WARLORD OF MARS RETURNING IN NOVEMBER!!

[Guest]

I certainly prefer the idea of parallel universe Marses to ... bless his heart, love his work, but... Alan Moore's approach in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, where every freaking possible Mars ever from a certain era, including Lewis' excellent and vastly superior Out of the Silent Planet, is just jammed together. Given the theological aspects of the Space Trilogy, I found it pretty repellent to try to cram that one in with the others--experiments on Sorns? The Eldila and Maleldil would have put a stop to all of that nonsense in double-quick time if it were set in the Space Trilogy universe.

[pulphero]

Something I've been meaning to read for decades, but somehow never get around to. So many books, so little time (and seemingly diminishing as time goes on) . If only it were adapted as a graphic story... 1938 was hardly the same "era" as Wells, Arnold, Burroughs' Mars. Science fiction (even though Lewis wasn't part of the genre's tradition) changed radically in the decade or so before he wrote those. True, Burroughs was still squeezing out the occasional Barsoom story... but the end was near for that sort of old-fashioned "planetary adventure".

But "jammed together" really is the basic concept of TLOEG... not just Mars, but everything from every writer. Despite what seems like a common perception of the period (which actually is encompassing some 80 years or so) these things were NOT meant to fit together. Silent Planet though, is well on the outside of the loop of Moore's Victorian/Edwardian focus. He might just as well have chucked Weinbaum's A Martian Odyssey in there as well.

[Guest]

Actually, Lewis was specifically writing some of it--especially the first book--as a sort of homage/response to Wells. Indeed, in the foreword to the first book, he says, "Certain slighting references to earlier stories of this type which will be found in the following pages have been put there for purely dramatic purposes. The author would be sorry if any reader supposed he was too stupid to have enjoyed Mr. H. G. Wells's fantasies or too ungrateful to acknowledge his debt to them." Also, Olaf Stapledon's "First and Last Men."

[Guest]

Oh, and I know that's the point of LOEG, it's just a bit distasteful to me. Heck, I got turned off of Vertigo's Fables because of the first issue talking about what sounds like Narnia being completely conquered/destroyed, which of course Aslan would not let happen. (I don't mean like by the White Witch or the Telmarines, I mean in the way things were in the Fables universe.) After that I never bothered with Fables again.

[pulphero]

Actually, Lewis was specifically writing some of it--especially the first book--as a sort of homage/response to Wells. Indeed, in the foreword to the first book, he says, "Certain slighting references to earlier stories of this type which will be found in the following pages have been put there for purely dramatic purposes. The author would be sorry if any reader supposed he was too stupid to have enjoyed Mr. H. G. Wells's fantasies or too ungrateful to acknowledge his debt to them." Also, Olaf Stapledon's "First and Last Men."

I had read somewhere it was influenced by A Voyage To Arcturus.

[pulphero]

Oh, and I know that's the point of LOEG, it's just a bit distasteful to me. Heck, I got turned off of Vertigo's Fables because of the first issue talking about what sounds like Narnia being completely conquered/destroyed, which of course Aslan would not let happen. (I don't mean like by the White Witch or the Telmarines, I mean in the way things were in the Fables universe.) After that I never bothered with Fables again.

Ah, you're missing out. Even though it's still that "everything but the kitchen sink" approach -- combining everything from mythology, folklore, fairy tales, Aesop, Mother Goose, Brothers Grimm, Arabian Nights, to more modern children's fantasy stories like L. Frank Baum, Lewis Carroll, Carlo Collodi and Rudyard Kipling -- Bill Willingham has managed to deftly mix humor, drama, horror (even a little soap opera and superhero fantasy) into a heady mix in his "FABLES universe". In some ways, I think it's much more carefully-wrought and well thought out, than Moore's TLOEG. Since it's such a long-running series, part of the attraction of watching the ongoing evolution of the saga was that you just never knew when some previously-unmentioned "fable" was going to show up, and possibly upset the balance of the status quo, among the already-established characters. The series tends to split its focus between the main characters more familiar to the general pubic through their modern sanitized versions (the "Disney Princesses" are very different here, as Willingham takes every opportunity to contrast those impressions against elements from the unexpurgated original stories), and lesser-remembered characters from nursery rhymes and the like. Also interesting is the way that many of the main characters have adapted quite well to modern civilization.

I don't believe Narnia is ever really mentioned specifically (or even pastiched in a "nod-and-a-wink" manner) in FABLES, and I think you may have completely misinterpreted that as a reference that wasn't really there. Aren't the Lewis books still under copyright to his estate, just like some of the ERB stuff? Moore's TLOEG referenced Lewis' Silent Planet in enough of an offhand fashion to avoid any sort of legal complications. Willingham seems to be sticking fairly carefully to public domain, and he probably NEEDS to -- there's far more than enough fodder there for him to feed off of. So much traditional storybook material that he's GOT to limit himself in some way, he can't be throwing pastiches of copyrighted material into the mix as well. In fact, Willingham has SO much source material to draw upon, that after the original FABLES series proved successful, the stories overflowed into the ongoing spinoff JACK OF FABLES (which featured the continuing adventures of that same Jack who went up a hill, climbed a beanstalk, sat in a corner and stuck in his thumb, jumped over a candlestick, could eat no fat... he's had a storied career as Jack Nimble, Jack Horner, Jack Frost, Jack the Giant-Killer, Jack of Hearts, Jack O'Lantern, and so on). Jack is a bit of a "trickster" character, not evil per se, but sort of a handsome "con-man" of Fables, constantly getting into trouble or getting others into trouble, unpopular and viewed with suspicion/barely tolerated as an inveterate ne'er-do-well and "bad egg" by his fellow Fables -- but despite all his scams and schemes, his failures and windfalls, he leads a charmed life, and always manages to worm his way out of the stickiest of situations somehow, by the skin of his teeth (he managed to have a fairly good run in Hollywood too, for a while). That series has since concluded, after a healthy 50-issue run (and a multipart crossover with the main series), but there have been a number of spinoff miniseries and one-shot graphic novels in the Fables universe as well, in addition to adding another ongoing spinoff last year, THE FAIREST (featuring all those "fairest in the land" beauties, in rotating story arcs). Both the main FABLES series (with issue #150), and its current spinoff FAIREST, are due to conclude early in 2015 -- which makes it Vertigo's most popular and longest-running series short of HELLBLAZER (Neil Gaiman's SANDMAN, despite only having 75 issues, continues to be the biggest seller in TPB, but I believe FABLES has overtaken HELLBLAZER on that front).

In FABLES, mention is often made of (and sometime we actually see) "The Homelands", which is sort of a multiverse, in which the original worlds in which those fables took place still exist. There was a big war however, in which a tyrant menace conquered most of the worlds of that multiverse, which results in the displaced "fables" taking refuge on our Earth, known to them as "the mundy world" (we humans are "mundies" -- i.e. mundanes). Humans barely appear in the series as anything more than the most peripheral of characters, however. The fables hide among us in plain sight, in a section of the city called "Fabletown", using magic to create the illusion of normalcy and blend in. Some Fables can't blend in, because... well, they're animals. Those characters inhabit a second Fable enclave somewhere upstate called "The Farm". The action of the series primarily focuses on these two locations, although it eventually ranges all over the mundy world, and beyond, into the "Homelands" of the multiverse from which the Fables were originally exiled.

FABLES truly is a wonderful series, deserving of all the awards it has won. It's got tons of characters, with tons of interesting relationships between them, and long, involved storylines with depth where it really feels like something important is happening (unlike many of the mainstream comics published today). And offhand, I can't recall another series or "universe" comprising less than 300 published comics in total, that inspired its own encyclopedia. FABLES really is its own little universe, fully stocked with characters and stories, unto itself.

[Guest]

I had read somewhere it was influenced by A Voyage To Arcturus.

Yes, and Screwtape as well.

[Guest]

Oh, the Narnia reference...

http://dc.wikia.com/wiki/Fables_Vol_1_4

One scene depicts the "Kingdom of the Great Lion", with a dead male lion lying on the ground with arrows sticking out of him. King Cole says that he found the lion to be a "bit too Holier-Than-Thou". This is a rather obvious reference to the character of Aslan from C.S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia. The Holier-Than-Thou remark is a reference to the numerous Christian parallels found within the stories, particularly that of portraying Aslan in the role of a Christ figure.

[Guest]

Open minded, but sceptical. Not a fan of reboots - not fond of having my whole collection thus far becoming void.

I find it a bit of a slap in the face.

However Tars Tarkas eye patch aside - it's not a complete reboot.

Bart Sears covers for me. Awesome.

[pulphero]

Oh, the Narnia reference...

http://dc.wikia.com/wiki/Fables_Vol_1_4

OK... The series often pokes fun at aspects of the original stories it's based on, as well as other things like superheroes. At the time, the gag was tossed out and passed by so quickly that I missed the reference - I suppose (seeing as how many of the fairy tales have been adapted as popular Disney animated films) that it registered with me at the time as some vague reference to The Lion King. We are talking about a gag involving a fictional lion in a children's fantasy story with broad allusions, not the actual biblical Savior himself. Now that you've pointed it out, I could see where it might be completely normal and natural to interpret that one throwaway gag as a vicious hate-based blanket condemnation of one of the world's major religions, and thus a justifiable reason for rejecting the entire body of Willingham's work, sure.

[Blinky McQuade]

I am so looking forward to this series!

Is there any movement to get the other ERB properties in the same rights as John Carter? Is DE getting the same arrangement with Lord of the Jungle? I read from a post from Pulphero that a Tarzan arrangement has been made--I hope that is true! ERB created a great amount of worlds and characters that I would like to see. Heck, I hope DE gets permission to publish a trade of the on line ERB strips.

[pulphero]

Is there any movement to get the other ERB properties in the same rights as John Carter? Is DE getting the same arrangement with Lord of the Jungle? I read from a post from Pulphero that a Tarzan arrangement has been made--I hope that is true!

I don't know the exact details, Blinky. I know DE and ERB are working on it. Currently Dark Horse has the comic book license to use the Tarzan trademark, but they haven't done any new material since a 3-part story, The Once and Future Tarzan, that appeared in DARK HORSE PRESENTS a couple of years ago, and was later collected into a one-shot. However, Dark Horse has continued to release reprints of older Tarzan comic books (the Dell and Gold Key Comics - including KORAK SON OF TARZAN and JOHN CARTER OF MARS, an authorized reprint of Charlton's short-lived and definitely UNauthorized JUNGLE TALES OF TARZAN comic book from the 1960s), and more recently began a reprint hardcover series collecting Hal Foster's original Tarzan Sunday pages from the 1930s (which has seen 2 volumes to date, but isn't complete yet - as far as the Foster run is concerned, which is all they're doing).

So there's something to be worked out there between ERB, Dark Horse, and DE... but concurrent with this IDW and Titan Books have also released hardcover reprints of older Tarzan comic strips (the Russ Manning strips and the Burne Hogarth Sundays, respectively), so there's so precedent here for multiple companies releasing different Tarzan comics material in various formats. I'm confident that things will get sorted out in DE's favor, but there may be a certain time frame involved for Dark Horse's options to expire.

I don't know what Dark Horse's position on this is, either. One might think that since they haven't done much with Tarzan in the way of new material for a long time, that they'd be amenable and just let it go... but on the other hand, this is sort of a bad time for Dark Horse to be losing recognizable properties, since they're already losing STAR WARS at the end of this year to Marvel. That impacts their bottom line income big time, and they need to build up other properties that they have let go into "sleep mode" for awhile -- it's not coincidental that in the last couple of years, they've put some effort into reviving the long-dormant DARK HORSE HEROES line, for the loss of Star Wars has been foreseen for some time now. If you look at what they're doing on other fronts, you'll notice them publishing a lot of their older franchises that hadn't seen much new activity (outside of reprint collections) for some time now: TERMINATOR, ALIENS, ALIENS VS. PREDATOR, PREDATOR (and the recent addition of PROMETHEUS). So, maybe the loss of Tarzan isn't such a good idea for Dark Horse at this time, but I have the feeling DE has convinced ERB Inc that they were doing more for their characters with WARLORD OF MARS than anybody had in a long time, so they've got that going for them, and I suspect for Dark Horse it's going to turn out to be a case of too little, too late.

[Guest]

They could make a deal similar to Gold Key where DH prints the archive stuff and DE does new stuff. That way both companies and the fans would be happy.(I normally don't buy the archives because they're too expensive)

[pulphero]

They could make a deal similar to Gold Key where DH prints the archive stuff and DE does new stuff. That way both companies and the fans would be happy.(I normally don't buy the archives because they're too expensive)

I sort of got the idea that DE wanted to get a little more heavily into the high-end/high-priced reprint stuff. At first it was rare for them to do books like that, and usually it would be a very specific, one-shot thing. I think when they got going with VAMPIRELLA ARCHIVES, they realized there's good money to be made on these, even though it's not an item a lot of people buy compared to monthly comics or even TPBs.

The problem there is, most of the good source material for archival hardcovers is already spoken for, either owned by some other publisher or locked up by them in a deal with the true rights owners. I think DE made a point of mentioning reprinting older material when they were announcing the deal with ERB for JOHN CARTER... so presumably they'd be hoping to get those rights to TARZAN too, to make it more worthwhile for them. Although they might have to wait awhile before they can reprint stuff again, since so much of it has been reprinted recently, between Dark Horse, IDW, and Titan Books.

I know it probably sounds like a pretty insignificant thing to most people that don't buy that stuff, because they're not considering how many $4 comic books you need to sell to equal the same profit on a $50-$60 hardcover book. But to give you a concrete example, I'd be willing to bet Dark Horse made more in income off their reprint hardcovers and trade paperback collections of the Silver Age DOCTOR SOLAR, MAGNUS, and TUROK than they did off the monthly comics featuring new material (even including the TPB collections of the newer stuff). That may be even more true of the TARZAN stuff... how else could you account for the fact that they've actually released more volumes of Tarzan reprint comics, than they have original-material floppy comic books?

[Guest]

Partner was in hospital and should be coming home today (yay!) but since I was feeling down, I went to Barnes and Noble... and I saw... this.

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/john...=9781435149915

John Carter of Mars: The First Five Novels.

For like eight bucks including tax.

As one big hardcover.

YES.