Creative Staff:
Story: Robert Napton
Art: Rod Rodolfo
What They Say:
An unexpected attack from a deadly force puts Warlord of Mars John Carter and his beloved Dejah Thoris under siege within their very own palace. With the help of their loyal friend Tars Tarkas, they manage a hasty escape only to find their world teetering on the brink of destruction. Facing overwhelming odds, they must forge questionable alliances in order to save their people from a fate worse than death! A thrilling, action-packed story in the spirit of pulp master Edgar Rice Burroughs!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
When it comes to the Warlord of Mars world, I keep finding myself in this position of really wanting to be engaged with it, but still not finding it to feel right to me. I had a hard time with the books years ago as the writing style just didn’t work for me and past attempts at the comics left me feeling really off about it all. I really, really enjoyed the live action film from a couple of years ago and am still frustrated over how that whole thing played out. I haven’t read the current series, but I figured a one shot special would be something potentially fun to check out since it would be largely self contained, taking place within the overall context of that series without really impacting things for the most part.
With this forty page special, we get a sprawling piece that deals with a lot of the big aspects of the property overall that goes above and beyond in a way. The tale as told here has Carter and Thoris enjoying their time together after some other recent events going on from the Swords of Mars adventure, but it’s not long quiet for them as Morgors from Jupiter have come to conquer, lead by Bandolian. The two had an encounter before on Jupiter and it was something where Carter had a sizeable impact in seeding ideas into some that the status quo won’t always remain so. What we get with this tale is a lot of action and adventure as Carter and Thoris have to flee amid the Morgors invading Barsoom and throwing the world to chaos.
Their journey is one naturally filled with a lot of interesting sights and characters, and some reinforcement of their own relationship along the way when it comes to their level of trust in each other. While we get the main thrust of the Morgors, we also get the Tarids making an appearance and a rebel side of the Morgors as well through an old friend that was inspired by Carter’s actions on Jupiter. Between this and other alliances, we get a very sprawling sense of things here, and some goofy science as well, that has Carter commanding an impressive group to go against Bandolian in order to free Barsoom in a relatively short amount of time. It moves as well as it can amid all of this while dealing with so many different little moving parts and players.
In Summary:
The world of Warlord of Mars is one steeped in tradition and established material, but it still feels clunky to me in many ways. The various naming conventions that come up with the way the worlds are viewed from different races definitely makes sense, but it also comes across as an added layer of complication that it doesn’t need. The story here is trying to convey a lot in a relatively short amount of space and it just feels too compressed to be truly engaging as the characters are pretty much bounced from place to place. The artwork from Rod Rodolfo isn’t bad, but it also doesn’t feel like it fits as Carter himself looks different in so many scenes that you could mistake him for different characters. I like the old style classic approach of the original works in how they can be interpreted, but this one just has such a sense of larger scale with the Jupiter side that it feels clunky and not terribly cohesive with the rest on top of all the other issues. It has a great sense of awe and wonder, but there’s no heart here to bring it all together.
Grade: C-
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Dynamite Entertainment
Release Date: March 18th, 2015
MSRP: $4.99