Something of an immortal (though even he doesn’t know how long he has lived, or how long he might live), John Carter began his epic adventure shortly after a stint as a captain in the Army of the Confederacy. After the end of the Civil War, Carter became a prospector in Arizona. In 1866 he was chased into a cave by unfriendly Apaches, and was overcome by a mysterious gas that rendered him unconscious. Having an out-of-body experience, he walked out of the cave, looked up, and found himself strangely attracted to a bright red “star”--the planet Mars. Stretching his arms upward, he found himself drawn through the airless void of space to the red planet.

Arriving naked and unarmed on Mars, John Carter was soon taken captive by the Tharks, a tribe of the tall, four-armed, nomadic and warrior-like Green Men of Mars. It was while being held by the Tharks that Carter first met the incomparable Dejah Thoris, the beautiful princess of Helium, a major city of the Red Men of Mars. The Red Men of Mars looked much like the people of Earth, though like all Martians they were oviparous--their young hatching from eggs after a five-year incubation period.

Life on the dying planet of Mars, or Barsoom as it was known to its inhabitants, was often harsh, with war, assassination, and violence a continual state of affairs. Barsoomians could live for a thousand years, though many did not make it to this age due to the violent nature of daily life.

The Tharks eventually became allies to John Carter and the people of Helium, and Carter wed his beautiful princess. Under the hurtling twin moons of Mars, over the desiccated beds of long-dead seas, through the crumbling ruins of once great cities, and in the crowded streets of warring city-states, the story of John Carter, his family and friends was vividly reported by Burroughs in the pages of his Martian Tales.

Little has been reported regarding the career of John Carter following the death of his great chronicler, Edgar Rice Burroughs. The Mariner space probes that flew by and orbited Mars in the mid-1960s found no remnants of the once great Martian civilization that had been recorded by Burroughs. The thin Martian atmosphere reported by the twin Viking landers in the mid-1970s confirmed that the great atmosphere production factory of the Orovars was no longer in operation.

No subsequent space probe has shed any light on this baffling mystery, and we can only speculate as to the enormity of the catastrophe that served to obliterate all traces of the Barsoomians and their ancient civilization from the face of Mars. Given the resourcefulness and resiliency of the great Warlord of Mars, however, there’s little doubt that John Carter and the incomparable Dejah Thoris somehow survived the disaster that befell their world--though their current whereabouts remains unknown.