Tuesday, September 22, 2026

2006 Upper Deck DC Infinite Crisis VS System CCG Card DCR-145: 3...2...1...

Illustration by Gus Vazquez.

Appropriately enough, I'm running late and short on time...
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Monday, September 21, 2026

2005 Upper Deck Justice League of America VS. System CCG Card DJL-032: Reform the League

Illustration by Ariel Olivetti.

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.
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Sunday, September 20, 2026

2007 Upper Deck DC World's Finest VS System CCG Card DWF-101: Technocrat - Geoffrey Barron

Illustration by Cat Staggs

Not gonna lie-- I cursed out loud at the sight of this card. I was not expecting to have to look closer at a card of a forgotten '90s Outsiders member to find a Martian Manhunter cameo next to Green Lantern Hal Jordan. At least it's a nice looking piece or art-- better than the subject deserves, surely.
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Saturday, September 19, 2026

2007 Upper Deck DC World's Finest VS System CCG Card DWF-157: Pick a Card

Illustration by Ed Benes

As I progress through an inventory of the VS. System gaming cards for my own purposes, I'm finding that the 2007 sets are the biggest pains in the butt to get a good look at, and World's Finest is the most tedious set. Not the most work though, since so many of the cards are immediately ruled useless and uninteresting to me. The artist selection is fine, and I have no basis to judge the gaming dynamics. My issue is that the vast majority of the cards are Batman and/or Superman and/or their familiar extended casts going through the motions. Of course, that's expected of any DC Universe project, but also, it's the default mode of the DC VS. System from the very first Gothamcentric set on to the second Metropolitan set and so forth. As with Overpower before it, DC VS. entered a gaming space already well established through a breadth of Marvel Universe properties by drilling down deep in Batman and Superman lore across hundreds of cards. Unlike Overpower, VS. System then went back for yet another combination Batman/Superman set to absolutely scrape the bottom of the barrel. I mean, Lex Luthor and The Joker are among the most famous super-villains around, but do I need that "literally" illustrated across combined dozens of gaming cards? Part of the reason why, despite recent Absolute-fueled consistent dominance of monthly comics sales charts, DC has otherwise remained in Marvel's shadow for my entire (and increasingly advanced) lifetime. Because Marvel will build out an entire cosmic sub-universe that keeps incredibly negligible characters like Nova marketable to audiences, but DC will always retreat to their half-dozen or so core franchise, with Batman and Superman making up about a third each, and everything else squeezed into that final third (mostly Green Lantern, Flash, and the Justice League brand.)

All this is to say, here's a friggin' Joker card where he's seemingly pitted against the JLA, as represented by card-in-a-card representations of the DC Trinity and the League itself, as represented through the Manhunter from Mars. I'd be more pleased if I didn't figure it was just a way to avoid slighting either the Flash or Green Lantern fandoms by only featuring one of them in the available space (or pitting them against the fans of Aquaman, Green Arrow, and so on.) I've been doing this blog for 19 years, and general Sleuth-stanning for longer, and there's still Martian Manhunter fandom to speak of. If we were in U.S. politics, we wouldn't even be the Green Party, as thematically appropriate as that might be (though clearly less so than the GL Corps.) We're more like that one guy in New York whose whole platform is "The Rent Is Too Damn High!" Anyway, it remains to be seen if I find any more cards in this set relevant to Martian interests, and whether I can find a scan that's bigger the 220px if I do.
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Friday, September 18, 2026

2007 Upper Deck DC Comics Legends VS System CCG Card DCL-052: Intangible

Art by Dustin Nguyen

Here's another one of those tough-to-find DC Comics Legends card scans. It's a shame too, because they afforded much more image space with this set. It's also a good thing, because I had to blow this sucker up from 220px, so a tiny picture would have made it that much worse.

Particularly in my message board/versus board days, I heard cries of "overpowered" a lot, and I gave plenty of consideration to paring down the Manhunter's power set to make him more palatable. But what powers to cut? I had some ideas, but I never wanted to give up intangibility. It's one of if not the most strikingly dissimilar powers to Superman, who also gets called "OP" plenty, so it's not easy to find uncommon ground from Kryptonian to Martian. Typically, it's supernatural characters who become immaterial, like ghosts and mythical deities. Much less associated with aliens, which helps distinguish J'Onn J'Onzz from every other prominent character. That said, the Barry Allen Flash vibrated through objects often, so it wasn't even unprecedented among the founding five members of the Justice League of America. I'd argue that Kitty Pryde's "phasing" and the Vision's density control are more broadly known among fandom than Manhunter's own brand. Christopher Priest really leaned hard into Manhunter's own density control if his stint on Justice League Task Force in the '90s. I was never comfortable with that, just like I don't care for Vision being assigned proper flight after years of more accurately "floating" in a manner similar to zero gravity in outer space. You know I loathe homogenization of characters and universes in comics, so that everyone has a potential duplicate of everything in any given story. But also, I really like intangibility, and like Hal Jordan, I thought I liked the Vision until I got to know his stories better.

Ultimately, I'm down with "OP." Why should super-heroes be made smaller to suit the lack of imagination in creators and fans? Craft stories big enough to take advantage of those abilities, instead.
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Thursday, September 17, 2026

2005 Upper Deck Justice League of America VS System CCG Card DJL-154: World's Greatest Heroes - Team-Up

Illustration by Joe Phillips.

The Legends period was such an important time for J'Onn J'Onzz. I was not very interested in DC Comics Pre-Crisis, and that only started to change when Marvel's top artist took over Superman. I had some exposure to George Perez, and in fact New Teen Titans was one of the few DC titles I occasionally sampled, but John Byrne was a staple. Not only had I loved his X-Men work, but I was always up to toss through one of his (very DCish) Fantastic Four issues, and I bought reprints of his Spider-Man work in Marvel Tales (though I barely gave Alpha Flight a Titans-level sniff.) Where I only bought a single issue of Who's Who, I got a late start on the first volume of Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe, I continued to buy it routinely in the second, "Deluxe Edition." Byrne art was on most covers and a great many entries. He wasn't just Marvel to me-- he was "comics," and with Legends he was at DC Comics. I did buy an issue of Perez's Crisis on Infinite Earths, and I would soon enough sample his Wonder Woman, but I got there through the door Byrne was holding open.

I didn't actually buy a single issue of Legends new, as I had ten consecutive issues of Secret Wars, but I did catch a bunch of tie-ins in first run or through recent-ish three packs. As with Secret Wars, I could feel the events in Legends reverberate through other titles. It felt fresh, and important, even without the context that the public being turned against their super-heroes by a demagogue was echoing the anti-comics crusade of the 1950s. But I could feel that tension, from creators who lived through it, reflecting on it through their work. I finally got to read some of the core mini-series through a friend's copies in 1988, by which point I'd graduated from only knowing the Alien Atlas through the Super Powers Collection into proper monthly comics. But seeing that Post-Crisis DC coming together here, with the Manhunter from Mars near the fore, it felt like a coronation. Suddenly, DC Comics mattered to me, and more shockingly, J'Onn J'Onzz finally meant something to DC Comics.

That having been said, I don't remember Captain Atom being involved with Legends at all. DC largely recreated that character after purchasing him from Charlton Comics, and getting in somewhat on the ground floor with a character I had only the slightest prior awareness of was, at the time, even more intriguing to me than some Jolly Green Giant in a cape. I bought a number of issues of Captain Atom's solo titles in the period before I reached Legends. Seeing the Charlton Action Heroes fully and effectively integrated into the New(er) DC was exciting, and I've long associated J'Onn J'Onzz with their "welcome wagon." It reminds me of how I waxed rhapsodic over that same possibility being afforded the Wildstorm integration early into the New 52. I loved seeing the Sleuth from Outer Space making a new welcome wagon out of Stormwatch. So less than a year in, he quit that team and mindwiped everyone to never remember that he'd ever been a member. A bitter disappointment, but an excellent metaphor for the New 52 and that abortive Wildstorm integration. What integration? What Wildstorm? Who are you people?!?
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Wednesday, September 16, 2026

2004 Upper Deck VS. System Superman: Man of Steel CCG Card DSM-095: Toy Soldiers

Illustration: Adam Archer
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Tuesday, September 15, 2026

2007 Upper Deck VS System DC Legends CCG Card DCL-118: Felix Faust - Soulless Mystic

Illustration by Wellington Alves
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Monday, September 14, 2026

Commissionpalooza I



With the blog's 20th anniversary next year, I'd really like to take care of old business, like unposted commissioned art that I've sometimes been sitting on for over a decade. I've got a lot of pieces lying around, and it can be hard to keep track of what I've got online already, and in what state. This is especially true of the section where I'm supposed to put artwork, Pictures of Martian Manhunter, having a note of last update as 6/4/11. I only started collecting commissions in 2010, and virtually none were in that mix. So I figured that I should create a repository post to help me sort it all out, and while I was at it, I figured I might as well show off some of my non-Alien Atlas art for what has always been my primary blogging audience. I have too much material for a single post, and it was too much work to not milk for more days. Also, if you think I've been holding back on you in the Sleuth from Outer Space department, I literally have dozens of pieces devoted to other interests that hardly anyone has seen. Since there are overlapping artists, I'd like to hold back those galleries until I can offer something more comprehensive. I also cut out the one-off artists sorted together by year at 2013, because I started all those jam projects in 2014, and those are still being reckoned with...

Karl Altstaetter Chris Beaver Damon Bowie Pat Broderick 2010 Ian Chase Nichols Brian Denham Derec Donovan 2011 Brad Garneau Brad Green Paul Gulacy & Walden Wong Kiriska Andy Kuhn 2012 Sam Lotfi Josh C Lyman Kevin Maguire & Tony Kordos Antoine Mayes Lane Montoya Marat Mychaels 2013 Mark Nasso Adrian Nelson Tommy Duy Nguyen Vo Nguyen Eddie Nuñez Brent Peeples George Pérez Nick Pitarra
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Sunday, September 13, 2026

2010 "DC Universe Vol.1: JLA" Martian Manhunter by alexmax

Click To Enlarge


Just for fun, here's me taking a stab at the DC superheroes in an animated type style. Inspired by the Bruce Timm cartoons and movies, but at the same time trying not to copy them. I had so much fun doing this that I'd like to try doing some other "sets" of characters (hence why I called it Vol. 1!), and put my own spin on some of them.

Of course I had to begin with the JLA, and my favorite JLA lineup is the one from the relaunch in the mid 90's. It had the best contrast of personalities with seasoned veterans, younger heroes, reluctant members, etc.

Here is what I was thinking as I did each design...

Superman: My favorite. More athletic than hulking (so the mild-mannered reporter persona can be believable). The "S Shield" should be as big as possible.

Green Lantern: Kyle Rayner, my second favorite comic character. A cross between his first two looks, kind of like what he has in the comics these days, except I don't like the white gloves and the logo on black. Slimmer, and younger, than any other hero.

Batman: Hard to make Batman look unique. Picked my favorite look for him.

Wonder Woman: Adam Hughes boots, Byrne's bracelets, current belt, big tiara.

The Flash: Wally West. Uncovered eyes to distance him from the JLU design. On the thin side like Kyle, but with muscled legs.

Aquaman: late 90's version. A guy living in the depths of the sea should be huge to withstand that kind of pressure. Monster calves to swim.

Martian Manhunter: More "squared" than the JLU version.
Another one that's been in my drafts folder since 2011, probably because I was going to use the art segments for the various heroes to crossover between my blogs. Despite the watermark, I'd rather just get this posted and move on.
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Saturday, September 12, 2026

2005 Upper Deck Justice League of America VS System CCG Card DJL-055: Maxwell Lord - Financier

Illustration by Cully Hamner.

This is just a cameo appearance by J'Onn, so I thought twice about featuring it, but hey-- I got dates to fill. Max was still a good(ish) guy around 2005, but this was the same year as Countdown to Infinite Crisis, so the heel may already have been turning. My main cause for pause to reconsider this was that it seems like Cully Hamner may have drawn influence from the likeness of another wealthy New York elite that turned into a global super-villain, and that semblance is more repugnant to me than a bullet to Ted Kord's brain.
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Friday, September 11, 2026

2007 Upper Deck DC Comics Legends VS System CCG Card DCL-054 : Mightiest Heroes

Art by Kalman Andrasofszky.

Another certified rare card from this set that I can't buy or find a normal sized scan for. The artist is probably best known for spearheading the modern era relaunch of Captain Canuck.
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Thursday, September 10, 2026

2005 Upper Deck Justice League of America VS. System CCG Card DJL-180: H'ronmeer's Curse

Art by Joe Bennett.

As of this writing, I still haven't pulled the trigger on buying a single Vs. System card. I actually played Overpower, and I have enough high quality base/chase cards packed out of boxes direct into 9-pocket sleeves to make it worthwhile for me to eventually plug in the holes. Collecting a CCG from scratch with only online resources twenty years after release is probably too big an ask for me. I have no great desire to put together any more Batman/Superman heavy card sets (see, again, Overpower,) and the more diverse sets like Justice League of America go hundreds of cards deep at various levels of availability. There are some really choice artists working on the set, but going back to granddaddy Magic: The Gathering, all these paintings are done dirty by postage stamp presentations in favor of game mechanic text.

All this is to say that I'm just prettying up scans swiped from eBay listings, and despite not being a valuable card, there are no good English language scans of this particular card handy. For presentation purposes, I doctored up an Italian-language card, but figure someone might be curious about a translation. The card is of the "Plot Twist" type, which I believe translates into an Event card in Overpower speak (which I stopped playing well before this card came out long enough ago to drink legally.) In layman's terms, it's a card that's played to change a gaming dynamic.

In this instance, "Ongoing: At the start of your attack step, if you control a non-stunned character, each player stuns a non-stunned character he controls with cost 2 or less." Hey Upper Deck-- your pronouns are out of date. Admittedly, I don't recall a single solitary girl ever playing Overpower in my vicinity. I think I knew a trans-femme in the broader super-hero trading card sphere though, and certainly women played more popular CCGs, even in my day. So, shouting out from Woke.0?

The flavor text quote reads, "For the weaker Martians, the curse is deadly."
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Wednesday, September 9, 2026

Justice League of America's Vibe #1-3 (April-June, 2013)

Martian Manhunter had a cameo in the debut issue of Vibe's solo book as a head shot in a preview of the upcoming Justice League of America. The following issue, the Alien Atlas stood beside Colonel Steve Trevor, Katana, Vibe, Stargirl, and Hawkman in front of the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. for a press conference presided over by President Barack Obama to announce the formation of the J.L.A. A photo of J'Onn also turned up on a corkboard at A.R.G.U.S. in the third issue.

Francisco Ramon was recruited by Agent Dale Gunn of A.R.G.U.S. to serve as the hero Vibe under orders from Director Amanda Waller. Given a costume and the codename "Vibe," Ramon would use his command over vibrational frequencies to detect breaches from other dimensions. He was also secretly expected to be a potential weapon against the Flash, just as the Martian Manhunter was a planned counter against Superman. The J.L.A.'s covert reason for being was to give the United States an option to take on the original Justice League with their own super-heroes, should it prove necessary.

The American League wasn't the only bit of dirty business Amanda Waller was up to, as she also imprisoned super-powered subjects in her underground laboratory dubbed "The Circus." There was already a containment cell that literally had Vibe's name on it if he ever fell out of favor. In her New 52 debut as part of a first issue cameo, captive subject Gypsy looked on from confinement, and wasn't the only such prisoner by a fair margin.

In the following issue, a menacing alien courier roamed the streets of Detroit until he was confronted by Vibe and brought low with the aid of Dale Gunn. It carried a scroll featuring extraterrestrial writing, which was eventually turned over to Waller, who brought it for a visit to the Circus. "...It has your name on it, doesn't it? Written in your language. It's a letter. Someone went to a great deal of trouble getting this to you..." The prisoner asked after the fate of the courier, and explained that the letter was a request from her father to come home. "You seem to prefer a more nomadic existence. That makes you something of a trans-dimensional... Gypsy." Waller wanted the girl to tell her father that she was safe and well cared for, but if he decided to try to take his daughter back, he'd share her "accommodations." Gypsy felt that Waller had no right to keep her, and Amanda agreed, but also noted that some of her superiors would prefer that her holding facility become an abattoir. "I want out! I'll take my chances out there! Please..."

Finally, feedback from a confrontation between Vibe and Kid Flash caused the power dampening generated in some of the Circus' cells to falter, allowing Subject 24 ("Gypsy") access to her abilities. Creating the illusion that she was a guard who had been trapped in her cell, Gypsy lured another guard into freeing her and escaping. The stories were written by Geoff Johns & Andrew Kreisberg & Sterling Gates, with pencil art by Pete Woods & Andres Guinaldo & Fabiano Neves. Yes, that is a lot of names for three issues, isn't it?
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Tuesday, September 8, 2026

2005 Upper Deck Justice League of America VS System CCG Card DJL-109: Power Siphon

Illustration by Keron Grant.

I forgot to mention yesterday that even though my card scans are often squared rectangles, gaming cards almost always have rounded corners like poker cards, because the rigors of gameplay would swiftly wear down pointed corners. The points would poke your hands (as was still the case if you played with plastic sleeves,) and it would create a point of vulnerability for the card to be permanently bent (or "marked,") and the sides could begin to separate from each other. Another thing that I forgot as I started looking into the VS. System is that I have old man brain, and it would wear me down.

I've been a little obsessive over the Vs. System, because I realized while working on the DC Secret Files Podcast that the short form periodical reference books like Who's Who were abandoned in the '90s in favor of trading cards. They returned in comic book form as Secret Files and Origins specials, but those were far from comprehensive in their coverage, so you needed trading cards to supplement them for snapshots of the full scope of the DC Universe in the '90s. But also, getting into the 21st century, the non-sports comic book trading card market was virtually extinct, and almost none of those sets featured original art. It was just reprinted, repurposed material from the comics industry. Also, the Secret Files books themselves were increasingly few and far between in the aughts. But see, collectible card games were still a thing, had a broad scope in service to gaming mechanics, and I finally realized my usual resource Trading Card Database effectively "hid" these cards in a separate gaming catalog. Suddenly, properties that I'd struggled to find resources to cover were at my virtual, digital fingertips. All these Vs. System posts are the fruit of searches for these cards on places like eBay.

The quality and resolution of these images vary wildly, and the availability of images from the later sets are thin. What I really wanted was to get my hands on the actual cards to pull my own scans. However, most eBay listings for individual cards start at a dollar each, plus shipping, and I'm looking at needing hundreds of these things. I don't want to get buried in duplicates of a card game that I'll never play by buying not-inexpensive boxes, where there are even boxes available to buy. So one day, my gal and I hit numerous comics and gaming stores, plus a gaming-specific co-op "convention" open most weekends on the other side of town. This took up much of the day. We came home empty-handed.

For starters, the only actual Vs. System product we found was at Houston's oldest comic book store. They only had Marvel cards, in packs, collecting dust in a plastic case on a back wall counter. The card I'm featuring today can almost book a rental car without any insurance hassles. Why would I even think anyone would have a decades old gaming system in stock? Even though VS. System had way more releases than the Overpower I did collect, and I saw them being sold in more shops, that was also probably during the Bush Administration. Hell, HeroClix is much more recent, and nobody has carried those in nearly a decade. The only hybrid comic/card shops that I know of to still exist are all like that one-- local institutions-- around my advanced age. Only after did it occur to me that I never see sports cards outside of department stores nowadays, or single trading cards outside of booths in antique malls.

I do see gaming cards, but guess what? That's still mostly Magic and Pokemon. Almost nobody has those bulky cardboard boxes, or even the wooden shelving anymore. It's all plastic and glass now, enough to hold active modern card packs and encase high dollar key singles. Common deck building stuff is what you buy the packs for, and then trade with your community, not the shop. I'm sure the prices come from matching online dealers, because who would bother to print a guide in 2026? At gaming specialty stores, Vs. System isn't necessarily even a memory. How many shops have opened and closed since the cooling of J-horror and the rise of K-Pop, itself an institution now, rather than an emerging scene?

At that CCG convention thing, my gal was going booth to booth with a picture of a Vs. System pack on her phone like we were working a missing persons case. We also called some shops on said device (not helped by her initially asking for "Vee's Cards,") and almost nobody even knew what we were talking about. Here, they had sports cards. There was a stray comic booth where I tried to buy a $3.50 Comics Journal, before determining it was actually a $350 wall book because of some early McFarlane art. There was a tiny representation of comic book trading cards in a few binders. There were some of those intricate cardboard boxes from back in the day. They did not contain twenty year old VS. System singles, nor should they have. Why would they? Only an old man who sees that broad expansive of time as a blip, despite my entire relationship with my previously mentioned old lady being contained within than expanse, could delude himself into thinking otherwise. What do I know about modern CCG retailing, or any hobby retailing? I haven't gotten my regular comic fix at an LCS in near on a quarter century.

And so, back to eBay, casting my net far and wide for viable scans. Probably ordering singles to fill those gaps. And torturing y'all with the product of these efforts. An old man boring you with tales of a card game that could attend college that he never even bought himself.
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