Barsoom Plant Men

Between a daytime 9-5 and teaching an evening class and a few other projects, I have been ignoring the website. So here is a drawing of one of the ‘Plant Men’ from the Edgar Rice Burroughs John Carter of Mars stories.

I very much enjoyed these tales when I was a youngster despite Burroughs’ weaknesses as a writer. Or maybe ‘weaknesses as a writer’ is putting it wrong — he’s a pulp writer, so comparing him to ‘writers of literature’ probably tells us nothing. Frank Baum probably couldn’t get his Oz stories published today but the influence of Baum on culture is obvious — ERB is at least as important to me as a writer like Jules Verne (and I LOVE Jules Verne). I also remember the comics published by Marvel from the 1970s vividly; Gil Kane was/is an art hero to me.