First Appearance: Wonder Woman 259 (1979)
Creators: Gerry Conway and Jose Delbo
Abilities: The dark twisted art of advertising, The diabolical practice of public relations, The twisted trick of knowing the wants and desires of your target audience and using those to get what you want.
Backstory: Agent of the Greek god of War. Martin Markham was a mild mannered publicist. Scheming and plotting in order to build up the reputation of anything he was paid to, so long as the price was right.
Summoned by Mars/Ares from his office at the Markham, Menditz & Monroe building in New York Citys Madison Avenue, Martin would agree to serve the god of war and accomplish the most difficult of feats, make the world worship Mars/Ares as their god. Make the world willingly bow before him.
Promised great power and fortune should he succeed in his goal, Martin leaped at the chance and quickly developed a multi staged plan which would ensure his success in this very thing which he was certain could not fail.
For the the United States, the most powerful nation in the world by all rights should worship Ares already.
They revere war with thousands of statues, songs, holidays, and memorials celebrating it.
They possess the largest army the world has ever seen several times over and invest more money into their military than anything else.
Their culture is one that champions war and viewing themselves the the winners of every conflict and every conflict they create or join to be justified because they are always in the right.
And they venerate violence to the point that every citizen is encouraged to have a gun and make war at the slightest provocation.
Convincing them to turn their worship to the god of war would be simplicity itself.
He simply had to also do a smear campaign against Wonder Woman in order to ensure his victory. Which would not exactly be difficult in a nation which was allergic to the message of peace, discriminatory against women, and wary of people from other countries. Especially with Martin guiding the gods efforts in tarnishing Wonder Womans reputation to build up that of Mars/Ares, the new ruler of Olympus.
What force could possibly stand in the way of the power of publicity?