1929 was quite a strange year for kids. On the down side, the Great Depression was in it's first few months and would run for close to ten years. Families would have little extra money for simple things. Cheap entertainment like movies for a nickel or dime and the Sunday funnies would become a Depression kid's best escape from family struggle. Fortunately, both newspapers & movies knew their importance. Money may have been in short supply but imagination wasn't. Mickey Mouse was a only few months old and comic strips of both Buck Rogers & Tarzan started on the same January day.
Tarzan was the brainchild of writer Edgar J. Burroughs. Like Buck Rogers, he had started his literary life as a story in a pulp magazine. The character was introduced in 1912 and became instantly popular. He was an early subject of cinema with his first film in 1918.
Today when properties are simultaneously released as video games, collectible card games, trading cards, action figures, phone icons, Internet avatars & movies, it's hard to imagine it took Tarzan more than 15 years to appear in the popular medium of comic strips. With artwork by illustrator Hal Foster (Foster would go on to create Prince Valiant), I'm sure kids thought it was worth the wait.
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