As I've mentioned a number of times over the years, I had no exposure to J'Onn J'Onzz in the '70s or early '80s. There were house ads for the War of the Worlds arc from Justice League of America #228-230, and I especially recall Chuck Patton & Dick Giordano's cover to the last issue featuring Martian Manhunter battling The Marshal, which was glorious. However, I was not reading any DC Comics in real time during this period, and probably saw that ad in a copy of Blue Devil that I bought at a flea market months after release, if even in the 1984 calendar year. I was definetely hip to the Alien Atlas through a figure and mini-comic from the 1985 second series of Kenner's Super Powers Collection, but I probably bought that at a deep discount some time after initial release. A 1986 DC Comics Subscription Ad stands out in my memory, but by then I'd already read Crisis on Infinite Earths #7, the first proper comic that I received new and have a firm recollection of the Sleuth from Outer Space playing a role. Though I didn't buyt any, I did toss through some late run issues of Justice League of America in '86.
All this is to say that even though I didn't read any material from the period of the Detroit Justice League, this blog wouldn't exist without it. Even if Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons had done their proposed Martian Manhunter mini-series in the early '80s, that alone wouldn't have gotten us an action figure in 1985. Most probably, we would have gotten J'Emm, Son of Mars, and maybe that guy would have landed on some lesser team like The Outsiders, making J'Onn J'Onzz a redundancy. More likely, J'Onn or J'Emm would have been killed off during the Crisis, since we didn't need two Martian heroes in the streamlined new continuity. Regardless, I might never have made J'Onn's acquaintence, or made it later, and in a different form.
I don't think of the Detroit team as a true standard-bearing Justice League. They were failed X-Men bandwagon jumpers. But because they were short-lived, before my time, and novel, and came to embrace them. I love Gypsy as an expansion of the Martian family, and a surrogate daughter. I love Vixen as a compelling and trailblazing heroine. I still don't care much for Steel, but I see value in his lore, and I'm a big Dale Gunn booster. Vibe... well... an icon I put together for the blog served as the basis for the title sequence of a DC Nation short. It may be my personal largest (if mostly forgettable) contribution to popular culture. Plus I grew quite fond of Zatanna and Aquaman and Sue... not so much Elongated Man. I see the Detroit League as more J'Onn's team than the Magnificent Seven ever were. Martian Manhunter is a misfit, and he's more vital with his own kind.
2 comments:
It's wild that DC passed on an Alan Moore pitch. Do you have any info on what the book might have been about?
I could have sworn I'd done a post about it, but if so, couldn't find it to reference. There wasn't much to it, as I recall. Just a pitch with an illustration shot down by the JLA editor.
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