In 1928, commercial artist Hal Foster began drawing a 60-part black-and-white newspaper comic based on Edgar Rice Burroughs' novel Tarzan of the Apes. Since no American newspaper wanted to publish it at first, it premiered in England and was very well received. When US newspapers finally wanted to print his comics, Foster was not interested. It was not until 1931, when the Great Depression was a matter of ensuring the survival of his family, that he agreed to create Tarzan as a colorful, full-page Sunday comic. He described the extremely poorly paid job as "a lentil dish". The lentil dish fed him and his family for the next seven years, during which time Tarzan became one of America's most popular Sunday comics. Although the newspapers complained about the violence (Burroughs countered that Tarzan's success was the result of a "human weakness for bloody and gruesome situations") and denounced the incessant nudity (the author's script notes called for "a lot of female nudity"), readers found Tarzan's adventures with ancient Egyptians, modern criminals, Vikings, dinosaurs, killer monkeys, and a number of provocative queens and princesses fascinating. In 1937, the strip was continued by Burne Hogarth. For this XXL volume, the comics from the original newspapers have been reproduced and the colors and characteristic Ben-Day rasterization of classic comics have been retained. Let Hal Foster's Tarzan take you back to the time of Sunday mornings when you lay on your stomach on the living room carpet, the newspaper spread out in front of you, immersed in a world of exotic adventures while your mother made you breakfast.