Ravenskull Book

The clear star of this book is Joe Kubert's pencils, as he beautifully brings the jungles to life with giant animals and explosive movement. The story itself comes in two parts: first, the 4-issue origin of Tarzan, then a few one-shots about Tarzan's life. The origin story isn't anything particularly new or interesting to someone with even a passing cultural knowledge of Tarzan, and is in fact the weak point of the book. The way they describe Tarzan, and his inhuman ability to learn language and communicate in English as an adult raised by apes, is a hard pill to swallow and takes me out of the story. It's strangely paced and while it hits all the important parts to get one acquainted with Tarzan it's not what you should pick up the volume for. The one-shots, instead, are excellent days in the life of Tarzan. From sky-battles against giant gorillas to saving wildlife from humankind to hallucinating drug trips, it's a fun adventure set to this beautiful jungle backdrop. This is a book worth reading for the art alone and though the stories can be simplistic and occasionally leave you wanting, it's 100% worth reading just for Kubert's art.