John Carter of Mars is a fictional Virginian soldier who acts as the initial protagonist of the Barsoom stories by Edgar Rice Burroughs. A veteran of the American Civil War, he is transported to the planet Mars, called Barsoom by its inhabitants, where he becomes a warrior battling various mythological beasts, alien armies and malevolent foes. Created in 1911, the character has appeared in novels and short stories, comic books, television shows and films, including the 2012 feature film John Carter, which marked the 100th anniversary of the character's first appearance.
Appearances
John Carter was the lead character in the first novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs, set on a fictionalized version of Mars known as Barsoom. Written between July and September 28, 1911, the novel was serialized as Under the Moons of Mars in the pulp magazine The All-Story from February to July 1912. It later appeared as a complete novel only after the success of Burroughs's Tarzan series. For its October 1917 hardcover publication by A.C. McClurg & Company, the novel was retitled A Princess of Mars.
Carter reappeared in subsequent volumes of the series, most prominently in the second (The Gods of Mars, 1918), the third (The Warlord of Mars, 1919), the eighth (Swords of Mars, 1936), the tenth (Llana of Gathol, 1948), and the eleventh and final installment (John Carter of Mars, published posthumously in 1964). John Carter is also a major secondary character in the fourth volume (Thuvia, Maid of Mars, 1920), and the ninth (Synthetic Men of Mars, 1940). In September 2021, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. released John Carter Of Mars: Gods of the Forgotten, by Geary Gravel. Considered the 12th book in the Barsoom series, it is officially seen as canon.
Description
Carter stands and has close-cropped black hair and steel-grey eyes. Burroughs describes him as immortal. In the opening pages of A Princess of Mars, it is revealed that Carter can remember no childhood, having always been a man of about thirty years old. Many generations have known him as "Uncle Jack," but he always lived to see them grow old and die, while he remained young.
His character and courtesy exemplify the ideals of the Antebellum South. A Virginian, he served as a captain in the American Civil War on the side of the Confederacy. After the war, Carter and his companion Powell, who was also a captain in the Civil War, became gold prospectors. Carter and Powell struck it rich by finding gold in Arizona. While hiding from Apaches in a cave, he appears to die; leaving his inanimate body behind, he is mysteriously transported by a form of astral projection to the planet Mars, where he finds himself re-embodied in a form identical to his earthly one. Accustomed to the greater gravity of Earth, he finds himself to be much stronger and more agile than the natives of Mars.
Character biography
On Mars, which its natives call Barsoom, Carter encounters both formidable alien creatures resembling the beasts of ancient myth, and various humanoids. He finds his true calling in life as a warlord who strives to save the planet's inhabitants. He wins the hand of a Martian princess, Dejah Thoris of Helium, but after several years of marriage he sacrifices himself to save Barsoom from the loss of its atmosphere. Awakening again after this second death he finds he has been miraculously transported back to Earth, into his original body. Carter then collects the wealth that resulted from his discovery of a rich vein of gold ore right before his original passage to Barsoom. Unable to return to Mars, he spends several more years in a small cottage on the Hudson River in New York, where he once more appears to die on March 4, 1886. In his first appearance, he refers to the fact that he does not actually know how old he is or when or where he was born. He further states that he has been a fighting man for a very long time, by implication far longer than a single human lifetime.
Again, Carter's apparent demise is not a true death; rather, he is restored to Barsoom, where after more adventures he rises to the position of Warlord of Mars, having played an instrumental role in creating alliances among many of the sentient races of Barsoom. He returns to Earth on a number of occasions afterward to relate his adventures to his nephew ("Burroughs"), revealing that he has mastered the process of astral travel between the two worlds. During his adventures on Mars his earthly body reposes in a special tomb that can only be opened from the inside.