Tuesday, August 8, 2023

Brightest Day #7 (Early October, 2010)

Cradling the critically injured M'gann M'orzz, J'Onn J'Onzz urged her to open her mind to him, allowing him to give her strength for survival. Yeah, I don't know how that's supposed to work, either. Anyway, in the Deadman (and Hawk & Dove, I guess) part of the book, the Life Entity had begun showing all the resurrected characters the reason that they had been returned: "save the cheerleader, save the world." Oh wait-- that was Heroes. Actually, everybody got their own cryptic and arbitrary assignments. As it happened, in this exact and fortuitous moment, White Lantern Martian Manhunter received his: "BURN IT. BURN IT DOWN. BURN ALL OF IT." Now if there's one thing no Martian should be in favor of, it's arson. I mean, certainly creating wildfires specifically would be bad, but did they even have forests on Mars? No seriously, I was drawing swipes on notebook paper in middle school science class-- did they though?

Besides setting up a side quest in a tenuous crossover to help relaunch Green Arrow in a solo title, J'Onn's brief switch to a white costume came with the bonus of completely healing Miss Martian. What a convenient resolution to a cliffhanger in the two pages the Manhunter was allotted this fortnight! I'm sure M'gann is instantly relieved of any psychological trauma from nearly being murdered because a serial killer didn't want any conceivable* competition for becoming J'Onn's babymama. Which isn't a disgusting subplot to begin with, right?

* See what I did there? Wink, wink. "The Secret of Life" was by writers Peter J. Tomasi & Geoff Johns, with art by Patrick Gleason & company. The art was pretty phoned in, so I guess Pat used up his monthly allotment of awesome sauce last issue.

2 comments:

Kevin from New Orleans said...

Wearing that white costume J'Onn reminds me of Pulsar Stargrave

Diabolu Frank said...

Agreed. I played around a lot with white in trying to redesign Martian Manhunter's costume, particularly through an integration with the Bloodwynd concept. Ultimately though, the white takes him too far from his detective aspect and too deep into the science-fantasy. Darkness is inherent in noir, where the white of monk's robes negates J'Onn's effectiveness as a protagonist. It's sidelines him into a supporting role for other heroes.