.
The first, from 1977 features The Ancient Dead. This is an adaptation of the first story in Llana of Gathol, the first ERB book I ever saw in a shop- the long-lost Grants bookshop in Glasgow's Union Street.
Carter wanders into the lost city of Horz. The isolated Orovars condemn him to the pits with his new friend Pan Dan Chee. They then discover the senescent embalmer, Lum Tar O, has actually preserved the lives of the ancient rulers of Horz. This is a tragic, dream-like episode and one of the best of Marvel's ERB adaptations. However, Carter's granddaughter Llana doesn't appear and Pan Dan Chee weirdly ages to death like the mummified queen with whom he has become enamoured.
1978's Headmen of Mars is also a partial adaptation of The Chessmen of Mars and The Master Mind of Mars, in which characters from the latter appear in the milieu of the former.
Carter encounters the symbiotic Kaldanes and Rykors of Bantoom and is aided by a mutated white gorilla ( an experiment of Ras Thavas, who is presented for some reason as a Kaldane here) and a "good" Kaldane. Valla Dia, the heroine of Master Mind has been transformed into a Kaldane too.
This is an incident-packed adventure from Bill Mantlo and Ernie Chan. Taak, a huge, pulsating brain and the bizarre Tal Tarag are memorable characters but ERB's monsters here are bizarre and pretty ludicrous. I wonder why Marvel squandered two novels for one annual. Why did ERB not receive the same respects Robert E. Howard? I suppose because Carter wasn't the hero of either novel and no one wanted to visit his timeline decades in advance. Nonetheless, I liked both of these annuals better than the serials.
Finally, the 1979 Amazons of Mars is a collaboration by Wolfman, Claremont and Alan Weiss. Carter gives himself "over to sensual delights" before he is to be sacrificed by the eponymous warrior women. This slightly sleazy, mystical tale is very Claremont- as is the Amazons fire- goddess who sets everything to rights at the climax. Her pronouncements make me wonder if she was intended to be the Phoenix Entity: "I am pledged to life...out of love was I born...I am part of the natural order of things".
While Carter's travels between Mars and Earth are quasi-mystical, Barsoomian pastiches and other
interplanetary romances utilise technology that resembles magic ( as in the Cambodian "Gate Between Worlds" in Lin Carter's Jandar series) or by actual magic ( of the Tibetan kind in Carter's slightly superior Green Star novels).
In Michael Moorcock's early-60s pastiches, his hero Michael Kane has created a "nucleonic" matter transmitter which transports him millions of years into Mars's past. Beginning with Warriors of Mars aka City of the Beast, this expert fencer ( who doesn't need to be taught by a wily old master, unlike Jandar) rescues the princess Shizala from the Argzoon, a race of blue giants ruled by a wicked queen.
In two sequels, Blades of Mars/Lord of the Spiders and Barbarians of Mars/ Masters of the Pit, Kane rediscovers lost technology from an ancient race, like the "ethercraft" and travels back to Earth to recount his adventures to Moorcock, who employs a coy, Burroughsian alias, "Edward P. Bradbury". There is also a very staid and conservative Burroughsian message of manly virtue overcoming decadence and intellectualism.
In the next two books, the "splendid young god" encounters winged men, devolved bat-men and, comically, dog-and cat-people. The stories are juvenile and simplistic but fortunately, they gallop by. Kane travels to "Vashu" in the first four pages Of Warriors. The giant spider of Blades is dispatched by chapter 9. Happily so, after this kind of thing:
"Sso, an appetissing morsel for today'ss feasst..."
The third book, which I bought in Amsterdam in the summer of 1981, when I was 18, attempts some of the satire of ERB's Amtor books. The City of the Curse is the source of a plague known as the Green Death and its council have chosen a robotic devotion to logic as a consequence, which Kane and Moorcock ridicule. The trilogy labours under Edwardian allegory: technology may eventually destroy the Earth as it devastated ancient Vashu.
In recent years, I've revisited the science fantasy of my adolescence. Living in Glasgow twelve months ago, I discovered Young's Interesting Books, near Shawlands Cross.
I found a 1964 copy of Synthetic Men of Mars and also The Swordman of Mars and The Outlaws of Mars by Otis Adelbert Kline and published by Ace Books.
I first discovered Kline through Tim Conrad's stylised 1975 adaptation of "A Vision of Venus" from Marvel's Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction, reprinted in the UK Planet of the Apes weekly.
Suicidal fencing instructor Harry Thorne is sent to the Mars of millions of years ago by "mind-compass". His mission is to hunt down and kill the dangerous Frank Boyd, who has allied himself with Martian communists. Harry is torn between two maidens: the peasant Thaine and the aristocrat Neva and is assisted by fairy-like winged people after a spell in the Baridium Mines. Of course, he wins the princess.
Jerry Morgan, the hero of Outlaws wins a princess too but spurns the kingdom for the life of an, er, outlaw. He is transported by a space-time vehicle of Venusian design and overthrows a masked sun-god, after adventures with sun-cultists and giant man-eating birds.
Kline is a better writer in the Burroughs style than Moorcock although the plots of these two little books and their characters are virtually interchangeable. There is none of ERB's bizarre creativity but if you like Barsoomian pastiche, they're slightly more rewarding than the meagre prose of Edward P. Bradbury.
Coming soon: Frankenstein, Iron Fist and Ant-Man.
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