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| The Tarzan Twins |
I’m about 90% sure I never read this one and I wasn’t missing much. This was written just a few years before the appearance of the first comic book sidekick, Robin the Boy Wonder, and it was probably meant to serve the same purpose. Sidekicks like Robin were introduced to comic books to give a younger audience a character they could identify with. It was thought that kids would be more interested in comics if there was a kid in the comic and it would bring younger readers in. (A similar thought process led to the inclusion of Captain Stubing’s daughter, Vickie, on the Love Boat. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, ask your parents – or grandparents.)
In this case, two first cousins are called the Tarzan twins for rather tortured reasons. It seems their mothers were twin sisters and one married an American and stayed in the States while the other one married a distant cousin of Lord Greystoke and settled in England. The sisters had sons on the same day but on different continents. One is blond and one is dark and one is named Doc and the other is Dick but don’t ask me which is which. They’re pretty interchangeable.
When they go to school together their schoolmates dub them the Tarzan twins due to the distant connection to Tarzan and their resemblance to one another. To try to live up to the name they learn to climb trees and participate in athletics to make themselves strong and fit. When the chance comes to travel to Africa to visit the Greystokes at the age of 14, they jump at it. Of course they get lost in the jungle and are captured by cannibals.
There isn’t anything new or particularly memorable about this one other than the introduction of mini Tarzans, something we never asked for and didn’t need. We already have a much better example with Korak – Son of Tarzan – and I found these boys annoying to the extreme. It’s nice and short at least, but there’s another one coming up behind it so I’m not quite done with these two, unfortunately. I have to give this one 3 stars just because Tarzan appears, but it’s really a 2 star book at best.
