It's now two weeks until I move house for the fifteenth time and although it sounds greedy, I would like a couple of days away to clear my head a little. I have posts in mind about Iron Fist, Ant-Man and the Wasp, Horror Double Bills and Colin Baker's Sixth Doctor and too little time in which to write them.
As I said previously, I had a pile of books to read, had I gone down to Galloway last month, including the hardcover of Alan Davis's version of Killraven. I haven't read it yet but, like today, it will be part of a loose series of posts on Mars and Martians.
As you know by now, I always associate the Rhins and the Machars with Bronze Age Marvel. I got a few seminal Conan comics in Stranraer and I can also remember reading a few UK comics in the now defunct Arches restaurant- like this one.
My first ever sighting of a Mechonoid from Doctor Who in 1965 in TV Action.
In 1973, the fledgling Marvel weeklies made FOOM membership available to UK readers. I think issues 1 and 2 of the magazine followed closely on each other in May and June, while issue 3 arrived in August. From what I've pieced together, a ten-year-old's memories being only vague impressions now, that was the time of year we first visited the Tigh-Na-Mara hotel in Sandhead. As you also may know, I've stayed there four times as an adult, in the last eight years.
The b/w thumbnails in Foom Magazine made the increasingly rare US comics seem disturbing, fascinating and illicit. Conan's golden gorilla showdown was bought in Stranraer ( as was the oft-cited 1977 Conan Treasury) but on the way home, my dad stopped for a break in Castle Douglas. That was where I got this issue of DC's Weird Worlds.
I'd read one issue- number 3- earlier in the year and then months later, I read this next one. The blend of hideous Plant Men, the scanty costumes of the heroines and the repellent practices of the Mahars combined to create a comic more alluring and transgressive than even Conan or Kull. Murphy Anderson's gorgeous, savage interpretation of Barsoom is the one fixed in my mind's eye. However, the art for this episode ( a very loose adaptation of The Gods of Mars) was by Italian creator Sal Amendola. It would be months again before I read another Carter story- DC's last.
A year later, I wasn't sophisticated enough to recognise Barsoomian pastiche in the pages of the UK weekly editions of Planet of the Apes. Alongside Ka-Zar, the exploits of Gullivar Jones, Warrior of Mars were an added attraction to the simian saga.
The series first appeared in Creatures on the Loose in 1972. It was loosely adapted from Edwin Arnold's 1905 novel Lt. Gulliver Jones: His Vacation, to which Roy Thomas was introduced by a Dick Lupoff. Thanks to the work of Gil Kane, the strip recalls Blackmark and its eponymous hero has white hair like Mar-Vell, Savage and the later Talos.
Cynical veteran of the 1968 Battle of Khe Sanh, Jones is transported perhaps a million years back in time to Mars via a glowing nimbus conjured by a wizard, Lu-Pov (sic). With a magic translating medallion, the Marine ( I think) rescues a golden-skinned, green-haired princess from a group of tailed, red men. This is essentially a re-run of John Carter's first encounter with Dejah Thoris and the Tharks.
Jones makes a few hip 70s references to Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers in his 10-page introduction, but loses the princess Heru to reptilian Wing-Men and plunges on to a funeral barge sailing down the River Iss- ah, the River of the Dead.
There is a second episode by Kane where Jones escapes the dwarfish Spider-Swarm only to become sacrificial victim to the giant monster Phra- an homage to Edwin Arnold's better-known novel, Phra The Phoencian . There were a handful of further episodes by Ross Andru, Wayne Boring and Gray Morrow. None of them captured the dynamism and exotica of Kane's Mars. Then the series was replaced by Marvel's version of Thongor, Warrior of Lost Lemuria. More of him shortly.
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen features a cameo of Jones which places him clearly in Carter's milieu and Dynamite Comics made Heru the mother of Dejah Thoris.
In the early weeks of January 1979, I visited Amsterdam with my dad and during our stay, I bought one of Lin Carter's books - the first instalment in the adventures of Jandar of Callisto. I had read about the series on a UK Marvel lettercol- the Avengers, perhaps- and I had already read two of Carter's pastiche Conan novels ( co-wriiten with L. Sprague De Camp.) I knew Thongor from the weekly Savage Sword of Conan but I wouldn't read one of the novels until later that year, when I first checked out the thrilling stock of East Kilbride library.
Jandar- Jonathan Dark- is a Viet Nam veteran like Marvel's Lt. Jones. A helicopter pilot and fencing champion, Dark is forced down near a jungle-lost Cambodian ruin. A jade well-like structure transports him through space and time to Jupiter's moon Callisto. Among the scarlet and black forests of the Jungle Moon, Dark is captured by warlike insect-men and rescues a gilded princess from decadent pirates flying in ornithopters. Again, it's the plot of A Princess of Mars.
The mystical super-science that displaces Dark across the solar system and Carter's charming pretence ( in the spirit of Burroughs) that his manuscript is a genuine artefact from another world, modernises the Barsoomian model somewhat. Also, Carter impudently has Jandar resolve a dilemma with the help of an incident in the plot of Thongor Against The Gods, which the hero had read on his tour of duty. The Thongor books, which are naive and very silly, are a mash-up of Conan and John Carter, blending the monsters and quests of the latter with the king-making of the former. I hugely enjoy Carter's pulpy, derivative adventures and while I devoured Atlantean epic The Black Star on Monday, the Callisto series remains a firm favourite.
Next time, we'll look at Marvel's interpretation of John Carter's interplanetary romances in the late 70s.
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