"I am a very old man; how old I do not know. Possibly I am a hundred, possibly more; but I cannot tell because I have never aged as other men, nor do I remember any childhood. So far as I can recollect I have always been a man, a man of about thirty. I appear today as I did forty years and more ago, and yet I feel that I cannot go on living forever; that some day I shall die the real death from which there is no resurrection. I do not know why I should fear death, I who have died twice and am still alive; but yet I have the same horror of it as you who have never died, and it is because of this terror of death, I believe, that I am so convinced of my mortality."

-John Carter in his own words.

John Carter had, for the time immediately prior to his first recorded adventure, been a member of a Southern USA family. He had served as an officer in the armies of several European powers as well as being an officer in the army of the Confederate States of America.

Carter eventually became an adventurer after the War Between The States and on one of his intrepid adventures in America's heartland he fell foul of native americans and was left for dead in a cave. Utilising previously unmentioned astral powers he focused his dying mind on the glowing red star in the sky that he knew to be Mars... and lost consciousness.

When he regained consciousness it was to find himself on Barsoom (the native name for Mars).

Carter is handsome, dark haired, extremely powerful physically especially on Mars due to the different gravity and pressure, and the greatest swordsman on two worlds.

He displays all the symptoms of hypomania but this in no way impairs his leadership, fighting ability or tactical skills. Indeed it adds a frightening edge to his already courageous murderous behaviour in combat making him one of the most terrifying potential melee opponents in literature.