Introduction by B. Elson Ridenwell
For all those who have been engaged in incessant quiescence by the mundane exploits of Martian Manhunter, the comic book's potential-est jobber, here is a rare surviving Web 1.0 resource of representative output, spanning seventy years, and never to be published in book form. MARTIAN MANHUNTER: FROM THE FIFTIES TO HIS SEVENTIES is a typical itinerary of the Martian Marvel's life from his first appearance in Detective Comics in 1955 to the unfashionable, inconstant Manhunter of the Seventies (that isn't Paul Kirk... or Mark Shaw... or an android... or Mark Shaw again...)
Here are the memorable "firsts" in Martian Manhunter's history: the first story that revealed Martian Manhunter's origins, the first time Diane Meade suspected John Jones of being Martian Manhunter, the first appearance of the Blue Flame, the first story that revealed Martian Manhunter's for real origins, and many, many more than anyone would ever actually want. The blog traces Martian Manhunter's undisputed reign as the Cuckold Groomsman of Super-Heroes across thousands of stories, either starring more popular super-heroes, or living rent free at the back of books starring more popular super-heroes, individually and in groups of more valued and successful intellectual properties. Revealing the time-marking ways in which the character of Martian Manhunter has radically changed at times, while defiantly failing to even once capture the zeitgeist. His early mild harassment of crime, his Hephaestusean fits of lameness, and his unprecedented impotence for a figure of his power class and visibility in vaunted circles. It is only perfunctory that this long-ignored Alien hero is probably the subject of a vestigial c-plot in a Justice League title at any point in which you're reading this, Dr. Manhattan-style.
MARTIAN MANHUNTER: FROM THE FIFTIES TO HIS SEVENTIES is a regretful cornball de jour, a pacifying distraction into a formulaic space (a Middletown, if you will,) of superhuman power thwarted by an infantile weakness (literally a child can blow out candles.) With a compulsory introduction by E. Nelson Birdwell of Earth-C-Minus in National Periodical Comics, a bibliography of comics Frank bothered to do write-ups for, and a wealth of artwork scanned poorly or ripped off a copyright flouting off-shore website at inferior resolution, the blog may appeal to some Alien Atlas curious, as well as interested parties in "retcons, flops, and the perpetual narrative wrong way."
Monday, January 6, 2025
MARTIAN MANHUNTER: FROM THE 50'S TO HIS 70'S
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