2015 The Cobra-Beast Space City Comic Con Jam Sketch Detail by Mark Nasso

As I work through the bottleneck of my comic art commissions, some of these lengthy deferrals make zero sense to me, this one being a prime example. I had an encyclopedia entry for The Cobra-Beast written in 2014, a year before I got this art, using that entry's image as the artist's reference. Speaking of, I've gotten a bunch of stuff from Mark Nasso, so he's not one of those unattributable creators that I can't track down. Even though I couldn't find it tonight, I'm confident I have a scanned jpeg of this portion somewhere, it's on an unpublished draft life of un-posted art, and I started drafting this post on 9/27/2018. Finally, while there are still contributions to this jam that do fall under some of these categories, this was one of the first such large scale collaborations that was finished years ago, so I've had plenty of time to track down the details. I guess my sorry excuse is that the pencil parts didn't 100% photocopy? Gah-- I suck.

So here's a new scan taken directly from the original art (though I did leave the bag on it.) I used to see Mark at most local comic shows, but even before COVID, Houston cons started to stink so bad that it was easy to stop going. On the rare instances when I reaffirm that bias personally, I haven't seen him around. But a lot of the guys I used to get pieces from have drifted away. Probably sitting on their stuff for a decade doesn't help.

Mark Nasso

• 2012 Fernus the Burning Space City Con Commission by Mark Nasso
• 2013 Korge, the Last Angry God Commission by Mark Nasso
• 2019 Dawn of the Dead John Amplas as Rico Comicpalooza Commission by Mark Nasso

2018 Houston Comicpalooza Miss Martian commission by Eva “Rexevabonita” Bonita

My appetite for reading corporate comics, much less blogging about their intellectual property, is at a lifetime low. I've made no secret about the fact that one of the main reasons I'm still posting on a semi-regular basis is to "keep the seat warm" for when I try to get all the art commissions I've been hoarding for a decade out onto the internets. I feel guilt about this, and I'm sure at this point, a lot of the less experienced artist of that time would rather not have their awkward early stuff out there now that the exposure won't do them any good. Again, I'm sorry, but I'm sure at least some of them will look back fondly on pieces that I was and remain happy with.

It took a minute to sort through which social media the artist formerly signing as “rexevabonita” was still active on, but I got a list together at the footer if you'd like to peruse her contemporary work. She had more of a manga feel, which she leaned into, away from the regular comic shows into the anime ones. Being an old super-hero dude, that translated to me into M'gann M'orzz, the most manga of Martians in Manhunter's sphere. Also, she might have picked the Young Justice cartoon character out of a stack of reference options. Look, I was old then, and my memory isn't going to sharpen +7 years.

Another reason why I sat on a lot of this art is because I used to have to resize the originals on Xerox machines at Kinkos/FedEx Express, then scan the often lousy reproductions at home. This piece did not fare well under that process, as a full color work on textured board with subtle elements. Thankfully, I now have an 11x17" bed to directly scan on, and it really brings out what an appealing piece this is. I especially dig the white-out tracing of the skirt and the smirk! Glad you finally get to see it, too! I also got her to do Batman at the same show...

Eva Bonita

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Manhunter from Mars #161 (December, 1977)

Nearly a decade into the intermittent and irregular groupings of cosmic criminals from multiple planets aligned against the Alien Atlas, the various players remained informal, unnamed, and disconnected. That changed in the post-Star Wars landscape of comics catering to the science-fantasy audience. Among other things in George Lucas' blockbuster vision, editorial saw "a wretched hive of scum and villainy" and said to themselves, "we can do that, too." Reviving the "Secret Six" formula of the original gathering of space rogues with the largest collection of interstellar scoundrels to that date, to serve as a sort of Secret Society of Supervillains for the rocket ship set. And thus was finally born "The Solar Syndicate!"

A mysterious coordinator once again gathered alien crooks from across the solar system for a grand scheme, beginning on Earth with the Terran Tobias Manning enlisting the forces of Solo of Neptunia, for a trip to Mercury to remove of Venus Girdle from Queen Celerita. Next, Ghurkos of Phobos and Thas Bakkus of Deimos were sent to convince the ruling council of Titan that they had been tricked into believing all Earthlings were super-powered, bringing Kral with them to demonstrate human frailty. Meanwhile, Lord Uvo of Uranus reached out to Shrudlu of Pluto with the trajectory of a rocket carrying the subdued Moon-Beast using information stolen from Challengers Mountain.

These major moves did not go unnoticed, as Jovian Security Officers reached out to Roh Kar, Last Lawman of Mars, from his lonely post orbiting his dead homeworld. They had observed Jovian Metal Creatures departing their world under the guidance of the Crimson Centipede of his own Red Planet. Just as Roh Kar had relayed the message to J'Onn J'Onzz, he was assailed by The Face-Hunter from Saturn. Recognizing the expanded scope of these sol system sinisters, the Manhunter from Mars enlisted the aid of Saturnian Lawmen on his way from new Mars to old to investigate. However, their craft was ambushed, with only the Sleuth from Outer Space escaping with his life to the Earth's moon.

There, he uncovered the assembled Solar Syndicate, working under the direction of the Venusian Mister Mind in a bid to recreate the Solar-Brain and conquer the entire Milky Way Galaxy. Cut off from his friends and allies, the Martian Marvel manages to thwart the Syndicate's initial bid, but his sabotage of the cosmic forces summoned for the Solar-Brain has the unintended side effect of blasting J'Onn J'Onzz across space and time... to the year 2070! As proof of the longevity of this Solar Syndicate, one Manhunter would join another, Starker, as well as Ultra, the Multi-Alien, to face a future incarnation led by Doctor Dynamo and including his old foe B'enn B'urnzz!

Despite being groomed to take over from Jack Kirby through an Adventure Comics serial, Mike Nasser was already overcommitted on Challengers of the Unknown, Legion of Super-Heroes, and a Black Canary serial. Despite missing out on the conclusion of that trial strip, Nasser did return to the character for a string of covers to help The Manhunter From Mars ride out the DC Implosion as a newly christened monthly.

Credits
Script: David V. Reed
Pencils: Juan Ortiz
Inks: John Calnan
Cover: Mike Nasser
Price: $0.35 USD
Pages: 36
Indicia frequency: Monthly
Indicia Publisher: DC Comics Inc.
Editing: Tony Isabella

CBR's 2025 “The Best Martian Manhunter Storylines, Ranked” by Maxwell Pishny

My first real engagement with the internet was on a WebTV that my best friend Illegal Machine and his brother had gotten, and one of the first things I did with them was search for Wonder Woman and Martian Manhunter content. A year or so later, I got a WebTV of my own. Inspired mostly by fatigue from repeating the same Martian Manhunter information constantly on the DC Message Boards, usually on versus threads, I started building my first Martian Manhunter fan pages. I think it was the third or fourth such page on Web 1.0, and the skeleton of the Angelfire one is still out there. Mac introduced me to Comic Book Resources around this same time period, via Steven Grant's Master of the Obvious opinion column. It became a daily haunt for me-- my primary source of comics news and workday distraction. It was where the world was introduced to Gail Simone, and a rare space where I could indulge in my lettering nerdiness with Augie De Blieck. There are plenty of blog posts here where I made a mountain out of a molehill over some minor nitpick of a Brian Cronin piece or what have you.

Cronin's one of the only old guard still left at the modern CBR, which congratulations, has finally overtaken Cord Blood Registry as top search result for those three letters. I'm not sure how, besides paying Google to game it, because I don't know anyone who still goes there. After founder Jonah Weiland sold out to Valnet and deuced in 2016, there was a sharp and steady decline. I don't think any of the old columnists are around anymore, and they don't seem to have found any replacements. There's just this constant churn of press releases, clickbait, and listicles. I'm not entirely above that sort of thing, which is how I tolerated Newsarama for a while after I dropped CBR. It's specifically that CBR is an obvious content mill, farming engagement through know-nothing nobodies and maybe ChatBots? It's such cynical, no-effort crap that it's not even worth passing across most people's eyes.

In answer to what I'd assumed would be a rhetorical question, I guess Mac still gets over to CBR from time to time, because he sent me the subject article with the demand that I preemptively "CHILL." I've been known to go H.A.M. on this sort of thing, and I do wonder if that's had a chilling effect on Martian Manhunter media coverage. If so, and I've had any hand in keeping this sort of piece from getting drafted, I feel like I've done a good job. This kid's only been with CBR since November, filling two pages worth of top 10 lists and only the most basic takes. His "About Me" page is longer than some of his articles, and he insists on "over two decades obsessed with all things superheroes and comic books," which from his profile picture suggests improbable in-utero consumption. He's currently working on reading every Batman comic... since 1986, which hits different when your contemporaries did that in real time.

Some of you are probably thinking, "aww man, Frank, why do you have to be so mean? Why take personal shots? Why do you have to make your bad day somebody else's?" To which I would humbly reply, shut your piehole. You want some of what he's getting? But also-- it's a top 4 list. The bare minimum is a top 5 list, and I will not accept shrinkflation in my @#$%^%# listicles as anything but a sign of contempt for a subject that I'm notably sensitive about. I could do a top 5 Elongated Man list off the top of my head, and I could give a rat's patootie about Ralph Dibny. Identity Crisis, 52, that European mini-series with the Parobeck art, the first appearance, and the one where he marries Sue. I haven't even read most of those-- I just rattled off the first things that came to mind without research. This article's writer can't do that, because he doesn't have the age and experience, which if fine. I hope he's getting paid with more than exposure to type "best Martian Manhunter stories" into a search bar and crib something together out of the results, with maybe a personal preference thrown in for flavor.

If you're not a total schmuck, just to cover your bases, you at least pick an origin story. The lowest hanging fruit would be "The Strange Experiment of Dr. Erdel" from 'Tec #225, but you could just as easily go with the Secret Origins retcon, or the 1998 Martian Manhunter #0. He went with Martian Manhunter: Identity, the 2019 12-issue maxi-series. Maybe he's right? I only got a few issues into it, realized that it wasn't for me, and bailed. I'm old now, so I don't have to force the latest tedious retcon on myself. You can tell me if I'm missing out there. Yes, you have permission to speak now.

That was the #3 spot, of four. In the final quarter was 1996's JLA: New World Order, which launched the blockbuster Morrison/Porter run. It's one of the great Justice League stories, which launched my favorite period in the book's history, and DC's biggest franchise of the '90s. J'Onn J'Onzz is barely in that story. Spoiler-- it's secretly about Martians, and so as not to tip his hand, Morrison sidelines the Manhunter for most of the arc. Waid & Hitch did an arc about these same characters a few years later that does foreground J'Onn, but that didn't make the cut, and the Midsummer's Nightmare mini-series that immediately preceded JLA was what made me a fan of the character. So close-- still a bitter failure for this list.

The #2 slot went to Starlin & Mignola's Cosmic Odyssey, which has some really memorable moments with Martian Manhunter and Green Lantern John Stewart. It's a 226 page, four part prestige format mini-series from 1988. I think the Johns may have speaking parts on about a dozen pages. They're in the penultimate positions of a 9 character line-up on the cover, flanked by Bug and Orion. I guarantee you the kid's Batman reading project has gotten to 1988, and he though J'Onn was cool in this, and that's why he cobbled together this top 4 list. Too bad he hasn't gotten to the actual Martian Manhunter mini-series with an actual Martian Manhunter story from that same year, or if I'm being perfectly honest, his much better appearances in Justice League International from the same period. You could have said "Moving Day" and no one would have said "boo" back.

His top pick out of all the Martian Manhunter stories was the "Revelations" arc from the 2000 Ostrander/Mandrake series. I had serious misgivings about that book, despite affection for the same creative team's Grimjack work, with a paper trail going back to the aforementioned DC Comics Message Boards that the kid may have perused while in the womb. No? Yeah, that's probably best. Anyway, despite my grievances, I know a lot of people who hold that run in high regard. Generally speaking, I think that they prefer "Son of Mars" and "Rings of Saturn," the two arcs DC bothered to collect into trade-- initially for intentional audiences, and decades later domestically. "Revelations" does have its fans, particularly the JLI Choco homage with Doug Mahnke art, but I don't know any that actually prefer it to the real JLI stories.

So that's it. The kid did about 1300 words for CBR, and I gave back about 1200 in reply. I hope it was worth it to him, because it sure wasn't for me, and I won't be linking to help him panhandle. Nobody ever gave me a dime for this toil, but I still have enough personal integrity to give you more than the top four Snapper Carr stories (the debut Starro story, the one where he betrays the team to Joker, any two stories from Peyer/Morales Hourman, and if that doesn't satisfy, the Blasters Special?)

MARTIAN MANHUNTER: FROM THE 50'S TO HIS 70'S

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."