When
DC picked up the rights to
Edgar Rice Burroughs' characters from
Gold Key in the
70s, they wasted no time expanding them empire. The
At The Earth's Core back-up strip from
Korak and the
John Carter Of Mars back-up from
Tarzan were very quickly spun off into their own title:
Note that DC took
pains to tell readers what the hell this was:
They threw the creator's name on there, along with having his most famous creation "
present" the book...and featured Tarzan just hangin' around for no reason on the cover:
They continued on the inside, as the first page continued to remind readers that this was an
ERB book, and he created Tarzan, so you're going to love this,
dammit!!
And every single issue had Tarzan plastered across the top of the cover, trying to beat the connection into peoples' heads:
Now, this didn't necessarily work: John Carter and
David Innes only lasted 7 issues of
Weird World, before they were shuffled off to
Tarzan Family. The last 3 issues of Weird World featured
Iron-Wolf, and then was cancelled (according to
Denny O'Neill, because of a
paper shortage!).
Contrast that to
Disney's disastrous flop with the
John Carter movie:
It's
Disney's John Carter, you see...and you have to get out the magnifying glass to find ERB's name anywhere on the posters. And you'd think that they would be trumpeting "from the creator of freakin' Tarzan!"
Nope...hell, eventually they even dropped the "
Of Mars" from the title. So if you weren't already familiar with the character, the marketing campaign pretty much gave you
nothing (not to mention rendering the "
JCM" logo meaningless...).
I'm not saying that Disney should have necessarily had a
Joe Kubert-drawn Tarzan on the posters saying, "
Yeah, I present this!" But a "
from the creator of" might have moved a couple of more tickets, not to mention using ERB's actual name, and keeping the word Mars in the title.
Hell, why go small at all? Disney should have gone whole hog, pushing an "
ERB Cinematic Universe."
Carson of Venus movies.
Pelluidar movies. Tarzan movies. Korak movies.
Crazy-ass crossover movies!!
But for some reason, Disney seemed, well, ashamed of the pulpy origins of John Carter, and tried like hell to hide it. See how well that worked out?
Yeah, the whole John Carter thing should've easily been a slam dunk and yet it wasn't for most likely the very reasons you listed.
ReplyDeleteIt's highly-questionable and bone-headed decisions like this that make me seriously worry about the future of Marvel movies now that Feige has more power and say so, allowing that infamous Disney interference we all dreaded when they bought Marvel.
I love that OTHER WORLDS equates to a sex siren!
ReplyDeleteIt's head-scratching that they buried the Mars connection in its marketing considering how much money they spent to create "Mars" onscreen.
ReplyDelete