John Carter is the lead character from the Barsoom series of novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs.
Apperance
Carter stands 6 feet 2 inches (1.88 m) and has close-cropped black hair and steel-grey eyes. He is thought to be immortal; he cannot remember any childhood, and has been a man of about thirty years old for as long as he can remember. Many generations have known him as "Uncle Jack," but he always lived to see them grow old and die, while he remained young.
Carter 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 is much stronger and more agile than the natives of Mars due to its lesser gravity.
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, with whom he has two children.
Carter is an excellent sword fighter and has a strong sense of honour. On Barsoom he is also known by the name of Dotar Sojat.
Role in the series
We first meet John Carter in the story Allan and the Sundered Veil, in which, between leaving his body on earth and his frist arrival on Mars, his astral form is first send to a dreamworld where he encounters his grand-nephew Randolph Carter, the British adventurer Allan Quatermain, and the Time Traveler. He helps the three men fight off a group of Morlocks. When the time machine of the Time Traveler is broken and the four heroes are stranded in a chrono-crystal aleph, John Carter sees several visions of his own future, including him fighting against Green Martians and meeting Dejah Thoris. Shortly afterwards John Carter's astral form leaves the dreamworld again and continues his journey to Mars.
We next meet John Carter at the start of Volume 2, in which he teams up with luitenant Gullivar Jones (another Earth man transported to Mars) and several Martian races, including the Green Martians, the Hither People and the Sorns, to fight off a group of aliens known as the Mollusc, that have been terrorizing Mars for several years now. The attack is succesfull and the Mollusc are forced to flee, but John and Gulliver quickly find out the Mollusc are now heading towards a new target; Earth.