Taschen is releasing Hal Foster’s Tarzan: The Complete Sunday Comics 1931–1937, a comprehensive collection of 292 full-page Tarzan Sunday strips in oversized XXL format, reprinting every comic from the original newspapers with their distinctive color and Ben Day dot coloring process. The 392-page hardcover, priced at $200, arrived in May 2026 and marks a landmark preservation of one of the most influential adventure comic series of the early twentieth century.
Foster initially adapted Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan as a 60-episode daily black-and-white newspaper strip beginning in 1929—the first adventure comic strip of its kind. Though the daily strip found little interest among American papers at first, premiering instead in England to great acclaim, Foster reluctantly returned to the character in 1931 when financial hardship during the Great Depression forced him to accept Burroughs’ offer to draw a full-color, full-page Sunday comic. What Foster called “a bit of pottage” became one of the most beloved Sunday strips in America.
From 1931 until Foster handed the strip to artist Burne Hogarth in mid-1937, readers found Tarzan’s adventures mesmerizing—encounters with ancient Egyptians, modern criminals, Vikings, dinosaurs, and killer apes, alongside provocative queens and princesses. Newspapers complained about the violence and nudity, but Burroughs defended the content, noting that Tarzan’s success stemmed from a “human weakness for gory and gruesome situations.” Foster’s anatomical precision and research rigor were unlike anything appearing in the funny pages at the time; he took his work seriously, lamenting that some writers failed to consider details like what trees would naturally line an African river.
Foster’s Tarzan defined the character for decades and established a visual template for adventure comics that influenced some of the medium’s greatest artists. Legends including Frank Frazetta, Jack Kirby, Bernie Wrightson, and Wally Wood all cited Foster as a major influence on their own work. According to comic historians, without the success of Foster’s first Tarzan newspaper comics, action and adventure comics—and the later comic book medium itself—might never have achieved their cultural prominence.
Foster grew increasingly dissatisfied with his Tarzan work, frustrated by inadequate flat fees while writers received a percentage of profits, and by scripts he felt lacked his own attention to detail. He eventually left the strip for a more lucrative deal with King Features Syndicate, where he gained creative control and the ability to write and draw his own adventure comic—the equally revolutionary Prince Valiant, which became his magnum opus.
The new Taschen collection, edited by Dian Hanson, preserves the color and texture of the original newspaper comics, carrying readers back to what Foster described as Sunday mornings spent belly-down on the living room rug with the “funnies” spread before them. The volume is aimed at serious collectors of Tarzan lore and comics history; at $200, it represents a significant investment but stands as an essential scholarly resource for understanding the origins of adventure comics and Foster’s outsized influence on twentieth-century illustration.
Sources
- Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. — official announcement of Taschen book release, publication details, and Foster’s biographical background
- No Flying No Tights — detailed review of the collection, Foster’s career trajectory, and his influence on later artists including Frazetta, Wrightson, and Kirby
- ICV2 — publication date and price confirmation
- Lambiek Comiclopedia — Foster’s role as first adventure comic strip artist and his adaptation of Tarzan
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