Martin Mystery

Premise

The series re-imagines the comic books' main characters Martin Mystery and Diana Lombard as teenage stepsiblings attending Torrington Academy, a boarding school located in the city of Sherbrooke, Quebec. They work for a secret organization known as "The Center," which covertly protects the people of Earth from extraterrestrial and supernatural threats and investigates the unknown and the paranormal. Their allies at The Center include Billy, a small, green-skinned alien who is one of Martin's best friends; and Java, a caveman from 200,000 years ago, who works as a janitor at Torrington Academy and is the muscles of the group.

Martin's vast knowledge of the supernatural and his remarkable intuition make him a valued agent of The Center, and compensate for his huge ego and his clumsy attitude. Diana resents these flaws at times, as Martin often does not seem to understand the seriousness of his missions, but generally respects him, and loves him and his way of being himself without compromises.

Characters

Martin Mystery

Martin is a 16-year-old Canadian boy, with a passion for monsters and the paranormal, who works as a paranormal investigator for The Center. He is immature, hyperactive, and zany, constantly bursting with energy. He is usually an underachiever in school, once getting 106 out of 902 on his pre-college aptitude test. While impulsive and impatient – often leaping into danger on missions without thinking to help those in peril – he consistently proves to be a quick thinker and clever. He has a peculiar love for everything slimy, sloppy, and gooey – things that make Diana gag. His favorite pastime is taunting Diana badly by playing practical jokes. A running gag in the series is his constant flirting with every beautiful girl he meets, who usually reject him.

Martin jumps to conclusions very often, coming up with every unlikely theory he can think of, usually from some horror movie or monster movie he saw, or from his subscription to Paranormal Monthly. As the leader of the trio, Martin is also the only one who wears a U-Watch. His first monster was Venoso, a female chameleon monster that has the power to shape-shift into any person it wants.

Martin appears in a crossover episode of Totally Spies!. During the episode, he is immediately smitten with Clover, even though she is uninterested in him. Towards the end of the same episode, Clover finally showed interests in Martin and even tries to get his attention, but Martin and Alex have hit it off due to a shared love of comics and video games. Throughout the episode, Martin continuously describes Sam as a "really lame buzz-kill", but does not lash out at him due to her composed demeanor.

Diana Lombard

Diana is Martin's stepsister, who is his complete opposite. She is also 16 years old and an agent for The Center, while attending Torrington Academy. She is a rigid overachiever, and often has a hard time keeping her cool with Martin. The stepsiblings argue frequently, with such arguments ending in some sort of bet that Diana usually loses. Diana can be timid at times – which leads to Martin calling her a "wimp" – but can show great courage when called upon. Her intelligence often comes in handy on their missions. Never sharing Martin's love of the paranormal, she often tries to reason with logic instead of jumping to conclusions.

Recurring

Jenni Anderson

Diana's friend and Martin's crush. Jenni is one of the prettiest and most popular girls attending Torrington. She has blue eyes and flared auburn-coloured hair, usually seen wearing a black blouse and skirt with knee-high boots. Martin is in love with her, which she does not return due to his immaturity. She regularly describes him as "immature", a "freak", and a "loser". However, there are times she becomes interested in him, particularly when Martin acts like a gentleman. Unfortunately for Martin, this never lasts due to her memory being erased, or Martin subsequently doing something stupid.

Marvin

Martin's rival. The son of a pilot, Marvin enjoys the extreme, saying that he enjoys the adrenaline rush that comes with such activities. Some of his activities includes rock climbing in the Himalayas, parasailing over the Great Barrier Reef, street-luging on the German Autobahn, jungle kayaking, and snowboarding down the face of K2. His talents and popularity make everyone at the school fawn over him, while making Martin jealous.

In "The Third Eye", Marvin is recruited to work for The Center, which annoys Martin. At the end of "Body-Swappers", he is relocated to Hawaii as a reward for his work on the mission. However, in "Rage of the Leprechaun", he is relegated to The Center's South Pole facility because of his negligence in a previous mission, and blames his unfortunate circumstances on Martin.

Gerard Mystery

Martin's father, and Diana's stepfather. The complete opposite of his son, Gerard is a very rational, logical person. As a scientist, he spends much of his time doing field work in the forest. He and Martin have a strained relationship, partly due to Gerard considering Martin's interest in the paranormal to be "balderdash". He only appeared in three episodes; in his second appearance, he finds out about The Center and that Diana and Martin work for it. Diana's mother, Martin's stepmother, is only mentioned once in season three.

Broadcast

Martin Mystery aired in Canada on YTV and Discovery Kids in English, and on Vrak in French, from 2003 until the series finale in 2006.

In the United States, the first 7 episodes were originally shown on the FoxBox in May and June 2004. Nickelodeon later picked up the series, and after a brief run on the main channel, the series aired on Nicktoons Network from 4 July 2005 until 27 April 2008.

In other markets

Other channels that aired the show included M6 in France, Rai 2 in Italy, and Jetix throughout Europe (excluding Italy and Poland). Additional channels in Europe included SVT1 and SVT Barnkanalen in Sweden, NRK Super in Norway, Yle TV2 in Finland, Alter Channel in Greece, GMA Network and Q (now known as GTV) in the Philippines, VT4 in Belgium and ZigZap in Poland. In Sri Lanka, the series was aired by Channel Eye of the Sri Lanka Rupavahini Corporation.

MBC 3, Ajyal TV, and ART 3 broadcast this show in Arabic throughout the Middle East, with the voice talents of Mo'awad Ismail as Martin and Mariam El Khesht as Diana.

Home media

Home video of Martin Mystery was distributed in France by PolyGram and MK2. In Italy, home video was distributed by 01 Distribution. Home video for the English version of season 1 was also released in Canada and the United States, but has become a rarity in recent years.

Crossovers with other series

Background characters resembling Martin, Diana, and Marvin have appeared on other series produced by Marathon and Image, such as Team Galaxy, Totally Spies!, and The Amazing Spiez!.

In 2007, a year after the series ended, the characters of Martin and M.O.M appeared on a fifth season episode of Totally Spies!. In the episode "Totally Mystery Much?", Martin helps the team investigate a series of Yeti sightings in Antarctica. None of the other Martin Mystery characters appeared in the episode, although Diana was mentioned.

Future

The series ended production after its third season, with 66 episodes being aired.

In December 2013, a possible "new season project" was announced on the official Martin Mystery Facebook page. As of 2025, there has been no further announcement or plans for such. However, there have been talks about a potential digital remaster and re-release of the series in 16:9 widescreen.

On 10 October 2023, it was announced a new animated series is currently in the works. No further announcement for such has been made since.

Reception

Common Sense Media wrote of the series, "Scooby-Doo meets X-Files; tweens OK."