RIP "Tarzan" star Ron Ely

TV's Tarzan and Mike Nelson in the revamped "Sea Hunt," Ron Ely has passed at the age of 86.

I featured Ron Ely in my “Biographic” newspaper strip back in 2016 when I looked at how Tarzan has been depicted in TV and movies. Having previously been a series regular on “The Aquanauts,” Ely played the lead on the “Tarzan” TV series in the late 1960s. He did all his own stunts, suffering two dozen major injuries in the process, including two broken shoulders and numerous lion bites! Ely later played the lead in the 1975 movie “Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze,” before starring as Mike Nelson on the remake of TV’s “Sea Hunt.” In 2019, his wife was stabbed to death and police who were called to the scene shot and killed the suspect, Ely’s 30-year-old son,

Here’s how Ely was depicted at the time in the British comic “TV Tornado.”

The inimitable Mort Drucker was the artist and Dick De Bartolo the writer for this MAD magazine parody of the “Tarzan” TV show :

Finally, here are a couple of “Tarzan” comics covers featuring Ely: