RECOVERINGS™

Revisionist Graphics:

An alternate dust jacket for Metropolitan’s

A Fighting Man of Mars

Max Elser’s original idea included a “wash reproduction” redraw-ing of one of Frank Hoban’s Blue Book illustrations. Oddly,Burroughs had previously said that he thought that Hoban “madethe red men of Mars look like half-wits.” An opinion not reallyborne out by close examination. Ed was probably thinking of anillustration in The Blue Book Magazine by Joseph Chenoweththat was used to promote the magazine serialization. In any case,this is the Hoban spot that Hutton redrew for the frontispiece.

The awkward staging of Hutton’s frontispiece over-shadows some decent drawing in the primary figures. Itbears the hallmarks of an insistent art directordemanding that all the story be told in one image. TheU-Gorians were likely an afterthought—Tavia andHadron appear to have been repositioned to the rightto accommodate them.

Phil Normand

copyright © 2004 Phil Normand and Recoverings

The story of how Burroughs’ seventhMars novel ended up with its final

dust jacket is detailed in Part IV ofRobert R. Barrett’s article, “Edgar RiceBurroughs and Metropolitan Books,Inc.” in the Winter 2001 issue of The Burroughs Bulletin (Number 45).In November, 1930, Maximilian

Elser, Jr. of Metropolitan NewspaperService decided that A Fighting Manof Mars would become the fourthBurroughs book to be published bythem. He asked for a suggestion as tothe jacket artist, and Burroughs ofcourse suggested J. Allan St. John whohad more than established an associa-tion with all of his books.Elser wrote that he would contact

St. John about the illustrations, but inJanuary, 1931 sent Ed a letter detail-ing his “new idea” for the dust jacket.He wanted to use the LaurenceHerndon cover painting for the May,1930, Blue Book Magazine as thefront illustration and one-color repro-ductions of various foreign transla-tions of Burroughs’ novels on theback. The back blurb would catalogthe details of the foreign translationsand also promote A Fighting Man ofMars while the flaps would contain asynopsis of the book along with pressnotices about Tarzan at the Earth’sCore and Tanar of Pellucidar.Burroughs had his mind set on

using St. John, however, and said thathe really couldn’t work up muchenthusiasm for any other artist. TheBlue Book cover just didn’t appeal tohim. Elser backed off the Herndonpainting but also closed the subject ofusing St. John because the artist want-ed more money to do the title letter-ing. Metropolitan felt that they couldcreate a more dynamic look to thejacket. “Mr. St. John is an excellent

artist, but, after all, he is rather con-ventional. What we need is a sellingjacket,” Elser wrote. He then suggest-ed that they use either Hugh Huttonor Paul F. Berdanier, both working in-house at the time.All this came at a difficult time for

Burroughs who had been hospitalizedin November for epididymitis and,though back home in December,1930, suffered a relapse and was backin and out of surgery in January.Perhaps too tired from his illness toengage in his usual attention to thedetails of the illustration of his books,Ed finally told Elser that he could usehis own judgement in the matter ofthe choice of artist.The resulting Hugh Hutton wrap-

around dust jacket is generally consid-ered to be the weakest of all the Marsseries jackets. It contains none of thestrongly rendered action or classicanatomy that St. John was capable ofpainting. The design is subverted byan asymmetrical composition thatputs the center of conflict on the spineand all the interesting details on theback cover. In fact, in an interview with car-

toonist Jack Bender in the fanzineERB-dom in August, 1969, Huttonrecalls the cover assignment as beingdone under miserable conditions:“All I can remember was working

against a deadline,” he says. “I caughta ‘bug’ and had a temperature of 103degrees. The only way I could keepgoing was to alternately paint and lieflat on the floor under the drawingboard. Mrs. Feg Murray* walked inonce and let out a shriek that crackedthe door glass—she thought I haddropped dead at work.”Two years later Hutton moved to

the Philadelphia Inquirer where he

became well known as an award-winning editorial cartoonist and amember of the Philadelphia SketchClub until his death in 1976. His car-toons show that he became muchstronger as an anatomist and drafts-man than this cover exemplifies.Elser got the go-ahead in February

and by the 27th he told Ed that theyhad started on the art. Elser said thatthey (Metropolitan) considered thefrontispiece and jacket “excellent.”He also said, “We have been super-vising drawing of frontispiece andpainting of jacket design…,” bywhich we might conclude that Elsermay have been responsible for theart direction himself. The paintinglooks hurried and shows little style,but, perhaps Elser himself has to beheld responsible for the result.It is a good bet that the idea of

putting some kind of emphasis onthe spine originated with Elser sinceTarzan and The Lost Empire is thefirst ERB dust jacket to use a spinemotif. Ed must have thought itworked pretty well as a sales gim-mick because he used a spine draw-ing on all the books published byERB, Inc. that didn’t use a wrap-around jacket.

For a couple of years, after doingthe Savage Pellucidar alternate

dust jacket, I had toyed with the ideaof using the Blue Book cover as analternate to the Hutton for FMM. Ibelieved that it would have made amuch more exciting cover. WhenBarrett’s BB article came out I wasastounded to learn that not only hadit been the original consideration,but that there was a definite state-ment as to what the whole jacketwas to have looked like. I deter-mined to go ahead with the redesignand wrote to Robert asking if he had

more information about what booksmight have been depicted on theback of the jacket.He promptly sent me a copy of a

photostat of a group of foreign edi-tion covers which ERB, Inc. had fur-nished Metropolitan and which hadbeen intended for use in newspaperads. Barrett assured me that wecould easily assume that this wouldhave been the same art for the dustjacket back panel. The cut is verydark and not really clear enough touse, so I sent a copy of it to GeorgeMcWhorter at the BurroughsMemorial Collection in Louisville,Kentucky and he supplied me withcolor copies of all but two of the for-eign edition covers. Shown on thephotostat, but not available in thecollection were the Arabic andPolish editions of The Beasts ofTarzan.After an extensive search, I was

unable to find copies of the elusivecovers so I substituted foreign edi-tions of A Princess of Mars and TheGods of Mars. While in Louisville,Kentucky, for the 2002 Dum-Dum, Itook the opportunity to scan thecover from the May, 1930, Blue Bookin the Burroughs Collection atEkstrom Library. I digitally removedall promotional type and letteringfrom the cover and filled in the lowerright corner of the painting. Thebook title lettering has remained thesame because it was done in-houseas a matter of course.So, this is what might have been.

I hope you enjoy this revisionist dustjacket and that it will find a place inyour library.

Phil Normand, APRIL, 2004NORMAND DESIGN and RECOVERINGS

*“Feg” Murray was a sports cartoonist work-ing for Metropolitan at the time.

Revisionist Graphics: An alternate dust jacket for Metropolitan’sA Fighting Man of Mars