During the speculator boom years, I collected both the Diamond Distribution "Previews" and Capitol City "Advance Comics" pre-order catalogs. For years, I carted milk crates of the things from apartment to apartment as I moved around. Years of handling the things as a retailer finally broke me of that awful, potentially debilitation habit. Now they get passed off to friends as soon as I can possibly unload them. That's also why I've scanned and posted this piece of fan art by Jennifer Mannino with all due haste. I think it's a pretty nifty take on a JLA without a single y-chromosome between them.
4 comments:
That is a really cool concept. I always wondered myself if J'onn was in fact male, or simply prefered a male form. I mean, in a race of people that can be ANYTHING, do they have gender in the first place? I can't recall if this was ever adressed in any real way, so I've always kind of speculated on it. (My husband and I had a whole discussion on it when we first watched that Justice League episode with the amazon that released the "Y the Last Man" type virus that made only men sick, and J'onn fell to it.
Well, that was an aside. LOL. This is a very very cool piece.
I gave a lot of thought to the story possibilities of an androgynous Martian Manhunter back in the day, but ended up throwing most of them out, because of elements of his handling since about 1988. While there were only allusions to intimacy with characters like ">Bel Juz and J'en, his having a wife and daughter really established gender roles for J'Onn and his people that have only become more concrete with time. Peter David really spelled it out in his story for Justice League Task Force #7 and 8. Then again, J'Onn began assuming female aliases with some regularity after that point, so I suppose there's still room for ambiguity...
Yeah I kind of figured the wife and daughter meant they DID in fact have them...or was that what the two of them preferred...being a female form? I dunno, I'm weird like that. I imagine if they didn't have a biological gender, but a chosen one, then relationships would hinge solely on the idea of being attracted to, and in love with , the essence of the person alone.
I'm weird, I consider stuff like this. :)
Nothing weird about it. I've given the matter thought myself, but the comics guided me to my eventual conclusions. I'd like to see heroic androgyny/ambiguity played with more (see "Cloud" of the New Defenders,) but comic writers have a hard enough time with anyone who isn't a straight white male...
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