ERB also did an excellent one shot book that was serialized in two stories called Beyond The Farthest Star. Basically a foretelling of things to come with the Second World War, an Americain Aviator flying for England or France in 1939 gets shot down over Europe and is killed. But like John Carter, he reawakens healthy on a distant planet and becomes the ERB everyman. Like John Carter, David Inness, Carson Napier, Barney Custer and most every other man in the pulp fiction canon he proceeds to set the new world right. ERB was clueless about flying and sword fighting but he was able to write an exciting story using these devices. (How often was something refered to as a hurtling engine of destruction. Zitadars, Thoats, Rhinos and elephants got the same ERB treatment.)

ERB was certainly derivative but at least he was an original and derivative of himself. With the possible exception of The Mad King which was everything that The Prisoner of Zenda should have been and wasn't.

Don