John Carter of Mars Covers by Michael Whelan
In 1979, Del Rey/Ballantine Books commissioned Michael Whelan to paint new covers for Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter of Mars novels, succeeding Gino D’Achille‘s 1973 series.
Following in the footsteps of previous illustration greats like Roy G. Krenkel and Frank Frazetta, Whelan brought his considerable skill in research and detail to give us a more fully-realised view of Barsoomian life than we had seen before.
Collected below are the 11 wraparound cover paintings without text, and four sketches.
Character studies
A Princess of Mars
The Gods of Mars
Sketch for The Warlord of Mars
Sketch for The Warlord of Mars
The Warlord of Mars
Thuvia, Maid of Mars
The Chessmen of Mars
Sketch for The Master Mind of Mars
The Master Mind of Mars
A Fighting Man of Mars
Swords of Mars
Synthetic Men of Mars
Llana of Gathol
John Carter of Mars
The Published Covers
A Princess of Mars
The Gods of Mars
The Warlord of Mars
Thuvia Maid of Mars
The Chessmen of Mars
The Master Mind of Mars
A Fighting Man of Mars
Swords of Mars
Synthetic Men of Mars
Llana of Gathol
John Carter of Mars
A Guide to Barsoom
Updated Logo Design
Revising the logo to make it dimensional, and using high-quality scans of the original paintings to bring new vibrancy to the Del Rey editions.
New eBooks
And here are a couple with a new type scheme, one that puts the emphasis on the image as opposed to the JCoM branding. I did the series up for personal ebooks.
Design © Scott Dutton 2011
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For the updated covers you made, for the personal ebooks…you wouldn’t be able to share them privately would you? I’ve been scouring the web for nicely formatted epub versions of the series, or for a complete series epub. If you can, please let me know. I’m a fellow fan and I really like what you did with the cover art (as well as your epub formatting for the books you have available on the site – superb).
Thanks!
Hi George –
First off, thanks for the kind words about the ebook work.
As far as making these covers available – publicly or privately – as part of ebooks, I’m afraid that the artwork is copyright protected by ERB Inc.
While many of the Barsoom texts are now in the public domain and available from sites like Project Gutenberg, I cannot legally distribute ebooks with Whelan’s art attached to them without a licence agreement.
Nothing stops you from sourcing cover art scans and adding them to your own files, but if the artwork is under copyright, they have to be for your reading pleasure only.
Take care –
Scott
No worries, thanks for the reply Scott. Any tips on where I could find such high-res artwork? Feel free to email me, so I’m not cluttering your blog comments with idle requests. : )
George
Seek, and ye shall find. 😉
And I’m always happy to talk publicly or privately about books and design. That’s why I set up the blog part of the site.
Thanks – the JCoM branding looks sweet. Nice design choices. Thanks for the reference.
You’re entirely welcome.
Hi Scott
Thanks for this post, really enjoyable and great to see these pictures. I remember buying this series when it came out and I was really impressed with the covers then.
I love what you have done with the covers, very impressive and I agree that they bring the covers to the forefront.
While I understand that you can’t share a complete set with us is there any chance you could share the technique? i.e. Font choice, transparency level etc.
Even better would be a template psd 🙂
Thanks again.
Scott
Hi Scott –
The font is a compressed Helvetica. Opacity is less than 100% obviously, but it varied a bit depending on the image underneath.
The cover images were cleaned up in Photoshop, but I do all my layout/typography work in InDesign.
I’m sure a resourceful individual like yourself – appropriately named no less – can create something outstanding.
– The other Scott
Scott,
Thanks for the feedback 🙂
Great work!
Some of my favorite books (I have the full set of Del Rey releases) and Whelan covers.
Thank you for sharing the love & talent!
Best Regards
Stu
Thanks, Stu!
Thank you for this posting. I just bought the series hardcover for my 12-year-old son. The covers are a missing component in the hard cover. The first book cover was painfully hand-crafted into a poster when I was 15 and it brought the tales to life. Whelan is masterful at his craft.