Best of Reading Room: GULLIVAR JONES "Warrior of Mars"

The Dreaded Deadline Doom caught up with us this week...

Art by Gil Kane and Bill Everett

...so we're re-presenting the never-reprinted adventures of the first Earthman on Mars, whose adventures predated Edgar Rice Burroughs' tales of John Carter of Mars by half a decade back at the beginning of the 20th Century.

 A bit of background: with the surprise success of Marvel's Conan the Barbarian, comics went pulp-mad, looking for other properties that were doing well in paperback reprints to adapt into the four-color format.

DC latched onto The Shadow, The Avenger, and Fritz Lieber's Fafhrd and Gray Mouser well as the entire Edgar Rice Burroughs library including Tarzan, Carson of Venus, and John Carter.

Marvel grabbed Doc Savage, added Kull (also a Robert E Howard character), and looked for another barbarian/swashbuckling hero.

They ended up adding two, Gullivar Jones and Lin Carter's Thongor, neither of whom ran more than eight issues.
Gullivar Jones had the advantage of only one novel to adapt, then the door was open to totally-new adventures.

Art by Frank Frazetta

This tale from Marvel's Creatures on the Loose #16 (1972) was Part 1, written by Roy Thomas, penciled by Gil Kane and inked by Bill Everett.
We'll be presenting the remaining chapters through this week, so be here tomorrow.