There is quite a bit of John Carter of Mars fandom going on around the blogs, but I haven’t seen this little bit of a gem talked about.
I was rummaging through some of my comics last night, and came across volume 2 of Alan Moore’s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and was reminded that John Carter shows up in the opening pages of the story. It is way cool. As shown in the pages above, the Green Martians are present, but most interesting is the appearance of characters from other fiction about Mars. Edwin Lester Arnold’s Lieutenant Gulliver of Mars makes an appearance. First written in 1905, Arnold’s Gulliver had many things in common with John Carter (both were soldiers, and both were transported to Mars from Earth by magic/super-science), and began the Sword and Planet genre.
Both John Carter and Gulliver, aware of each other’s existence on the planet and obviously having met before, come together to face the Martians of H.G. Wells War of the Worlds. Not truly Martian natives, but invaders from some other planet who came to attack mars after scrying info about the Humans on Mars with The Crystal egg from the book of that name by Wells, the Wells Martians are losing their war against Carter, Gulliver, and the natives (which even includes the Sorns from C.S. Lewis’ Out of the Silent Planet). With Carter and his armies closing in, the invaders are driven off of Mars, and off they go to Earth to struggle against the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
This has to be the most interesting John Carter appearance outside of his own books (He had some team-ups with Tarzan in a Marvel Comics mini-series in the 90’s that were pretty cool), and it places him firmly in the Wold Newton family tree as created by Phillip Jose Farmer. If you are unfamiliar with Wold Newton, it basically is a theory that all pulp heroes are related in some way, and at the very least exist in the same shared universe.
Carter’s appearance is fairly brief, but if you are a fan of Barsoom you should try and pick up this nifty little item (get the graphic novel compilation and save a few bucks).
