Comic Strip That Might Have Been -Sam Glanzman 100th Anniversary
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Comic artist Sam Glanzman was born 100 years ago today on December 5, 1924.
Sam Glanzman had a long career as a comic book artist mostly drawing war comics in the latter half of his career. He gained a cult following for his cartooning that included a number of respected comic book artists and creators. Among hos most famous comics was the semi-autobiographical U.S.S. Stevens for D.C. Comics and others, and for his and Joe Gill’s unauthorized Jungle Tales of Tarzan for Charlton in 1964-65.
It is those famous unauthorized Tarzan comics that we focus on today.
As Roger Broughton wrote in an essay for that Dark Horse collection of the Gill and Glanzman Tarzan comics, during the time they were creating the comic books they also were planning to syndicate a Tarzan comic strip.
But once E. R. Burroughs, Inc. straightened out Charlton Comics about the trademark issues the Tarzan comic strip never saw the light of day, joining the Charlton comic book in a comic purgatory.
As Broughton explained – if the Gill and Glanzman comic strip had been syndicated it would have competed with the authorized Tarzan comic strip then being done by John Celardo; like the competing Captain and The Kids and The Katzenjammer Kids comic strips at that time.
But about a decade later Sam tried the syndicated comic strip game again with his Sleepy Hollow creation.
From a 2009 interview with Bryan Stroud:
Stroud: Did you ever do any syndicated strip work?
SG: No, but I was a fraction of an inch close to getting a job with the syndicate. The owner of the syndicate really loved it. It was a storyline about three guys who lived up in the mountains and it was called “Sleepy Hollow.” He loved it and I had to draw up 15 issues or more, I forget how many I did now, and they printed them up and his salesman took my job, “Sleepy Hollow,” and also that Viking comic strip. What was the name of that one?
Stroud: Hagar the Horrible?
SG: Right. That’s it. So, his agent took my stuff and Hagar around trying to sell it to the various newspapers and apparently, they liked Hagar better than mine. I think they pushed Hagar and Hagar took and mine didn’t take.
So Sleepy Hollow turned into a “never was” comic strip.
Tarzan © Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.; Sleepy Hollow © The Estate of Sam Glanzman
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