Frank Frazetta Masterpiece Sold for a
World Record $1+ Million by Heritage Auctions
Frazetta At The Earth's Core world record auction price DALLAS — At The Earth's Core, a 1974 masterpiece by Frank Frazetta, sold for $1,075,500 during day two of Heritage Auction's summer Comics & Comic Art Auction in Dallas — setting a world auction record for the hugely popular artist. The important illustration was used for the cover of the first Pellucidar paperback novel by the legendary writer, Edgar Rice Burroughs.

"Heritage has a strong reputation of getting top dollar for Frazetta artworks, and this painting surpassed our previous record by more than double its auction price," said Todd Hignite, Vice President of Heritage Auctions. "We expected strong interest, partly because At The Earth's Core is significantly larger than virtually every painting we've ever auctioned by the artist."

The 21-inch by 29-inch oil on canvas hung in the Frazetta Museum for many years. His powerful paintings appeared on book covers every year from 1963 through 1996, however At The Earth's Core stands out as an enduring classic image of Frazetta's work. The meticulous attention to detail in both the foreground and the background tell an entire story in one image – a talent the master of modern fantasy art did better than anyone else.

"If you are a collector of Mr. Frazetta's vision and talent, this is the painting to have," Hignite said. "It represents everything he did so well, from painting the female form to depicting realistic monsters and cliffhanger scenarios."

More at:
 http://www.erbzine.com/mag58/5860.html
and in ERB C.H.A.S.E.R.
http://www.erbzine.com/mag7/0741.html
Our Frank Frazetta ERB Art Gallery
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Breaking News From John Martin
WB Announces Legend-Ary Toy Line Some have complained that there are no toys to go with the new Legend of Tarzan movie.  The complaints are premature.

  Through some friends of mine who are Hollywood insiders, I have learned that the soon-to-be-famous toy manufacturer, Werper Bros., will be coming out with a line of toys in time for Christmas, hoping to catch the wave of renewed interest in The Legend of Tarzan from sales of DVDs and Blu-Rays. The toys are being designed to be authentic in looks and operation, while still maintaining a degree of safety standards. With these playthings, kids everywhere will be able to replicate the action scenes in Legend.

  Here's what the lineup looks like so far:

George Washington Williams Blow-'Em-Away Gun. An elephant gun-size barrel fitted onto a polished pistol handle. Shoots rubber bullets, like the ones the police use. Will cause some pain but no serious injury unless the bullet strikes target directly over the heart or in sensitive orifices on the face and other parts of the body. Kids will love them.

Rom Spider-Silk Rosary with built-in slide for choking GI Joes and pets which invade the sanctity of your property. Also may be used for prayers over bodies of said pets. Not recommended for children under five.

Jane makeup kit and training bra. Kit includes instruction manual for proper placement of silverware and techniques of accurate power-spitting.

Itching Powder. This stuff looks just like ape hair. Have your friends apply some, thinking it will make them look like one of Tarzan's hirsute jungle pals, and then watch the fun as they start wildly scratching themselves to death.

Tear-away Trousers. Deliberately manufactured with defects in knee area so that lower leg portion of trousers can easily be disposed of when necessary to step up the level of action.

Russian Roulette Vine Swing Kit. Hang these six realistic looking vines from a tree in your backyard and invite friends to take a swing, warning them they may suffer bodily injury if they pick the snapping vine, which looks no different than the others. Great for parties.

Congo Model Train. Comes with Tarzan, GWW, native action figures and soldiers, the latter with bodies capable of being bent into all manner of otherwise impossible positions which child can then place near Tarzan in train cars.

  It is also rumored that there has been a warehouse find of unsold Disney Davy Crockett powder horns which will be relabeled as makeshift knives for pretend ape-man to carry to intimidate opponents.

  Those are the toys I've heard about, but my sources say there may be others. Perhaps some of you have gotten wind of some of them...

Who was the real Tarzan?
The Daily Telegraph ~ June 14, 2016

As The Legend of Tarzan arrives on UK cinema screens on 6 July, we investigate the possible inspirations behind the rope-swinging Lord of the Apes…

In Edgar Rice Burroughs’ stupendously successful books (and they really were a huge deal in their day), Tarzan is an aristocratic child left to fend for himself in the African jungle after he and his parents are marooned. The orphaned John Clayton is raised by a family of semi-literate apes who name him Tarzan, meaning “white of skin”. So begins a series of wild adventures as Tarzan fights numerous jungle beasts and bloodthirsty hunters as the head of his adopted family. 

There has long been debate as to the inspiration behind one of literature’s most enduring characters. Could it be that Tarzan was based on a real person? According to journalist Thomas Llewellan Jones in a 1959 article for Man’s Adventure magazine, the 14th Earl of Streatham, William Charles Mildin, spent 15 years living in the wilds of Africa between 1868 and 1883. The earl’s story came to light only when family documents were made public following the death of his son in 1937.

According to Llewellan Jones, Lord Mildin left 1,500 pages of memoirs, which begin: “I was only 11 when, in a boyish fit of anger and pique, I ran away from home and obtained a berth as cabin boy aboard the four-masted sailing vessel, Antilla, bound for African ports-of-call and the Cape of Good Hope…” Mildin’s ship was wrecked after a three-day storm and the young lad survived by clinging to a piece of driftwood that eventually washed him ashore somewhere between Pointe Noire and Libreville in French Equatorial Africa. Official insurance documents, Llewellan says, verify the ship’s destruction in 1868.

Mildin claimed to have been befriended by a group of benevolent apes who offered him food and shelter. The boy took pride of place within the ape family by fashioning weapons and creating fire. The teenage Mildin eventually left the apes and became accepted by a tribe of natives, marrying five of the local women – siring four children in the process – while he lived there. Mildin eventually left the village after his people’s renewed hostilities with a rival tribe and over a number of years made his way 250 miles further up the coast, eventually coming to a trading post. Within months Mildin was back in Britain.

So why didn’t Burroughs acknowledge the real-life inspiration for Tarzan? According to Llewellan, Mildin’s death and the details of his adventures were largely kept secret due to complications with his will. Or it may be because Llewellan himself made the whole thing up. Man’s Adventure did run true stories, but there doesn’t seem to be much evidence outside of the article that Mildin existed at all.

But there are other ways of being inspired. Burroughs was writing at a time when the fight against slavery, having been settled in the West, was broadening out into a movement against colonialism. Although attitudes to race were fairly unreformed, there was a growing feeling that, in the jungles of Africa, the heroes were not the guys with pith helmets and rifles.

George Washington Williams was a Civil War veteran and the first African-American to be elected to the Ohio State Legislature. Played by Samuel L Jackson in The Legend of Tarzan, Williams was a human-rights campaigner who in 1889 fought to end the suffering of the Congolese in the Congo Free State at the hands of Belgian colonists, who were busy producing rubber in the region. Williams was successful in highlighting the abuses heaped upon the Congolese people and his trips to Africa were widely reported at the time and would certainly have been known to Burroughs, who first put Tarzan into print in 1912.

Whether or not Williams’ mission to help the natives of the Congo struck a chord with Burroughs is not known, but there are interesting parallels with his fictional exile, who stands up against the violence and greed of the colonial hunters. “It is a characteristic of the weak and criminal to attribute to others the misfortunes that are the result of their own wickedness,” Burroughs said.

Then again, did Burroughs even need to look elsewhere for inspiration? Having been discharged from the US Army in 1897, the young Burroughs undertook a number of jobs, including that of a pencil- sharpener salesman, before trying his hand at writing adventure and science fiction. He proved to be perhaps the most successful such author ever, going on to write 80 books, many from his own publishing house, and founding a town – Tarzana – which still exists as a suburb of Los Angeles. There were 25 Tarzan books in total, which proved to be the most successful and enduring of his works.

Burroughs may not have been raised by apes in Africa’s darkest regions, but he did possess a sense of moral obligation when it came to the treatment of his fellow man and animals. “As the body rolled to the ground Tarzan of the Apes placed his foot upon the neck of his lifelong enemy and, raising his eyes to the full moon, threw back his fierce young head and voiced the wild and terrible cry of his people.”

So was Burroughs himself the inspiration for Tarzan? Was Tarzan the man Burroughs wished he could have been? Burroughs was certainly in possession of an adventurous spirit. Science-fiction writer Ray Bradbury said of Burroughs: “By giving romance and adventure to a whole generation of boys, Burroughs caused them to go out and decide to become special.”

~ Article submitted to ERBzine by Laurence Dunn

Burroughs' Sailor Among Apes (excerpt) . . . "So avid was the pursuit of the account of Burroughs' sailor among the apes that at least one was manufactured: 'The Man Who Really Was...Tarzan,' by Thomas Llewellan Jones, first published in the March 1959 issue of Man's Adventure Magazine. Here William Charles Mildin, 14th Earl of Streatham, is alleged to have lived 15 years among the apes in French Equatorial Africa after surviving the October 1868 wreck of the Antilla. A search on The Times Digital Archive 1785-1985 does not reveal any of the stories about Mildin alledged to have appeared in The Times. While José Philip Farmer also debunks the story in his Afterword to Jones' article, he himself proposes an alledged privately printed (London: Rackham, 1887) book titled Survivors by one Whitworth Russell, which contains a chapter, 'The Wreck of the Antilla' outlining the similar adventures of a Lord of Streatham. A search of the British and other library catalogues does not reveal any such work." . . .  http://www.erbzine.com/mag14/1474.html