Large Feature Comic #5
Large Feature Comic #5 holds a singular place in comics history as the first comic book devoted entirely to Tarzan, presenting the ape-man in a format free from anthology competition for the very first time. It reprints the complete 60-episode daily newspaper strip from 1929 — itself a landmark as one of the earliest adventure story-strips and the debut newspaper work of Hal Foster, who would later redefine the medium with Prince Valiant. By transplanting Foster's naturalistic draftsmanship from the daily newspaper page into a standalone comic-book object, Dell gave readers their first concentrated, cover-to-cover immersion in the origin of John Clayton, Lord Greystoke — a milestone for both the Tarzan franchise and the still-young comic-book medium. The issue also sits at an intriguing crossroads of comics genealogy: a panel from Foster's interior art for this book has been identified by researchers as a visual source appropriated in the published origin of Batman in Detective Comics #33 (1939).
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The story content originates with a commission placed around 1928, when advertising executive Joseph Neebe hired commercial artist Hal Foster to adapt Edgar Rice Burroughs' 1912 novel Tarzan of the Apes into a 60-installment black-and-white daily strip; the strip was initially rejected by American papers and made its print debut in the British weekly Tit-Bits before launching in U.S. and Canadian papers on January 7, 1929. The strip's text — adapted by R.W. Palmer — closely followed Burroughs' original prose, functioning as a 'picturized' retelling rather than a conventional panel-dialogue comic. Dell packaged those 60 episodes into Large Feature Comic #5 in 1939, supplementing Foster's repurposed strips with additional transitional panels and ten full-page chapter illustrations by illustrator Henry E. Vallely, who had also worked extensively on Big Little Books for Dell's publishing orbit. The Large Feature Comic series itself was an oversized, largely black-and-white anthology vehicle Dell used from 1939 through 1942 to package single-feature newspaper-strip reprints in standalone issues, making #5 one of the earliest entries in that short-lived but historically rich series.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Recognized as the first comic book devoted entirely to Tarzan — the first time the character headlined a cover-to-cover solo comic-book publication.
- Reprints all 60 episodes of Hal Foster's daily newspaper strip that debuted January 7, 1929, itself notable as Foster's first-ever newspaper comics work.
- The source strips were a direct prose adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs' 1912 novel Tarzan of the Apes, scripted by R.W. Palmer, with much of the narrative caption text drawn verbatim from the novel.
- Interior art credits: Hal Foster (the reprinted 1929 strips) and Henry E. Vallely (supplementary transitional panels and ten full-page chapter illustrations added for the comic-book edition).
- The book runs approximately 72 pages in an oversized, predominantly black-and-white format — consistent with other Large Feature Comic issues of the 1939 series.
- Part of Dell's Large Feature Comic series (1939–1942), an approximately 30-issue run of single-feature newspaper-strip reprint books that served as an important early vehicle for translating syndicate strip properties into comic-book form.
- Sometimes catalogued by early collectors under the informal alternate title 'Black and White #5,' reflecting the series' non-standard numbering conventions.
- A panel on page 42 of the book — drawn by Foster — has been identified by comics researchers as a pose visually appropriated in Batman's first published origin story in Detective Comics #33 (November 1939), linking this issue to a notable moment in superhero comics history.