Tarzan - Works Inspired By Tarzan

Works Inspired By Tarzan

In the 1940s, the Finnish writer Lahja Valakivi published four adventure novels about Tarsa karhumies, i.e., Tarsa the Bear Man. The books were obviously inspired by Tarzan, but they were adapted into a Finnish setting: as there are no apes in Finland, the hero Tarsa was raised by bears instead.

Tarzan's popularity inspired numerous imitators that appeared in pulp magazines. A number of these like Kwa and Ka-Zar were direct or loosely veiled copies, others like Polaris of the Snows were similar characters in different settings, or with different gimmicks. Of these characters the most popular was Ki-Gor, he starred in fifty-nine novels that appeared between winter 1939 to spring 1954 in the magazine Jungle Stories.

In 1950, the Italian comics series Akim was created as a rather straight copy of Tarzan. It was published between 1950-1967, and 1976-1983.

In 1967, Jay Ward Productions released the animated series George of the Jungle, a Tarzanesque ape man. Later on a film was made starring Brendan Fraser, later a direct-to-video sequel was made.

Disney released The World's Greatest Athlete in 1973, which was about a Tarzanesque figure named Nanu (Jan-Michael Vincent) who was spotted by a Safari guide with American coaches to participate in sports competitions.

In 2007 a Canadian remake of the original George of the Jungle cartoon was made, it aired on Teletoon in Canada and Cartoon Network in America. A video game based on the show released for the Wii, PS2, and the Nintendo DS.

The Japanese manga series "Jungle no Ouja Ta-chan" (Ta-chan, King of the Jungle) by Tokuhiro Masaya was based loosely on Tarzan. It was later made into an anime series. It featured the characters of Tarzan and his wife Jane, who had become obese after settling down with Tarzan. The series begins as a comical parody of Tarzan, but later expands to other settings, such as a martial arts tournament in China, professional wrestling in America, and even a fight with vampires.

The late comedian George Carlin mentioned Tarzan when he was doing his HBO stand up It's Bad For Ya when he was talking about how to deal with boring people in public or on the phone.

In Asia, Philippine Cinema's inclination in satirizing western entertainment produced Starzan, a comedy film loosely based on the original Tarzan franchise. It stars Filipino comedic actor Joey De Leon as Starzan, Rene Requiestas as "Chitae", and Zsa Zsa Padilla as Jane.

Tarzan appears briefly as a character in the book Lust, by Geoff Ryman.

Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book had some similar concepts from Tarzan.

Warren Ellis' and John Cassaday's Planetary features in its issues 1 and 17 a British Tarzan-like character, Kevin Sack, Lord Blackstock, who was "lost as an infant, raised by jungle fauna" and now (the 1930s in issue 17) "comes back to Africa every few years".