This weekend finds me at Wild Wild West Con in Tucson, Arizona. If you’re in town and able to come to the event, please drop in to the dealer’s room or see me on one of my panels. This is one of those rare conventions I have been fortunate enough to attend every year it’s been held and this will be the final year. I’m looking forward to this being an event to remember. One of the things I have loved about this convention is that it’s a very immersive steampunk convention where people really get into the spirit of the event and dress up. Over the years, both at this convention and at other events, we have delved into the question of what steampunk is and where it started. At its heart, I’ve long felt that steampunk celebrates science fiction’s eighteenth and nineteenth century roots. It looks to works like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea or H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds and tells stories in a similar milieu. Of course, those works are just early science fiction. Who told the first steampunk stories which looked back at the past and told stories in the style of those earlier works? I once heard an interesting case made that Edgar Rice Burroughs could be considered the father of steampunk. After all, in Burroughs’ first novel, John Carter was a post-Civil War soldier who finds himself transported to a very retrofuturistic Mars. Meanwhile, At the Earth’s Core also has very steampunkish Victorian elements.

One truly standout work of steampunk literature is the graphic novel The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen by Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill. This book literally brought many of the great heroes from Victorian adventure fiction together to battle a seemingly insurmountable menace. I wouldn’t be surprised if Bill Willingham took some inspiration from The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen when he realized that the Edgar Rice Burroughs canon consists of a rather extraordinary group of heroes and villains who could be brought together for a truly epic team-up against some rather implacable foes. His graphic novel The Greatest Adventure, released by Dynamite Publishing in 2017 did just that.

Featuring art by Cezar Razek, The Greatest Adventure imagines that Tarzan villain Count Rokoff and a band of Black Martians have captured a fabulous space vessel from the planet Poloda. Rokoff has also captured Jason Gridley, whose Gridley Wave has been used to communicate with many of Burroughs’ worlds including Pellucidar, Mars, and Venus. He wants Gridley to use the technology of several worlds to build the ultimate weapon, which will give him and his battleship almost Death Star-like powers. Fortunately Gridley escapes in a fighter craft before Rokoff can find the one piece he needs to complete his weapon, a legendary crystal which can only be found on a lost island inhabited by dinosaurs.

Although Gridley hopes to make it home to California, he finds that his craft will make it no further than Africa, so he seeks out Tarzan and his wife, Jane Porter. Willingham is well acquainted with the Tarzan canon and knows that Lord Graystoke has considerable resources and is a leader to be reckoned with. Lord and Lady Graystoke summon their children and head to New Mexico to build team of heroes culled from the novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs. Among them are Ulysses Paxton who brings a sky ship from Mars and the team sets out to seek the missing crystal before Rokoff can lay his hands on it. When they reach the island, they find the crystal has been taken to Pellucidar at the center of the Earth. Our heroes follow only to find that Rokoff has beaten them to it and departed for Mars.

Of course our heroes are hot on the villain’s tail. When they reach Mars, it doesn’t take long for Tarzan, Jane, and Gridley to team up with John Carter and Dejah Thoris. All in all, I found this a satisfying and fun adventure that honored the heroes of Edgar Rice Burroughs. I didn’t know all of the characters, but the graphic novel made me want to get to know them better through the source material. I’ll be certain to seek out more of the adventures of Carson of Venus, Tarzan and Jane, and Jason Gridley Was this collection steampunk? I certainly think it had the retrofuturistic, steampunk-like vibe many of Burroughs’ stories maintained.

My own Clockwork Legion steampunk series is about a group of unlikely heroes banding together to thwart an emperor’s ambitions to capture the United States. In many ways, my series owes a strong debt of gratitude to adventure stories such as those written by Edgar Rice Burroughs. You can learn more about my series at: http://davidleesummers.com/books.html#clockwork_legion