Before Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers, and long before “Dune,” “Star Trek” and “Star Wars,” there was famed sci-fi writer Edgar Rice Burroughs’ cosmic adventurer John Carter of Mars.
First appearing in 1912 within serialized tales in The All-Story magazine titled “Under The Moons of Mars,” this stalwart Virginian and former Civil War captain was magically teleported to the exotic world of Barsoom (Mars) when hiding out in an Arizona cave from Apaches while hunting for gold.Â
The story was first published in novel form in 1917 as “A Princess of Mars.” The heroic character went on to star in a series of epic Burroughs novels all set on Barsoom, where John Carter is elevated to the status of immortal warrior and savior of the planet’s alien inhabitants.
Now following decades of tie-in books and spinoff comics, and 10 years after an ill-fated $250 million “John Carter” feature by Disney starring Taylor Kitsch, Lynn Collins, and Willem Dafoe, the charismatic Martian warlord is charging back into a new ongoing comic book series this spring from the folks at Dynamite Entertainment.
Written by the Eisner Award-winning Chuck Brown (“Bitter Root,” “Aquamen”) and joined by acclaimed illustrator and colorist George Kambadais (“Firefly”), “John Carter of Mars #1” lands in comic shops this April with a new slate of adventures in the realms of Barsoom and Earth.
The plotline takes place in 1919 as a strange asteroid made up entirely of the elemental substance “Ninth” streaks toward Earth. Its mysterious effects start to uncannily blend and switch the inhabitants on both Earth and Barsoom.Â
John Carter, The Warlord of Mars, discovers himself torn from the bedrock of his life and loved ones. He struggles to make sense of this cosmic conundrum while he’s abruptly transported back to Virginia where he clashes with Martian apes. If these bizarre events are occurring on his home planet, then what odd calamities might be befalling his beloved Barsoom?
“I’ve always been a huge fan of sci-fi and adventure,” said writer Chuck Brown in a Dynamite press release. “Like many of us, as a kid I was obsessed with Mars and the other planets in our solar system. Barsoom has such amazing characters and backstories. So it’s a huge opportunity for George and I to play in this world.”
Dynamite’s “John Carter of Mars #1” arrives in April with special variant covers by Junggeun Yoon, Jonathan Case, and two more by “Dejah Thoris” veteran Joseph Michael Linsner and series interior artist Kambadais.
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