Warlord of Mars: Dejah Thoris Volume 2 - Pirate Queen of Mars TP [Paperback]

This is a collection of the five issues of Dynamite Entertainment's comic book `Warlord of Mars - Deja Thoris Volume 2: Pirate Queen of Mars'. It is a prequel to the graphic novel collection `Warlord of Mars', and a sequel to Deja Thoris' solo adventure `Colossus of Mars'.

The art and scripting is of as reasonable standard for the story, which is basically wholesale slaughter of Martians by Martians in the tradition of Edgar Rice Burroughs' original stories. This time round we have Black Martians slaughtering Red, Green and Black Martians, with the added ingredient of cannibalism, as the Black Martians happen to eat their victims - though they draw the line at Green Martians, viewing them as unfit to eat. It is all good clean fun, in the great American pulp tradition. I just find the artwork a bit too `cartoony' for my taste, preferring the traditional American adventure comics' more naturalistic style - see John Carter of Mars: Weird Worlds as an example.

Anyway, having captured the city of Greater Helium in the previous volume, we now discover that the water supply has stopped. Deja volunteers to lead a party to the south polar pumping station to investigate, where they find the crew locked up and a mysterious gold coin at the bottom of one of the reservoirs; it must have been cold wandering around the pole and swimming in just two nipple-protectors and a converted eyepatch covering her strategic bits. Coincidentally, Deja's father is out on a raiding expedition to steal gold from the Green Martians to fund the rebuilding of the cities of Helium. Anyway, she is soon captured by the Black Pirates of Mars. In the next episode, an even bigger pirate ship turns up, captures Deja's crew from the pumping station and pursues the first pirate ship. After a fight, Déjà and her new friends are captured, and sent to the galley, where we find the cooks cutting up Deja's crew... We also discover that the two pirate captains have a history together. In the third episode, after a bit of gratuitous slaughtering in the galley, Deja and her pirates escape, and she learns of a long-lost Black pirate treasure buried under the ice at the pole, just as the other pirate captain tortures information out of one of Deja's crew left behind on his ship about the coin she discovered. So, everyone is heading for the pumping station... In the fourth episode Deja's pumping crew have a tunnelling machine that take them into a network of caves, where they discover the aged survivors of the lost expedition - Martians live until something kills them, remember - as well as a giant worm with very sharp teeth, and the treasure, and the other pirates discover them... In the last episode, Deja and her pirate captain, and the captain's brother, escape, leaving their crew to be gratuitously slaughtered by the pirates, who in turn get picked off by the monster. Eventually, the evil pirate captain confronts the three escapees above a nest of the giant worm's offspring... What happens next you ask - well read the book and find out!

Even without reading the previous volume, this was a fantastic pulp action graphic novel. The artwork, colors, and solid storyline, made this a very fun and easy read.

This felt very Burrough'esque to me. Not an easy feat!

If you love blood and guts action and pure sci-fi/fantasy escapism - along with triple hot babes of Mars! - then this is for you.

I really loved the various artists renditions of Dejah and Mars landscapes. (Just that alone is worth the ticket price.) Beautifully illustrated, excellently written, Warlord of Mars is sure to please the 'Saturday at the matinee' kid in you.

A must have.

› Go to Amazon.com to see both reviews  4.0 out of 5 stars