Amazing Heroes #156 (January 1st, 1989)

Amazing Heroes remains my all-time favorite industry magazine, despite (okay, partially because) being printed in comic book dimensions (while costing 3-4x as much as its subject averaged) and my only having bought a few editions while it was still being actively published. In fact, I've been actively working on an (economical) set for a while now, and my gaps continue to narrow. I have a lot of contempt toward Wizard specifically, because I saw the negative impact it had on the industry in real time, including its lowering of the overall discourse with hype and crass humor. But also, because I had a basis for comparison to much better magazines, including Comics Scene (even pricier for less content and way too much animation/media coverage, though still more value than the Wizard ilk.) A lot of it was just down to timing, since first generation comics fans were still active and vital at midlife, while the Boomer and Gen-X writing staff had collectively experienced all that North American comics had to offer up to that point. It was still possible to collectively know "everything" about what was available to their audience. Further, it spun out of The Comics Journal so that they could go full fart-sniffer about capital-A "art" releases. So you had a bunch of over-educated liberals getting out from under being brow-beaten by the Gary Groth crowd, but still took mainstream comics seriously enough for literary analysis, and the perspective of having read more ambitious and underground work. There's a reason why so many of its contributors went on to luminous careers of actually creating their own comics.

For instance, Don Rosa was essentially their version of Bob "The Answer Man" Rozakis with his column "Info Center," before succeeding Carl Barks as the Eisner-award winning chronicler of DuckTales. Because he knew his stuff and communicated it well, instead of taking cheap shots like drunk Tony Stark jokes at every opportunity to fill space between price guides. And again, that multi-generational knowledge base would allow for a segment explaining that the original "Manhunter from Mars" was Roh Kar, not J'onn J'onzz. This was a time before ready, widespread reprints, and there were no databases to access this type of obscure information. The oldest Overstreet I have is the 21st edition covering 1991-1992. There's a line under Batman #78 noting "Roh Kar, The Man Hunter from Mars story-the 1st lawman of Mars comes to Earth (green skinned.)" So if you could find that line in a 548-page book of tiny print, regarding a book that hadn't carried the J'onn J'onzz strip, you'd have the barest idea that there was a so-called "Golden Age Martian Manhunter." You could also score a mint copy for $300, which is less than a CGC 1.8 on eBay as I type this. They're asking $1,645 for a 6.0. The best time to invest really was thirty years ago.

Anyway, I learned about Roh Kar from U.S. Navy Commander Adam Benson on the DC Message Boards a quarter century or so ago, because I didn't have this particular issue of Amazing Heroes to educate me. But having read the actual story many times over at this point, what I'm most interested in was how they got that Silver Age Manhunter image in there. Presumably they photocopied a comic that they had a copy of (clearly not Batman #78,) since J'onn is clearly covered in Ben Day dots,) so I figure they then went around that figure with liquid paper to white out the background. This sort of thing got so much easier once the Showcase Presents came out. Anyway, it's nice that a relatively minor character like the Sleuth from Outer Space got any kind of attention in a forum like this, likely because at least one staffer was probably reading the original Batman stories that the Martian Marvel was backing-up.