Sunday Splash Page #328

 

"The Face of Mars," in Martian Manhunter (vol. 2) #1,000,000, by John Ostrander (writer), Tom Mandrake (artist), Carla Feeny (color artist), Ken Lopez (letterer)

The Martian Manhunter had long stints as a back-up feature in various DC books back in the Silver Age, and a 4-issue mini-series in the late '80s, but he didn't get his own, ongoing solo book until John Ostander and Tom Mandrake took a crack at it in the late '90s.

Ostrander shifts between J'onn's Martian roots and his connections with people on Earth, mostly keeping the book from leaning too heavily one way or the other. It's made easier since the Martians had been established as performing scientific experiments on Earth in the distant past. So J'onn can run into remnants of the White Martians' experiments - drawn in slippery, toothy-ridden form by Mandrake - or even a few Martians that transferred their minds into human bodies and have been doing so for decades or more.

But you also have stories where J'onn has to contend with his brother Ma'alefa'ak, who gets a name that basically implies he's cursed (which she intended as a warning to Ma'alefa'ak), only for him to abduct and torture other Martians until J'onn catches him and his telepathy is shut down. Which leaves him free to create a plague that only attacks telepathic Martians and causes them to burn to death. That would be a great lesson in the danger of self-fulfilling prophecies. You know, if J'onn hadn't been the last Martian left on the planet.

Still, it leads to a lot about how J'onn lost himself in grief for some period of time before being accidentally brought to Earth. Ostrander delves into the nature of Martian beliefs (the Green Martians, anyway, he doesn't diverge from the "ruthless supremacists" mold Morrison stuffed the White Martians into), how J'onn perceives his duty as a "manhunter", things like that.

Those parts work pretty well. Mandrake's art, with those loose pencils and heavy shadows, is well suited for a species of shapeshifters. J'onn's telepathy, combined with some of the stuff he finds in the minds of his enemies, offers another avenue for Mandrake to bring a horror element to the work. It's not a horror book by any means - definitely closer to a detective book - but the nature of the Martian Manhunter's powers means he's going to face stranger, more dangerous things in the course of his investigations.

Likewise, the exploration of J'onn's life on Earth outside being a JLA member is interesting. Ostrander runs with the idea that J'onn has a lot of identities across the world, not just John Jones, private detective. Famous Brazilian authors. A Japanese boy who transforms into a giant robot. A dumb muscle super-villain (who somehow always screws things up for whatever gang he gets hired on to). A cat. It fits not only with J'onn's ability to assume different forms, but with his image of himself as a philosopher, striving to see things from many different perspectives.

One thing that doesn't particularly work is that Ostrander has Ma'alefa'ak kill J'onn's friend and partner, Karen Smith, after "John Jones" finally revealed the truth about himself, but before there'd been any sort of reconciliation or real conversation about it between them. It ends up leading to the DEO (mostly Cameron Chase of the short-lived series Chase) finding a story Smith started writing about the truth about John, and the DEO trying to force J'onn to tell them secret identities of other heroes, but there's never really any reckoning for J'onn about Karen's death, all the times he used his telepathy to make her forget things she saw him do, or where things were left between them.

I like Ostrander's work, but women have an extraordinarily high mortality rate in his stuff, there's no question.

I also don't love giving J'onn a long-standing enmity with Apokolips. It makes sense that Darkseid would want beings with the array of powers Martians have under his control, and symbolically, I can see it. Guy weakened by fire, venturing into a world with fire everywhere. A telepath roaming a planet full of suffering and death, where the inhabitants believe their pain is proof of their ruler's love. J'onn, coming from a people who routinely intermingled thoughts and bodies, as a way of connection and healing, against Darkseid, who wants all thoughts to be his thoughts anyone. Still, it feels a bit like punching out of one's weight class, even for the Martian Manhunter.

Because The World Series Of Poker Uses Teep Blockers, You Know

Without the use of his superhuman abilities, how insightful is the Martian Manhunter? With telepathy, J'onn can normally probably learn quite a bit about a person with little time.

What if that isn't an option? How perceptive is he then? Say he was fighting some foe, and he can't read their mind, and isn't sure why. The foe claims it's because they are a superior telepath to J'onn, and not only are they blocking his attempts to probe their mind, they're actually messing with his perceptions at this very moment. J'onn can't poke inside their mind to determine whether this is true. Do you think he could determine if they were bluffing*?

Granted J'onn was a detective for at least some of his time on Earth (among many other identities), but I have no idea how often he would have solved cases relying solely on intuition, rather than his considerable array of powers. I'm sure he wants to try and learn about how Earthlings do things, but that probably takes a backseat to expediency when there's a murderer on the loose. I know in JLA 50, he told Wonder Woman that he isn't the detective Batman is**, because he lacks a certain level on deductive insight the Dark Knight has. Which suggests that without the skeleton key of being able to peek inside your mind, J'onn couldn't tell whether you have three aces or not. Although, he has been on Earth for awhile, surely he's picked up some things just from being around so many people.

* For the purposes of this, say they are bluffing. It wouldn't actually be a bad gambit to try, getting J'onn to doubt his senses. Hey, against someone as powerful as him, you really ought to grasp any advantage you can find, right?

** Though other than Detective Chimp, who is? Elongated Man, I guess.

Is It The Quiet Ones You Have To Watch Out For?

This occurred to me today, while I was working. I'm not sure why it came to me precisely, but that's how my brain tends to work anyway. I was performing some basic task, and something made me think of Martian Manhunter #24, the issue where J'onn tells Kyle Rayner about this horrible addiction to Chocos he once had.

In the story, J'onn's JLI teammates confront him with the true of his addiction to the creamy filling and crunchy cookie, and so J'onn promptly concentrates, isolates the addiction to a few specific cells in his body, and casts it out. But the addiction has a mind of its own, and starts possessing his teammates, jumping from Ice (who saved J'onn from being possessed), to Guy, to Fire, then to Max Lord*. Anyway, J'onn destroys the addiction entirely, and tells Booster and Beetle (who were behind the whole mess that got us to this point), that while he thanks them for helping him face his problem, they should never do anything like this again. The catch is, J'onn made up the whole story to get Kyle to think about the importance of being self-aware, which I knew at the time, but that didn't stop my brain. Not that things like that ever do.

The thing that occurred to me was, as the other JLIers are being controlled, Ted and Michael are standing off to one side, apparently taking note of every secret desire the others utter, because, as Booster put it, 'This stuff is, dare I say it. . . gold!'** So, were they planning to tease the others with what they said? Blackmail them? Play pranks related to the confessions? And then I thought, "Well, surely they wouldn't play one on Ice! That would be like kicking a puppy, and they aren't that cruel!" Then that raised the question of, well, assuming they were that cruel, how would they have used the fact that she secretly craves baby seal burgers? What are thye going to do, kill a baby seal and present it to her on a platter, with onions and whatever else she said she wanted on it? Even for Blue & Gold, that's a lot of heat to risk. I mean, I'm sure Fire would be digusted, Max would probably be pissed, especially once PETA somehow finds out about it, and starts protesting outside their embassy.

But mostly, it came back to the idea that Tora's simply too nice for people to play pranks on. Then I started wondering if she was really that sweet and nice, or might she have a more mischevous side to her. She could make life pretty difficult for those two, putting aside the possibility of simply siccing Guy on them. They could wake up with their lower bodies encased in ice, which would cause major shrinkage***, little ice on the floors when Ted's got some new bit of technology he's been waiting for, or engage them in conversation, while quietly creating ice stalagmites behind them, that once thye get large enough, give the two of them wedgies.

You can see that I'm not exactly good at this pranking thing. Perhaps that's the point of Blue & Gold's antics: That they don't really stop to consider what might happen (to others or to themselves) if they do something, they just do it. Because it's funny. Which isn't to say I hold J'onn turning into a Hulk-like creature bellowing about how 'Mars needs CHOCOS!' against them. That was probably far enough out there, it couldn't have been anticipated, even if it had actually happened to the characters. Though maybe it did happen, on one of those other Earths. The other universes, the were recreated as if they had history before Alex Luthor made them and Mr. Mind devored/altered some of them, so that could have happened, even though chronologically, it would have taken place during the "1 Universe" years, right?

Ugh, headache.

* I really wish Batman had been in attendance, rather than simply teleconferencing. Just to see what he would have blurted out.

** This is actually why it's probably good Batman wasn't there, because Booster and Beetle wouldn't be able to resist making fun of whatever he admitted being addicted to, and then he would probably use some paralyzer punch on both of them, and it would be a very sad day.

*** And probably leg-endagering levels of frostibite, but I'm sure the JLI have some gizmo that can help with that.

Things I Think About #10

Beware, this is me getting my nit-picky fanboy on.

Harken back to the OMAC Project mini-series. I don't remember which issue it was, 4 or 5, but an OMAC is getting ready to kill Rocket Red #4. No worries, Maritan Manhunter on the job. Except, the OMAC knows about Martian vulnerabilities, so it ignites, J'onn gets burned, he can't stop the OMAC, no big deal.

Except. . .

In an arc in JLA, J'onn overcame his vulnerability to fire, with the help of a woman named Scorch, falling in love in the process. Unfortunately overcoming that lead to his reverting to an earlier form of Martian life, that almost ended the world, but that's not the point.

At then end, as J'onn is sitting next to Scorch's comatose form, he comments he isn't completely vulnerable to fire anymore, just fires of emotion. I assume that means a fire set out of hatred, or fires set out of love. I'd guess the fire starter leaves a sort of psychic imprint behind with the fire, and J'onn being a telepath, he picks up on it.

Anyway, my point is, there wouldn't be any sort of emotions behind a computerized defense system. It was just the OMAC initiating its programmed response. So it shouldn't have worked. J'onn should have kicked it's butt, end of story.

Ah well, the whole 'fires of emotion' thing was kind of ambiguous.