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Official Edgar Rice Burroughs Tribute and Weekly Webzine
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Volume 3696

Eclectica Archive

ECLECTICA v.2012.03

Eclectica Archive

Updates to our John Carter Film News site Now 23 Photo Galleries ~ More Posters ~ +250 Reviews Art ~ Interviews ~ JC Through the Years  Books ~ DVDs ~ etc. www.cartermovie.com

Bill and Sue-On Hillman at JC Film: 23 Photo Galleries

ERB, Inc. and Burroughs Family at The John Carter Hollywood Premiere

Teenage Mars Art Stanton | Andrews | Chabon

Walt Disney’s Ward Kimball’s John Carter of Mars and Beyond! In 1957 Disney himself took a brief trip to Barsoom via Mars and Beyond, the beloved episode of the Disneyland television series directed by Disney animator and eccentric Ward Kimball. The episode, which speculates on what man would find when they inevitably journeyed to the red planet, began with a retrospective of Mars’s influence on our culture. In true Kimball fashion we get a wacky look at the past, and on past theories about Martian life. One segment is devoted to the civilizations, flora and fauna of Mars as described in Burroughs’s series of John Carter novels. These designs give a hint of how Kimball’s wild imagination envisioned the world of Barsoom.

The segment begins by discussing Burroughs's Martian Dictionary, and all the terms he created for the population of Mars. Calot: Described as "A large dog-like creature with a frog-like mouth and three rows of teeth" This is a Banth, a ten-legged Martian "lion" This is a Martian Plant Man. This is a thoat - an eight-legged Martian 'horse.' View the entire Disney special HERE

Utah red-rock country inspired Burroughs’ A Princess of Mars
Author lived in Utah in 1900s.
The Salt Lake Tribune ~ March 16, 2012

The creator of Tarzan never went to Africa, but he did visit Mars. The recent failure of the $250 million Disney science fiction movie "John Carter" is all the talk in Hollywood. It’s also bad news for Utah. Filmed in the Beehive State, its producers had planned sequels that would also have taken advantage of Utah’s otherworldy landscapes and fed millions into the local economy.

"John Carter" is based on Edgar Rice Burroughs’ 1912 science fiction classic, A Princess of Mars. Utah’s red-rock deserts provide a credible stand-in for the Red Planet. Burroughs, better known for his series of Tarzan novels, wrote more than a dozen books about imagined civilizations on Mars and Venus, which are the templates for virtually every great science fiction writer or movie maker since. Everyone and everything science fictiony, from Ray Bradbury to "Star Wars," can trace its genealogy back to Burroughs’ imagined worlds.

Burroughs never made it to Africa, where his vividly imagined Tarzan was raised by apes. But, by way of Utah, he’d glimpsed Mars. In 1904, Burroughs, 29, was a railroad policeman in Salt Lake City. He was not yet even halfway through a decade of poverty and short-term jobs, including mining, advertising, sales (first light bulbs, then candy) and accounting. (Burroughs knew nothing of accounting, but he got the job because the employer advertising for an "expert accountant" knew even less.) His job odyssey took him from Chicago to Oregon and Idaho and Utah, all in an attempt to provide for his wife and two children.

It’s clear from A Princess of Mars that Burroughs was familiar with Utah's stark southwestern desert. Squint really hard and you can imagine his alien vistas, peopled by six-limbed, green-skinned Martian warriors somewhere south of Nephi. Burroughs got his big break in 1911 after it dawned on him that he could do better than the trashy escapist fiction he read. "I made up my mind that if people were paid for writing such rot as I read I could write stories just as rotten," he said. But in 1904, he was still just a railroad cop in Salt Lake. Butch and Sundance had robbed their last train just a few years before and railroad police were left to chase hobos out of rail yards.

Despite taking odd jobs to supplement his meager pay, Burroughs complained that while his family was in Salt Lake City, they were "poverty stricken." His biggest Salt Lake windfall was when he and his wife auctioned off their household furniture to raise money for a move back to Chicago. "People paid real money for the junk," he said.

About the same time, a Swedish immigrant named Joe Hill was also scouring the West in search of any work available. He would become famous for his International Workers of the World protest songs; he would become a martyr when he was executed in 1915 in Utah for a murder he probably didn’t commit. Hill’s clever songs highlighted the plight of workers at the hands of uncaring exploiters, chief among them Burroughs’ employers: the railroad magnates. It’s entirely possible that Joe Hill and Edgar Rice Burroughs crossed paths. . . . More>>>

Five Reasons You Should Be Excited
About Disney's 'John Carter'
Forbes.com ~ February 26, 2012
Ignore the critics. John Carter looks like an awesome space-and-sorcery adventure.
It may look like cheesy space-and-sorcery – a high-tech reimagining of Star Wars replete with the latest CGI – but John Carter has plenty to be excited about.
I have no idea if it’s going to be a great film, but I’m definitely looking forward to its release this coming March. Here’s a few reasons why I think you should ignore the critics and go see Disney’s big-budget science fiction flick on March 9th.

1. John Carter was written and directed by Andrew Stanton.
Stanton is a Pixar veteran. He directed A Bugs Life, Finding Nemo, and Wall-E. He worked on the screenplay for most of Pixar’s animated films, including the in-production prequel to Monsters Inc. (Monster’s University.) If you’re like me, Pixar can do almost no wrong. So Cars wasn’t exactly their best (I haven’t seen the sequel) but by and large, when Pixar takes a swing at bat they knock it out of the park. I’m glad to see more Pixar players branching out into non-animated, more adult fare.

2. John Carter is the brainchild of Edgar Rice Burroughs.
Burroughs was the pulp-science-fiction genius behind the Mars books that spawned John Carter (of Mars) and the classic Tarzan novels like Tarzan of the Apes. It’s neat to see old adventure stories come to life on film, even if they end up straying a long ways from the original. Certainly Tarzan has seen his fair share of film and comic adaptations. John Carter is getting his moment in the sun now, after being long over-shadowed by his jungle-dwelling counterpart. Sure, in 2009 we got a direct-to-DVD adaptation in Princess of Mars, but the big-budget John Carter from Disney should be much better.

3. Reactions to the film’s premiere in L.A. have been uniformly positive, according to Hollywood Reporter:
    “John Carter is much better than you’re expecting it to be. A lot not shown in the advertising,” wrote Peter Sciretta of Slash Film soon after the premiere. “Lynn and Taylor were great. You’ll love Woola and will leave hoping they’ll make a sequel.” Hitfix’s Drew McWeeney wrote, “I am no longer in danger of being killed for saying that I quite liked John Carter.”

Think that can be dismissed as mere fanboy chatter? A smattering of “normal person” reactions ranged from “awesome flick” to “Ignore all the trailers and listen to me when I say JOHN CARTER was amazing and you need to go see it.” “We made a f—ing great movie in John Carter,” the film’s star, Taylor Kitsch, said. “It’s such wasted energy if I worry about what a million people I don’t know are going to think. I’m excited for people to enjoy the journey.”

4. Four-armed aliens – the good guys, apparently – and big white ape things that Carter has to fight in an arena.
We’re dealing with a ton of CGI here, and it looks beautifully done. Space ships, desert vistas, scantily clad men and women, fifteen-foot-tall aliens, a high-stakes adventure. What more could you ask for?

5. Besides, how often do you get a $250 million dollar remake of a classic science fiction story, replete with 3D and CGI?
Forget what the naysayers are saying. How many articles can people come up with claiming that the movie is a fiasco before it’s even released?

More>>>

Ron De Laat meets John Carter in Holland

Jane Carver of Waar By Nathan Long Night Shade Books, 312 pp., $14.99 Nathan Long's devilishly entertaining homage to Edgar Rice Burroughs gets the updating right. "Jane Carver of Waar" features airships and romance and savage four-armed warriors, but in the John Carter role it has Jane Carver, a sword-swinging biker chick swashed in leather and buckled in a bronze bra. Burroughs' prose is vigorously updated, with flowers "the electric pink of a hooker's hot pants" and food "that tasted like the paste I wasn't supposed to eat in kindergarten." Long also includes more explicit sex and violence than Burroughs dared consider. Still and all, I think the old guy would have approved.

"John Carter: The Gods of Mars" #1, the comic book Marvel Comics ~ Story by Sam Humphries ~ Art by Ramon Perez Colors by Jordie Bellaire ~ Letters by Cory Petit ~ Cover by Julian Totino Tedesco “John Carter’ the movie hit theaters March 9th, but that won’t be the only medium in which we’ll see the character this year.  First, a little history for those who might not be familiar with John Carter.  The character first appeared in novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs beginning in 1912.  A former Confederate Captain, Carter appears to die and is mysteriously transported to Mars, where he is thrust into the middle of a battle between evil forces.  The novels were highly successful, and the character so compelling that Carter ended up being in other stories throughout the years.  From his own comic strips to comic books, Carter kept popping up throughout the decades following his initial appearance in the Burroughs novels.  The character has also been in various TV shows and films, as well as Alan Moore’s “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.” And now Marvel is bringing John Carter back to the comic book genre with this new series.  Created by Sam Humphries (Sacrifice) & Ramon Perez (Jim Henson’s Tale of Sand), the story centers on Carter returning to Mars to save the planet from Martian gods.  The comic book was produced in collaboration with the Edgar Rice Burroughs estate.

PulpFest 2012 is very pleased to announce that award-winning science-fiction writer Mike Resnick will be its guest of honor. Winner of five Hugo Awards and a Nebula Award, Mike first became involved in science fiction through the work of Edgar Rice Burroughs. With this year being the hundredth anniversary of the start of Burroughs’ writing career, it is fitting that our guest of honor is an author who, early in his career, "wanted nothing more than to write books in the style of Edgar Rice Burroughs."

A recognized authority on the works of Burroughs, Mike is currently co-editing THE WORLDS OF EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS, an anthology of original stories inspired by Burroughs and his creations. It will be published by Baen Books.

For further information about our special guest, please visit the PulpFest website at www.pulpfest.com

The PulpFest site is ready for 2012. All of the pages are now up to date and ready for the coming convention. Stop by a visit the site for our updated registration forms, information on guest of honor Mike Resnick, a brief "pulp history" lesson, or a look at previous PulpFests. You'll even get a peek at our planned programming schedule for the 2012 PulpFest. Visit www.pulpfest.com and register now for Summer's great pulp con in Columbus, Ohio, August 9-12!

How to Create a Brand New Iconic Hero or Villain

Over a decade into the 21st Century, our imaginations are captivated by creations of the 19th and 20th. Sherlock Holmes rules television and movies. We're eagerly awaiting new movies about James Bond, Captain Kirk, Superman, Batman and Spider-Man. Where are the 21st Century mass-media heroes and villains? Why isn't anybody even trying to create them? Part of the answer is that almost all of our truly mainstream heroes and monsters arose from pulpy mass media, created cheaply at the start of a genre's lifespan. To create new giant heroes, you need a new pulp. And new genres. More>>>

Claptrap Classics
TIME Magazine February 6, 2011

A curious thing happened to Edgar Rice Burroughs on the way to oblivion. When the 74-year-old novelist died in 1950, most of his 24 Tarzan books and ten Martian sagas were long out of print and far out of vogue. Then in 1961, a lady librarian in California removed a Tarzan book from the shelf on the grounds that the Ape Man and Jane were living in sin. Actually, as Burroughs went out of his way to establish in The Return of Tarzan, the two were properly married in the bush by Jane's father, an ordained minister. But the nationwide newspaper publicity over Tarzan prompted paperback publishers to burrow into the Burroughs estate.

Genteel Voyeur. As it turned out, at least eight Tarzan titles and a galaxy of Marses (Burroughs habitually produced one of each yearly) were in the public domain—and what the public wanted. Tarzan and Mars books now sell more than 10 million copies a year, account for one-thirtieth of all U.S. paperback sales. Latest to be reissued: A Princess of Mars (1917) and A Fighting Man of Mars (1931).

Their author, as the Martian duo (Dover; $1.75) makes clear, was as much of a threat to public morality as a parlor aspidistra, which his prose style often resembles. A Burroughs hero is virile and all that, but he is first and last a gentleman, inclined more to genteel voyeurism than simian action. "She was as destitute of clothes as the Green Martians who accompanied her," observes John Carter in A Princess of Mars. "Indeed, save for her highly wrought ornaments, she was entirely naked, nor could any apparel have enhanced the beauty of her perfect and symmetrical figure." Clean living was the ticket. In The Fighting Man of Mars, Burroughs relates, "Tul Axtar reached for his pistol and I for mine, but I have led a cleaner life than Tul Axtar had. My mind and muscles coordinate with greater celerity than those of one who has wasted his fiber in dissipation. Point blank I fired at his putrid heart. . ."

Anti-Intellectual Snob. For a man who flunked out of Andover and flopped at half a dozen business ventures before he turned to writing at 37, Burroughs found time to acquire a comprehensive set of prejudices. An anti-intellectual and a snob, he disapproved of any race but the white (the Red Martians are morally superior to the Green Martians because they have remote white ancestors) . He was suspicious of most white men as well, save for "natural aristocrats"—among whom are included "John Carter, gentleman of Virginia," the hero of the Mars stories and, of course, Tarzan, who is really an English lord. The Continent was plain depraved. "A splendid young woman I had known in New York," says one Burroughs hero, "had been head over heels in love with a chum of mine—a clean, manly chap—but she married a broken-down, disreputable old debauchee because he was a count in some dinky little European principality that was not even accorded a distinctive color by Rand McNally."

Why 10 million paperback readers a year should beat a path to this convoluted claptrap is anyone's guess. Perhaps, suggests Psychiatrist Frederic Wertham, Burroughs appeals to a reader's "primitive instincts." A more likely explanation is that the books induce the same kind of "dreamless and refreshing sleep" that overtakes John Carter when he breathes the atmosphere of Mars.

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ERBzine Archive
An ERB reprint we featured over 10 years ago in
Volume 0058
THE TARZAN THEME
By Edgar Rice Burroughs
Writer's Digest - June 1932
Plus
The later version as reprinted by Dark Horse

THE FUNNY SIDE OF JOHN CARTER

 

Al Bohl, co-creator of the documentary,  Tarzan of the Apes: Lord of the Louisiana Jungle,  holds a poster for a film and a comic book that were inspired by the 1912 Edgar Rice Burroughs novel.

Morgan City festival  celebrates the area’s ties to fictional hero The Advocate ~ April 2, 2012 Go ahead; give it a try. The ear-piercing, primordial Tarzan yell will be heard for blocks on Friday and Saturday, April 13-14, when Morgan City hosts the world’s first Tarzan of the Apes: Lord of the Louisiana Jungle Festival. There couldn’t be a more splendid spot to honor one of America’s first fictional heroes. The Morgan City area was one of the sites chosen for the first Tarzan of the Apes silent movie filmed in 1917. More>>> Follow the ERBzine Behind-the-Scenes Reports  of the making of Al Bohl's Tarzan documentary   Starting at:   www.erbzine.com/mag31/3110.html  Come and join the fun The Bayou Calls. . . www.ERBzine.com/dumdum