John Carter of Mars

• 1. Introduction

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  John Carter of Mars was born in a pulp magazine in 1912, and the world of science fiction has never quite recovered. Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote the original story between July and the 28th of September 1911, and the tale of a Confederate soldier flung across space to a dying planet planted seeds that would eventually grow into Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, Superman, Star Wars, and dozens of other touchstones of popular imagination. How does a Virginia gold prospector hiding from Apaches in an Arizona cave end up as the Warlord of Mars? And how does a character created over a century ago still inspire graphic novels, blockbuster films, and role-playing games today?

• 2. The Man Who Cannot Age

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  Carter stands six feet two inches tall, with close-cropped black hair and steel-grey eyes. Burroughs describes him as immortal, and the opening pages of A Princess of Mars reveal something stranger still: Carter cannot remember his own childhood. He has always been a man of about thirty. Many generations of his family have known him as "Uncle Jack," watching him remain young while they aged and died.

  He served as a captain in the Confederate Army during the Civil War, and afterward partnered with his companion Powell, also a Civil War captain, in gold prospecting. The two struck a rich vein in Arizona. It was while sheltering from Apache pursuers in a cave that Carter's earthly life was interrupted; he appeared to die, left his inanimate body behind, and found himself transported by what Burroughs describes as a form of astral projection to the surface of Mars.

  On Mars, Carter's body adapted instantly to his new environment. Having grown up under Earth's heavier gravity, he was dramatically stronger and more agile than any native Martian. That physical advantage became the foundation of everything that followed.

• 3. Life on Barsoom

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  Mars, as the planet's own inhabitants call it, is Barsoom, and Carter arrived there to find both terrifying creatures that recalled the beasts of ancient myth and various humanoid peoples. He came to regard the planet as his true calling, eventually rising to the title of Warlord of Mars after forging alliances among the many sentient races of the world.

  He won the hand of Dejah Thoris, a princess of the city of Helium. After several years of marriage, he sacrificed himself to save the entire planet when its atmosphere was in danger of failing. That apparent death transported him back to Earth, back into his original body, and he spent several years in a small cottage on the Hudson River in New York before once again appearing to die, on the 4th of March 1886.

  The deaths kept proving false. Each time, Carter was restored to Barsoom. He eventually mastered the mechanics of astral travel between the two worlds, journeying back to Earth on multiple occasions to relate his adventures to his nephew, a character the books identify as "Burroughs." During his absences from Barsoom, his earthly body rested in a special tomb that could only be opened from the inside.

  Carter and Dejah Thoris had two children: a son, Carthoris, and a daughter, Tara. Carthoris appears as a secondary figure in The Gods of Mars and The Warlord of Mars before becoming the protagonist of Thuvia, Maid of Mars. Tara is the heroine of The Chessmen of Mars, published in 1922, and the mother of Carter's granddaughter Llana, who leads Llana of Gathol.

• 4. From Pulp to Shelf

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  The story that would eventually become A Princess of Mars first reached readers through The All-Story, a pulp magazine, under the title Under the Moons of Mars. It ran there from February to July 1912 as a serialized story. A hardcover book edition only arrived after the enormous success of Burroughs's Tarzan series had established his reputation. A. C. McClurg and Company published it in October 1917.

  Carter anchors the first three Barsoom novels most prominently. The Gods of Mars appeared in 1918 and The Warlord of Mars in 1919. He plays major roles in Thuvia, Maid of Mars in 1920 and Synthetic Men of Mars in 1940. Swords of Mars came in 1936, Llana of Gathol in 1948, and the final volume in the numbered series, John Carter of Mars, was published posthumously in 1964.

  In September 2021, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. released John Carter of Mars: Gods of the Forgotten by Geary Gravel. Some consider it the twelfth book in the Barsoom series, though that designation is not widely accepted. Carter's legal status today sits in a complicated middle ground: the character is in the public domain, but the Edgar Rice Burroughs estate maintains ownership over certain specific aspects.

• 5. Comics and the Long Reach of Print

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  The newspaper comic strip nearly happened several times, and almost happened differently. In 1932, Burroughs tried to persuade United Feature Syndicate, which already distributed the Tarzan strip, to add a John Carter adaptation. The syndicate turned him down. A year later, King Features Syndicate wanted a science fiction strip to compete with Buck Rogers and held talks with Burroughs. The artist J. Allen St. John expressed interest in illustrating it. Negotiations fell apart, and King Features went instead with an original property: Flash Gordon, by Alex Raymond.

  United Feature reversed its position in 1941, greenlighting a John Carter strip with the hope it could match the popularity of Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon. Burroughs's son John Coleman Burroughs both wrote and drew the strip. It debuted on Sunday, the 7th of December 1941, the day of the Pearl Harbor attack, and lasted one year and four months before ending on the 18th of April 1943. House of Greystoke reprinted it in book form in 1970.

  Dell Comics published three issues of John Carter of Mars under its Four Color Comics anthology title in 1952-1953, numbered 375, 437, and 488. Gold Key Comics reprinted them with new covers in 1964. DC Comics ran a John Carter of Mars feature in its Tarzan and Weird Worlds titles from 1972 to 1973. Marvel Comics published John Carter, Warlord of Mars from 1977 to 1979. Frank Frazetta, the fantasy painter, returned to Carter repeatedly in sketches and paintings across his career.

  Dynamite Entertainment launched an ongoing Warlord of Mars series in 2010, written by Arvid Nelson. The following year, Nelson also wrote Warlord of Mars: Dejah Thoris. In 2023, Glénat Éditions published a French graphic novel adaptation, La Princesse de Mars - Tome 1, scripted by Jean-David Morvan with art by Francesco Biagini.

• 6. A Century of Echoes

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  James Cameron described his inspiration for Avatar directly in terms of the Burroughs template: a soldier goes to another world, following what Cameron called "the Edgar Rice Burroughs mold, like John Carter of Mars." The debt extends far earlier. Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, Superman, Adam Strange, Dune, and Star Wars all carry the imprint of Burroughs's invention.

  Writers across genres borrowed freely. Robert A. Heinlein built two central characters of The Number of the Beast around the Barsoom mythology, naming one Zebadiah John Carter, a Virginia reserve captain, and giving another the name Deety Burroughs Carter. The similarity is acknowledged inside the novel itself. Alan Moore, in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, placed Carter on Barsoom helping the local population against the Martians from The War of the Worlds, and proposed that H. P. Lovecraft's Randolph Carter was John Carter's grandnephew.

  Dan Simmons included a John Carter Brigade in Hyperion. Harry Turtledove placed a character named John Carter at an estate called "Tarkas," a reference to the green Martian Tars Tarkas, in his Southern Victory novel Settling Accounts: In at the Death. Stephen King gave a character in The Long Walk the deadpan self-introduction: "My name is John Carter, my home is Barsoom, Mars."

  In game form, Heritage Models published the John Carter, Warlord of Mars role-playing game in 1978. British company Modiphius Entertainment acquired a John Carter license in 2015, announcing a new role-playing game, miniatures, and a board game.

• 7. Screen Adaptations

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  Bob Clampett, the animator, pursued a full-length John Carter cartoon as far back as the 1930s, discussing the idea directly with Burroughs. A few seconds of that early animation survived and appear in the supplemental material of the Disney home-video release.

  Antonio Sabato Jr. played Carter in the 2009 film Princess of Mars, which starred Traci Lords as Dejah Thoris. The Disney adaptation arrived in 2012 with Taylor Kitsch in the title role and Lynn Collins playing Dejah Thoris. That film was released in the 101st year after the character's first appearance in print, and despite a difficult theatrical run it brought Carter to a mass audience that had never encountered the Barsoom novels.

  In January 2020, Altus Press released Tarzan: Conqueror of Mars by Will Murray, an authorized Tarzan novel in which Tarzan is stranded on Barsoom and enlists Carter's help to return to Earth, uniting Burroughs's two most famous creations in a single adventure for the first time.