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Presents
Volume 7530
PUSHING THE ENVELOPE XXI
Envelope Packets 229
by John Martin
My "other hobby," buying, exchanging,
making and mailing postal art covers,
ties in with my Edgar Rice Burroughs
hobby quite a bit.
I enjoy making covers featuring
Tarzan or other ERB characters,
and friends of mine have made
and mailed me such covers as well.
I thought it would be fun to
start scanning and sharing such covers
on the anniversaries of the
dates they were originally postmarked.
PUSHING THE ENVELOPE No. 229
"The Tigers of Edgar Rice Burroughs"
We know that the first time Edgar Rice Burroughs included tigers in one of his adventure stories it did not go so well. Back in 1912, a lot of people probably thought there were both lions and tigers in Africa, so it isn't surprising that ERB included the orange and black-striped beasts in "Tarzan of the Apes." We know that some letters to the editor in the next issue of The All Story set him straight. Burroughs may have been embarrassed by his error but he was not discouraged. He changed all of the tigers to lionesses for the publication of his story in book form in 1914, and continued to churn out more adventure stories as well.Along the way, he had other characters encounter tigers, including some modern-day tigers. some prehistoric saber-tooth cats, and some exotic tiger-like creatures on Venus. And eventually he had traditional tigers show up in two other Tarzan stories, written in the last decade of his life, a novella, "Tarzan and the Castaways," and a full-length book, "Tarzan and 'The Foreign Legion'," both of which were set on islands in the Pacific.
The first was a story which had the ape man adventuring on an island settled by Mayans from Yucatan and the latter was a story which placed Tarzan on the the island of Japanese-occupied Sumatra during World War II. Tigers also occupied that island.
To make first-day covers for the 2022 Year of the Tiger stamp, I looked for book and magazine cover illustrations of some of Burroughs's stories which featured tigers. Some of these were saber-tooth tigers which are traditionally pictured without stripes. However, we have their bones --not their pelts -- so when some of the various illustrators' guessed that the primeval tigers wore stripes as well, their guesses were as good as any.
"The Eternal Lover," sometimes titled as "The Eternal Savage," was a time-travel novel in which an ancient caveman, Nu, the son of Nu, battled a saber-tooth tiger, Oo when an earthquake buried them both. He woke up in Tarzan's Africa and met the modern gal, Victoria Custer, who is a lookalike for his girlfriend of yore.
Burroughs populated his Venus stories with unusual civilizations and beasts unlike any found on Earth. Two of them were tiger-like. One was the tharban, a cat-like beast resembling a candy cane with red and white stripes running the length of its body instead of cross ways, and a thick dark mane growing out of its spine. Even weirder perhaps was the tongzan, an aboreal panther-like predator with lobster-like claws in place of its front paws. It featured a single, scarlet eye, sharp fangs and yellow fur crossed by crimson stripes.
"The Land of Hidden Men," also published under the title of "Jungle Girl," took place in a lost civilization in Cambodia and the beast they called "My Lord, the Tiger" was every bit the kind of tiger we know today.
Another of his novels that featured saber-tooth tigers was his trilogy about the lost island of Caspak, which was populated by prehistoric people and dinosaurs, as well as tigers. That novel was titled "The Land That Time Forgot" and included a novelette by that name as well as two others, "The People That Time Forgot" and "Out of Time's Abyss."
Burroughs wrote seven novels about that world inside the Earth called "Pellucidar." Several of those stories had dangerous encounters between the protagonists and saber-tooth tigers.
The seventh book, "Savage Pellucidar," was made up of four novelettes and published after ERB's death with a cover featuring an old illustration by J. Allen St. John. Phil Normand, who has been making quality jackets for ERB books for several years, decided to make a special variant cover for that book, published by Canaveral, featuring much more colorful art.
Phil had learned from longtime ERB fan D. Peter Ogden of a painting that was used on a Fantastic Adventures magazine cover to tie in with ERB's novelette, "War on Venus." But the art had mistakenly been used for the wrong issue of the wrong magazine! It was supposed to go on the cover of the Amazing Stories April 1942 issue which carried the "Tiger Girl" part of "Savage Pellucidar," Phil said.But it accidentally was set up on the cover of sister magazine Fantastic Adventures, March 1942, issue, which carried ERB's "War on Venus."
Phil said that it was Ogden "who encouraged me to create the alternate dust jacket after he saw the reproductions I was doing at the 1999 Tarzana Dum-Dum. Hard to believe it was that long ago. Later, when I was catching up on collecting the older numbers of ERB-doms, I saw that Caz had been trying to design the 'correct' jacket for 'Savage Pellucidar' when it came out from Canaveral. Caz also used the 'Tiger Girl' illustration, but it was repainted by someone. That was way before we got the digital tools we have now that made it easier (not simple, but easier) to use the actual pulp cover and remove all the titling," said Phil. "Anyway, at this point I think I can say that my version is the definitive one after all these years."
[My special thanks to Phil for permitting me to use his fine dust jacket creation on one of my ERB tiger covers.]
See all of Phil's dust jacket re-creations at www.recoverings.com.
"The Living Dead," one of four novelettes which made up the Edgar Rice Burroughs book "Escape on Venus" (1946), was first published in Fantastic Adventures in November 1941 with a cover painting by J. Allen St. John featuring the Venusan tiger-like creature called a tongzan, which had crab- or lobster-like claws in place of front paws.
J. Allen St. John painted a striped saber-tooth tiger, who was called Oo in the story, for the dust jacket of Edgar Rice Burroughs's "The Eternal Lover," published by A.C. McClurg & Co. in 1925.
"My Lord, the Tiger," as he was called by the inhabitants of the lost city of Pnom Dhek, menaces Fou-tan in this Roy G. Krenkel painting which was used for the cover of the 1963 Ace paperback edition of "The Land of Hidden Men" (also titled "Jungle Girl").
Frank Frazetta painted the candy cane-colored tharban to go after the treed Carson Napier and Duare for the cover of "Lost on Venus" published as an Ace paperback in 1963.
The saber-tooth tiger had a big bite and wore stripes as it went after Dian the Beautiful in this painting by J. Allen St. John for the cover of Edgar Rice Burroughs's "Pellucidar," published by A.C. McClurg & Co. in 1923.
Michael Herring is the artist who painted this striped saber-tooth tiger on the cover of "The People That Time Forgot" by Edgar Rice Burroughs, published by Del-Rey in 1992. The three novelettes that make up the Caspak trilogy are often published in separate editions in paperback and one edition in hardback or trade paperbacks under the overall title of "The Land That Time Forgot." "People" is the second novelette in the series and "Out of Time's Abyss" is the third.
The seventh book in the inner world series by Edgar Rice Burroughs, "Savage Pellucidar," was made up of four novelettes and published after ERB's death with a cover featuring an old black ink illustration by J. Allen St. John. Phil Normand, who has been making quality jackets for ERB books for several years, decided to make a special variant cover for that book, published by Canaveral, featuring much more colorful art.
Phil had learned from longtime ERB fan D. Peter Ogden of a painting that was used on a Fantastic Adventures magazine cover to tie in with ERB's novelette, "War on Venus." But the art had mistakenly been used for the wrong issue of the wrong magazine! It was supposed to go on the cover of the Amazing Stories April 1942 issue which carried the "Tiger Girl" part of "Savage Pellucidar," Phil said.
“But it accidentally was set up on the cover of sister magazine Fantastic Adventures, March 1942, issue, which carried ERB's "War on Venus.”
Phil said that it was Ogden "who encouraged me to create the alternate dust jacket after he saw the reproductions I was doing at the 1999 Tarzana Dum-Dum. Later, when I was catching up on collecting the older numbers of ERB-doms, I saw that Caz had been trying to design the 'correct' jacket for 'Savage Pellucidar' when it came out from Canaveral. Caz also used the 'Tiger Girl' illustration, but it was repainted by someone. That was way before we got the digital tools we have now that made it easier (not simple, but easier) to use the actual pulp cover and remove all the titling," said Phil. "Anyway, at this point I think I can say that my version is the definitive one after all these years."
[My special thanks to Phil for permitting me to use his fine dust jacket creation on one of my ERB tiger covers.]
See all of Phil's dust jacket re-creations at www.recoverings.com.
G.P. Micklewright was the dust jacket artist for the Methuen edition of "Tanar of Pellucidar" published in Great Britain in 1939. This was the third novel in Edgar Rice Burroughs' inner-world series and has a saber-tooth tiger with stripes going after Tanar
"Tarzan und die Fremdenlegion" was a translation of the title of "Tarzan and 'The Foreign Legion'." Tarzan has to dispatch a tiger in this novel, originally published in 1947. Joe Jusko captured the scene on canvas and it was used for the cover of this paperback edition published in Germany.
Frank Hoban painted Tarzan versus a striped saber-tooth tiger for the cover for one of the installments of Blue Book Magazine's serialization of Edgar Rice Burroughs's "Tarzan at the Earth's Core." The magazine featured a Hoban cover with each installment of the serial, six in all, in 1929 and 1930.
Celebrating Chinese New Year
THE YEAR OF THE TIGER 2022
At the Hillman Chinese New Year Site
www.hillmanweb.com/newyear/indexTIGER2022.html
ERBzine REFERENCES
Edgar Rice Burroughs: ERBzine Bibliography
Escape on Venus
The Eternal Lover
Jungle Girl
Lost on Venus
Pellucidar
Land That Time Forgot
https://www.erbzine.com/mag7/0747.html
War on Venus
Tiger Girl
Tanar of Pellucidar
Tarzan and 'The Foreign Legion'
Tarzan at the Earth's CoreJ. Allen St. John
Roy G. Krenkel
Frank Frazetta
D. Peter Ogden
Joe Jusko (S. Af. Tarzan Covers ~ ERB, Inc. Authorized Editions)
