John Carter of Mars is the eleventh and final book in the Barsoom series and collects the two stories titled "John Carter and the Giant of Mars," published in 1941 within the pages of Amazing Stories, and "The Skeleton Men of Jupiter," published in 1943 also in Amazing Stories. The first story came under a little bit of fire as many readers could easily tell that "John Carter and the Giant of Mars"
was not written by the Master himself but by a Ghost Writer. Years
later it was revealed that in fact this was true and that the story was a
collaboration between Edgar Rice Burroughs and his youngest son, John
"Jack" Coleman Burroughs, who also provided the illustrations for the
story. The second story in the collection "Skeleton Men of Jupiter"
was clearly intended to springboard off into a longer series of
stories, but unfortunately it was left unfinished by Burroughs, and
though several authors have written their own pastiches, in what
direction they thought the story would go, we will never know exactly
what Burroughs had in mind.
John Carter and the Giant of Mars
opens with the abduction of Dejah Thoris, and by this point in the
series we must wonder if there is some kind of Starbucks promotion going
on here, “A free coffee after every ten kidnappings.” We later learn that she had been snatched as hostage by the villainous Pew Mogul, a synthetic man and pupil of The Master Mind of Mars
Ras Thavas. Pew Mogul, like many of his kind, is a horrifying sight to
behold and his ugliness is only matched by his hatred of all other
Barsoomians. His ransom demand for the return of Dejah Thoris is that
the iron works of Helium be turned over to him; this would allow him to
amass a great many ships to aid in his conquest of all Barsoom. John
Carter, Kantos Kan, and Tars Tarkas all lead expeditionary forces to
locate their missing princess.
Carter
is led into a trap by a false radio message he thought came from Kantos
Kan, and soon he finds himself battling a trio of Barsoomian white
apes, a horde of giant rats, and a hundred and thirty foot tall giant.
Once seized by the massive hand of Joog the giant our hero is brought to
face to face with the repulsive Pew Mogul where he not only sees a
chained up Dejah Thoris but also a severely manacled Tars Tarkas. Carter
learns that Pew Morgul has transplanted the brains of criminals into
the bodies of the giant Barsoomian white apes and with them, along with
his indestructible giant, he plans to attack Helium while the bulk of
its navy is off searching for Dejah Thoris.
Carter, Dejah Thoris
and Tars Tarkas are left in a standard Bond villain trap, a slowly
lowering set of cages over a pool of man-eating reptiles, while Pew
Mogul takes his army of white apes, that are mounted upon a fleet of
once presumed extinct and very large Barsoomian birds, to sack Helium.
Of course Carter will escape this deathtrap, and soon he and his friends
will face off against this terrible army that dare lay siege to their
home.
Overall John Carter and the Giant of Mars isn’t
terrible, the big battle at the climax is fun, and Carter’s brilliant
plan to defeat the enemy is quite ingenious, but a lot of it does tends
to be rehashed plot elements from other books and John Burroughs does
not have his father’s flair for humor or prose.
Skeleton Men of Jupiter
opens with the abduction of John Carter…wait, what was that you say?
After countless adventures rescuing his wife, or other family members,
someone finally has to rescue John Carter? Sadly that is not the case,
and Dejah Thoris is abducted shortly after Carter. The basic premise to
this story is that a warlike race from Jupiter kidnaps John Carter so
that they can interrogate him for Helium’s military secrets (they had
deduced that Helium was the key power to Barsoom and if once taken the
rest of the planet would fall), but of course Carter would never betray
his people.
And just how did these interplanetary invaders managed
to capture the legendary fighter John Carter? Well the Morgors of
Sasoom, a race of skeletal looking men from Jupiter/Sasoom, had managed
to capture a beautiful Barsoomian woman and used her as leverage over
U-Dan, formerly a padwar in the guard of Zu Tith, the Jed of Zor. If he
didn’t aid in the capture of John Carter his love would be tortured and
raped. So U-Dan is forced to lead Carter into an ambush and then they
are all whisked off to Jupiter, where the ruler becomes pissed when
Carter refuses to comply with their demands for information. They then
throw Carter into a prison cell, with U-Dan, and send another mission
party back to Mars to retrieve Dejah Thoris so that they can hold the
threat of torture and rape over her to get Carter to work with them. Now
we are told that these Morgors are military geniuses, and that their
entire society focuses on warfare, but they didn’t think to grab Dejah
Thoris along with John Carter in the first place? They had already used
this form of coercion to make U-Dan work for them, so why and the hell
would they think this tactic wouldn’t be needed for the Warlord of
fucking Mars?
Though the plot structure isn’t the best, and as
mentioned it's also never finished, Burroughs does create a pretty cool
new society for his adventures to take place in, and once again John
Carter is shown to be the coolest cat, and best fighter, on now three
worlds. My favorite moment in the book is when Carter is thrown into a
cell with a bunch of slaves and dissidents of the Morgors; a bully by
the name of Pho Lar tries to play the dominance card over John Carter
and our hero slaps him down and beats the dude unconscious, but that’s
not the cool thing, what is great is that when the other prisoners
decide to pick on the now dethroned bully Carter intervenes and saves
Pho Lar from a savage beating. That’s a true hero. We later learn that
Pho Lar is possible the best swordsman John Carter has ever seen, next
to himself of course, and they become fast friends. It’s these kinds of
character moments that make the heroes of Burroughs’ books so amazing,
and is why these stories continue to inspire and influence writers of
fantasy and science fiction to this very day.
It’s truly a shame that Skeleton Men of Mars
was the last book Burroughs was to write for the Barsoom series, an
epic interplanetary war would certainly have been interesting, but alas
the book ends with Carter having escaped the prison/arena of the Morgors
but he hadn't yet been reunited with Dejah Thoris. I’d love to know why
this storyline wasn't continued, had Burroughs become bored with tales
of Barsoom? Regardless of that we can at least look back across the
eleven books, and multiple thrilling adventures, and thank Burroughs for
giving us such a fun ride, even if it stopped a little short.
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