Maciste and Tarzan...Have You Ever Seen Them Together? by Dave Goode

I've always looked at Maciste flicks as being almost the half-brother of the Tarzan movies. In the first Golden Adonis strip Vance Capley and I did together the pro wrestler turned sinew & sandal movie star notices the script for a movie he's starring in bears more than a slight resemblance to Burroughs' TARZAN AND THE CITY OF GOLD. TARZAN AND THE LOST EMPIRE is another Burroughs' tale that reads a lot like a Maciste adventure. And I can recall once seeing an European poster for a silent Tarzan movie in which they were selling Tarzan as "America's Maciste". 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Probably the most Maciste-like of Tarzan films is TARZAN'S THREE CHALLENGES starring Jock Mahoney.It's just too bad Gordon Scott was no longer playing the role of the Lord of the Jungle.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gordon Scott who portrayed Tarzan in six movies would go to Europe after making two of the best Tarzan movies,TARZAN'S GREATEST ADVENTURES and TARZAN THE MAGNIFICENT,to star in peplum pictures. Most notably DUEL OF THE TITANS in which he and former Mr.America,Mr.World and Mr.Universe Steve Reeves play the twin demi-gods Romulus and Remus. Another favorite Scott movie from the genre is GOLIATH VS.THE VAMPIRES a.k.a Maciste contro il Vampiro.

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's just too bad no Italian movie producer got the idea of filming an adaptation of TARZAN AND THE CITY OF GOLD starring Scott or some other peplum movie star. And with a Chelo Alonso or Scilla Gabel as Nemone,Queen of Cathne the titled City of Gold. Or maybe just changing the hero's name from Tarzan to Maciste.

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The Jackie Robinson of Super-Heroes by Dave Goode

Born at the tail-end of the baby boom,just when the Silver Age was beginning I loved the comic books of that era. But there was one thing that I found a bit disturbing about that period. The lack of "heroes with a face like mine". Consider that the civil rights movement was getting a major push at the same time the Silver Age was beginning it seemed strange that the first black super-hero from a major comic book company wouldn't appear until 1966 with the appearance of the Black Panther in Fantastic Four 52 and 53 from Marvel Comics.

To be sure there had been black characters featured in comics since the Golden Age. But the less said about them the better. They were a reflection of their times. Mimicking the negative stereotypes that were found in the movies. It was during the Silver Age that you began to see black characters that were positive role models for young black comic book readers. And that taught young white comic book readers to reject the old stereotypes.

In Fantastic Four No.52 we got the first black super-hero to appear in a mainstream comic book...T'Challa, the Black Panther. The only thing that you can compare it to was when Jackie Robinson broke Major League Baseball's "color barrier in 1947. In 1947 no matter what baseball team you rooted for if you were black the Brooklyn Dodgers automatically became your second favorite team. Captain America was my favorite super-hero.But the Black Panther immediately became my second favorite super-hero.

T'Challa was the king of a scientifically advanced fictional African nation. He was a super-athlete able to fight the Fantastic Four,at least for a brief time,to a standstill. He was intelligent,articulate and you could easily imagine him played by Sidney Poitier in a movie. The Black Panther was soon followed in by a super-hero I could even more readily identify with...Sam Wilson,the Falcon. Wilson would be the first African-American costumed hero from a mainstream comic book publisher. He would also become the partner of my favorite super-hero Captain America.

The other day I was watching THE SINS OF RACHEL CADE (1961) starring AngieDickinson and Roger Moore. The movie is set in Africa and features Woody Strode and Rafer Johnson in supporting roles. Watching the two athletes turned actors set me to imagining them in a 1966 Black Panther movie with Johnson as T'Challa and Strode portraying his father T'Chaka.