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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