July 24, 1964— Canaveral Press publishes the first hardcover edition of John Coleman Burroughs’ pastiche, “john Carter and the Giant of Mars” along with ERB’s own last John Carter adventure, “Skeleton Men of Jupiter.” The book has an introduction by Richard A. Lupoff, a two-color dust jacket and eight interior illustrations, plus endpapers, by Reed Crandall. The first state of the binding states, “John Carter and the Giant of Mars” which was later corrected to the book’s true title of “John Carter of Mars.”
In 2006 Recoverings produced the limited edition, full-color design for an alternate dust jacket for the book using the J. Allen St. John cover art for the “Giant” story as it appeared on “Amazing Stories” in January, 1941. Since it was acknowledged by 1963 that the title tale had been written by John Coleman, I decided to make the author attribution a reference to ERB rather than a byline. John Coleman’s participation was also signaled by the use of his title lettering from the Sunday comic strip that he had drawn in 1941. I also used a drawing of John Carter from the strip as an illustrated device on the spine to match the style of the jacket with those that were produced by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. for their publications. The back cover uses the same photo of Ed, hand colored, along with reproductions of the two pulp covers for the original appearances of the stories.