Friday, August 9, 2013

Lords of Mars #1

It's surprising that Edgar Rice Burroughs never teamed up his two most famous characters - Tarzan and John Carter of Mars.

Dynamite continues its public domain versions of those characters, this time teaming them up in the new series Lords of Mars.

The difficulty with such a team-up, of course, is managing to bring the two heroes together. And it actually doesn't happen in this issue.

We look in on Tarzan as he tries to adapt to a more "civilized" way of life in England (and not exactly succeeding at that task), and we check in on John Carter, who has undertaken a major operation on Mars - but one that seems to be causing concern among certain enemies of the Warlord of Mars.

So it's a slow start to the story by Arvid Nelson (though it promises to pick up quickly). The art by Robert Casto is solid, but he doesn't get much room to show off here - there's a lot of standing around going on.

But the promise is there, and it should be interesting to see how Tarzan adapts to Mars - and how he reacts when he meets the White Apes.

Grade: B

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3 comments:

Jim said...

Won't buy these since the Burroughs estate gets no licensing fees. Love the characters. Won't go into my personal anecdote but I can tell you Danton Burroughs was one righteous guy.

Glen Davis said...

I really thought Tarzan seemed out of character here.

Chuck said...

Glen, I agree - it didn't seem like the "real" Lord Greystoke.