Starting this week, we're presenting runs of short-lived series on Wednesdays...
...beginning with one of the very best from two future comic legends!
When
Gold Key lost the license to
Edgar Rice Burroughs properties in 1971,
DC snapped it up right away!
The then-new Conan the Barbarian title had proven pulp characters had viability as comics and both DC and Marvel were grabbing up pulp properties currently in paperback reprints to adapt.
While Marvel was concentrating on Robert E Howard's characters (and other barbarians) along with Doc Savage, DC got Doc's stablemates The Shadow and The Avenger as well as Burroughs' lineup.
Besides continuing the Tarzan and Korak titles (from their Gold Key numbering), DC decided to re-launch John Carter along with previously-unadapted series Pellucidar and Carson of Venus as back-ups!
Note: While Gold Key's Tarzan had visited Pellucidar in several multi-issue tales, the underground world and it's inhabitants never had stand-alone stories!
There was no shortage of eager creatives to handle the new series!
Writer Len Wein and illustrator Michael Kaluta got the nod for Carson and ran with it, as you can see in this premiere story just dripping with both period mood and pulp-style high adventure from DC's Korak: Son of Tarzan #46 (1972)!
The team adapts ERB's introductory Carson novel Pirates of Venus in a multi-issue arc.
Oddly, they leave out one of the more interesting aspects of the book...a number of references to other Burroughs characters including Tarzan, David Innes, Captain Zuppner, Abner Perry and Jason Gridley!
Whether this was DC's or the Burroughs Estates' decision is unknown, but I find it hard to believe serious fans like Wein and Kaluta would deliberately leave out the references...
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The Complete Ace Books Carson of Venus Series
