Warlord of Mars #1, Joe Jusko Variant Cover,Dynamite

I've never read any of Edgar Rice Burroughs' "John Carter of Mars" stories, although of course I'd heard of the old pulp novels back in the day, and knew some of the basics. Reading "Warlord of Mars" #1, though, showed me just how many of the basics I still didn't know about the character. Like, for instance, that he was a captain in the Confederate Army during the American Civil War, which had recently ended as the comic begins.Arvid Nelson could have probably left that part of the story out, or at least skimmed it over in his adaptation of Burroughs' prose into comics, but instead we leap right into the middle as Carter and his friend and fellow former Confederate officer James Powell get into a fight with several Union officers while stopping for a beer in Arizona Territory. It's interesting, because at a glance it's hard to not focus on just Carter being a Confederate soldier. As the story unfolds, though, it becomes clearer that Carter has two very specific allegiances, and they're specifically to his home state of Virginia, and to his friends. These loyalties are ones that I suspect will become important as "Warlord of Mars" continues (and Mars becomes Carter's new home and he makes new friends there), and I appreciated that Nelson plays it subtly as this story unfolds.