Barsoom!

pulp illustrators, used to send up screens of shimmering bubbles to protect his audience from the sight of so much as a corrupting nipple. Even the great Frank Frazetta, working in the 1960s and seventies, suffered an occasional attack of fig leaf syndrome.

But Caldwell portrays human anatomy pretty much as OF Ma Nature sculpted it. I would like to direct your attention in particular to Caldwell's portrayal of Thuvia (she's the lady with the six-legged lion) and Liana (the babe on the deck of the Barsoomian airship).

Well, all right, there's some exaggeration there. It's a t&a show.

Yup. But that's part of Burroughs.

Burroughs wasn't all slash-and-hack. And while his love scenes are cloaked in the genteel and flowery talk of his day, behind the scenes lurked the kind of things Caldwell brings into the open.

Gar-damn, those are lusty, fleshy folks in those books. You can bet they didn't come home from a hard day on the arid plain to talk about flower arranging and then bed down by ones.

Come on!

Three cheers, say I, for Clyde Caldwell. Let the Puritans paint mother hubbards over their copies of the pix.