This is a blog series about … well, series. I love stories that continue across volumes, in whatever form: linked short stories, novels, novellas, television, movies, comics. It’s been on hiatus for a while, but returns this week with the first of two posts about new content from Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.
Pellucidar: Across Savage Seas,
Publisher: American Mythology, 2022 (in conjunction with Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.)
Story: Christopher Paul Carey
Writer/Editor: Mike Wolfer
Pencils and Inks: Miriana Puglia
Colors: Periya Pillai
Letters: Natalie Jane
In Pellucidar: Across Savage Seas, Gretchen von Harben (all grown up her from last appearance as a twelve-year-old girl in Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan and the Tarzan Twins) narrates to an unseen audience her first visit to Pellucidar, the hidden world at the Earth’s core. Accompanying adventurer Jason Gridley on the airship Favonia as a college student, Gretchen is knocked loose when the Favonia is attacked by a flock of pterosaurs. She parachutes to a remote, uncharted island with only a pistol and limited ammo. There she encounters beings fans of the Pellucidar books will recognize (human Gilaks and ape-like Sagoths) as well as entirely new races that this series adds to the official Burroughs canon (Kratalaks and Azlaks). Gretchen faces a lot of peril over the course of four issues, and in the tradition of the strong female Burroughs characters who have preceded her (Jane Porter-Clayton, Dejah Thoris, Duare, and more), she more than rises to the occasion. This may be Gretchen’s first recorded adventure as an adult, but I certainly hope it’s not the last. She’s an engaging and dynamic character who deserves to be featured (along with the supporting cast that’s been built around her) in many more stories.
Christopher Paul Carey crafted the general story of Gretchen’s first adventure in Pellucidar, originally intending it to be a novel. Writer Mike Wolfer did a wonderful job converting the story to comic book form, pacing the story perfectly across four issues. Fewer issues would have rushed the story too much, and I think five or six issues would have padded the story out too much. Reading the series as it was issued in monthly (or as close to monthly as the publisher could get given various supply chain issues plaguing small independent publishers these days), I was very satisfied with where each issue left off – cliffhangers, of course, as befits a story that could easily have been told as a classic 1940s movie serial – and never felt like the drama of the end of a chapter was unearned. Carey is a Burroughsian scholar of the highest level, and Wolfer matches him well in creating a story that Burroughs would be proud of. For instance, I have no idea how much of the dialogue was in Carey’s original plot, how much the writers crafted together, and how much is purely Wolfer – but regardless, each character’s voice is distinctive and clear while still being perfectly Burroughsian in style.
Complimenting the writing, Miriana Puglia’s artwork is wonderful. Her clean lines and fluid body language convey action and emotion with equal clarity. Fight scenes have a flow and symmetry that makes them easy to follow, and upon multiple reads tiny details stand out. And when it’s time to go creepy (as one almost inevitably must when adventuring in Pellucidar), Puglia absolutely rises to the occasion. There’s one particular page in issue 4, for example, which made me a bit nauseous (trust me, this is a compliment.). Colorist Periya Pillai keeps the action well-lit with a mix of bold and quiet colors as appropriate to the scene; even moments in dark caves or underwater are easy to follow because Pillai’s colors don’t go so dark that they subsume Puglia’s art.
In recent years, Edgar Rice Burroughs Inc. has made a concerted effort to expand the official canon of the ERB Universe with new novels and comics series like this one, that bear the “Edgar Rice Burroughs Universe” banner across the top of the cover as well as an “Official ERB Universe Canon” stamp and hew as closely to Burroughs’ original interconnectedness universe as possible. In the novels of the current “Swords of Eternity” Super-Arc, readers have been introduced to an intrepid young woman traversing time and space named Victory Harben. Yes, there’s a direct connection between the Gretchen von Harben of Pellucidar: Across Savage Seas and the Victory Harben who has been appearing in those novels: it’s not a spoiler to reveal here that Victory is Gretchen’s daughter and is the person to whom Gretchen is narrating this story. Along with appearing in the novels/novellas already released, Victory will take center stage in her own novel later this year – but before that, she’s also been the star of another American Mythology / ERB Universe comic book mini-series: Beyond the Farthest Star: Warriors of Zandar, which will be the subject of next week’s Series Saturday post.