It appears that Victoria University Press has incurred the wrath of the legal eagles at Edgar Rice Burroughs Incorporated. Nigel Cox’s latest, greatest book, Tarzan Presley has stirred the estate of the creator of Tarzan into demands for VUP to can the book.

VUP Publisher Fergus Barrowman was ‘surprised’ by the move. 'Tarzan is in the dictionary, for goodness sake, and the book is in no sense an attempt to pass itself off as the work of Edgar Rice Burroughs or an authorised continuation of his work. It's a literary reinvention,' he said.

But Burroughs’ estate has a long history of litigation protecting the Tarzan brand. It’s based in Tarzana, California, and yes, the town was indeed named after Tarzan. In 1919 Burroughs bought a farm north of LA which he named ‘Tarzana’. The citizens of the community that sprang up around the ranch voted to adopt the name when their town was incorporated in 1928.

I must say, I had no idea that Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote almost seventy novels, and was a pencil sharpener salesman when he started reading pulp fiction mags and decided that 'although I had never written a story, I knew absolutely that I could write stories just as entertaining and probably a whole lot more so than any I chanced to read in those magazines.'

His first attempt, Under the Moons of Mars was serialised and Tarzan of the Apes soon followed. It was a sensation, and the merchandising mayhem which followed damned his critics and made Tarzan one of history's biggest brands… good move, Ed.

Anyway, apparently the current state of affairs is an uneasy truce between VUP and ERBI. The estate is OK with VUP selling the current print run, but none are allowed to be sold outside New Zealand. And the next edition would have to remove the name Tarzan, change the storyline to avoid similarities, and again, not be sold outside New Zealand. If not, it’s ‘see you in court’. Blimey.

It would be very expensive… but on the other hand – you couldn’t buy that kind of publicity for our Nige! Perhaps he could adapt a 'David and Goliath' story on the back of it? Hang on, who's got the Bible copyrights?