John Carter News | February 17, 2012

One thought on “John Carter News | February 17, 2012”

• ERB Estate might be the one named in the lawsuit, but this is 100% Disney. They changed the name of the movie from “John Carter of Mars” to “Disney’s John Carter” for a reason. They are publishing their own comics based on the novels & movie. They are even publishing a novel adaption of the movie. Yeah. You read the right. Rather than market the actual novel, they are pushing a kid-friendly version that they will own. (And by ‘kid friendly’, I mean no mention of how naked everyone is, and just acting like the actual novels aren’t already kid-friendly.)

  Disney has about a half billion invested in the actual movie and ad campaign. That’s more than Edgar Rice Burroughs EVER made on the original novels.

  Meanwhile: Dark Horse supposedly owns the rights to John Carter, and has allowed both of their John Carter trades (reprints from the 1970s DC & Marvel runs) go out of print. Curious thing to do if you own the publishing rights to a character a month away from a major movie, yes?

  Dynamite published topless Dejah Thoris covers, tame enough to be sold on European newsstands and barely seen in US stores since they are specifically sold as collectibles. Forget that she is actually topless in the books, she was topless or nearly so on almost every paperback reprinting of the original novels. Never once did the ERB estate claim they were pornographic.

  After two tries, Marvel has done jack and squat to sell people of the John Carter character. if they had produced a product that people wanted, they would have simply run Dynamite off the farm. Instead their Princess of Mars adaption was laughably bad. The art looked like an 8 year old draw it, while having an epileptic fit. I grew up reading a Transformers comic book drawn by Don Perlin and Jose Delbo, so when comic book art is so f#@!ing awful that I take the time to point it out…it’s BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAD. the story wasn’t much better. He jumped around the book so much that having just read the novel AND the Dynamite adaption, he still confused me as to what was going on at times. Again, the art wasn’t helping.

  If Dark Horse does have the rights to John Carter, then hire off the creative team for Dejah Thoris and start the book up again. The last arc (#6-10) was the best John Carter related comic ever published. Ever. I mean that. Ever. It was on par with the first trilogy of the ERB novels and for that the creative team should be proud.

  Frankly, if the movie is a hit, I doubt that Dark Horse or anyone but Marvel (which is owned by Disney) will ever be allowed to publish any comics with John Carter. Disney already own enough material (movie, their own novel, toys) that I doubt even the ERB Estate will ever be able to use the name “John Carter” again without adding “Disney’s” to the front of it.

  Now, if this IS from the estate…then they need to prove it and sue the producers of the Princess of Mars movie with Traci Lords as Dejah Thoris. (Who does not show off her boobs. Sorry.) And then the publishers of the new John Carter Barsoom novel that just came out.