Writer’s Commentary: Dan Abnett On ‘Dejah Thoris Vs. John Carter Of Mars’ #6 From Dynamite Comics

Dan Abnett returns once more to talk us through his latest comic book from Dynamite Comics, Dejah Thoris Vs. John Carter Of Mars #6 and the finale of this current series starring the much loved pulp heroes of Edgar Rice Burroughs. 

[+++ WARNING: Possible SPOILERS! Buy and read the book, then return here for some cosmic commentary. +++]

And so we reach the world-shaking (or should that be ‘Mars’ shaking?) conclusion of this epic tale. Dejah Thoris and John Carter are trapped in an ancient palace that defies the laws of time, trying to prevent the extra-dimensional invasion of the Longborn, god-like entities that intend to dismantle the entire Solar System and rebuild it as a home for themselves. All our heroes can really hope to do is slow the Longborn down…  and buy enough time for their allies, Kantos Kan and Matai Shang (stuck OUTSIDE the palace), to unleash the fury of the Helium arsenal and wipe the palace off the face of Barsoom, thus ending the Longborn threat forever.

Of course, that will end Dejah and John forever too!

It’s full-on, fate-of-the-world stuff…  and we open with Kantos and Shang drawing the weapons of mass destruction into place. Alessandro gives us immense scale and SF wonder, what with the airships and the strange devices. Alessandro Miracolo (here aided and abetted by Vincenzo Carratu) has done marvellous work this series, fully capturing the exotic high adventure of ERB’s Barsoomian ‘Planet Stories’. I’ll take this opportunity to commend his very fine work throughout and admire, once again, how it is so perfectly complemented by Dearbhla Kelly’s color work and Simon Bowland’s lettering. The Barsoomian takes of Edgar Rice Burroughs are now over a century old, and there is inevitably a danger they might appear old fashioned and ‘vintage’. They have also been so influential on other things, things that are now more famous and prominent in the zeitgeist, that it could be hard for a modern audience to appreciate how truly original and inspired they were. I think Alessandro and the art team have shown that the Barsoom tales are as a vivid and exciting as they ever were, and that they can be rendered in a way that keeps them incredibly fresh and relevant…  without (and this is the key trick) losing the essential essence of what makes them their own thing. I cannot praise the art team highly enough.

Inside the cursed palace, things are more mano-a-mano. John, Dejah and their mercurial ally, Rotak Gall, are fighting two of the Longborn that have manifested in ‘human’ form (ie they have acquired human clone host bodies that allow them to function in this world). But as John dukes it out with the Longborn clones, Dejah faces another threat… ANOTHER John Carter, an experimental (and entirely feral) clone of John produced as a would-be host body for other Longborn.

What we get – as befits a grand finale – is a mighty battle where everything is on the line: dazzling swordplay, twists and turns, and fierce action, all played out against the ticking clock of the detonation Kantos and Shang are preparing. More than anything else, this is a moment where a comic fully delivers on the promise of its title: Dejah Thoris vs. John Carter!

I hope you’ve all enjoyed this epic adventure, which is both a self-contained story AND a climactic ending to the storyline we wove through Dejah Thoris’ recent series. And I really hope you enjoy the high-stakes spectacle of the way we wrap it all up. It is, as I said, a full-on, no-holds-barred grand finale. 

Will there be future stories with these beloved characters? Not my place to say right now, but time – in this case, quite literally – will tell!

Dejah Thoris Vs. John Carter Of Mars #6 is out now from Dynamite Comics