Tarzan and the Lost Empire Comic Strips
Dust jacket from Metropolitan Books edition of Tarzan and the Lost Empire

Tarzan and the Lost Empire was first published by Metropolitan Books, Inc. in 1929. The image to the left shows the dust jacket from that book.

Metropolitan Newspaper Feature Service, Inc., a subdivision of Metropolitan Books, published an illustrated condensed newspaper comic-strip version of the story. It doesn't seem to have run simultaneously in all the newspapers carrying the series. The Worcester Evening Post carried it during the period between January and April 1931. This newspaper series was illustrated by Rex Maxon.

These comic strips were collected by Roland N. Anderson (1916-1982) while working as a paperboy. He delivered both the Worcester Evening Post and the Worcester Evening Gazette, both newspapers published in Worcester, Massachusetts. The strips appeared in the paper six days a week, from Monday to Saturday.

When Ballantine Books republished this book in paperback in 1963, it summarized it on the back cover as follows: "Somewhere in the heart of Africa, a man had disappeared - Erich von Harben, son of an old friend of Tarzan of the Apes. Now the ape-man was seeking to rescue him. The trail led to a mysterious valley where Tarzan discovered two surviving outposts of ancient Rome, almost unchanged by time. And there, Tarzan was thrust into the bloody arena, to face every peril the cruel and corrupt Emperor of Castra Sanguinarius could devise to ensure the ape-man's death. Miles away in Castrum Mare, Erich von Harben was also awaiting execution upon the sands of another tyrant's arena. "

Inasmuch as the Tarzan series was more a series of illustrated short novels than a typical comic strip, the amount of text in each strip far exceeded the amount of text in other comic strips, and consequently of rather small size, about 10 points. In order to make the material more readable, the strips are presented here in halves at about 50% magnification.

The first strip begins at this link. On the left side of each comic strip, next to the title, there is a number which indicates that particular strip's position in the series. Some browsers will display this number in the lower left hand corner of the window frame. If someone quits reading some segment of Tarzan and the Lost Empire before having read it all and then at some later date wishes to return to where he left off, this can be done by entering the number of that particular comic strip here.


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