Brightest Day #9 (Early November, 2010)

Despite only taking up about half the page count, more of the story around the Martian Manhunter/Green Arrow was told in the quasi-anthology than in Ollie's full solo comic. J'Onn J'Onzz flew to Star City at the urging of the White Lantern to visit the White Lantern tree in the White Lantern-created forest. Direct contact caused some sort of allergic reaction, with his Martian body swelling out of control, becoming nigh-unintelligible, and involuntarily blasting laser vision with such force that he shot off his own hands. It's played as body horror, but all I could think of was the time Gunfire accidentally exploded his own butt with his New Blood powers.

Elsewhere, the female Green Martian serial killer that still doesn't have a name has spree killed an entire grocery store full of people, stuffing corpses into freezers while pushing a shopping cart while inane sales announcements straight out of Dawn of the Dead play on an automated loop. The bid to be the most horrible horror to ever horror with a horrible horror of a villainess again dips deeply into unintentional parody. It was hard to read the panel where she inspects jars of baby food on account of my eyes rolling.

Green Arrow engaged the hulking green monster laying waste to his forest, while the White Lantern let loose with pages and pages of contradictory statements, recalling the worst excesses of '80s Chris Claremont with any of the intentional affect. At least the '80s X-comics would use the psychic plane to (temporarily) resolve internal/external conflict, where this is just spinning wheels for another fortnight until the writers can figure out there endgame. At least J'Onn's psychic trauma also impacts upon the serial killer, so that their first "confrontation" is a future vision of battle over the physical and emotional fate of the characters and their native Mars. Stifling a yawn. This was actually the first time the killer was made aware that J'Onn had restored a pale semblance of life to their homeworld, and her interlude ends with a statement about the way to a man's heart being his stomach while looking at a large display of Chocos. Maybe the North American comic book market should die after all?

Green Arrow finally used his 6 in Detective skill to determine that the large green shapeshifter who was trying to say Ollie in a moaning drone was in fact his long time Justice League teammate. While J'Onn shifts through several Earth identities, one seemingly to remind readers that the scripter used to edit the '90s Martian Manhunter series, and is therefore my personal millstone, the Emerald Archer finally separates J'Onn from the White Lantern tree. The Manhunter's recent tendency to kill everything flora kicks into overdrive, so that Ollie has to first drag and then help J'Onn run through a swiftly collapsing forest. I mean, J'Onn is pretty near invulnerable and Ollie is probably acrobatic enough to dodge a few falling trees, and for some reason there is no active fire displayed, so I'm not sure what the hurry was, beyond forced drama. Also, the art quality is collapsing faster than the forest itself, exploiting silhouettes and colorist Peter Steigerwald to cover from some shockingly substandard work. There was a time before comics was a subsistence field that turning in this level of work to a major publisher would have seen an artist fired and blacklisted, is what I'm saying. "Shoddy" would be a compliment.

Once the pair exit the forest, it was immediately restored to full lush health, and Manhunter's powers restored once past the "telepathic black hole." Thank You Mario, But Our Princess is in Another Castle, and This Isn't the Forest to Arson. Despite virtually every Silver Age story hinging on J'Onn's inability to reach Mars, the Manhunter expresses intent to break off his investigation to return home, seemingly under the assumption that the female who had been trapped on Earth for longer than J'Onn would somehow also be going there soon, instead of just brutally murdering more humans for cheap shock value. I'm remembering now why I quit monthly collecting after the launch of the New 52.

"Lost & Found" was by "writers" Peter J. Tomasi & Geoff Johns, with "art" by Patrick Gleason & company.