Barsoom Reborn: John Carter rides again (in glorious animation) TV news.
Hold on to your radium rifles, dear readers, because John Carter of Mars is charging back into the fray – this time in animated form. According to The Wrap, a brand-new animated series based on Edgar Rice Burroughs’ classic pulp saga is in the works, and will be making its grand entrance (or at least a teasing toe-dip) at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con.
For those not already aboard the Barsoomian bandwagon, John Carter is the original interplanetary himbo – a Confederate cavalry officer turned Martian messiah – whose adventures on the red planet were blowing minds and inspiring generations long before a certain George Lucas decided to bung some space wizards in bathrobes and call it a franchise.
This latest attempt to breathe fresh Martian air into the old saga comes courtesy of writer and showrunner Michael Kogge (who’s already penned a well-received John Carter audio drama starring Sean Patrick Flannery and, delightfully, Ian “Emperor Palpatine” McDiarmid), alongside the fine folks at Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.
If all this sounds a bit familiar, that might be because Disney’s 2012 John Carter live-action film attempted something similar – with about the same subtlety as a Thark in a tutu. Alas, it flopped harder than a wounded thoat and sent Carter limping back into the shadowy corners of pop culture limbo. But now, thanks to the golden age of adult-leaning animation – think Castlevania, Blood of Zeus, or Twilight of the Gods – the time may finally be ripe for a Martian resurrection.
And oh, what riches the animators have to play with! Expect towering green Martians, deadly white apes, floating cities, brain-eating parasites, and, of course, Dejah Thoris – the original sci-fi space princess, now due for a proper character arc that doesn’t involve just lounging around in a brass bikini looking exasperated. We’re crossing fingers for at least one episode involving Carter playing 3D Martian chess on a giant board surrounded by insectoid warlords. You know, something tasteful.
No word yet on which streaming platform will host the series, or what animation style it will take – cell-shaded retro? Stylised and moody? Full-on space anime? One thing’s for sure: with Kogge and the Burroughs estate involved, expect the adaptation to cleave closer to the original novels than any previous incarnation, which should please purists and pulp-fiends alike.
Here at SFcrowsnest magazine, we love this kind of cosmic comeback story. John Carter may have spent over a century bouncing between comic strips, book reprints, and ill-fated film pitches, but now, at long last, the red dust may settle in his favour. And with the visual freedom that animation allows, perhaps Barsoom can finally be realised in all its mad, operatic, ray-gun-toting glory.
Will this be John Carter‘s long-overdue redemption arc? Or just another ambitious leap that falls short of the second moon? Either way, we’ll be watching – from Earth, naturally.
