The Martian Tales of Edgar Rice Burroughs

Plus a preliminary concept for Thuvia at auction

and

Mar 30, 2025

John Carter stands over the body of a green Martian with a rapier plunged into its chest. In his arms, he carries Dejah Thoris who lays a hand across her chest covering one breast. She wears no clothes but accents of gold jewelry and chains cover her arm and waist. An angry mob of green Martians gathers behind the raised dais as John Carter looks for an escape. The wall behind them is open in an onion style arch revealing brilliant blue sky and a large craggy moon. The surrounding pillars are marbleized metallic green swirling against smooth sand-colored stone. An elegant laser pistol lies on the floor in the immediate foreground. — A PRINCESS OF MARS (1978), Acrylic on Illustration Board - 24" x 28"

I have had a special fondness for The Martian Tales by Edgar Rice Burroughs ever since I first read them in my early teens. That is also when I first did drawings based on them, and I even used some of my illustrations to help win acceptance to the Rocky Mountain School of Art at age fifteen.

John Carter fights side-by-side with Tars Tarkas. In Barsoomian fashion, John Carter is completely naked. He pierces the chest of a blue plant man with a skilled thrust of his rapier. The anatomy of his green alien companion is fascinating in that Tars Tarkas has a second torso stacked on the first. He towers over all around him. Two large tusks jut fiercely out of his lower jaw, and his eyes are set on the side of his head. Tars Tarkas draws back a rapier in one of his four arms. His other lower arm guards with rapier held laterally. The two allies are framed by a milky white boulder with a shiny gold vein running through it. Despite outnumbering the two heroes, the plant men seem to find only death in their approach up the red grassy hill. In addition to the troop of plant men, white apes with four arms approach from out of the trees. Above the scene, two craggy moons hang in clear blue skies above the gold rimmed valley where the fighting takes place. — THE GODS OF MARS (1979), Acrylic - 25" x 34"

Once I became a professional illustrator, the eleven-book series was among the assignments I hoped to do...someday.

Figuring that if the chance to do the covers ever came my way it would be after decades of work in the field, I was surprised and thrilled to have been offered them after only three years as a professional.

John Carter strikes a heroic pose with rapier in one hand and long dagger drawn back in the other. He plants a foot on a tusked skull sitting in a bed of green and purple ground cover. The wide, smooth trunk of a huge tree rises behind him. At his side, Woola the eight legged Calot, depicted with green scaled skin and a wide, pronounced muzzle, fixes the red bead of its eye on a massive Barsoomian insect hovering left. With the oversized eyes of a fly, the wings of a dragonfly, and a stinger like a scorpion, it presents as a threat with 6 legs drawn up ready to capture prey. — THE WARLORD OF MARS (1979), Acrylic - 20" x 25"

I was so enthusiastic about the project that after the first call from Judy-Lynn del Rey, I immediately got started rereading the books, making extensive notes, and compiling a supplementary catalog of every visual reference I could find. My aim was to do the most accurate depictions of Burroughs' Barsoom yet realized.

THUVIA, MAID OF MARS (1979), Acrylic and Gouache on Illustration Board - 20" x 25"

But this series poses many problems for illustrators, because Burroughs always portrayed Barsoom as being or having more than Earth. For example, there are nine colors in the Barsoomian spectrum—that alone is a challenge for an Earthly artist!

A man in sweeping red cloak assaults a warrior draped in black, who pivots toward him as if caught by surprise. Face etched with rage, the aggressor draws back his sword arm as he dwarfs his opponent in size and ferocity. His advance is aggressive with his limbs aligned all in diagonals. Knees bent and both feet off the ground, he springs into his attack. The sweeping arc of his ornate handguard echoes the delicate filigree of his headpiece. In the background, men wearing feathered plumes on their heads—either red or black—stand among the orange and black checkered squares of the Martian stadium floor as if they are chesspieces on a board. One warrior takes a knee while another is bent at the waist, trying to catch his breath, propping himself on his sword with point in the ground. The bodies of defeated chessmen crumple where they fell as all attention turns to the main combatants. — THE CHESSMEN OF MARS (1979), Acrylic - 20" x 25"

With few exceptions, the beasts have more legs (six or eight), the vehicles move faster (Burroughs had to upgrade the speeds several times in succeeding books to still keep them ahead of Earthly vehicles), there are two moons, and the women are more beautiful and come in many colors!

John Carter stands with a hypodermic needle poised over Dejah Thoris, who lays unconscious on an operating table. Tubes run from her arm to a device hanging from the ceiling. A large chamber in the device is filled with blood. An emaciated old man lurks behind them, fixing his goggled stare on John Carter. The Master Mind holds a long slender blade in his hand. Through an archway on the left, a four-armed white ape enters. — THE MASTER MIND OF MARS (1978), Acrylic - 21" x 27"

There were questions to answer and details to work out along the way. Lester del Rey and I had a lengthy discussion about whether the white lizard I wanted to depict for A Fighting Man of Mars had six or eight legs.

Barsoomian counterparts to four-legged creatures on Earth always had eight legs, but Burroughs specifically described the white lizard as having only six. Was it a mistake or did Burrough intend for it to have six legs because it had spent its life in isolation in the cave?

Menacingly, a white, six-legged lizard grips pale rocks rising well above the floor in an expansive cavern. Distant stalactites extend from the ceiling washed in dark pink and purple providing contrast. The lizard perches above twin Barsoomian warriors opening its maw to expose its teeth. As if caught by surprise—evident by the sword still in its scabbard—one of the men is standing upright and poised to attack with just a dagger in hand. His companion crouches warily with a basket-hilt sword held out, tip up. His shoulder length black hair swings forward with motion. A massive bone protrudes from the floor, the ball joint of a femur seemingly larger than the lizard itself. The foreground around it is littered with human bones, swords, and shields. — A FIGHTING MAN OF MARS (1979), Acrylic - 24" x 32"

Since Barsoom is a desert planet, it seemed likely that most of my cover art would feature scenes in arid locales. To avoid the overuse of backgrounds of that nature, I took the opportunity to seize on different settings.

Despite the problems, the books really are an illustrator's dream. Virtually every page contains an interesting scene full of artistic opportunities.

Cyclopean aliens ambush a man and woman beneath the yellow canopy of a lush Martian forest. Pronounced fangs make them look feral. From their heads sprout tufts of blonde hair resembling mohawks. Their skin is olive green, and their eyes an angry orange-red. The male warrior in red loin cloth extends his sword arm upward, but his wrist is seized from behind and his other arm is locked in a Half Nelson. He throws his leg back in a wide stance, but another cyclops grabs his ankle. The blue-green haired woman with him is seized by another. As she falls back, her necklace flies upward with motion. — SWORDS OF MARS (1979), Acrylic - 20" x 25"

I was so excited about doing them that I had the fourth cover completed before we finalized the terms of my contract. I tried to act tough in the negotiations and even brought an attorney along to help in the process, but truth to tell I probably would have done them for free!

A grossly disfigured, hulking man ferries a boat through vermillion swamp. He holds an ornate rapier at the ready while pushing the craft with a makeshift pole gripped in his offhand. Gentle ripples in the water—highlighted in pink—radiate from the boat. The synthetic man's black hair and red cast skin are native to Barsoom, but his face is grotesquely asymmetrical with one huge eye bulging. His other eye is barely visibly as his face droops and his mouth slants at a sharp diagonal. His frame is comically top heavy with tense, striated muscle concentrated in his yolked shoulders and broad chest. At the bow of the boat, a Barsoomian woman decked in jewels and not much else is caught in a moment of surprise as she spies monstrous creatures ahead. A green, six-legged lizard with yellow eyes emerges from the water, stretching its jaws to reveal a mouth of jagged fangs. On an uprooted tree nearby perches an enormous insect with pincered mandibles, barbed tail, and translucent fly-like wings. The background is dominated by dense forest. Willowy trees, wide and squat, obscure most of two glowing moons as they float low in the sky. — SYNTHETIC MEN OF MARS (1979), Acrylic - 32" x 24"

In the process of painting eleven covers over the course of a year, some things became less important as time went on. For example, we worried less about the title of the book when deciding on the cover scene. Llana herself doesn’t even appear on her cover.

Two scantily clad Barsoomian men carrying laser pistols are caught by surprise on a polar landscape by a large wooly beast. The creature has a body like a yeti, covered all in white fur, but it's lower half is four-legged like a stocky pachyderm. It has large insectile eyes and rhino-like horns protruding from its snout. Two tusks extend from the corners of its mouth, which is open exposing uneven pointed teeth. — LLANA OF GATHOL (1979), Acrylic - 24" x 32"

After nine covers, I realized I still had not shown one of the unique Barsoomian airships so commonly featured throughout the series. That was partly because Robert Abbett had done such a great job visualizing them on the covers he painted for the books in the 1960s. Nevertheless, the scene we chose involved an airship and also conveyed the feeling of the book very well.

On the back of a saddled Martian bird, John Carter flies above a barren red landscape with the horizon tilted at a steep angle. His arms are spread wide as he grips reins in one hand and a rapier in the other. Dejah Thoris has a worried expression as she holds him around his waist. The bird twists with its eyes and beak pointing in a different direction than rider, giving a disorienting change in motion. Behind flies Tars Tarkas on his own winged mount. An elegant city with high reaching spires and onion-shaped peaks sits in the distance framed by a huge moon. Another smaller moon hangs bright in the gray blue sky. — JOHN CARTER OF MARS (1979), Acrylic - 22" x 28"

For the last book, I wanted to wrap up the series with a painting that evoked the romantic notion of the deathless hero and the woman of his dreams winging off to further adventures against the backdrop of the full majesty of their planet.

Original Art Now At Auction

Preliminary concept for THUVIA, MAID OF MARS. The view of topless Thuvia is from the side as she stands close to a fierce eight-legged Martian lion. Its claws grip an oddly flecked rock. Face down on the ground below is the body of a warrior. The elegant spires of the Martian city in the distance is behind less defined walls than the final painting. — Preliminary concept for THUVIA, MAID OF MARS, Acrylic and Gouache on Illustration Board - 8 ½” x 6 ¾”

We don’t often highlight Michael’s original art on the secondary market or at auction because rarely do we see even preliminaries come available to the public, so it’s always a thrill when work surfaces from a signature series like the John Carter books, done way back in the 70s.

The listing for this concept from THUVIA, MAID OF MARS at Heritage runs until April 6th with a live bidding session.

View at Heritage Auctions

Weekly Art Recap

Grid of images 3 across in 2 rows corresponding to the list below. — Art featured from March 24 - 29

Amazons 2 - for the DAW anthology edited by Jessica Salmonson
Island - exploring the metaphor of Earth as an island
Erebus - a chilling classic for The Year’s Best Horror Stories anthology
Rimrunner - a cautionary tale from The End of Nature series
The Ultimate Enemy - for the Berserker Saga by Fred Saberhagen
Path - a portrait of Seren from the first Leftovers & Gremlins gallery

Stormlight Original Art - Wednesday 4/2 at 11 ET

We are again taking a pause in the 2025 Leftovers & Palette Gremlins gallery project. Instead of the usual L&PG reveal, we will be adding preliminary art from WIND AND TRUTH to our shop.

An exclusive preview of the original art will be available for our paid subscribers on Substack before the art is released to our shop on Wednesday, April 2 at 11am ET.

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