Other than a ragged copy of Chessmen of Mars that I had salvaged from a school waste basket the year before, this Return of Tarzan was my first G&D. My parents gave it to me on my birthday, January 11, 1955. It has another special meaning. 

My trip down ERB memory lane starts in the late '40s / early '50s with Lex Barker movies, the Tarzan radio show with Lamont Johnson, Dell comics and Annuals, Big and Better Little Books (with their flip animation pages and crude Maxon art), gadzillian premiums and toys, 3-D bubble gum cards, View Master reels, EC Mad Comics parodies, colouring books, Sunday pages (Hogarth, Lubbers, Celardo, et al) and the Jesse Marsh-drawn John Carter comic... 

 Sadly, there were NO ERB NOVELS... and I loved to read. My mother, realizing my obsession for "jungle stuff", started me on a series of TOM STETSON books on Whitman (anyone remember these?). Christmas 1951 yielded "The Giant Jungle Ants", '52 "The Blue Devil" and '53 "On the Trail of the Lost Tribe". A little later I discovered the BOMBA series on G&D ...but still no Tarzan. 

 Finally, in 1954, on a trip to the big city of Brandon, I discovered a book shop that stocked the G&D Tarzans. After months of subtle Jean Shepard Xmas-Story-Red-Ryder-BB-Gun-type hints to my parents and 'old softie' grandfather, they presented me with the THE RETURN OF TARZAN on my twelfth birthday -- the book was a revelation. 

I still have this now-jacketless G&D treasure with its loose pages... and the tear on page 296 -- actually a rip from the claw of my pet cat. I had just started Chapter XXV - "Through the Forest Primeval" when word came that my Grandfather had been taken to the hospital and was dying. I had jumped up, dropping the book and my startled reading partner lap cat to the floor. 

 Now, many decades later, I have parlayed my sense of adventure into careers in education, and music. My Tarzan eventually took on the added persona of John Carter and we married Dejah Thoris. Together, my Princess of 55 years and I have preserved and added to all the early ERB treasures. . . while still finding time to travel and play our music across 20 countries 

. . . but I'm still ticked off about that mutilated page 296... 

~ Bill Hillman