Too much text this week, I figure, so we're taking a little break tonight. Also, too little attention given to the Teen Titan representing for the Red Planet here for too long. I'll tell you what-- if I get ten comments from at least four people after this post, I promise to institute M'gann M'orzz's Miss Martian Monday in the near future. Deal? Hey, maybe she'll finally meet J'Onn J'Onzz in Brightest Day, eh?
For another picture and creation details, visit Victor Kraven's custom Miss Martian page!
22 comments:
Thanks for all the awesome posts. I am glad that J'ohn is back in the DC universe in some form.
I also like how DC has been expanding there universe with some new characters like Miss Martian. It seems to hearken back to the days where most of the Superheroes had a 'family' related to them. I also like how they did this recently with the Red Tornado.
Keep up the awesome posts.
Nice custom. I've never been wild about any of the Teen Titan characters after the original five, but I always liked the design/look of Miss Martian.
Like her inspiration, she is made to job too often, but I think she's got massive potential.
I like the idea that the White Martians are not inherently evil as well. I still wanna know what happened to the white at the end of the most recent MM mini series...
Plus, red heads are cute as heck.
Yessir, I think I like her.
Glad you dug 'em, Brian!
Miss Martian rubbed me the wrong way at first, being part of the painful swelling of the Teen Titans One Year Later, and an assumed traitor to boot. It didn't help that she was often written as "unfamiliar with human behavior," which too often resulted in her coming off as a complete idiot, or just a walking cliche. Plus, she pretty much begged for the usual criticism from the Superman camp about J'Onn's being knock-off, having his own Supergirl now.
However, the introduction of her brutal future self and modern M'gann's response demonstrated that she was destined to become something very different than a Martian Maid of Might. Plus, I love the return of Martians with hair, and the introduction of white into the Manhunter costume color scheme. Finally, I like that she's had four years to define herself independent of the Martian Manhunter (even if it's as Starfire Jr.) I don't know what J'Onn and M'gann's personal dynamic will be, but I hope it'll be interesting.
Ryan, do you mean the original original five Teen Titans? Like, Garth and Roy and the rest? I'm not sure I've ever talked to anyone who shared that opinion. I grew up NTT, so the fans I knew were much more into the Wolfman/Perez creations. I cherry pick from the whole history myself, with favorites including Dick, Donna, Roy, Mirage, and, yes, Pantha.
M.C., I totally agree, especially on racism and gingers.
Yep, the original original Teen Titans. I love Dick Grayson as Robin "skinny legs and all". I like Donna as Wonder Girl, Wally as Kid Flash, Roy as Speedy and Garth as just Aqualad not crazy magic Tempest.
I have this aversion to "legacy" heroes, like Wally becoming the Flash (even though I love Mark Waid and Geoff Johns' run on the character), or Dick becoming Batman (even though Morrison's B&R is a lot of fun). I've always found the DC heroes to be more iconic, more mythological, and more timeless than Marvel's. So for that reason, I just want to see the original characters as the heroes.
And yes, I believe I am in a very small minority in not being wowed by Wolfman/Perez's New Teen Titans. (I like the concept of Cyborg; just never read a story with him that blew me away.) I read some of NTT, but it just didn't do it for me. I absolutely love Marv Wolfman's work on the Marvel Horror titles, but I never cared for NTT or Crisis on Infinite Earths.
Great custom! I'd grab that figure from the shelves so fast if it went into production!
I've seen a few pictures of this character but am not familiar with her, having not read any Teen Titans for decades. Guess I need to hit up old Wikipedia!
i really like m'gann, altho i'm surprised to read she's never met j'onn?
Is this cos she was introduced after j'onn after was killed?
(DC continuity throws me every time)
"racism and gingers." I love that South Park has made that phrase possible. Probably the best thing ever.
M.C., if I inadvertantly tripped over a South Park reference, it's news to me. I haven't seen that show in years, and stole "gingers" from the limeys.
Saranga, J'Onn and (I really must learn to spell this) M'gann have been around one another during events, but I've never read a story where they exhanged dialogue. They co-existed for a couple of years, though. Anyone?
Bubba, she's well designed, but I'm still waiting for her to impress in print.
1,2,3, 4... okay, five people fullfills requirement A. I'll still be needing three more posts, though...
Ryan, I used to be a big supporter of legacy heroes, but now realize what a headache they cause. You end up with four different Robins, fights between Barry & Wally fans, plus an ex-prostitute Speedy with HIV to compete with being a junkie who knocked-up an international assassin. Yet, all the senior heroes are meant to be be 28-35 years old? Let's stick with adults taking the mantle of elderly/dead heroes and leave it at that?
I loved Wolfman and Perez, but not their original creations. Cyborg came the closest to hitting the mark, but at heart he was just a whinier version of Ben Grimm. I'm just used to folks of my generation embracing the New Teens, and those that followed cling to David/Johns' group, leaving many of the originals and most of what came between out in the cold. Also, I really don't like Wally West, tolerate Garth in small doses, and Titans West was full of lose.
I know very little about M'gann, but she sounds like a character who has potential. Perhaps one thing she can deal with are problems caused by White Martians. Also, some dialog with J'Onn would be good.
J'Onn could use his own "family" as some have stated. I forget the character name, but there was a White Martian who helped J'Onn during the Coneheadhunter days, J'emm, Son of Saturn, and others whom the Martian Manhunter can interact with. In many ways, J'Onn seems to be one of the most solitary figures in the DC Universe.
Did I comment on this or did I imagine that I did? I vaguely remember saying something mildly pessimistic about M'gann but I'm a little foggy.
So that's two comments needed...
"Yet, all the senior heroes are meant to be be 28-35 years old?"
welll, i'm not entirely convinced that's the case. i read ollie as mid 40s. in fact I think of the oringal JLA they'd all be mid or early 40s. i think the original teen titans are now mid to late 20s.
i don't have much evidence for this and i'm probbaly basing it mostly on alex ross art, but it works for me.
That's a sweeeeet figure.
Liss, that was your first comment here. Maybe it was just deja vu?
Saranga, I gave up on trying to figure the age thing out. Ollie was clearly a burnt out '60s radical in the '80s, which definitely puts him at middle age. He got a new younger body at resurrection, but there are fewer fixes for his contemporaries, and DC will swear by 28-35 across the board in the face of all conflicting evidence. Someday, Dick and Bruce will be, like, two years apart in age, if they aren't already.
I think my browser must've been acting up or I didn't click the post button. No prob.
Let's see if I remember what I had originally...
I have mixed feelings about Miss Martian, but I'm willing to keep an open mind. I think she undercuts the whole "sole survivor" cachet that I think should belong to J'onn (even though she's white.) Then again, I think all White Martians steal J'onn's thunder a little bit. I like the fact that she's not a stereotypical two-dimensional White Martian. I really which the Morrison-era White Martians weren't so heavy handed. I mean, a whole race that's evil, for no reason other than to be evil? At least Blanx had some motivation.
I'm just not a big Teen Titans fan in general, so I'm a little biased in that regard. I think there's promise, if written correctly. She could be J'onn's little cousin. Again, though, it draws parallels to Superman...
Frank, as far as age in comics books, I usually just explain it away in my mind by telling myself that comic book time moves differently than our time...so World War II and the 60's maybe took place within ten years of each other instead of decades, thus allowing the Golden Age heroes to still be running around, albeit slightly older. (Even though Batman would be the same age, but let's ignore that, shall we? And it's weird that Dick Grayson grew up while other don't.) That's just my own little rationalization and I have no idea if there's any basis in actual continuity, but it works for me. Comic book time, for whatever reason, is one aspect of comics where I don't mind suspending my disbelief by leaps and bounds.
Liss-- I officially gave up on the "Last Son of Mars" angle better than a decade back. In retrospect, it was a bad idea that served a good purpose. Through the death of Mars, the sense of tragedy and isolation that surrounded the Weisinger era Superman was gifted to J'Onn J'Onzz. This made J'Onn a deeper, more interesting, and more attractive character. However, Superman was never truly alone, retaining a large and varied Kryptonian cast. Martian Manhunter could have and still can benefit from similar treatment, but from 1985-1996, was left without any fellow Martians to build a supporting network out of. Even the White Martians remain undeveloped evil aliens who appeared in any book but J'Onn's. If a new series comes out of Brightest Day, it needs to give ownership of all Martians back to the Martian Manhunter franchise, and it really ought to restore all the Green Martians left in limbo by the 1988 revision. J'Onn's tragedy can come from the death of his family, his "tribe," his culture and 99% of all Martians without excluding anyone previously introduced into his lore.
The thing to remember about the White Martians is that they're brutes from pre-history. They're Cro-Magnon Martian savages. Miss Martian shows there is hope for their lot, but I doubt I'd have much regard for my fellow humans if a few hundred from just a century or so back turned up out of nowhere. What was perfectly acceptable then (slavery, misogyny, genocide) would be perceived as "evil" today. Hell, there was an employee at Home Depot I overheard the other day telling a co-worker he wished Air Force One would crash "for the good of the country," and that it "take his whole family with him." That guy was born just last century, and his "patriotism" struck me as backward psychopathy. Imagine how someone serving under the Jackson Administration would come off?
I was a Titans fan until toward the end of Wolfman's run, which set a pattern of putting together teams of D-listers and committing atrocities against them until the "real" Titans come back. Also, they cry an awful lot, which is very Red Tornado of them.
My theory on comic book time? That people get "lost" for years in between crossovers. For instance, we're now at the point where the 60s-90s have no heroes of their own. My explanation is that when modern heroes met say, the Bloodlines characters, they were traveling through time during CoIE/Zero Hour/IC/etc. Our heroes go home, while Anima stays in the awful 90s where she belongs, to have an uninspiring career and die alone. Batman and Robin have been going through this stuff since 1940, but Dick gets caught up in it most often, which is why he's now only six weeks younger than Bruce.
As long as we don't go back to J'onn's parents calling him up on an interplanetary telephone and his little brother showing up, I'm willing to tolerage other Green Martians. Unless they're like Ca'yan. Eh, maybe not. I don't trust any writers to execute a supporting cast of Green Martians well enough, so I say it'd be safer just to leave them out of the picture, you know?
If I knew that about White Martians I had forgotten it. (Even though I did read all of their JLA appearances...I think.) See, I like my villians to be intelligent. There's a different between a lion that kills a man and a man that kills a man. One's a lot worse than the other.
"Also, they cry an awful lot, which is very Red Tornado of them." This is why I don't like them so much. :)
Your theory on comic book times takes too much physics for me to get a handle on. Though it's very similar to the scientifically-valid tricks of relativity in Ender's Game, so I guess your theory is more scientifically sound than mine. Hey, whatever works for you.
Nah, I'm all for dead parents, and we all know that's what drove T'omm mad and made him Malefic. I just want all my villains back, and J'en's the only named Martian of note on the side of angels.
The White Martians built spaceships and performed vivisection on humans, so they're pretty intelligent. It's just that, being time lost, their development level is bound to be different from modern Greens and Pales.
I've never read Orson Scott Card, and it seems like I'm too old and jaded to start now. If I've stumbled upon a decent scientific theory based on reading entirely too many event comics, I'll try my best to fake knowing better than I do. :)
Bwaha! It never ocurred to me that T'omm could be Malefic. I knew I didn't like that kid from the very start...
I've got to refresh my memory about the whole White Martian (and Saturnians, too, I think?) connections to the Greens. It just bugs me that they are so vile and underdeveloped, when I assumed from other series that Mars was an enlightened, advanced place. I forgot how they fit in the picture and need to go back to those JLA trades.
Frank, with your theory of comic book time, you pretty much described the time dilation effect of special relativity. See, who says comics aren't educational?
back to the age thing, i didn't realise DC were fixed on their heroes being no older than 35. oh well, this is where I create my own story in my head to suit my needs.
Re: Gingers... I did not know that was a British thing. South Park has a think about "Gingers" not having souls... on Age it seams like a number of writers (Morrison and to a certain extent Johns) are working in more realistic aging. That said, problems still arise, and I rather like your solution. Gunfire in the nineties, Firestorm in the eighties... Really, I think most of the "crucial" heroes could easily have longer lifespans writen into their origin/powers, not unlike MM. Superman, Aquaman, Wonderwoman...heck I could even get away with Flash and Green Lantern. Morrison's "Batman and Robin" have convinced me that Robin graduating to Batman can be just as entertaining. There's your JLA, and a plethora of stories, not unlike what Atomic Robo is building currently.
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