Warlord of Mars (Arvid Nelson, Steven Sadowski and Lui Antonio)

One of the most productive avenues for authors of comics is mining pulp fiction of the early twentieth century. It was while browsing through various Conan titles on Amazon that I came across this adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs' 'Warlord of Mars'. Seduced immediately by the gorgeous art and pulp storyline, I ordered it just before Christmas.

This trade paperback collects the entire first run of Dynamite's 'Warlord of Mars' comic. The tale starts in post-Civil War Arizona, where John Carter, late of Virginia's army, is mysteriously transported from a cave to the red planet, known to locals as Barsoom. There he finds a race of four armed green warriors, the Tharks, who are mostly savage and brutish, apart from a few heroes, such as Tars Tarkas, who Carter quickly befriends out of mutual respect. The atmosphere of Mars makes Carter un-naturally strong and quick, and with his martial training on earth, he becomes a peerless warrior and chieftain among the Tharks. But then, one fateful day, he realises that the green men are not alone on Barsoom: the Tharks capture a princess of the "red men" (physiologically the same as humans, but red skinned) who is a compelling, scanitily glad, passionate beauty. Dejah Thoris immediately becomes Carter's raison d'etre, and he daringly jail breaks her...and this is just the start of their adventures together.

The comic strip is framed by an opening section penned by "Edgar Rice Burroughs" explaining how "Uncle Jack" told him these stories and left him these manuscripts, and also by a closing section which inventories the technology of Barsoom. I don't read a lot of comics/trade paperbacks/graphic novels, so to catch my eye, a work of this genre has to stand out from the crowd. This does just that, a rollicking adventure, economically told and gorgeously illustrated, complementing rather than replacing Burroughs' original pulp adventure, styaing true to the world, the characters and the vision. Recommended.