Nubia: Coronation Special #1 (July, 2022)

Years ago, in Denver, CO, the Amazon Nu'Bia was arrested by local authorities. Nu'Bia was the guard over Doom's Doorway, under the island paradise of Themyscira, through which Tartarus can be reached. I suppose she vacationed on occasion, while fully armored, and might have cause to break the arm of an attempted rapist* if one crossed her path. The cops were, well, cops, so they cuffed her instead of the creep and talked about putting her in her place (for women? Blacks? Resistors? Check all that apply.) It didn't help that the actual perpetrator was the deputy mayor's son.

Nu'Bia was taken to an interrogation room, where she was more cordially greeted by a plainclothes African-American detective. He explained that this was a he said /she said situation, presumably because the woman with her child who the assailed man had attempted to "take" had left the scene before police arrived, so the deputy mayor's son now claimed he'd turned down the woman's solicitation, and was beaten and robbed for his virtue. Nu'Bia was increasingly incensed-- by the assault, the disrespect, the lies. The detective repeatedly told her to calm down, eventually explaining "I know your sister, Diana. We work together sometimes." J'Onn let a bit of his green skin show, but it was the black skin he was otherwise wearing that he referenced when he continued, "... you and I have more in common here in man's world than the two of you. The color of our skin-- yours, my chosen form, and even the woman who was the real victim here? It has us viewed as not just less than others, but actively seen as dangerous. It makes us targets and scapegoats." Despite his own expressed contempt for the badged bigots that had brought Nu'Bia in, J'Onn acknowledged that even outranking them, he was still at least partially beholden to the white supremacist structures they upheld. The Martian observed that while African-Americans are no longer technically property, "they are still seen as objects. And if we are not acting as grateful mules, we are a liability to their way of life.

Nu'Bia rejected any accommodations for white frailty, and wondered if the people in this place were worth saving. J'Onn explained that he believed in being subtle in his aid to the oppressed of this land, but the Amazon questioned if that was just complacency. Essentially, his experiences with the race war on Mars meant that he was unwilling to use his powers to create an autocracy, so gently, quietly nudging humanity toward justice was the best option as he saw it. For instance, using his powers to essentially erase Nu'Bia's involvement in the assault, from both the physical and mental record, then removing the handcuffs she herself didn't break loose out of respect. J'Onn gave Nu'Bia a card that would provide her with help if it was needed again. "Just because they aren't ready yet, it doesn't mean you're not needed. You just need to be more careful, for your own sake.

This story segment was written by Stephanie Williams & Vita Ayala, with art by Darryl Banks. I was reading the event Trial of the Amazons for a podcast, not enjoying it, and this was part of a two book coda. I was kind of checked out, so I thought it was cute that the artist was using David Harewood as reference for this cop, and missed the "Denver" part entirely. D'oh! We're probably past the point of needing coded Blackness from a Martian, but as a fan, I do appreciate noted police officer John Jones expressing views that better align with my own than, say, David Clarke. Sorry for the lapse in posts, but I had a medical thing, then a crush of podcasting and life stuff.

* Apparently, just using this word will put the post in some sort of Google jail. I'm not changing $#!+. Euphemisms protect the guilty, not the innocent. Say it plain to speak the truth.

Green Lantern Corps #4-5 (February-March, 2012)

The planet Xabas. A team of Green Lanterns with depleted power rings led by John Stewart were surrounded by robot ninja dudes possessed of emerald energy weapons of their own. Said weapons were demonstrated as useless against the ninja dudes, thanks to DNA signatures. The head ninja dude saw the fire in Stewart's eyes, even in surrender. "We spit on all treaties, and surrender's abhorrent to you as it is to us... That's why I feel you still need... the proper motivation." Head ninja dude stabbed a bald Caucasian Green Lantern in the head, spilling conveniently purple blood.

On Oa, Guy Gardner was torturing a captured ninja dude for information. Without the standard issue black armor, he looked like Chemo on Slimfast with a skeleton floating inside. Six pages in, I learned the ninja dudes are called Keepers, but I still don't know the name of the executed GL. Gardner tried to play good cop/bad cop with Salaak, but the old alien was too much of a fuddy-duddy to go full Patriot Act on the Keeper. The Keepers were slaughtering whole planets full of people, but to Green Lanterns, that sounds like Tuesday.

Elsewhere, some big rocky Lantern named Kannu was beating up actual rocks and himself over leaving a fellow corpsman behind. Elsewhere elsewhere, the reptilian Isamot Kol was trying to work a power ring with his tongue in a training session, since his arms and legs were still regrowing. Sheriff Mardin recommended he switch to his tail, since the ring apparently tasted terrible. I think these guys had all escaped Xabas, unlike poor Unnamed Cannon Fodder, who shall long be mourned. After all, John Stewart needed something else to feel guilty about.

The GL POWs were teleported to a barren world pocked by power battery impressions. "Be prepared to lose your will and maybe your lives... as you cross the Emerald Plains."

Guy Gardner continued his brutal interrogation, but not drugs nor violence nor threats could break the Keeper. From out of nowhere came the Martian Manhunter, with whom the Green Lantern apparently has no prior history in the New 52. J'Onn J'Onzz informed Gardner of his identity and position with Stormwatch, fully intending to wipe the Lantern's memory after extracting all relevant information from the Keeper's mind. As it turned out, what they kept were GL power batteries, on the plain where Lanterns could send their power sources to keep them from being left otherwise unattended. That situation turned sour, and now the Keepers were headed for Oa to claim the Central Power Battery...

"Prisoners of War" & "Mean Machine" was by Peter J. Tomasi, Fernando Pasarin and Scott Hanna. Remember that old Stan Lee saying about how every comic is somebody's first? Tomasi doesn't. See, this was my first issue of GLC since the Mongul arc from volume one. I don't think many of the corpsmen here who were in that story. I don't know these guys, and I don't feel like I got much of an introduction. Guy Gardner playing Jack Bauer was in character, but Martian Manhunter came right out of Tomasi's poop chute to get all mindrapey. You know what kind of comics I don't need to read? Vague ones with nothing new or interesting to say except to tell me that all my funny JLI issues don't count anymore. I've got a few longboxes of that good stuff, and they're the only reason I bought this book... once.

Here's a fun fact-- if the previous text came off as coarse or flippant, there's a reason for that. It was written in the time period of the comic. The draft was last updated in late January of 2012, over a dozen years ago, art and all. I never got around to buying the second part of the story, and this was also in a period where I was overburdening myself trying to do New 52 posts across all my DC blogs at the same time. No wonder I burnt out. I do not missing scanning comics, either. So yes, I was in a much different head space in the moment, rather than looking back on the ambiguities of a then-new continuity that has become increasingly irrelevant. I mean, this was so early on that they were still coloring the New 52 costume dark blue, and honestly, I miss that. Also, I used Pasarin's art for my April Fool's 2012 New 52 Wave 3 Martian Manhunter #1!, which got a lot of views at the time, so maybe I didn't want to step on that action. Man, I really liked his art, and still wonder why he didn't have a better career. Where's his Ghost Machine title? As much as I enjoy Eddy Barrows, I wish they'd gone with "my" book instead of the Rob Williams' series that I didn't finish reading.

Anyway, I never bothered completing my coverage before because J'Onn is barely in the next issue, and absent entirely from the finale. After giving Guy the information outright torture wasn't yielding, the Manhunter also inspired Gardner to pull together a group of rebel Lanterns to help save their comrades. Also, John Stewart snapped the neck of one of his own men to prevent his weakness from giving Oa over to the bad guys, because Tomasi can too grimdark as hard as Geoff. Oh, and the Alien Atlas did all this because it was out of Stormwatch's scope, and he apparently mindwiped all the Lanterns so they wouldn't remember his involvement. No wonder I was such a pill back then.

Legion Lost #6 (April, 2012)

This is, like, a dozen years late, so I'll keep it short. Timber Wolf and Chameleon Girl had been captured and held at "The Clinic," a secret government stronghold to study alien life forms and technology for defensive applications. Martian Manhunter had been tasked by Stormwatch with following unique energy signatures detected when the time-tossed Legionnaires arrived in the 21st Century. J'Onn J'Onzz was shocked to find that Brin Londo could "see" through his invisibility and altering the perceptions of the Clinic's staff. The Sleuth from Outer Space struggled to read the evolved 30th Century minds, and also was surprised that Timber Wolf knew who he was (the New 52 still hadn't firmly decided if he was a publicly known hero, but he's a legend in the future.) The other Legionnaires worked to release their comrades, which led to a confrontation between Manhunter and Wildfire. The cooler head of Tyroc prevailed, as he negotiated with and fully opened his mind to the Manhunter from Mars. The Alien Atlas then helped Chameleon Girl regain her natural form and eventually consciousness by helping her to absorb needed biomass from a Durlan corpse held in the facility. Having gotten his answers, he then left the Legion to their own devices. After all, "Time-travel is a strictly one way trip. You cannot return home. You're all going to die here."

"Inevitable" was by Fabian Nicieza & Tom DeFalco and Pete Woods & Matt Camp. Although I don't know if we needed such a sinister Manhunter, those edges got knocked off as the New 52 progressed. I enjoyed the visuals for the Martian Marvel in this issue, giving him giant cartoon hands to carry Yera Allon or shapeshift into a dragon like in the opening credits of the Justice League cartoon. There's a reason why Jim Lee's redesign has survived to the present, when so little else from nü-DC's terrible teens can still be seen.

Martian Manhunter in Lazarus Planet (2023)

While there was a part of me that wanted to continue with Bloodwynd material after Black History Month, just to finally close that long dangling thread, at a rate of one post per week, it would still take up another few months... maybe even the rest of the year. That would rather strain the parameters of this blog, not to mention my interest in the concept. Reader dissapointemnet (don't ask me to spell or pronounce that Ctrl+C/+V) asked last week about covering a recent Martian Manhunter story which felt like a nice pivot point, but I lacked context. I pretty much gave up on the DC Universe during the New 52, aside from a tiny blip following Rebirth, and didn't even bother to collect or fully read the 2018/2019 Martian Manhunter maxi-series (bought the trade only.) When I became estranged from Marvel Comics in the early '90s, I continued to read all of their monthly solicitations as an informed retailer into the next century, but finally gave up on that sometime before the 2010s. With DC, the estrangement began in earnest sometime after Infinite Crisis/One Year Later (I quit 52 halfway through,) but I think we were well into the Rebirth period before I finally opted out of reading the DC solicits, or as Grandpa from The Lost Boys might have put it, my TV Guide. I just stopped caring about the ebb and flow of that universe, and even a stab at creative writing that saw me try to catch up was abandoned more than a year ago. Lazarus Planet has been well reviewed, but it's also a weird mash-up of super-heroes, Vertigo, and Chinese lore that's daunting to wrap my brain around.

As I understand it, current Robin Damian Wayne has been mucking around with his mother's side's resurrection apparatus, some monstrous entities got involved, Batman got possessed by one, and a volcanic eruption of the Lazarus Pits caused alien parasites to gene bomb an underworld. Or as less of a geek test, a plot device gave DC editorial an excuse to muck around with people's powers on a grand scale to mine crossovers and spin-offs. And because a good chunk of the readership hate anything magic or related to China, the Batman Family get shoehorned in to force feed it to that lot. Also, they continue to push the entire discipline of inking over a cliff by shooting directly from the pencils to turn everything into a washed out muddle, and inflict a bunch of excess text on the audience by crediting nine different artists for variant covers that they (hopefully) only bought one of. But I'm not bitter.

Where Dark Crisis (I'm already exhausted by the title alone) seems to have been the more classical (if perhaps largely irrelevant in the excessively grand scheme of things) crossover, Lazarus Planet feels like an old Marvel Age Annual on steroids, cocaine, and PCP at the same time. Aside from the Batman vs. Robin tedium and a two(ish)-part bookend series, this event is mostly a collection of short stories by a vast number of creative teams setting-up/previewing new directions for the DC line. I guess this is where Jon Kent gets his dad's (and Strange Visitor's) old electric blue look/powers, and where the decision to make Renee Montoya the Question that got reverse years ago de-reversed (can I quit yet?) There's a lot of the Maryest of Sues, Black Alice (trigger warning, come @ me,) and a mountain of ah-spaghetti hits-ah alla the walls (best/worst Chris Pratt Mario voice?)

In a huge, very 21st Century tell, a mash-up of Martian Manhunter and Doomsday that might as well have been generated by an art AI program (did Dream get a credit with all the variant cover guys) was used to promote the event, even though J'Onn J'Onzz barely appears in any of these books. In the core story, the Alien Atlas is simply adjunct to the Superman Family, showing up as part of a cavalry straight outta Metropolis.

In the March cover-dated, January-shipping one-shot Lazarus Planet: We Once Were Gods #1, Dan Watters and Max Dunbar had the thankless task of validating the gimmick image in a ten page story. A person of color (but indeterminate race,) Raphael Arce gained the ability to absorb people's pain from the Lazarus rains. Arce selflessly visits hospices to relieve all the terminal (exclusively white male?) patients at a Metropolis hospital. In a big reach, his proximity to the city has him absorbing the residual pain of the time Doomsday "killed" Superman, and that memory is enough for Doomsday to begin regenerating within the dude's body. Martian Manhunter tried to relieve the reliever by taking the Doomsday seed into himself, becoming the advertised hybrid for barely two pages. Arce then takes the Doomsday back from him, seemingly immolating into a hyperdense red crystal. "Crushed down into a psychic gem of blood and pain. He allowed his flesh to become this. Dense enough to absorb the living memory of Doomsday."

There's a bookend where Martian Manhunter likes to fly way up into the something-sphere (he still needs to breathe, I assume, but can also see the whole Earth from wherever he stops) and partake of a symphony of pain and pleasure down below that's supposedly better than music. In the end, he's explaining all this to Superman, his seeming immediate superior in the DCU these days. For all his powers, Superman can't pick up "The patternless patterns of emotion rippling on the surface of the Earth?" I'm right there with you, pal, and since when did J'Onn switch from Chocos to pot brownies? Anyway, the pseudo-poignant denouement offered by J'Onzz is, "There are no songs among them today."

The intent is unclear, but we can choose the yarnwall this as a set-up for a post-Infinite Flashpoint 52 Convergence Rebirth Infinite Metal Dark Crisis reboot of Bloodwynd, even though the exact phrase is never uttered. I'm not sure if Raphael Arce is Black/Hispanic/Both/Neither, though that was definitely some "Magical Negro" s---, and I have exactly zero (hour) faith that this will ever be follow-up in any way. YMMV.

Action Comics #1042 (June, 2022)

At the abandoned Casino Riviera, the new Faceless asked an oozing green mass on the floor, "Who the hell is J'Onn J'Onzz? Or is it Rita Gonzales today? Or perhaps Albert Schmidt? Who is it you see when you look in the mirror? What is left when your body can hold no form? Do you know? Does anyone?" Most of the story is devoted to J'Onn's absence of self, a partial refutation of the Ostrander series where the multitudes of assumed identities and dutiful time spent with the League are a distraction from the Martian's inability to move past the death of Mars and fully manifest a true, evolving self while living on Earth. Meaning he's been spinning his wheels since at least the end of the Giffen DeMatteis JLI in 1992.

Faceless sent Professor Hugo to fetch the "naplam blood," but the Alien Atlas nigh-instantaneously pulled himself back together, turned invisible and intangible, flew across the room, then stood in place in solid form so that Arnold could bump into him. Just so's you know that none of the villains ever stood a sliver of a chance. The Manhunter then orders the fledgling Vulture chicks to run in their highly reflective featureless golden masks that couldn't ever be confused with the Helm of Nabu. While bashing the adult Vulture committee and Faceless, the Sleuth from Outer Space noted that he'd bested the neuron scrambler by moving his brain to his tongue, biting it off, and reforming. I wasn't on Twitter (more later,) but if the message boards were still up, I could have audibly heard the cries of "overpowered."

After the initial defeat of Vulture, they spent years rebuilding, watching Manhunter from the shadows to eventually exploit some weakness. Because J'Onn only ever lived a ghost of a life, he supposedly had no loved ones to imperil, so that his only vulnerability was his amassing of foes in the years since. So Vulture exploited that by enlisting... only the ones from the old Showcase Presents economical black & white reprints... and Dr. Trap, I guess. Oh, and Faceless is just some guy, I think? A lot of the male characters from this strip look enough alike that it could maybe be that researcher guy at the police station from an earlier chapter, but they make a point of his being "no one," so probably not. I don't care enough to check anyway.

Cops busted in to bag the perps, but the Manhunter bolts to spend the day hanging out with... Zook and Gwen from the museum? J'Onn commits to spending more time being himself with his... friends... like the little girl fan he just met and the random lady that escorted him to a crime scene? Like Harry Callahan at the end of the first of five movies spanning 17 years, J'Onn disposes of his police badge. Did we ever figure out which cop he was in the first place? And his throwing it in the garbage could have been a meaningful critique on police violence, which isn't a topic in this story, so treating it like refuse was merely circumstantial?

"A Face in the Crowd: Part Six" was by Shawn Aldridge and Adriana Melo. I had the option of covering the penultimate and final chapters of the Martian Manhunter serial more or less back-to-back, but wanted to give each installment room to "breathe." Then I got into a fight with a bot on Twitter, who then locked my account, and I refused to budge on anything related to the matter for two months. I was so sick of everything that I was thinking of scrubbing the entire Diabolu Frank identity and moving on with my life. I'm still probably going to delete the Twitter account and just fold any further promotion of this blog into the Rolled Spine Podcasts account, but one of the things I wanted to do first was completing the coverage of this serial.

The other reason I held out was because this story wasn't very good. As fan service, it made me very happy to see so many moribund concepts foundational to J'Onn J'onzz's original solo strip finally recognized and deployed in modern continuity. I believe that I already referred to this story as the Alien Atlas' "Hush," which sucked as a narrative but sang as a showcase for Jim Lee to draw Batman characters. Except Melo isn't Jim Lee, and the art takes a tumble in quality on the final entry. By burning through the old rogues in rapid succession without offering much in the way of revitalization, it simply reinforces the notion that they are disposable and unworthy of further consideration. Any future writer is robbed of the opportunity to shock an audience that "X" has returned after half a century-plus, deadlier than ever. "X" already came back in that Action Comics serial, and they accomplished squat.

Also, like Ostrander, the writer calls something a Zook that has no real similarity to the Silver Age character named Zook. To continue an analogy, that's like introducing Stephanie Brown as the new Bat-Mite. One is a human girl and one is a super-powered otherdimensional imp. There's not a parity there, just mutual diminishment. The little girl by definition can't be the thing she's named for, and the thing that still isn't getting screen time is at best suffering a trademark infringement besides. You can't announce that we're getting a sundae and hand us yogurt. That's just not even what you said you were going to do. Yogurt isn't ice cream drizzled with hot fudge and sprinkled with chopped nuts... maybe some whipped cream and a cherry? Even if there's a little cherry at the bottom of the yogurt, who do you think you're fooling?

I'm used to being disappointed by Martian Manhunter stories, robbing me year after year of motivation to continue blogging and otherwise championing the intellectual property of a soulless, clueless corporation for no reward whatsoever. It was nice to see the familiar faces and names dropped. Wasn't much else to it, however. Also, the part where he forms a fist in the middle of his chest to throw a punch? Blech.

Action Comics #1041 (May, 2022)

Action Comics #1040 (April, 2022)

Lurking outside the first floor Middletown Apartment of J'Onn J'Onzz was Doctor Trap. I feel seen. After nearly a full page of social media baiting cat petting while explicitly referencing Marco Xavier in 1960s Silver Age stories, the trap was sprung. Double Stuff evaded the thermal that detonated when J'Onn reached for their kitty food in the cupboard. J'Onn began melting like he'd been eating The Stuff before the story started while Trapp kicked down the door declaring a "House call." In a tell that makes me think a pass wasn't made at reading the original stories, the two characters exposit Who's Who bulletpoints while Trapp's voice sounds off for the character. Hired to capture the Manhunter, Dr. Trap decided he just had to kill the former Bronze Wraith, just about the time the cat attacks him. Yes, the big fat orange cat bought J'Onn the time to recover, then was safely "caged" in his abdomen.

The point is made between punches that our boy self-identifies as the Martian Manhunter, not Bronze Wraith, Marco Xavier, or even John Jones. Besides being arch and not exactly relevant, I think the one direct punch connecting would have done Doctor Trap in. I'm glad we moved past the untrained stand-ins for classic rogues to the non-powered real deals as an escalation, but like, what exactly was he going to do with that leg trap he kept swinging? His mind can't be read because of an implant by a guy named "Hugo. Funny looking dude. Head four times too big for his body." Trapp had been sent to give J'Onn a message. "If you want this to end, find them at the place you first met." The implant was in Dr. Ttap's jaw, which J'Onn shattered, then telepathically shut him down.

The next day, Certa and Peters investigated a dilapidated mansion property bought eight months prior by the presumed deceased Marco Xavier. Apparently, Ostrander was under concussion protocols from... um... I don't know? There wasn't a car crash last issue. Anyway, they got shot in their necks with tranquilizer darts. Is this comic a 1970s' TV show? Weird installment.

"A Face in the Crowd: Part Four" was by Shawn Aldridge and Adriana Melo. I know that it's a relatively small thing, given that these are only eight page monthly installments, but I'm really glad the creative team on this strip has been consistent. I liked Melo's work on Female Furies, and her mix of quirk and menace has really defined this story for me. I'll be so disappointed and have to track her down at a con for a commission if we don't get to see her Arnold Hugo in this arc. I've timidly dipped my toe into the waters of Shawn Aldridge coverage because, put indelicately, past interviews with previous Manhunter writers have led me to the conclusion that they're a bunch of f***bois. Honeyed words, crappy intentions. I mean, Aldridge even kind of looks like the new Getaway King. But he seemed like a good guy in the podcasts I've heard him on, and he's clearly done the work here. He's not just slapping legacy names on his own creations (well... Zoey...) but clearly knows who all these characters were and could be again to our Martian Marvel.

This really is the closest we'll ever get to a Batman: Hush or a Who is Wonder Woman? where the entire rogues gallery Vile Menagerie turn up in one Batman: The Movie style romp. The Diabolu Idol-Head, Human Flame, Monty Moran, Vulture, Mr. V... I'm not arrogant and I try not to be excessively paranoid, but it definitely feels like somebody's been reading this blog. Or the reference sites that borrowed heavily from here. There's a vague semblance of payoff for all these years of largely thankless effort. But also a bit of wistfulness, as there was always that not-so-secret hope that I'd get to do something like this someday, mixed with gratitude that somebody with actual motivation and any accomplishment within the industry actually did.

Action Comics #1039 (March, 2022)

"Three days ago, I decided to live a more grounded life, connect with my adoptive home and the people I protect. Two days ago, I fought a gig economy knock off of an old adversary. Now I sit across from a thirteen-year-old girl who says she's my biggest fan..." Zoey... "Zook" had watched the break-in, and relayed the details over milkshakes at a Metropolis diner. The waitress, Blu, seemed to be familiar with J'Onn J'Onzz and his Choco-Shakes.

The plainclothes detectives, Lt. Jack Certa and Ostrander, follow Zoey's lead on kids recruited to crime while wearing gold variant Court of Owls facemasks. They stake out the home of a kid named Justin Miller who seemed a prime candidate for the operation. I actually thought the partner was Peters from the first chapter, and it makes clear that a byproduct of diverse representation is that I wouldn't be confusing three different brown-haired white guys that basically all look like me and who all work together. I have to wonder if they're setting up a fake-out with that. Anyway, MISTERTWENTYTWO slid into the kid's DMs, and involved him in Katharsis Aureus, which Ostrander had researched. "It's like Greek or Latin for 'Golden Purify.' And it's kind of the scientific name of vultu'"

The conversation abruptly stops as the cops tail the kid after he exits his home with a packed dufflebag. Following directions on his cell phone, Justin ends up in a white van with dark tinted windows full of men in owl masks. A high speed pursuit follows, the van driver looking like a J. Scott Campbell rogue with an imperial circle beard, his vibrant red hair in a high fade slickback over his flaming neck tattoo. This would be our New 52 Getaway King. I can dig it. "Told ya, bro, no one catches the king." Well, a Martian Manhunter can. "I let the driver escape... for now. He is of no consequence. The kid is the priority." Cue a very special riff on that moment from All-Star Superman. Or maybe "You Are Not Alone." Well, probably not a Michael Jackson number, right?

The Sleuth from Outer Space has no patience for the threatening henchmen for info track when he can just reach into their minds... only to "hear" a voice. "Hello, J'Onn, it's been a long time... Let's call it a telepathic wiretap. Nanotech implants, really. All our operatives have them. You should feel proud, J'Onn. They were designed specifically for you." The voice chides him for not being the detective of old, unable to figure out the riddle before him. Another hint? "What's a kettle? ...It's a circle of... vultures. And vultures, J'Onn... only circle the dead."

"A Face in the Crowd: Part Three" was by Shawn Aldridge and Adriana Melo. Sorry for basically taking the month off, but I was pursing other obsessions. I've been watching Mutant X for podcasting purposes recently, and an episode referenced the "Infantino Hotel" on "Carmine Street" or some such, and it made me think of this strip. I will be seriously surprised if Vulture and the Court of Owls aren't explicitly connected, maybe leading to a continuation in Gotham City? I was going to point out that town will soon be down a Batman, but for all I know, this nostalgia parade is a long goodbye to our own imperiled Alien Atlas in the run-up to "Death of the Justice League".

I confess a shudder at that last page reveal. Excellent line. I guess once Marco Xavier shed the Faceless fat suit, he swore off ever donning it again. In fact, the modern Mr. V is positively anorexic, better reflecting his favorite bird and running counter to the common Kingpin trope of a literal "big man." I did the last write-up in one minimalist steam of transliteration burst. This one was an off-and-on hours long summation. A lot to digest here...

Action Comics #1038 (February, 2022)

The Martian Manhunter told Mrs. Heath to run from this rookie Human Flame, not the original and "first super-villain I ever fought." He made short work of the suit's flame jets with laser vision, as even though this Flame had been told of the Martian vulnerability to fire, he didn't exactly wilt at the sight of birthday candles. The Alien Atlas carried the imposter "ten thousand feet" in the air, then dropped him as an intimidation factor to get the facts. Apparently, telepathy wasn't an option anymore? He'd only met his benefactors once in person, to get the suit. It was all set up on an online forum. They wore white face masks, and had offered him half a million dollars to kill the Manhunter. As least he could still verify the store with his mental powers, seeing only those familiar featureless masks.

Metropolis Police Department Lieutenant Certa was soon knocking on the door of the parent of another teen taken in by the site. He was met at the door by his protesting (and all-too-similar looking) partner, Ostrander, who still believed that there were times when he wasn't on-duty. Sarah Garber's dad didn't know anything about Katharsis Aureus, respect her boundaries. Was he wrong for that?

Back to the Metropolis Museum. "Elements of my past, previously unrelated, now parts of the same puzzle." Shredded bits of white cloth on an air vent to small for a "normal-sized person" to access. In an alley outside, a young girl brown-haired girl in a orange hoodie claimed she'd seen kids perform the break-in. "I kinda patrol this area... Name's Zoey, but most people call me Zook. And you're Martian Manhunter. Big fan."

"A Face in the Crowd: Part Two" was by Shawn Aldridge and Adriana Melo. This is the part where the inevitable tweaks begin. Not my Zook, but better than a flower, at least. Getting used to the quirks of the art, and still appreciating that Pugh vibe. Good fit for the material. I'm calling Ostrander as the bad guy, but that may just be my bias when it comes to the Sleuth from Outer Space.

Action Comics #1037 (January, 2022)

In Metropolis, a variety of people of different races, ages, and genders all end up at Middletown Apartments, unit 225. They are all explorations of J'Onn J'Onzz, who wonders about whether the harder choice is just being himself, "But what the hell does that even mean?" As the Martian Manhunter, he feeds his housecat Double Stuff, reflecting on his own time in that role (along with Isobel de la Rosa, also deriving from the 1998 series, plus Bloodwynd.) "An endless list of endless aliases. Of endless lives. Yet none my own. I'm more vagabond than manhunter." Next he pours himself a bowl of Chocos cereal, and plops on the couch to watch a news program on the television. He reflects upon his disconnectedness from his adoptive world, still moored to lost Mars, and wonders if it's time to finally settle in.

Under the identity of Certa, essentially still John Jones, he's a plainclothes officer with the Metropolis police. Another brown haired white man named Peters visits his desk to discuss an ongoing investigation. Something to do with unconnected young people from all walks of life being linked to some crime, presumably the museum theft from the TV. A break in the case-- they visited an internet sub-forum called "Katharsis Aureus."

It's the Martian Manhunter who visits the Metropolis Museum. Admiring the painting "Lost" by Kyle Rayner that seems perhaps inspired by J'Onn himself, he's met by a stylish Black woman named Gwendolyn Heath. The Museum Director, she reports that the only items missing were pieces of an artifact they had been storing. The Sleuth from Outer Space perks up on learning that the "worthless" pieces were from "a large bust known as the Idol Head of Diabolu," which J'Onn confesses to having broken himself.

The discussion is interrupted by a brutish man in a sealed protective uniform featuring a series of bilateral small flaming jets running vertically up the chest. "Enough talk, nerds. I didn't come here to learn... I came here to burn! It's me, ya boy, HUMAN FLAME."

"A Face in the Crowd" was by Shawn Aldridge and Adriana Melo. I was passingly familiar with the Brazilian artist, who did work on two runs of Birds of Prey with Gail Simone, recalling Ed Benes and Terry Dodson. I'm a bigger fan of Steve Pugh, who she seems to be taking more cues from these days. I must confess to being completely unfamiliar with the writer, whose credits in the industry seem mostly in the lettering department. There was a four-parter in the Dark Horse Presents run that I've had sitting unread in a box since 2015, so that's on me, as well as the mini-series Hack/Slash vs. Vampirella and The Dark and Bloody. According to the podcast playing in the background, he's from Kentucky. For what it's worth, I tried to buy a physical copy of this issue from one of the biggest Houston comic shops, but they only had copies of previous issues left on the shelf. I can't speak to the Mongul lead story, as I've bought almost no new DC content this year, but am waiting for the trade of this arc.

Associating the Martian Marvel with the Man of Tomorrow goes back a long ways, but I still tend to chafe at stuff like basing the character in Superman's city. That said, the scripter goes further out of his way than anyone I've ever read to accommodate me specifically as an entitled fanboy. I considered various ways of highlighting all the fan service in the synopsis, but decided it would look like a heavily redacted transcript. One of the complaints I've heard about movies I've chosen not to see like Ghostbusters: Afterlife and The Rise of Skywalker is that filmmakers appeased hardcore audiences by just cobbling together images of all those things they like, so that they can point and say "look at that thing I like on the screen, making me happy by association with the familiar." I usually poo-poo such a thing, but I'm a whipped dog monkey after nearly a quarter century of creators thinking that naming a plant "Zo'ok" was all they needed to do to nod toward my character's history. To me, this story is like the comics equivalent of Lilly's brain mapping experiment. Ook! Thing I blogged about on WebTV! Ook! I'm fully recovered from Ma'alefa'ak's torture! Decades of stink weed traded for a tiny eight page bag of black tar heroin. Get in my veins!

I wouldn't have pegged J'Onn as someone who keeps pets, as I myself don't, but then he also had children, so maybe that's me projecting. He's definitely more of a cat person (same,) and I just spent too much time looking at pictures online to hazard a guess at its breed being Ragdoll (???) So I suppose I'm into it. It's fun, something sorely lacking in Manhunter comics, and I hope he gets to do some straight comedy in this serial (a stated goal in the podcast.)

Other things I'm not into? I didn't make it halfway into the last maxi-series, a prequel that featured a costume much closer to his Silver Age look. I don't know if that was used to pivot back to this '80s JLI look in the current continuity, which I'm sure many fans have missed since Infinite Crisis. Meanwhile, I always had an issue with the old costume, and wholeheartedly embraced the New 52 design, which I think would better fit Melo's style besides. The references to some momentous change are lost on me, and mentioning it without any context is vexing. I doubt every issue is somebody's first anymore, but it's my first in a long time, and I miss the brief recaps of comics in my youth. "Certa" is way too on the nose for me, and we don't need a white John Jones in the comics when he's now invariably portrayed by African-American performers in other media.

Yeah, that's about all I've got. It's been decades of my banging the drum for a representation that respects and builds upon the Alien Atlas' lore. This story intentionally draws from as many well loved eras of the character as could be reasonably expected within the space and then some, with direct references to Silver Age stories entirely erased for decades. I'm super-duper gun-shy about having any expectations going forward, but for at least this brief shining moment, I'm Montgomery Brewster and "This is the room I could die in."

Doomsday Clock (2017-2019)

Watchmen does to '60s Marvel Comics what Fritz the Cat did to funny animals twenty years earlier, but with pretentious transitions and leuprolide acetate. I'm morally opposed to a corporation exploiting works against the creator & owner's wishes because of an unprecedentedly aggressive anti-reversion strategy. But also, I'm specifically opposed to a bunch of pale grimdark Charlton Action Heroes analogs being integrated into the DC Universe. I think a bunch of self-conscious fanboys elevated Watchmen to "art" status back in the '80s to validate their fixations, but it's never been a favorite of mine, and arguably did more harm than good for the medium. Where were all the 'gaters when Rorschach was cramming his politics into childhood morality plays/power fantasies? Oh yeah, it was okay because their politics are Rorschach's. You know, the weird crazy stinky ugly homicidal son of a dirty whore who commits suicide by super-hero. Their guy.

So, I didn't read Doomsday Clock, but I have skimmed the heck out of it for a thought experiment. Most online resources are less than clearly written, and I think we can be a bit more concise than a three hour explainer video. Most of the early issues are very grounded in the Watchmen continuity, which is one of my problems with the book. I don't want to spend a third of a series on a Watchmen sequel that then transitions into a typical DC event series, and I doubt people in the market for a Watchmen continuation want to spend a third of the series on an Ostrander-period Firestorm: The Nuclear Man arc. I'm going to really speed through the early stuff.

So the grand scheme that ends Watchmen fails, and about half a decade later (1992), Adrian Veidt is ruined. He was exposed by the Walter Kovacs diary, with his businesses overrun by angry mobs. I'd argue that unsubstantiated ramblings from a criminal nutjob wouldn't have that level of impact, but then 2020 happened. A new incarnation of Rorschach breaks into a prison to release grim n' gritty analogues of the old Charlton villains Punch and Jewelee. Marionette & The Mime have enhanced killing-people abilities, and a young son that was taken from them after being born behind bars. Ozymandias is supposedly dying from a brain tumor, which he uses to convince Rorschach II to help him with a new global salvation plan involving Earth DC, and the quartet escape Earth-Sad-Bastard just before the nuclear war starts.

Speaking of their destination, the not-so-New 52 is living through its own retread of the immediate Post-Crisis deconstructionist "realism," especially John Ostrander-associated material like Legends. For the past six months, "The Supermen Theory" has plagued the popular consciousness, explaining the abundance of metahumans in the U.S.A. as the result of secret government experimentation inspired by the debut of Superman. It was first postulated by Dr. Helga Jace of the European nation Markovia from period The Outsiders comics. Metamorpho and Man-Bat were supposedly products of this Department of Metahuman Affairs project, which makes me groan because Rex Mason dates back to 1965, while the D.M.A. apparently was introduced 31 years later in a half-dozen The Power of Shazam! issues that barely anyone read. I realize we're nearly a quarter-century out from that, but the Department wasn't popularized until Allan Heinberg's brief Wonder Woman run in 2006, which to my old ass was five minutes ago. DC had given a big push to the D.E.O. back in the late '90s, and I vastly preferred them to the seemingly redundant D.M.A., if only for having better alphabet soup letters for my spoon. Anyway, who cares, Bendis probably bloweded them both up in his Leviathan story.

I think most people in the U.S. would be going "U!S!A!" over that, and the rest of the world would sigh and figure "that tracks," but instead its treated as a new "nuclear winter" type existential threat that casts a pall over all of increasingly panicky human life. Seeking metahuman research, LexCorp buys out Kord Industries (Blue Beetle,) Genetech (Mike Baron Flash comics) and the Sunderland Corporation (Swamp Thing,) while Wayne Enterprises muddles through ill-considered acquisitions of Dayton Labs (Mento) and Stagg Industries (Metamorpho.) Aside from filling out back matter to mirror that of Watchmen, these details don't amount to much. I guess it sets up that Lex Luthor has been tracking temporal anomalies for years, including a vast collection of duplicates of that picture of Jon Osterman and Janey Slater that Doctor Manhattan drops everywhere across space and time because he doesn't wear pants. He blue himself before becoming an always-nude.

Because layers, there's a side story where Johnny Thunder sneaks out of a retirement home, finds Alan Scott's original Green Lantern battery, and meets up with Rorschach and Saturn Girl. I'm going to assume at least a bachelors degree in DCology among my readership, because I'm not going to grind everything to a halt to explain what a Legionnaire is. They usually come in threes, though-- minimum. Dr. Manhattan brings The Comedian back from the dead for reasons, which include trying to kill anyone on DC Earth from Watchmen Earth that he can find. Batman and the Joker do stuff, while Lex Luthor stokes anti-metahuman fear, as he is wont to do. As part of a slavish devotion to the structure of Watchmen, the comic-within-a-comic Tales of the Black Freighter is now the mystery of the murder of golden age of Hollywood actor Carver Colman, who played Nathaniel Dusk. Spoiler, his success hinged on a friendship with Dr. Manhattan, and he was killed by his own estranged mother in the '50s after pushing back against her blackmail scheme regarding his sexual preferences. Which would be multiple-choice answer "D." No wonder he's so fond of Dr. Manhattan. His name starts with a capitol "D."

So the new Rorschach is the son of the chubby African-American psychiatrist that treated the original Rorschach in Watchmen. The kid either was manipulated into believing his dad and Rorschach were friends, and also he's a lifelong cray-cray who manages to develop the same vocal mannerisms as Walter Kovacs. With his parents dead, he's institutionalized, gets befriended inside by Mothman, and outside following Mothman's death by Ozymandias.

Issue #5 is where the DC stuff really starts to take over the narrative. Hawk & Dove get busted in Saint Petersburg after a hostage situation goes south. Russia closes its borders and forms a new version of the People's Heroes, led by their most powerful metahuman, Pozhar. The Russians also ally with Markovia. Firestorm denies rumors that he was created by the same secret program Lady Clayface and Killer Frost claim to be products of. King Kobra was making big moves in the Middle East. Black Adam pushes back against his terrorism, and declares Kahndaq a safe haven for all metahumans. The Creeper is an early recruit, maybe, since he's also a double agent created by the project. There's a multi-page mock Newsweek magazine article where the writer groups together various international teams from his own DK DC Comics Encyclopedia for his homebrew Mayfair RPG campaign or whatever. I resemble this remark. I have already pasted these pages into a single .jpg for ease of reference for my own fanboy crap.

There's a meeting of villainous entries from Who's Who in a Gotham City subway that serves as the backdrop for the Marionette & Mime origin story (don't care.) The Comedian shoots Typhoon in the face, and backmatter reveals that he and Moonbow were both undercover agents for the Department of Metahuman Affairs. You can really see the influence Steve Dillon had on Gary Frank's art here, both from the exploding face and that face's having resembled The Saint of Killers. Ozymandias cloned a new fantasy cat that was part Doctor Manhattan so that they could find Dr. Manhattan so that he could do a half-issue long exposition dump so that Geoff Johns could sub-divide the team and foreshadow a bleak conclusion. *Deep sucking recovery breath* Firestorm gets into a fight with the People's Heroes and supposedly accidentally turns a crowd of people into glass statues. Lois Lane gets a thumbnail drive featuring newsreel footage of the Justice Society of America, which you may have forgotten don't exist on Earth... 0? Prime? K.I.S.S., in the New 52/Rebirth continuity. In a secret location, with all his might, Firestorm manages to revert one boy to normal. Superman backs him up on a return to Russia to save the rest, but Vladimir Putin gets heavy-handed (redundant?) and the glass people all get shattered in the ensuing skirmish.

Martian Manhunter finally joins the narrative in issue #9, but there's time-jumping and tension-building that I'm just going to cut through. Plus, it's dumb, and we don't feed dumb. That's Facebook's job. Somehow, Ozymandias got his cloned Bubastis-Manhattan pet (lost me at "trained cat") to turn all those Russian people to glass and to blow them up and to leave an energy signature to implicate Dr. Manhattan (it's a double-frame-job with Firepatsy) . So all of the Silver Age DC heroes (Rebirth editions) take spaceships to Mars to confront Manhattan. 100% attendance. Even the Charlton Action Heroes, in pretty much their original costumes. Not contrived at all. At. All.

"Is there a plan, J'Onn?" "We make initial contact, Ralph. We see what he wants. Hello. My name is J'Onn J'Onzz. Who are you? Where do you come from? What are you doing on Mars?" Guy Gardner goes full Guy Gardner on the naked blue guy, aided by the Mature Readers advisory that allows him to use for-real foul language, and J'Onn also reverts to the JLI days by barking, "Guy, that's enough. From your mind, I can see that you're confused." Yeah, the cat-astrophe in Russia sent all these tachyons from Earth to Mars, screwing with weather patterns and Manhattan's Memento-vision and stuff. Then Johns folds Secret Wars II into a single issue with the heroes seemingly eradicating Manhattan but he brushes them off and does a Japanese freeze-time porno with them for reasons. Oh, and in the absence of Silk Spectre, rapes Ronnie Raymond's childhood by revealing Dr. Martin Stein had founded the Department of Metahuman Affairs and in the absence of his own metagene, intentionally triggered his surrogate son's in the nuclear incident that created Firestorm. Plus an off-screen but unmistakably petty President Trump throws Superman to the wolves/Russians/outraged public. That will age painfully.

The big reveal is that Doctor Manhattan stumbled upon the DC Universe, became intrigued by its intrinsic optimism, and recognized that the central figure in the entire continuum is Superman. Besides the DC Multiverse, there's also "The Metaverse," which is basically the core continuity of the comics line that influences all of the offshoots. When people like the Anti-Monitor and Extant/Parallax muck with the space-time continuum, it moves up Superman's debut from 1938 to 1950-something to 1986 and so on. Superman's perpetual displacement in time has a butterfly effect that ripples throughout the multiverse so that all realities reflect the changing circumstances of the Superman in the current continuity on the Earth. So Doctor Manhattan tests this cascade effect by screwing with the circumstances surrounding Superman in each era, for instance moving Alan Scott's power battery out of reach so that he dies in the train wreck that was his origin story (literally, not figuratively.) Dominoes fall and typically the universe gets darker, until Superman resurfaces and pushes things back to the good. Even as this story's Saturn Girl and Johnny Thunder dry up and blow away, representing the collapse of Superman's past and future, they shall return in new incarnations once Superman is restored later in the timeline.

Last two issues folks-- almost done. Because of the tachyon smog caused by the Russian explosion, Doctor Manhattan has a final lingering vision of meeting and getting punched out by Superman. This event supposedly either kills Manhattan or the universe itself. Ozymandias' master b-plan is that Superman won't kill Manhattan, but instead inspire him to also be a "Man of Action" who will go back and save the Watchmen-Earth instead of just letting his wiener float in the breeze of human nuclear extinction. Johns doesn't know what to do with Wonder Woman, so she's mostly M.I.A. before being kidnapped by Themyscira so that she doesn't get killed by Black Adam and the metahuman army of Kahndaq once they march against the U.N. Assembly and White House. Batman is running around trying to stop the DC U.S. from launching nukes. All of the other major DC heroes are still on Mars or wiped from continuity. Superman stands alone against the greater world's metahumans looking to arrest him for the Russia debacle. Manhattan shows up. Superman winds up the punch...

...and hits Pozhar, who was coming up from Manhattan's exposed rear. No single image better exemplifies the cognitive dissonance/wrongheadedness of this entire event than Superman brushing past Doctor Dingaling to pop a minor Cold War-era alternate Firestorm. Johns is so on-the-nose as to have a Black Rorschach in the midst of an existential crisis over the collapse of his paranoid far-right fantasies against the backdrop of riots threatening a new Civil War getting battered by a red-capped MAGA cracker. It's entirely possible that this was a one image refutation of everything Watchmen represented, or a summation of Johns' cluelessness that he built his entire DC career on the Alan Moore deconstructionist aesthetic. Choose Your Own Adventure.

The insufferably smug Ozymandias gets his wish, Doctor Manhattan declares his fandom, and restores the Pre-Flashpoint paradigm. The Post-Crisis Justice Society of America returns, while the rebooted Bendis/Sook Legion of Super-Heroes also show up, both backing Superman against... international heroes? Yay xenophobia? Also, the Multiverse realigns again to better match the Pre-Crisis conception, so I guess the Earth-One JSA is back to being the Earth-Two one, and the New 52 Earth-2 one never was? Gen-X gets an Earth-1985, and there's even an Earth-52, so the Earth-2 JSA and priest collar battlesuit Superman are saved! Johns does that thing where he turns the closing pages of a book into a teaser trailer for future storylines, except DC just had another major round of layoffs and 5G isn't happening and Johns & Frank have bolted for a creator-owned project at Image and there's a really good chance AT&T is planning to shutter the comics line entirely.

In the more gooder post-Rebirth revised continuity, Nathaniel Dusk actor Carver Colman was not murdered, and instead became a trailblazing "out" gay performer and LGBTQ+ activist. It's all very Ryan Murphy. Lex Luthor "kills" The Comedian by restoring him to the point in time he was snatched from-- mid-fall in Watchmen #1. I think Mime & Marionette stay on DC Earth to raise their newborn daughter. Doctor Manhattan "dies" to restore Watchmen-Earth, but he invests his remaining essence into Mime & Marionette's son and sets him up to be adopted by Night Owl and Silk Spectre. Both Ozymandias and Martin Stein go to prison on their respective Earths. A new Global Guardians line-up is teased.

I thought this would be shorter. You?

Martian Manhunter in the 2010s

As it turned out, the murder of J'Onn J'Onzz was surely among the shortest-lived deaths in a comic book history partially defined in popular culture by its genre-specific impermanence. Pronounced deceased on May 28, 2008, the Final Crisis-branded coda mini-series starring the villain Human Flame (who had sought Martian Manhunter's death by Libra) was still being released when Blackest Night debuted. On July 15, 2009, 413 days from his expiration date, J'Onn J'Onzz of Mars was ordered to "RISE" and join the hateful undead Black Lantern Corps. Another 259 days later, a dozen "White Lantern" rings compelled their bearers to "LIVE" unto a Brightest Day. The Alien Atlas co-starred in the bestselling year-long biweekly ensemble maxi-series and seemed poised for another chance at a solo ongoing.

Comic book continuity is a sort of gentlemen's agreement, where readers suspend disbelief to allow for all the stories being told at a particular publisher to have "happened" as one overarching cohesive universe. A broad general audience expecting entry-level reading with every comic purchase had no use for that sort of thing, but as their attention and dimes shifted to television, the nerds living vicariously through a four-color existence demanded it. There was a loose coexistence until 1986, when fears of insolvency and irrelevance pushed DC toward a more contemporary and "Marvel" type of tight interrelationships. DC was always a square peg in a round hole in that regard, but aside from intermittent fixer-uppers and a few "hard" reboots, you could argue that there was a through line from their publishing beginnings to the present.

Then, Flashpoint. DC was tired of being eternally #2, and the slow steady decay of an ever narrowing market necessitated the sensationalism of a "New 52"-title strong across-the-board-of-the-Titanic restarting of their history. Talent-wise, DC just rearranged the deck chairs, and they were so indecisive that the public wasn't sure it even was a complete restart until months into the relaunch, but sure enough it seems to have been. Yes, still weasel words over seven years later.

Despite all the groundwork for spin-offs laid down in Brightest Day, none of it led anywhere, and we were now in a universe where the Martian Manhunter was at a halfway point between familiar super-hero uncle and scary inscrutable alien who had only the briefest association with the Justice League before seemingly, violently betraying them... To join, of all things, Wildstorm's integrated and reconfigured Authority (though back to being called Stormwatch to preserve future branding opportunities.) No need to go into too much detail, because the arrangement lasted less than a year before J'Onn erased the members' minds about his ever having served alongside them. Next up, a new incarnation of Justice League of America (various anti-heroes, second-stringers, and rehab attempts) manufactured by Amanda Waller to "take out" the real Justice League (essentially the 1960s founders with Cyborg replacing J'Onn.) I won't go too far into them either, since despite launching with FIFTY-THREE variant covers that title lasted barely more than a year. Next up, Justice League United, the de facto JLCanada. Seventeen issues. Fifty-two covers total. Martian mulligans. He's back on the main team, currently, following a "Rebirth" that seems to have let some of the old continuity back in.

There was finally another "ongoing" series (three years too late) and a maxi-series launched late in the decade, both a dozen issues of "everything you thought you knew was wrong, but you apparently thought you knew something from this book, which won't stick, so also wrong." Eh, nobody reads comics anymore. But the Cyborg swap also meant the Martian Marvel was no longer carried into DTV animation or feature films alongside the Justice League. But you saw Justice League, so whose to say which pro/con column that falls into. Martian Manhunter still gets lighter play in animation, too part in successful video games like Injustice 2, and has been a series regular on the CW TV show Supergirl since 2015. By the end of the decade, that will have seen over 100 episodes. It's not a billion dollars at the box office, but fish jokes aside, J'Onn is no Aquaman. And it sure beats being a zombie super-villain.


2010
Justice League: Cry for Justice #7 (April, 2010)
DC Holiday Special '09 #1

BRIGHTEST DAY PART 1
#0, #1, #2, #3, #6, #7, #8

Green Arrow #4

BRIGHTEST DAY PART 2
#9, #11, #12, #15, #18, #19, #22

2011
Flashpoint #1
DC Retroactive: JLA - The '90s #1
Stormwatch #1
Stormwatch #2

2012
Legion Lost #5

STORMWATCH
#3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9

Superman Annual #1

2013
Justice League #17

JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA
#1, #2a, #2b, #3

2015
All-Star Section Eight #3

MARTIAN MANHUNTER
#1, #2, #3,#4, #5, #6

2017
Doomsday Clock #1-12

Current as of 5/4/19

2016 Martian Manhunter Emerald City Comic Con Convention Sketch by Tim Sale

Sorry gang, but I wasn't really up for writing or scanning tonight, so I decided to revisit an old standby in Comic Art Fans for my first Manhunter search in many years. I came upon this surprising piece by Tim Sale, who is of course revered by his trips to Gotham City and Metropolis, but who I don't recall ever going near Middletown. Given his minimalist style and tendency to work in a "Year One" setting, I'm sure some of you are disappointed that he drew the New 52 design, but I dig it.

Justice League Vol. 1 (2018) Solicitation

Justice League Vol. 1
Written by Scott Snyder, Jorge Jimenez
Illustrated by Jim Cheung
Paperback
$16.99 US
DC Comics
On sale Nov 13, 2018 | 144 Pages | 978-1-4012-8499-2

Visionary author Scott Snyder makes his mark on DC's most legendary team in Justice League Vol. 1!

Spinning out of the cataclysmic events of Dark Nights: Metal and the universe-defining No Justice, the core members of the Justice League--Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, The Flash and more--are finally reunited!

The cosmos suddenly opens up to new threats that the Justice League could not imagine! As Lex Luthor and Batman race to solve a mystery going back to the beginning of the DCU, the rest of the League dive deep into new corners of their own mythologies!

One of the most critically acclaimed authors of his generation finally scribes DC's flagship title in Justice League Vol. 1! Collects Justice League #1-6.

It's been nearly half a year since my last post, due to both general burnout and my reading very little mainstream DC/Marvel output in recent years. Truth to tell, there were many years there where I kept buying Martian Manhunter and Wonder Woman product out of devotion to the characters and blogs without ever bothering to read them. They're still sitting in boxes. For this reason, I can't tell you a) a first person perspective on how the New 52 Martian Manhunter series ended; b) where he's turned up in the year or two since, or c) what he's been up to since his return in the most recent issue of Dark Nights: Metal. Well, okay, he rescued Green Lantern Hal Jordan and Mr. Terrific from imprisonment, they all fought Starro off-panel, and then they got ambushed by those parallel universe lowercase "b" bizarro Batman/Justice Leaguer mash-ups. That story is about to spin-off into an event mini-series called Justice League: No Justice where everybody including J'Onn J'Onzz gets a sucky group-themed new costume and a bunch of relaunches get set up.

Speaking of which, here's the sorta-not-really "leaked" solicitation for a collection of the 2018 relaunch of Justice League. They're folding all the current JLA series back into one, putting on notable talent, and giving us virtually all of the actual League founders on the same team again. Only Hal Jordan is excluded, but the Green Lantern Corps is still represented by John Stewart, who is the superior character anyway. Even the Black Canary of the '10s, Cyborg, is sticking around. But most importantly, the Manhunter from Mars is finally on the core team again for the first time since Infinite Crisis twelve years ago. Again, this blog is now a decade old, and that has never been the case across its entire existence. And they're keeping the New 52 redesign I really like, even if you guys all seem to have more mixed feelings about it.

Is this enough to get me to buy monthly floppies again? I've been doing that for a while, but they're of the more economical Alterna Comics variety, not this $4 nonsense. Christopher Priest taking over was a much greater temptation, if only for the new adventures of Glenn Gammeron, but we all knew the minute they put a black man in charge of the book that the countdown clock was ticking on that run. Barring some sort of J'Onnaissance, I won't even be picking up the trades. I'm just happy to see the Alien Atlas afforded some respect and acknowledgement again, plus I didn't want to have a reason to hold resentment towards Victor Stone.

Podcast: Martian Manhunter #6 (2016)

Episode #21

Look for us on iTunes, ShoutEngine or directly download an art-tagged MP3 from the Internet Archive

Frank summarizes and critiques the sixth issue of the "DC You" Martian Manhunter series by Rob Williams and Eddy Barrows, plus we catch up on a backlog of mail.





We enjoy dialogue on the red planet, so here are our non-telepathic contact options:

• Tweet host Diabolu Frank directly, or probe @rolledspine as a group.
• Email Diabolu
• If the main Idol-Head of Diabolu blog isn't your thing, try the umbrella Rolled Spine Podcasts.

Podcast: Martian Manhunter's 60th Anniversary Special Part Two (1993-2016)

Episode #20

Martian Manhunter's 60th Anniversary Special:
A Celebration of the Alien Atlas, Concluded

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Look for us on iTunes, ShoutEngine or just Download MP3

New York Times Program Synopsis:
A special which pays tribute to The Manhunter from Mars, the least popular co-founder of the Justice League of America and one of the greatest hanger-on associates to pop culture heroes of all time. The special interweaves memorable moments from J'onn J'onzz's television series, cartoons and comics highlighting his super powers, secret identity, acts of heroism, and personal life. Also included are comically inept text-to-audio vignettes featuring unrecorded guest stars discussing the best super-hero ever of Middletown, U.S.A.

• 00:01:38 Prelude: My Name is J'Onn J'Onzz
• 00:06:50 Reevaluating the Martian Manhunter with Grant Morrison
• 00:09:54 Justice League Task Force with Peter David
• 00:16:41 JLA with Grant Morrison, Howard Porter & Kevin Smith
• 00:30:20 Martian Manhunter solo series with John Ostrander
• 00:36:28 Elseworlds with Howard Chaykin, Darwyn Cooke & Mark Waid
• 00:47:47 Martian Marvel Media with Carlo Barberi, J. M. DeMatteis, Carl Lumbly, Phil Morris, Bruce Timm & Stan Berkowitz
• 01:02:35 Bold New Directions with A. J. Lieberman, Paul Cornell, & Matt Kindt
• 01:14:39 Commercial Interruption featuring rolled spine podcast & The Fire and Water Podcast Network
• 01:18:13 The Friends & Enemies of Martian Manhunter featuring Peter David, Phil Morris, Jim Starlin, David Harewood, Geoff Johns & Mike Carlin
• 01:55:17 Stay Tuned following messages from LanternCast, The Quarter Bin Podcast, Warlord Worlds, Pulp 2 Pixel Podcasts, Comic Reflections, King-Size Comics Giant-Size Fun
• 02:01:10 60th Birthday Party with Rob Williams, Geoff Johns & Mike Carlin
• 02:14:27 Supergirl with David Harewood, Chyler Leigh, Melissa Benoist, Kevin Smith & Andrew Kreisberg
• 02:30:50 Blue Planet for a Green Man from a Red World with Mike McKone, Peter David, J. M. DeMatteis, Howard Porter, David Harewood, Andrew Kreisberg, & Lance Reddick

Audio Source Credits

• Theme music "Blacksheep - alien" by Cyril.G Pereira from the album The Revenge of Glory (2007) with additional music from the album Diabolic (2012)
• Sal Velluto courtesy of Wizard Magazine #22 (1993)
• Christopher Priest courtesy of Digital Priest.com (2000)
• Howard Porter courtesy of Comics Coast To Coast #214 (2000)
• Grant Morrison courtesy of Fat Man on Batman Episode #27: Bat Christ (2013) & Multiversity Panel at SDCC (2015)
• Kevin Smith courtesy of Fat Man on Batman Episode #27: Bat Christ (2013) & Fat Man on Batman 103: Passion of the Kreisberg (2015)
• Kyle Rayner courtesy of Green Lantern #87 (1997)
• Wally West courtesy of Martian Manhunter #8 (1999), JLA #86 (2003), JLA: Scary Monsters #3 (2003) & JLA #92 (2004)
• Eel O'Brien courtesy of JLA #92 (2004) & DC One Million #1 (1998)
• Steve Vance courtesy of OverStreet Fan #21 (1997)
• Robert Greenberger courtesy of Millennium Edition: Detective Comics #225 (2001)
• Darryl Banks courtesy of Comics Continum.com
• John Ostrander courtesy of Dollar Bin Comics Episode 352 (2015)
• Mark Waid courtesy of Fantastic Forum (2013)
• Darwyn Cooke courtesy of Orbital in Conversation Episode 156 (2015), iFanboy - Episode 63 (2008) & ComicVineVideos SDCC (2012)
• Carl Lumbly courtesy of Sci-Fi Talk (2012), GNP Interviews (2015) & The Justice League interviewed at Comic-Con (2015)
• Bruce Timm & Stan Berkowitz courtesy of Warner Bros. Animation
• Phil Morris courtesy of SiDEBAR - COMICS, ART & POP CULTURE: Ep. 71 (2008)
• A. J. Lieberman courtesy of Where Monsters Dwell (2012)
• Paul Cornell courtesy of MTV Geek (2011), CBR TV @ CCI (2011) & Comic Book Road Show 163 (2012)
• Matt Kindt courtesy of Wayne's Comics Podcast #86 (2013) & PREVIEWSworld (2013)
• Geoff Johns & Mike Carlin courtesy of Warner Bros. Animation
• David Harewood courtesy of KSiteTV (2015), Whedonopolis Videos (2015), CBS.com (2015), Access Hollywood (2015)
• Jim Starlin courtesy of SiDEBAR (2008), Victor Rodgers (2014) and The Gorgeous Geeks (2010)
• Rob Williams courtesy of Word Balloon
• Supergirl Cast & Crew courtesy of CBS.com Supergirl Pilot (Behind the Scenes) (2015), Meet The Supergirl Cast (2015) & Stars Go Inside The Dept. of Extra-Normal Operations (2015)
• Andrew Kreisberg courtesy of Fat Man on Batman 103 & KSiteTV
• Chyler Leigh courtesy of KSiteTV
• Lance Reddick courtesy of IGN Keepin' It Reel Podcast
• Additional audio clips from the recorded programs Home Box Office, M.A.N.T.I.S. (1994), Justice League of America (1997), Justice League [Unlimited] (2001–2006), Smallville (2001–2011), The Batman (2004–2008), Robot Chicken (2005-2015), Justice League Heroes (2006), Justice League Heroes Original Soundtrack (2006), Justice League: The New Frontier (2008), Batman: The Brave and the Bold (2008–2011), Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths (2010), GraphicAudio DC Comics: DC Universe: Last Sons (2010), Young Justice (2010-2012), Justice League: Doom (2012), Injustice: Gods Among Us (2013), Lego Batman: The Movie – DC Super Heroes Unite (2013), Lego DC Comics Super Heroes: Justice League: Attack of the Legion of Doom (2015), Supergirl (2015-2016)

We enjoy dialogue on the red planet, so here are our non-telepathic contact options:

• Tweet host Diabolu Frank directly, or probe @rolledspine as a group.
• Email Diabolu
• If the main Idol-Head of Diabolu blog isn't your thing, try the umbrella Rolled Spine Podcasts.