The only comment I have is that North America certainly does have vines that you can swing from. As you said though, they usually have to be cut at the bottom. Frost and summer grape vines will entangle enough on higher tree branches to be able to support human weight. Poison ivy will support human weight, though I doubt that many people would enjoy the swinging. Frost grape (vitis vulpina) frequently grows beside rivers (hence its other common name ‘riverbank grape’) and it’s not uncommon to see kids or adults using them to swing out over swimming holes in the summer. As a means of transportation though, I think they’d leave a lot to be desired. They don’t grow particularly densely and there’s the issue that they tend to be attached quite close to the tree trunk, so to swing on them, you generally have to swing in a wide arc away from the tree and from a running start. I think that using them as transportation would end up looking a lot more like George of the Jungle than Tarzan.
What column is this in reference to?
The one in the title:
Batman can’t keep pulling endless numbers of cable guns out of his outfit to swing through the city either. Cable guns that mysteriously hold several hundred feet of cable in some sort of interdimensional space.
And after a while, you’d think the building owners would get tired of all the facade damage. Or that people would be regularly injured by falling chunks of debris.
At least Spider-Man’s webbing dissolves.
Also in the original ERB stories, Tarzn doesn’t swing on vines, at least not often as a means of transportation. That’s a movie addition. Tarzan is described as traveling through the upper terrace of the trees. I assume that means jumping from one tree to another. I don’t know why that would be faster than running though.
You don’t have to stop to scrape the elephant poop off your feet.