"You are ugly, but you are beautiful!" -Tars Tarkas, 2012




Cover to A Princess of Mars painted by Michael Whelan

 

My grandmother got me interested in Edgar Rice Burroughs when I was around ten years old.  She had a wonderful children's library that had a Tarzan and John Carter of Mars section and whenever we would go over to her house I'd gravitate towards that part of the room.  Now, Tarzan I had a fondness for mainly due to the Filmation cartoon series from the early eighties but John Carter was new to me. I really didn't know if I would like the series, but I gave the first book, A Princess of Mars, a try. It was the prologue of said book that enthralled me.  It detailed the author's own contact with his uncle John and created a sense of mystery with the inclusion of a uniquely opening tomb.  Edgar Rice Burroughs created something that felt like it actually had roots in real life and I admired that.  It also seemed to have hints of Indiana Jones and The Time Machine.  How could you not love that?  My grandmother ended up giving me her Edgar Rice Burroughs collection (with some first editions) a few months before she passed. As I look back on it now, her premonition of passing on was eerily similar to how John Carter dealt with moving on to Mars and how that's relayed to his nephew Edgar both in the book and film.  That definitely caused my emotional ties to the books to tighten ever so much more.  

 
Now, the film adaptation of John Carter hasn't been doing to well at the box office here in the U.S. but I loved it.  For some reason critics have disparaged it but I feel as though the film hearkens back to the Walt Disney adventure movies of old.  I'll be honest though.  When it was first announced I was a bit skeptical.  I didn't know much about the cast save for Mark Strong and Willem Dafoe.  Some desert epics really put me to sleep (Dune), and Disney's Prince of Persia wasn't helping things.  Then I saw the first teaser trailer and my interests were peaked.  The full trailer came out and it took all of one quote to turn me into a true believer. The above quote from Willem Dafoe's Tars Tarkas summed up the heart of the movie and conveyed an emotional necessity that's so rarely used well in films, camaraderie.  The friendship that's built between John Carter and Tars Tarkas the Thark is extremely well done and it was one of the things that kept me invested in the film. 
So I saw the film a couple weeks back and I've been trying to hunt down some collectibles from the film.  I found a great movie poster on eBay done by an artist named J.C Richard (check it out here) but I really wanted a 6 or 12 inch collectible figure.  Triad Toys has a pretty cool classical take on the character in 6 scale form (have a look see here) but besides that there's nothing.  Then I started to think about what I could put together on my own and it dawned on me that Hot Toys had made a long haired head that, when used with one of their true type muscle bodies, would make a great base for a John Carter figure.

Adding in the awesome costume and weapons from the Triad Toys release I found that John Carter had come to life.  In a wonderful bit of serendipity I found out that the long haired head that I was going to use was actually modeled on the actor who plays John Carter in the film, Taylor Kitsch.  Everything came together to create a pretty interesting semi-classical take on the movie version of John Carter. I gave him a Roman gladiator's gladius to go along with the Triad Toys sword, as I've yet been able to find a screen appropriate sword.  I also tried to find some material that was semi-sceen accurate so that I could fashion a sarong for Mr. Carter.  I'm pretty content with how he turned out...

Now I just need to figure out how to put together a 13 to 14 inch tall four-armed green Thark. 



Without...


  



...and with sarong.



All that being said, there is so much more that I want to talk about in regards to the film but I'm going to hold off on that until the blu-ray comes out and I can really go in-depth into why I like the film so much.



Bring on the white apes!!

*All the thanks in the world to Hot Toys and Triad Toys for making awesome figures and parts for customizing and to Edgar Rice Burroughs and his estate for creating these wonderful stories.
**A special thanks to Toy Anxiety in Phoenix, AZ. for all there help. 

***Go see and support John Carter now so we can get it's sequel, Gods of Mars!!! :)