More recently, Dynamite has now gotten the license to do “official” John Carter comics. The first issues didn’t impress me artwise. I honestly did not bother with their series. When the movie came out Marvel got the license to do “official” John Carter comics. I thought some of the violence was a little over the top, but have enjoyed them. Some didn’t care for the cheese-cake artwork used for Thoris and others. In 2010, Dynamite Comics started doing a John Carter series, with spin-offs due to the earlier books now being public domain. I read the DC and Marvel comics around the time I was reading the novels, and these influenced how I saw the characters. This has been collected a couple of times recently, finally in a color hardback edition by Marvel. Marvel Comics got the license next, and did a series with original stories for about three years, including three annuals. It has since been collected by Dark Horse Comics. This appeared as a backup in their Tarzan title, then showcased in Weird Worlds, before being a series in Tarzan Family. These were reprinted a couple of times and more recently collected into a hardback archive by Dark Horse Comics.ĭC Comics, when they had the license for Tarzan, adapted John Carter. Several of them have been collected in recent times in book form.ĭell Comics’ The Funnies ran an adaption of the first couple of Barsoom books done by John Coleman Burroughs.ĭell later did three issues of their Four Color series adapting the first three novels, with artwork by Jesse Marsh who was doing Tarzan. The Barsoom books have been adapted several times into comic books, sometimes with original stories. While swordplay was prevalent, there was also technology like the radium guns and flying ships. The origin of the Green Martians is unclear. These races were more powerful and prevalent in the distant past when the Martian Oceans existed, but as they dried up, the three races intermarried and produced the hardier Red Martians and faded away. These include the Yellow, Black, and White Martian races, as well as a few others. John does befriend one, Tars Tarkas, who is an important ally, along with his daughter, Sola.ĭuring Carter’s adventures, they (re-)discover other races, long thought dead. They are menaced by the roving, violent Green Martians, who have four arms, large red eyes and tusks coming from their mouths. Dejah Thoris is a princess of Helium, made up of two neighboring cities: Greater and Lesser Helium. The main race is the Red Martians (red-skinned humans who lay eggs), who are organized into various city-states. On this world we find several different races. The “canals” are real, dug when the large Martian oceans were drying up. We find a world that is apparently dying, as resources, like water, are hard to find, and a giant Atmosphere Factory must produce oxygen for the inhabitants. Barsoomīarsoom, what the natives call Mars, is a big part of the series. Ulysses Paxton, an Earthman who was apparently killed in WWI, is transported to Mars in “Mastermind of Mars.” “A Fighting Man” and “Synthetic Men” focus on a pair of native Martians, and the rest on John Carter’s later adventures, though sadly the last “novel” (really a pair of shorter works, the first really written by Burroughs’ son), leaves things unfinished. Their son, Carthoris, is the star of the next novel, “Thuvia, Maid of Mars” his sister Tara in “The Chessmen of Mars,” and her daughter Llana, in “Llana of Gathol.” The first three novels comprise a basic trilogy, as John Carter meets Princess Dejah Thoris, gets into various perils, finds and loses her, then marries her, returns to Earth, is able to return to Mars, finds new threats, and overcomes them. John Carter (who hints he doesn’t know when he was born, so is he somehow immortal?) finds himself mysteriously transported from post Civil War Arizona to Mars. John Carter was the main protagonist in only some of these. The volumes I got were put out by Ballantine Books and had covers by Gino D’Achille. The series consists of the following books: The series is usually known as John Carter of Mars, and is one of the first of the “sword and planet” or “planetary romance” genre, and considered the prototype for the genre. As a kid, one of the first science-fiction authors I got into was Edgar Rice Burroughs, and the first works by him I read was his series about Mars, or “Barsoom” as it’s called by its inhabitants.
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