Ol' Groove finally got to watch
Avatar (dug it), and it got me to thinking about how cool the upcoming (2012) Disney adaptation of
John Carter of Mars will be (if you watched the movie, I'm sure you'll figure out why it made me think of Edgar Rice Burrough's Barsoomian saga). That got me thinking about my favorite issue of Marvel's
John Carter Warlord of Mars with it's done-in-one-issue
Reader's Digest abridged adaptation of
A Princess of Mars by regular writer Marv Wolfman, guest-penciler Dave Cockrum, and semi-regular inker Rudy Nebres. A trio of titanic talents to be terribly truthful, and it was especially cool that uber-JC fan Cockrum got to draw the issue. Even under Nebres' heavy, stylistic inks, Cockrum's style is still strongly displayed, especially with his recognizable poses, body shapes (you can spot a Cockrum-drawn figure by it's very silhouette!), and faces (especially in close-ups). Though "only" a fill-in issue, Ol' Groove feels
John Carter Warlord of Mars #11 (April 1978) is really a high-water mark for the entire series. Even the cover is so good that
Penguin Classics has adopted it for recent printings of Burroughs'
A Princess of Mars novel!
