Monday, September 30, 2024

The Manhunter From Mars #106 (Nov.-Dec. 1969)

Following his clash with the Cosmic Criminals, J'onn J'onzz resumed his search for the Martian Ark. However, to his surprise, J'onzz's spaceship picked up a distress call from his family: mother, father, and brother, all once presumed lost. More puzzling, the signal came from Phobos, a moon of Mars the Manhunter had previously scanned for signs of life. However his family had come to be there, J'onn was set on reuniting with them.

Upon setting down on Phobos, J'onzz was greeted not by his loved ones, but the humanoid sentries of Duke Dorna. The Manhunter's Justice League of America compatriot Wonder Woman had once rescued her love Steve Trevor and Duke Dorna from a coup perpetrated by Ghurkos. Though Duke Dorna wasn't as clearly corrupt, the Plutonian legal system presumed guilt against any accused, and J'onn J'onzz was declared suspect in the immolation of Mars by The Blue Flame. Further, his fate would be determined through trial by combat, as was the Plutonian way, on penalty of death.

The accused was briefly jailed, sharing a cell with his old foe, B'rett, thanks to a safety feature in his Guard Belt that flew him to the moon when Mars perished in flames. Their reunion prompted a history lesson, recalling ancient myths of the Roman Gods having moved out into the solar system to claim worlds as their own, as was the case with Mars. Not content to reign over a planet that bore his name, Mars also sought to destroy any terrestrial gods, such as those worshiped by the green-skinned Desert Dwellers. The Albino Polar People embraced the gospel of Mars, which is why they assumed more humanoid appearances than the greens. Mars set the Martian tribes against one another, for sport and to assert dominance, aided by the lesser deities that served him. Lord Conquest oversaw a particularly ruthless band of Polars, who forced assimilation upon captive Desert Dwellers, from which B'rett's yellow-skinned race arose. Treated as lesser beings by the white-skinned Martians, the yellows came under the sway of Lord Conquest's rival, the Duke of Deception. The Duke so loved his people that he crafted a moon of their own to live upon, and led them to Deimos. Later, following a clash with Mars, Lord Conquest took his most fanatical followers to their own moon, Phobos, from whom the even more humanoid and Roman-influenced people of Duke Dorna were descended. Neither Green Martian nor Yellow Deimosian were welcome among the Phobosians, but only B'rett had the patronage of his personal deity in this foreign land. Not only had he declared that B'rett would survive his trial, but that he would also be free to leave for Earth aboard the soon-to-be deceased J'onzz's space ship. It was Duke Deception who had caused J'onzz to lose the trail of the Martian ark, and cast the illusion of J'onzz's family being stranded on Phobos.

All this caused the Sleuth from Outer Space to beg the question, what does God need with a starship? The Alien Atlas and the Xanthic Bandit competed in a series of Olympic-style challenges, as was the Phobosian way, each claiming an equal number of wins. Finally, the pair had to traverse perilous ground, and one wrong step meant a miles deep drop from atop a lunar plane where they had no special powers to save them. Through treachery, B'rett sent J'onzz falling to his apparent doom, while he succeeded with the aid of his still-active guard belt, giddily anticipating his rocket-powered exit from this satellite. However, Phobos could not sustain life without resources from lost Mars, so Duke Dorna and his favored would be taking the vessel for themselves, and allowing Brett to "live" for however long Phobos would keep him. Not only was B'rett enraged, but so was Duke Deception, himself trapped on Phobos by yet another rival, the Earl of Greed. Deception and B'rett joined forces against Dorna, but then the entire moon careened out of orbit.

The Martian Marvel had a history lesson of his own. Not only hadn't any of these false Roman deities of Earth "given" their followers moons, but there were never any Martian moons to begin with. 50,000 years earlier, the genius scientific survivalist Thas Bakkus had created the two miles-wide satellites during an earlier catastrophe on Mars when the rivers dried up and oxygen disappeared. While Thas Bakkus lay in suspended animation, Martian society evolved to adapt to the atmospheric changes, and in 1955 the Manhunter from Mars was teleported to Earth. Professor Erdel's experiments had also caused Thas Bakkus to awaken from his long slumber, and after studying Earth with his cosmic rays, attempted to conquer it as a replacement for his home world. Just after John Jones had captured “The Man of 1,000 Disguises”, Thas Bakkus caused all the humans on Earth to become his type of unevolved Martian, and obey his will. J'onzz was unaffected, but Thas Bakkus' having arrived near Earth aboard the Deimos satellite was causing gravitational calamity to the planet. While the Alien Atlas investigated Deimos and set it on a return course for Martian orbit, the human Jim Croft had thwarted Thas Bakkus himself. The Sleuth had recognized Thas Bakkus' handiwork on Phobos, and had programmed the satellite to carry its citizens to orbit a world that could sustain them. In the confusion, the Manhunter from Mars reclaimed his space ship, and made off, leaving B'rett and Duke Deception to drift through space, with only the guard belt between them...

Wednesday, September 25, 2024

2014-2023 Martian Manhunter Foes Convention Sketch Jam

As with the 2014 Martian Manhunter Villains Comicpalooza Jam, this was a set of pieces from a variety of artists mixing head shots with busts with figures in a way that kind of gets away from my preference of the subjects seeming to inhabit the same space, and which I sat on without posting for a decade. The big difference is that this one wasn't completed in 2014, but just last year, so I have a better excuse. Also, my scanner bed at home isn't quite 11x17", so to get more/all of the image up, I had to go digging for my FedEx Office printed copy. Given the chaotic nature of the piece, I think it comes together in the end, thanks especially to the artists who put in extra effort to provide bridging and filling elements. I'd love to say that this was the last jam in need of completion, but that would be a lie, so the saga continues until at least 2025. But I do have several more jams done to post over the next year, including one that I haven't even teased yet for the 70th anniversary...

2014-2023 Martian Manhunter Foes Convention Sketch Jam

Monday, September 23, 2024

2023 S'vor Fan Expo New Orleans convention sketch by Ian Chase Nichols


 One trick that's helping me as my aging mind fails is to take pictures with my phone of commissions at a given con, so that I can later recall more details of the when/where/who. I wanted to get commissions for celebrities appearing at that year's Texas Frightmare Weekend, plus this looked like a last convention run with one of my best friends before he was going to have to settle down. NOLA seemed like a reasonable drive from Houston, so we loaded up the car, rented a shotgun shack, and headed out for the weekend. You typically have to adjust your expectations for a show taking place right after the holidays, but there was top quality talent at there. I seriously considered laying down the $3K asking price for another Arthur Adams, and would have if they'd taken the cash at the show, but I hate dealing with online negotiations, indefinite waiting times, shipping concerns, et cetera... 

 I wasn't as familiar with Ian Chase Nichols, who's done work on IDW TMNT, Dynamite Red Sonja, and seems to pal around with The Tick's Ben Edlund. I liked what I saw at the show though, and was very happy with a Dawn of the Dead Charlie Peters piece he did for me. We had the time and money for another go (because Art didn't take it,) so he was kind enough to help finish another jam piece. He chose Jupiter's least favorite son, S'vor, an appropriate name for the porcine foe. I'd never gotten anything done with S'vor, and there was a decent anount of space yet, so Nichols did me a solid by filling it out. The Jovian looks to have gotten on Ozempic since we last saw him in the '60s, and he cuts a man figure. A love the energy radiating from our boy!

Ian Chase Nichols

Tuesday, September 17, 2024

The Conjurer convention head sketch inked by Kevin Conrad

This is another piece long lost in the shuffle. Although Antoine Mayes's pencil sketches for Porto augmented Herbie Rivera's original contribution with thoughts of his various assumed identities, I didn't love having a single character in a jam solely rendered in graphite. In truth, I have to fight myself not to get most pencil sketches inked, I love that solid comic book line so much. I enjoyed Kevin Conrad's inks on McFarlane Spawn comics, so he seemed like a good fit for the Image-style work of Shane Davis. That said, the when and where is fuzzy. It had to be after 2016, because I just employed ugly high contrast to use Davis' art for Who's Who in Martian Manhunter, and I got enough pictures at this same show to not recall having the inks done, so I lean toward HeroesCon 2017? All I know is that it took me way too long to finish this jam, but you should finally see everyone's combined efforts by month's end...

Monday, September 16, 2024

Mars & the Duke of Deception

In the Golden Age, the Roman God Mars ruled from the planet bearing his namesake, where he gathered the souls of dead men to serve as eternal slaves to his kingdom. Under Mars were three commanders, Lord Conquest, the Earl of Greed, and the Duke of Deception (along with General Destruction and Lya.) Mars and his lieutenants often deployed forces from the planet Mars against their sworn enemies, the Amazons, and their greatest champion, Wonder Woman. Initially, these "Martians" appeared to be Caucasian humans, perhaps related to those enslaved souls, but later, native Martians were clearly deployed. 

At one point, Duke Deception overthrew Mars to rule their planet, and later commanded a fiefdom over Yellow Martians, whose form he assumed to lead them in a combined invasion force alongside armies from Saturn and Jupiter. This was after Deception had gathered representatives from planets throughout the Solar System in a bid to join together to invade Earth, but they were put off when Princess Diana made an impressive demonstration of potential resistance in "The Olympics of Terror." Later still, after an unexplained separation from his prior army (which may have involved the machinations of Morpheus,) the Imperator of Illusions assumed a green-skinned form, and was surprised to make the acquaintance of actual Green Martians. For a sprawling arena of natives, the Master of Matter tasked Wonder Woman in the Martian Olympics of the Doomed, but the Amazing Amazon bested him in the crooked competition. In revenge, the Green Martians destroyed the Earth, but with the help of a Jovian, Princess Diana traveled back through to prevent the destruction before it began.

Mars himself pitted against Wonder Woman the Crimson Centipede, a powerful green-skinned being, and a Martian creation bearing roughly sixteen arms and legs. Meanwhile, the Duke of Deception disfigured Wonder Girl, and tried to use her as bait for the Wonder Family to be cut down by a Martian fleet, but was thwarted. After a final invasion attempt on Paradise Island with Martian saucers disguised as an Amazonian Swan Fleet, the Duke of Deception was commanded by the Lasso of Truth to return to the Red Planet, from which the Martian incarnation of the Imperator of Illusions never returned. This final return took place before the seeming destruction of Mars in the inferno of The Blue Flame.

Friday, September 13, 2024

2024 Comic Art Live “Ziggy Manhunter” Mystery Sketch by Nir Levie

Click To Enlarge


For the mystery sketch May 2024, I chose Ziggy Stardust, what I received was this gorgeous amalgamation of Ziggy Stardust and Martian Manhunter. It’s crazy, unique and fun as hell! That’s what I love about the mystery sketches, you don’t really know what you are gonna get. Nir Levie put his own wild spin on it, and it works fantastically. David Bowie would have killed for abs like these.
Sorry I missed yesterday. I went to a concert with the Rolled Spine Podcasts crew, and also was inspired to put a little more work into something that I'd intended to hack out before the weekend.

Wednesday, September 11, 2024

1986 FPC DC Comics Calendar Poster

Fellow children of the '80s likely longed for this swell looking calendar, featured in ads across various DC titles. It looked like a normal calendar, with 12 rectangular images of swell characters by top talents, incorporating the monthly calendar. There was a couple of cheats, in that the George Pérez New Teen Titans image was "zoomed in," obscuring six other partially visible sections, and obliterating a second. Further, all of those other images were barely more than postage stamps, and all of them were in black and white. It was a tantalizing tease though, including a Joe Kubert Sgt. Rock & Easy Company, a Gil Kane Sword of the Atom (featuring Princess Laethwen,) Keith Giffen Christmas with Ambush Bug & Cheeks, plus a very licensing on-model Superman (Ross Andru?)

It was produced by FPC, or The Federal Publishing Co. Pty. Ltd., who distributed black & white DC Comics reprints in the Down Under. In fact, the ad running, in the original U.S. comics, added the unusual shipping penalty of $1.50 extra outside Australia-- which is, y'know, all of us buying the original North American editions. Like, almost everybody on Earth is somewhere besides Ozzieland, which has less than 27M population, only 0.33% of the global population. I live in the state of Texas, with nearly 31M, and that's only one (admittedly populous) of 50 United States, and these things went to Canada, too (40M.) At $6.50 in 1985 dollars, that's $19.00 today, including shipping, which actually isn't that bad when I consider it. But it's pretty hefty for something expected to be thrown out on a year, which might be why I've never seen one in the wild. But also, it's a one-sheet poster, not a flip calendar, with the Marshall Rogers Batman & Robin crowding into four of the other images (molesting a small portion of the previously unobscured Titans portion.) Other characters revealed in the final release are Blue Devil & Amethyst by Paris Cullins, and... wait... that's it? A twelve month calendar with only eight images, because several months do double duty, and one triple. What a rip-off.

The image that I haven't discussed yet is maybe my favorite, though not without serious competition. Green Lantern John Stewart, Firestorm, Hawkman, Wonder Woman, and Martian Manhunter, drawn by Luke McDonnell and inked by Jerry Ordway! Wooo-we! That is quite the collection of choices cuts for ol' Frank-- enough for me to let my Texas (or at least my Slim Pikins) out just now. I really wish this art existed outside a sloppy, mangled sheet of paper. And it kind of does, as the original art is nominally available for trade or purchase. I'd miss that lovely Greg Theakston painted color, though I could overlook it wth those characters and that linework. But see, the seller doesn't actually post prices, and the listing is so old that for all I know it's part of the dead internet. I have enough trouble getting art and quotes from people face to face with me at conventions. I can't manifest the energy for "email me bro," so one of you can pursue it with my full blessing. I reserve the right to envy, however.

Tuesday, September 10, 2024

2016 Armek Commission by Rick Hoberg

I returned to comic conventions after something like a decade and started collecting commissions in 2010. I'd been daily blogging on J'Onn J'Onzz for going on three years at that point, and it seemed like a great way to visually realize the potential I saw in the non-franchise. I kept up that pace until a month after the seventh anniversary in 2014, the same year I began all those jams that took forever to finish (where applicable) and still await posting. Even though I'd pulled way back, I kept up with (on average) weekly posting for another couple years, but only bothered with seven total posts in 2017. My priorities shifted to podcasting sure, but also, I was just kind of sick of putting so much time and money into something that had made me that guy who shoehorned Martian Manhunter into conversations where he (or I) weren't wanted. I've kept my Alien Atlas art to a minimum in the COVID era, but old habits die hard, and I was still gathering a substantial body of material through at least 2017. So much of it, over such an expanse of time, that the process started to fall apart for me.

For instance, I approached Rick Hoberg at a convention. I'm pretty sure that it was in Houston, but I don't think it was Comicpalooza. Both Space City Comic Con and Amazing were still operating in town in 2016, the date on the finished piece, but it was a take-home that ultimately got to me later. For all I know, we might have first talked about it the previous year. I'd been getting 1950s-1980s characters done in modern styles, so I thought it would be fun have a comparatively recent (1996?!?) character created in the post-Image school done by a more classical Bronze Age veteran. There was an added layer of irony, because Hoberg is likely best known for his work on DC's Golden Age heroes in All-Star Squadron, but I mostly associated him with the Ultraverse's Image-adjacent team book The Strangers. I dug his clean line, and I think I gave him a choice of characters (I usually do,) with him picking the Hyperclan's robot member, Armek.

It turned out great, and I think you can tell that he had fun working on something outside what was expected from him. This poor guy probably never wants to draw another archer or old-timey mystery man again. His Armek reminds me of Geoff Senior's Death's Head, with all the armor layers and battle damage. There's another blog I could have threatened. Anyway, the same year as the art arrived, I was working on the first volume of Who's Who in Martian Manhunter, making a bunch of mistakes with it while chasing a stupid self-imposed deadline. That project was a ton of work, but I had every intention of getting back to it, and "saved" Armek for the first page of Vol II. Eight years later, I wouldn't hold your breath over that happening. So here I am, poorly serving Hoberg's efforts by sitting on them and forgetting most of the finer points behind the piece's creation. John Cassaday, twenty years Hoberg's junior, died today, and I'm still playing around with time like it's infinite. Sorry, Rick. The piece came out awesome. Thank you!

Monday, September 9, 2024

The Fake Manhunter from Mars Comic Series & Other Entertaining Fabrications

As an advocate for the Alien Atlas, I sometimes like to just imagine a world where the character could have supported his own ongoing solo series for decades, rather than largely disappearing from comics in the late 1960s, and mostly subsisting since by joining team books for the rest of his career. I piece together preexisting art to create "covers" for nonexistent books that I then "summarize..."

  1. The All-Stars #120 (August-September, 1961)
  2. The Boy All-Stars #1 (April, 1963)
  3. John Jones: Manhunter From Mars #100 (Sept.-Oct. 1968)
  4. The Manhunter From Mars #105 (Sept.-Oct. 1969)
  5. Manhunter from Mars #125 (February 1973)
  6. The Martian Manhunter #150 (Winter 1976)
  7. Manhunter from Mars #175 (February, 1979)
  8. Limited Collectors' Edition #C-61 ([March] 1979)
  9. Manhunter from Mars #199 (February 1981)
  10. Manhunter from Mars #200 (March 1981)
  11. Manhunter from Mars #201 (April 1981)
  12. Manhunter from Mars Annual #1 (1984) Part 1, Part 2
  13. Manhunter from Mars #250 (May 1985)
  14. Manhunter from Mars Annual #2 (1985)
  15. The Best of DC #74 (July, 1986)
  16. Manhunter from Mars #300 (July, 1989)
  17. The Manhunter from Mars Annual #7 (1990)
  18. Manhunter from Mars #350 (September, 1993)
  19. Manhunter from Mars Annual #12 (1995)
  20. The Manhunter from Mars Annual #14 (1997)
  21. Manhunter from Mars #400 (November, 1997)
  22. Surf and Turf #4 (9/08)
  23. 2012 Martian Manhunter Super Spectacular #2 Mock-Up
  24. 2012 New 52 Wave 3 Martian Manhunter #1!
  25. 2013 New 52 Villain’s Month: Malefic #1!

I've also goofed off in other ways, like constructing the The Manhunter from Mars Filmation-style limited animation intro/theme, or coming up with a solicitation catalog for the years 1999 and 2021 featuring more alternate universe Sleuth from Outer Space projects...

Friday, September 6, 2024

2015 Super-Team Family: The Lost Issues #1289: Martian Manhunter and The Mighty Thor

Martian Manhunter and Thor in "Battle for the Bifrost!"
To show how long I've been absentee/coasting, it's been nearly a decade since I shamelessly recycled one of Ross' blogging efforts just to make my quota on a daily. Which means I had plenty to choose from, but this was a favorite.

Thursday, September 5, 2024

2016 Cherry Capital Comic Con Martian Manhunter Commission by Ryan Lee

File under "cleaning out the files." I downloaded this eight years ago, I know not where, and went no further until now. Pretty nifty though, right? C4 is held in Acme, MI, and is billed as "Northern Michigan’s largest comic book and pop entertainment expo." I've never been in that direction, but someday...

Ryan Lee Art Studio

Wednesday, September 4, 2024

2024 Martian Manhunter Convention Sketch by Tom Mandrake

Click To Enlarge


I had something else in mind for tonight, but my files have gotten to be such a byzantine sprawl of external drives into which past computers have been collapsed that I can't find some required background. Also, I have a podcast and a long form blog supporting a podcast to get out tonight. So heere's a recent CAF post by prolific art patron Off(icer) White from the most prodigeous J'Onn J'Onzz artist in modern times. I'll do better tomorrow.

Tuesday, September 3, 2024

2014 Martian Manhunter Villains Comicpalooza Jam

Sometimes, common sense is a casualty of an erratic publishing schedule. For instance, I'm going through my commission books to see which pieces of art that I've posted, and whether the posts needed corrections for Photobucket failings or poor quality color scans. I picked up a large bed scanner over the past year, so I can now directly digitize 11x17" pieces, instead of resized photocopies at FedEx Office. I've made a bunch of revisions to old posts, most of which I promptly skeeted on BlueSky, since I can rarely be bothered top post anything there (I log into my personal Twitter account only a few times a year more than my Facebook, nowadays.) Besides finally getting stragglers posted (I haven't gotten many Martian Manhunter-related pieces this decade,) I wanted to make sure any dangling jam pieces were finally addressed, whether that meant new art to complete, or just posting stuff that's been in the works for a decade. I have to say, jams really killed my momentum on commissions for my blogs, as all those edits were from 2011-2013, and then the posts stall out. Anyway, given that I'm literally waiting for one of those commissions that you've never seen on here but is now completed to finally arrive in the mail, I hope I'm forgiven for the many, many hold-ups I hope to resolve by the end of 2025. For all that effort-- the one commission that I actually got done at a single show over ten years back? The one you've maybe seen every individual contribution from? Never posted the completed piece, as best as I can tell. So taste the low hanging fruit as I toil in the background on more involved stuff...

2014 Martian Manhunter Villains Comicpalooza Jam

Sunday, September 1, 2024

Countdown to 70

There's a symmetry in my starting this blog seventeen years ago on the first of September, which going forward would prove to be the month that I could expect the least engagement from an audience, despite often putting the most work into the "anniversary." The WebTV site goes back nearly another decade, when I first got passionate about the Manhunter from Mars. With too much time and absolutely no money, why not build a fan page on the digital frontier? And the blog came about because I was copying The Aquaman Shrine, with the intent of repurposing the fan page content that was lost when I stopped my WebTV subscription. But see, The Aquman Shrine began after DC had killed off its featured character, and over the course of the Shrine's run (and its spin-off/legacy podcast,) the King of the Seven Seas reached dizzying new heights from there, starring in a billion dollar motion picture.

They killed my character after I started the blog, and the Alien Atlas has mostly been subjected to a series of disheartening lows and a shrinking cultural footprint since his biggest moments, each coming before I had any skin in this game. The glory days of the JLA comics and launch of his only ongoing solo series inspired and preceded my overt fandom, and then his being featured on the Cartoon Network's Justice League happened between WebTV and Blogspot. If anything, the declining interest in the blog was followed by a successful supporting run on CBS/CW's Supergirl and a sort of appearance in Zack Snyder's Justice League (but not on an actual movie screen.)

All the spotlights and commissions and such that I wrote or crafted or paid for came of nothing in expanding interest in the Sleuth from Outer Space and his sphere. All my time in comics, as a retailer and as a public advocate, have helped forge a few friendships and filled some longboxes, but accomplished little else. If anything, I feel like I've been a bit of an albatross, never embracing the various creative visions for the character over the past thirty years. Bit of a back biter really, and maybe the Martian Marvel would be better off without me.

Anyway, I let other things eat up most of my time in August, but I'll step up a bit this September and next, plus points in between, writing the words of a sermon that no one will hear. I have a decade-long backlog of art pieces that I never posted, and most of the last few years' blogging has been driven by keeping the seat slightly warm ahead of getting all that out for the 70th anniversary in 2025. Having accomplished that minor feat, and finally acknowledging those artists' efforts, I can finally take or leave this thing as I please without a guilty conscience.

I put in so much time and effort, seemingly to no benefit to anyone, and I'm just damned tired of trying to prop up a piece of corporate intellectual property that I glommed onto in 1996 after a dozen year flirtation, starting around "War of the Worlds 1984" and The Super Powers Collection. J'Onn J'Onzz will always be my favorite Martian, and I want to wish him a happy birthday, but then it'll probably be time to wander elsewhere in this big ol' galaxy.