2026 McFarlane Toys Martian Manhunter Family of Figures

My understanding is that McFarlane Toys is going to lose their license to produce DC Comics action figures later this year. Whether it's severe restrictions on which characters they can produce in these final month, or the company losing its mind, their final year selections are deep cuts. There can perhaps be no greater evidence for this than their being multiple Manhunter from Mars-related offerings. Actually, the Ryan Kendall figure is the greatest indication, since he starred in the only Black Condor title ever produced 34 years ago that was cancelled after only one year despite being drawn by Rags Morales. This material has never been collected, he was killed off two decades ago, and there is no appreciable fan base for what looks like a dollar store knock-off of the Total Justice Hawkman. So of course I'll pick one up if I find a substantially better deal than the $26.99 initial asking price.

But again, what piques my interest and prompted this post was the J'Onn J'Onzz connection, which begins with the new Martian Manhunter DC Comics Page Punchers. I have to confess that I've rarely been wowed by the sculpts on the McFarlane DC figures (obviously excluding Ambush Bug & Cheeks the Toy Wonder.) Aside from using a similar lime green shade as on my beloved Super Powers figure, the only reason I'd buy this Manhunter is the novelty of the smaller format. Well, that and the cloth cape with folded-down collar. I also found it odd that rather than reprint a solo comic for the Alien Atlas, it was a Dan Jurgens Justice League with the crazy convoluted origin of Bloodwynd. Well, about that...

McFarlane will produce the greatest mass market Bloodwynd action figure ever, mostly because it's the only one ever, setting aside some nice custom jobs that I've seen over the years. It's designated as a "Red Platinum Edition," which is code for "overpriced GameStop exclusive" at $34.99 (the Manhunter is a still bogus $27.99, btw.) Sh'yeah, right. I will inevitably own this toy, probably when m'boy Fixit snags it for a fiver from one of his many thrift scene connections in a year or so. Besides essentially possessing J'Onn's body for a time (maybe-- it's a very confused story,) Bloodwynd also served in the same short-lived League iteration as Black Condor.

The connections don't stop there, either. The Martian Marvel beat up Captain Marvel in an iconic JLI bout (adore the cape, not digging the spikey hair.) Aztek was a JLA teammate (why did they sculpt his helmet like a Dragon Fruit?) The DC Direct Eclipso was maybe that line's best sculpt, and the Sleuth from Outer Space was prominently cover-featured in the final issues of his solo series, with this McFarlane pass being the closest anyone has come to his look from that period (though this is more JSA/Robinson JLofA.) Bronze Tiger dated Gypsy and trained her in the martial arts. Say, why hasn't anyone ever done a Martian Arts pun? I'm a big Ben Turner fan, but this New 52 design barely registers as the same character, plus I understand that he was a were-tiger? Jeez, the New 52 was dumb as a bag of hammers.

Miss Martian is the most obvious Manhunter Family brand extention, if not necessarily the most accurate. She was created for Teen Titans, best known from the Young Justice cartoon, and fell off after barely brushing against J'Onn J'Onzz in books like Brightest Day. This is another $34.99 job, so unless I opt to buy the other two Page Punchers, I don't see this one coming home. She's had a few figures now, and I haven't bought any yet. Honestly, my female alien telepath of choice from this lot would be Saturn Girl, which also has a funky sculpt, but I have a great affection for the post-Zero Hour "Archie" Legion and no Imra Ardeen representation to date. I also have to say, as much as I hate those awful "drawn" statues with the fake comic book linework on them, but I flipped for the Gangbuster. I couldn't care less about the character, but this was a perfect example of how to employ that technique.

2015-2017 Martian Manhunter Comrades Jam

Another funny one where all the individual parts have been posted online since 2019, but I waited a half decade to offer the combined piece as a whole. My explanation is that I intended this to be the "front cover" for the second volume of Who's Who in Martian Manhunter, with 2014-2016 JLI, Saturnians, & Other Friends Artist Jam on the back, but that's simply never going to happen. It's been eight years. I'm calling the time of death. Anyway, it's also amusing because this jam only took two years to complete, a short turnaround for such a long delay. It spanned an awful lot of conventions though, including a HeroesCon and a couple of Comicpaloozas, but the majority was done at just one of two years' worth of the now defunct Amazing Houston. Here's another cute thing: in the years between efforts, I had the same artist do two different Green Lanterns on as many jams without realizing it. On the plus side, the colors on the original FedEx Xerox were all washed out, but the direct scan from tonight improves on it. In the no laughing matter department, contributing artists Allen Bellman (a Golden Age great) and Adrian Nelson (one of my favorites and most oft-requested over the years) have passed away in the interim.

2015-2017 Martian Manhunter Comrades Jam

• 2015 The Atom (Ray Palmer) Amazing Houston Comic Con Jam Sketch Detail by Atom Todd
• 2015 Bloodwynd Amazing Houston Comic Con Jam Sketch Detail by Oliver Banks
• 2017 Elongated Man Jam Sketch Detail by Isaiah Broussard
• 2015 Glenn Gammeron Amazing Houston Comic Con Jam Sketch Detail by Adrian Nelson
• 2016 Green Lantern John Stewart Amazing Houston Comic Con Jam Sketch Detail by Eddie Nuñez
• 2015 Gypsy Amazing Houston Comic Con Jam Sketch Detail by Brent Peeples
• 2015 L-Ron Amazing Houston Comic Con Jam Sketch Detail by Ali Morgainne
• 2015 Miss Martian Amazing Houston Comic Con Jam Sketch by Mark Bagley
• 2015 Oberon Amazing Houston Comic Con Jam Sketch Detail by Johnny J. Segura III
• 2017 The Ray Comicpalooza convention Jam Sketch Detail by Jason Scholte
• 2017 Roh Kar Jam Sketch Detail by Allen Bellman
• 2016 Steel (Hank Heywood III) Amazing Houston Comic Con Jam Sketch Detail by Allen Adams III
• 2015 Vibe Amazing Houston Comic Con Jam Sketch Detail by Brian Salinas
• 2015 The Vixen Amazing Houston Comic Con Jam Sketch Detail by Brad Garneau
• 2016 Zatanna Comicpalooza convention Jam Sketch Detail by Garrett Gainey

DC Power 2024 (March, 2024)

If you haven't been following the story so far, Raphael Arce gained empathic powers during the Lazarus Planet event, which led him to a confrontation between Martian Manhunter and the psychic ghost of Doomsday that caused his corpse to be pressurized into a blood gem of sorts. Later, around the same time Supergirl and the Alien Atlas were dragged to the metaphysical Hell to again deal with Doomsday, we learned the infernal realm also hosted the lost soul of Raphael Arce. However, in the afterlife Arce had taken on the identity of Bloodwynd, with a new array of abilities. He was at this point in the Fifth Circle of Hell, and had to use a demon in each circle as a "passport" into the next. He was apparently working his way through the circles in pursuit of The Devil himself, and had randomly been assigned the role of "A Superman for Hell," whatever that means. Bloodwynd was sidetracked by an adventure outside Hell alongside the actual Superman and Etrigan the Demon. He then returned to Hell, where we rejoin him in the Eighth Circle: Fraud.

Raphael was meant to be tormented by "his" personal Hell, invoking the Arce surname and images from the career of the original Bloodwynd. But also, Raphael learned the history of the actual Blood Gem, crafted by antebellum slaves to slay their cruel master and gain infernal power from the act. The Blood Gem had been handed down through the ages, and passed through the hands of Raphael's mother. Returning to Bloodwynd, even Raphael was surprised to learn that he was a distinct entity from J'Onn J'Onzz, rather than an assumed identity of the Martian. Felix Faust eventually consigned Bloodwynd to the pit, which I wasn't aware of, and may be an invention of this story.

The demon assigned to torture Bloodwynd confirmed that he was a blood relative of Raphael, and that any who die while wearing the family's Blood Gem are immediately damned to Hell. Raphael claimed Bloodwynd was a hero who saved lives and served with the Justice League, and so fought the demon to liberate his soul. Bloodwynd finally declared himself Quintus Arce, the brother of Raphael's mother, who together faked his death so that her son might be spared the curse of the Blood Gem. Instead, they were both temporarily incarnations of Bloodwynd, until Raphael drained all vestiges of the mantle to allow Quintus access to Paradise. Quintus made Raphael promise to be a better Bloodwynd than he had managed, and to tell his sister that he loved her before vanishing. Finally, the new, sole Bloodwynd grabbed his uncle's demonic tormentor to grant him access to the Ninth Circle, to confront The Devil...

"Pit Stop" was by Lamar Giles, Sean Damien Hill, & Anthony Fowler Jr. I think the 8-pager is the best of the new Bloodwynd stories, which admittedly isn't saying much, but it did make sense, engaged me, and sorted out necessary details. It doesn't make it any less misguided, though. In the early days of the internet, Bloodwynd got picked up by African-American comics catalogers and touted as a high level powerhouse deserving of more exposure. However, in all my years of following the character as peripheral to Martian Manhunter and as a Black super-hero, I never heard of anybody who had a legitimate affection for him. It was all utility-- the abilities, the visibility, not being a "street-level" stereotype. But fans? Not really.

The main reason Bloodwynd is still a recognized quantity is that he was high profile during the Death of Superman, and strong enough to be one of the only Leaguers still standing after trading blows with Doomsday. Bloodwynd was created by Dan Jurgens, for his League book that was a key tie-in to the Doomsday arc, who got a splash page with Ice in Superman #75. It was by design, but Jurgens never actually put the character over, and abandoned him in the rushed wrap-up of said Justice League America run. Sure, he's on the big funeral for Superman poster, with the foul play red herring of J'Onn J'Onzz also appearing separately, but he's sort of like Dan Ackroyd at the "We Are The World" recording session. Bloodwynd is a Where's Waldo-- a "who is that and what was he doing there" geek drink night trivial pursuit answer. No matter what else you try to do with him, the very name of Bloodwynd in disqualifying. Bloodwynd isn't an heroic identity, but a gastrointestinal disorder. What do you call two Bloodwynds? A pair of Arces. A Bloodynd is when you fart so hard that you explosively rupture a hemorrhoid. A Bloodwynd is like racing stripes in your underwear, but it gets up the crack and looks like spray paint splatter from being kissed directly by the pucker. Bloodwynd is when you queef while on the rag. No good comes from a Bloodwynd.

And despite all this lip service, if DC cared so much, why have they passed Raphael Arce around from book to book and across multiple creative teams? Why saddle him with such a lame sub-New Bloods/gene bomb/"so you just got powers from an event book" origin story? Now that DC barely publishes anything not directly related to their Trinity, do they really have room to explore a multi-hero Bloodwynd dynasty, especially when the mysterious and slightly sinister old Bloodwynd has given way to a plain Jane goody-two-shoes model? There are ten stories in this book, most spotlighting a single hero or villain of African descent. There are three different variant covers spotlighting different groupings of these characters. The main cover offers eight characters, a variant has seven, and then there's a Far Sector one with about a dozen. Bloodwynd made none of these covers. He's not one of the five who got a Who's Who bio page, either. Nobody actual cares. This is trademark management personified, that will get killed off in a different crossover event down the line, until we get a third case of Bloodwynd... like Montezuma's Revenge.

Action Comics 2023 Annual #1 (February, 2024)

Thy foes sought slaves, to scrape and kneel.
Not fighting men of hell and steel.

I swear, you bring The Demon Etrigan into a story arc to spout a couple lines of doggerel and then get taken out by a super-kid with a sword? What are you even doing? And I have to cop to not knowing, because I only grazed the first three chapters of this serial to make sure that I wasn't missing any other Bloodwynd content. Like for instance, I though Blue Earth were just domestic super powered xenophobes, but are they from an actual Earth-Blue in the multiverse? I mean, this book starts on "Earth Al Ghul," a quasi-medievel fantasy setting and the base from which the "Empire of Shadows" conquered countless worlds in the "Dark Multiverse." I put quotations not because these aren't real things in the current DC continuity, but to speak of them mockingly from a place of ignorance, as elders do. All you nerds to brayed about how you weren't confused by multiple Earths before the Crisis? I hope you're lapping at this like a pig in slop. Then as now, you can have at it. I have always, will always, side with the Anti-Monitor on this anti-matter. That's a pun, son. Y'see, stories should matter, but when there's infinite variations on the same old crud, it's the opposite of mattering. Get it? You're a lost cause, boy.

Superman, Bloodwynd, and Etrigan saved a family from execution for defying the bad guys, hence the pull quote. Then Bloodwynd and Superman ran interference against the evil forces while The Demon advanced to the castle to save The Man of Steel's adopted daughter from being corrupted/possessed by the alternate universe granddaughter of Ra's al Ghul. *sharp inhale* But see, Etrigan stabbed in the back with Cloud Strife's ridiculously outsized sword (that's a Final Fantasy VII reference, dear child. This dumb visual had a clear cultural origin point.) by *checks Wiki* Otho-Ra. It's a lousy name, but don't worry, they recite the same Kryptonian fable twice here after having done it last issue and I saw at least once before with full visuals in a prior issue to let us all know her handle will be Starchild and her twin brother's Red Son by the time this is all over with. Nothing like completely exhausting a trademark. Just ask Strange Visitor.

There's a bit in here where Otho-Ra's arms are wrapped in chains that are said to be formed of links derived from each fallen foe, which I guess is where the new Bloodwynd also gets it from, since he's vaguely tied to Janan al Ghul's access of Earth-Zero via Hell. I didn't realize Earth-Zero was the new Earth-One, or Earth-Prime? I can't even keep track of something as basic as which Earth the name brand heroes are supposed to be on anymore. Thanks DC. It's like how I don't know if Blue Earth is an actual Earth, because those guys were also in the first three issues of the new Power Girl series starring a Gen-Z author-insert with no personality traits in common with the character I used to know, and I'm not checking for Bloodwynd there. What I do know, is that the chains hurt the minimalist Space Ghost indebted design that is arguably the best thing about the Bloodwynd concept. Kind of like how being a brash feminist with over the shoulder boulder holders was Power Girl's trademark, rather than crippling insecurity. These clouds aren't going to shout for themselves.

Giant energy portal in the sky unleashed massive space vessel flanked by faceless invaders and Man-Bats, in case things weren't already Marvel Phase Four enough around here. Blue Earth saw their two-faced leader Laura Ingraham "Norah Stone" was really Sister Shadow, and rather than doubling down by buying merch under the new branding, were convinced to repel the actual invaders alongside the Superman Family. Least realistic story element, based on our current political hellscape? After contributing little more than poor rhymes, Etrigan and Bloodwynd-- like-- gestured at the portal and made everything incoming on our side of it burst into flames? Maybe lead with that, guys. Also, The Demon claimed Janan al Ghul's soul for Hell, because something something her portal had left her indebted something infernal. Also, Bloodwynd and Etrigan stopped appearing at this point. I don't know what their deal was in this story, overall and specifically at this point.

Again, I skimmed most of the story line, so I don't know if I'm supposed to know who the construction worker who used to be a super-villain and his son are supposed to be, except the guys who tell us how awesome the Superman Family is as a capstone to the lauded recent run of the title. Which based on what I just read, was either well past the point of ending on a high note, or the kind of people willing to pay $4.99 for a monthly comic are so beaten down that this junk rates. You guys, am I just too old for corporate super-hero comics? Am I the one who needs to leave?

"New Worlds: Part Five: The Conclusion" was written by Phillip Kennedy Johnson with art by Max Raynor. It's funny how for decades artists lusted after paper quality that would allow for true blacks, and today they happily turn them back into limp grays with lame digital effects meant to make up for their inability to properly ink their own work. The visuals are otherwise fine, though necessarily a comedown from a relatively name talent like Eddy Barrows, big enough to rate actual embellishment by other hands. One thing I do find deeply annoying about both creators' work though is a tendency toward double page spreads... of narrative. Double splash pin-ups were a nuisance in the '90s, but this is horizontal multi-panel narratives throughout the books. Since it bridges writers and artists, I have to assume this comes down to editorial, or maybe a trend in the mainstream comics I don't read anymore. There's a lot of this in Rogue Sun, an Image title I was following, so maybe the latter. I hate it, because it leaves everything on a flat, narrow plane like a newspaper Sunday strip. I think they're shooting for Hitch-style "widescreen," but it has the exact opposite effect. Nothing pops, there's no surprises, plus I have to read into the staples. It's anti-comics, seemingly made for a sideways slung tablet, and even then that shrinks the image. I want nothing to do with any of this. Too much exposition and running snark this time, so no room to discuss Bloodwynd II's vague red energy zapping abilities and general pointlessness. Next week, then...

Action Comics #1060 (February, 2024)

A drunken, belching John Constantine was hanging out at a bar during a punk show when Superman walked in to plead for him to help find his daughter.

Wait. Stop. What? If this was a '90s comedy, there'd be a record scratch and voice over explainer, now a meme.

I gave up on DC in the first year of the New 52, although my connection had been on life support for years to that point. I never finished reading the 2015 "DCYou" Martian Manhunter series drawn by the swell Eddy Barrows, and barely bought any of the following volume in 2019. I was so divorced post-Rebirth that I don't even know if that maxi-series was part of a greater publishing initiative. G5? But one of the few DC things that I have bought in recent years was the Warworld mega-arc that ran for over a year and across some spin-offs. I have it in trade paperback. I haven't actually read them, but I've heard good things. While Kal-El was off in space, his rapid-aged late teens son Jon took over as the Superman of Earth. At the time, it felt like DC had finally given up on the original Man of Steel, and were transitioning to a younger model whose bisexuality made him hipper and less Übermensch-y. Except, again, everyone seemed to be loving the Warworld stuff, and Jon occasionally kissing another boy was somehow the less sexy product of the two for readers. So now the Man of Tomorrow is still your grandpa's, but he's the lead in a Superman Family title. The Kryptonian Supergirl, the Son of Superman, the Superboy from the '90s/Young Justice, the Chinese New Superman, and the armor-clad Steel with surname "Irons" offered with or without y-chromosome, as you choose. They even have matching uniforms liked an X-team. No need for a trial run, because I hate it on premise. Isn't the biggest complaint about Superman that he's overpowered, and now there's nine of them working together out of one Metropolis?

On right, the math. Yeah, there's two more. Otho-Ra and Osul-Ra are fraternal twins with powers comparable to Superman's, whom he saved from Warwold and has now adopted. If you're saying to yourself "didn't they do that with the new Flamebird and Nightwing during the 'New Krypton' period," I'll note that ended fifteen years ago. Like Chris Reeve, that thought makes me feel like catching a bullet in my teeth. I did reference the Superman Family title from the '70s, and closer to my peak fandom, the "Team Superman" that included versions of many of these properties in the '90s. Nothing ever ends or is ever truly new in mainstream comics, so instead of starting a pressure campaign against "thet queer Super@#$" like a Comicsgater, I just read more satisfying comic books elsewhere now. It's less work and stress, but you can't pretend your homophobia, racism, and misogyny are about "reverence for continuity," so it's a trade-off. And psst-- don't tell EVS, but I quietly like some of those indie comics with the non-white, non-binary, non-male characters, because they're just stories about people. Nobody's broken down my door to peg me yet. Having signaled my virtue, I can now comfortably restate that I hate most of these Super-people and they can all die painfully. But hey, I did pre-order Steelworks. I'm not a complete CIS-het monster!

Now that we're mostly caught up, I can move along to other things I hate. Like a mainstream DCU Constantine that is written as a cartoonish chav. That an adult-oriented character from a Vertigo title is in a Superman book. That of all the world class mages Superman knows, he goes to lower-tier dirty dealing gutter trash like John Constantine. That Superman spends most of the issue so distraught over a daughter that I just learned he had that he sounds like the woman screaming "my baby" at a fire and it turns out to be her cat. That the antagonists of the arc are a bunch of super-xenophobes given temporary powers, like the Everyman Program in 52 or the White Triangle Daxamites from Archie Legion, and are able to swiftly turn the populace against well-established heroes, as did the Hyperclan and G. Gordon Godfrey (but with metahuman powers of provocation.) That the big bad leading them is the parallel universe daughter of Batman and Talia al Ghul seeking revenge for a plot that was foiled in an earlier spin-off special involving a version of The Authority that is no one's favorite. Hystericalman with super-speed and hearing fails to heed a warning from Constantine, accidentally smashes the McGuffin that allowed the bad guys to travel to Earth via Hell, and releases the new team of Bloodynd and The Demon Etrigan back to our world... only to continue in a wrap-up annual. All that, just to explain how Bloodwynd's wynding arc leads to this nonsense.

"New Worlds, Part Four" was written by Phillip Kennedy Johnson. I was today years old when I realized that he and Daniel Warren Johnson are not the same guy, plus he's the new hotness giving me "next Tom King" vibes. Not a compliment, if there was any doubt. It was drawn by Eddy Barrows, who was once to Ivan Reis as Bryan Hitch was to Alan Davis, but also like Hitch, is adopting a more "realistic" looser illustrative style that I'm not as into. I thought he was just doing this for one horror story, but I guess it's for keeps. There's a bunch of other artists listed that may be drawing other pages, or just a squad of inkers, but I don't care enough to write or parse it out. I still have to read a whole ass annual of this tripe.

Action Comics Presents: Doomsday Special #1 (October, 2023)

There's a bunch of equivocating mumbo-jumbo about how in the multiverse, the collective subconscious, through the power of belief, can create a metaphysical simulacrum of yadda-yadda... but the simple truth is that the Biblical Hell exists in DC Comics, and thanks to the breakdown of the Vertigo partition, The First of Fallen from mature readers Hellblazer comics still runs it.

At the end of Dark Crisis, Doomsday was physically destroyed. In Lazarus Planet: We Once Were Gods (March, 2023), it was able to manifest from the collective memory of the city of Metropolis mumbo-jumbo yadda-yadda. Martian Manhunter confronted Doomsday, but it ultimately took the mortal sacrifice of a young man named Raphael Arce to stop the revival. However, Doomsday continued to exist in Hell, where it was building back the power necessary to break down a door to return to physical reality. This power was partly derived from the belief of the denizens of Hell that Doomsday was capable of the feat, and this faith challenged the reign of The First. So, a vision of Doomsday in Hell was sent to Martian Manhunter based on their recent interaction, J'Onn sent the vision to Supergirl so that she could interpret Kryptonian elements, and they were both suck(er)ed into Hell to serve The Fallen. With reservations, Supergirl ultimately suited up in a special armor that recalled her old foe Satan Girl, while the Sleuth from Outer Space (sorta) rallied the denizens of Hell to strengthen the barrier from Hell with their own distorted and traumatized bodies. This was all done to spare their mutual loved one Superman from having to deal with Doomsday yet again, but back in Hell, it just kept pounding away at that barrier.

"Doomsday in Hell" was by Dan Watters, Eddy Barrows, & Eber Ferreira. While Barrows had worked on the 2015 volume of the Alien Atlas' solo (maxi?) series, this version was much gawkier and vulnerable looking, suiting the Gene Colan/Tom Mandrake-inspired sketchy linework of this Halloween tale. It was nice to see J'Onn connected to Kara Zor-El again, as I tend to like their pairing more than either's with Superman (especially now that it means Supergirl has to wear a lame "team book" uniform with pants.) It still bothers me to mingle DC and Vertigo material though, especially on a darned Super-book. Feels too much like spiking the Kool-Aid at a children's birthday party. But hey, these weren't the only characters with a tale spinning out of that Lazarus Planet one-shot...

The spirit of Raphael Arce wandered the Fifth Circle of Hell, wrath, when he was discovered by a demon and attacked. Punishment was sought for the one who had brought Doomsday to Hell, and made it even worse than before. However, the demon didn't know that Arce had brought pieces of other beings to Hell with him, namely the Martian Manhunter and... Bloodwynd! Arce knew that he didn't belong in Hell, but also he felt that no one else did, either. So he had been moving from one circle of Hell to another and liberating the lost souls there with his new Bloodwynd powers. Even with them, he still needed to trick a demon in each circle to allow him passage to the next, as he Bloodwynd couldn't make the trip unescorted. See, besides the freedom trail, Bloodwynd also sought to have a word with the devil himself...

"Bloodwynd: A Superman for Hell" was by Dan Watters & Max Raynor. While implied in the first story, it's even more clear here that we now have a second confirmed member of a Bloodwynd legacy. Actually, that was even hinted at in the '90s origin story, and given that the premise is barely over thirty years old, I do find it a bit odd that a relatively new and underdeveloped property had to be put out to pasture for a new model who still bears the misfortune of being called "Bloodwynd." Heck, it would have been worth it if it meant that he would be called "Blood Gem" instead. Anyway, along with the strength and flight of O.G. Bloodwynd, the new model has chains wrapped around his wrists that he can animate Spawn-style, and he manages to take control of some Doomsday-infused giant hellhound besides. Also, all his teeth are canines? I'm not sure any of this adds to the design, and if there was one thing Bloodwynd had in his favor, it was that Space Ghost fashion.

Martian Manhunter in Lazarus Planet (2023)

While there was a part of me that wanted to continue with Bloodwynd material after Black History Month, just to finally close that long dangling thread, at a rate of one post per week, it would still take up another few months... maybe even the rest of the year. That would rather strain the parameters of this blog, not to mention my interest in the concept. Reader dissapointemnet (don't ask me to spell or pronounce that Ctrl+C/+V) asked last week about covering a recent Martian Manhunter story which felt like a nice pivot point, but I lacked context. I pretty much gave up on the DC Universe during the New 52, aside from a tiny blip following Rebirth, and didn't even bother to collect or fully read the 2018/2019 Martian Manhunter maxi-series (bought the trade only.) When I became estranged from Marvel Comics in the early '90s, I continued to read all of their monthly solicitations as an informed retailer into the next century, but finally gave up on that sometime before the 2010s. With DC, the estrangement began in earnest sometime after Infinite Crisis/One Year Later (I quit 52 halfway through,) but I think we were well into the Rebirth period before I finally opted out of reading the DC solicits, or as Grandpa from The Lost Boys might have put it, my TV Guide. I just stopped caring about the ebb and flow of that universe, and even a stab at creative writing that saw me try to catch up was abandoned more than a year ago. Lazarus Planet has been well reviewed, but it's also a weird mash-up of super-heroes, Vertigo, and Chinese lore that's daunting to wrap my brain around.

As I understand it, current Robin Damian Wayne has been mucking around with his mother's side's resurrection apparatus, some monstrous entities got involved, Batman got possessed by one, and a volcanic eruption of the Lazarus Pits caused alien parasites to gene bomb an underworld. Or as less of a geek test, a plot device gave DC editorial an excuse to muck around with people's powers on a grand scale to mine crossovers and spin-offs. And because a good chunk of the readership hate anything magic or related to China, the Batman Family get shoehorned in to force feed it to that lot. Also, they continue to push the entire discipline of inking over a cliff by shooting directly from the pencils to turn everything into a washed out muddle, and inflict a bunch of excess text on the audience by crediting nine different artists for variant covers that they (hopefully) only bought one of. But I'm not bitter.

Where Dark Crisis (I'm already exhausted by the title alone) seems to have been the more classical (if perhaps largely irrelevant in the excessively grand scheme of things) crossover, Lazarus Planet feels like an old Marvel Age Annual on steroids, cocaine, and PCP at the same time. Aside from the Batman vs. Robin tedium and a two(ish)-part bookend series, this event is mostly a collection of short stories by a vast number of creative teams setting-up/previewing new directions for the DC line. I guess this is where Jon Kent gets his dad's (and Strange Visitor's) old electric blue look/powers, and where the decision to make Renee Montoya the Question that got reverse years ago de-reversed (can I quit yet?) There's a lot of the Maryest of Sues, Black Alice (trigger warning, come @ me,) and a mountain of ah-spaghetti hits-ah alla the walls (best/worst Chris Pratt Mario voice?)

In a huge, very 21st Century tell, a mash-up of Martian Manhunter and Doomsday that might as well have been generated by an art AI program (did Dream get a credit with all the variant cover guys) was used to promote the event, even though J'Onn J'Onzz barely appears in any of these books. In the core story, the Alien Atlas is simply adjunct to the Superman Family, showing up as part of a cavalry straight outta Metropolis.

In the March cover-dated, January-shipping one-shot Lazarus Planet: We Once Were Gods #1, Dan Watters and Max Dunbar had the thankless task of validating the gimmick image in a ten page story. A person of color (but indeterminate race,) Raphael Arce gained the ability to absorb people's pain from the Lazarus rains. Arce selflessly visits hospices to relieve all the terminal (exclusively white male?) patients at a Metropolis hospital. In a big reach, his proximity to the city has him absorbing the residual pain of the time Doomsday "killed" Superman, and that memory is enough for Doomsday to begin regenerating within the dude's body. Martian Manhunter tried to relieve the reliever by taking the Doomsday seed into himself, becoming the advertised hybrid for barely two pages. Arce then takes the Doomsday back from him, seemingly immolating into a hyperdense red crystal. "Crushed down into a psychic gem of blood and pain. He allowed his flesh to become this. Dense enough to absorb the living memory of Doomsday."

There's a bookend where Martian Manhunter likes to fly way up into the something-sphere (he still needs to breathe, I assume, but can also see the whole Earth from wherever he stops) and partake of a symphony of pain and pleasure down below that's supposedly better than music. In the end, he's explaining all this to Superman, his seeming immediate superior in the DCU these days. For all his powers, Superman can't pick up "The patternless patterns of emotion rippling on the surface of the Earth?" I'm right there with you, pal, and since when did J'Onn switch from Chocos to pot brownies? Anyway, the pseudo-poignant denouement offered by J'Onzz is, "There are no songs among them today."

The intent is unclear, but we can choose the yarnwall this as a set-up for a post-Infinite Flashpoint 52 Convergence Rebirth Infinite Metal Dark Crisis reboot of Bloodwynd, even though the exact phrase is never uttered. I'm not sure if Raphael Arce is Black/Hispanic/Both/Neither, though that was definitely some "Magical Negro" s---, and I have exactly zero (hour) faith that this will ever be follow-up in any way. YMMV.

Justice League Quarterly #9 (Winter, 1992)

So this is your basic temporal paradox. Booster Gold meets a homeless kid who he recognizes as a huge celebrity and Samaritan from his past in the far future. She died tragically in the 21st Century, so Booster helps her avoid an unscrupulous Hollywood type and reunite with her family. Her twin sister survives what was once an early death, and together they forge a brighter future. As a result, Booster mostly forgets both the runaway and her erased infamous fate.

That wasn't the temporal paradox that I was referring to, though.

The girl shines up real good for someone previously routinely mistaken for a boy, blossoming like a made-over nerd in a teen comedy. Everyone's jaw is on the floor when she *gasp* applies make-up and raids Fire's closet. Booster. Max. Beetle. Bloodwynd... who even requests an introduction. "Geralyn, this is J'Onn... Ted... Max. Send them your autograph--"

This story came out roughly the same month as Justice League America #69, the Doomsday tie-in where Blue Beetle is beaten into a coma right before seeing Bloodwynd transform into someone else while exposed to flames. Five months before Justice League America #74, where that form was revealed to be the Martian Manhunter. Maybe it was an accident, or at least written off as one, but Booster still outed Bloodwynd as J'Onn J'Onzz way ahead of it being anything but a Feudian slip...

"Tomorrow Belongs to Geralyn" was by Elliot S. Maggin, Dave Cockrum, & Jose F. Marzan, Jr. Quite the hoary lot in the '90s, and this was Cockrum's second story in the issue, so I'm sure the little fanboys were just thrilled.

Eclipso: The Darkness Within #2 (October, 1992)

One of the more popular posts in this blog's history was an April Fool's joke in 2009 regarding the announcement of a Bloodwynd mini-series by Bart Sears. I crudely cobbled together some art from the short-lived Ominous Press, and yet somehow, not only did the post get some traction, but I've even seen the featured art turn up elsewhere. Could have saved myself some time and just used some of Sears' Bloodynd art from the Eclipso event, but I guess it was worth it for the attention.

There certainly isn't much for Bloodwynd to do in the actual story, besides mill about in the background with a host of other non-essential heroes. His eyes peer over the throne on the cover. You can see him looking over Nightwing's shoulder in one of the splash pages where the remaining heroes confront the eclipsed ones before they're teleported by their master/possessor to the moon. He's standing around while the dust literally settles, mostly on Bloodwynd's cape. There's a nice overhead shot of his standing with the heroes as they reconvene to plan strategy. It was nice to see Sears draw members of the Suicide Squad Bronze Tiger and Nightshade, as well as my boy Blue Devil in the same splash. With Ben Turner, you can play the world's worst variation of Where's Waldo with "spot the Black guy." Looking over the Will Payton Starman's shoulder. Wearing a spacesuit in a craft with Booster Gold and the Element Man, the latter treated to Bloodwynd's first line of dialogue. "Each of us must follow his own concience on the matter, Metamorpho... wherever that may lead!" That ship is later grounded by an eclipsed Mon-El, reinforcing Metamorpho's stated desire to outright kill Eclipso.

Quoth Jamiroquai, "Everybody's Going to the Moon" (what, you don't own the Titan A.E. soundtrack? Your loss.) The heroic force walks into Eclipso's lunar palace like chumps, where he's powerful enough to immediately eclipse everybody when they get ticked at the eclipsed Starman for using his shapeshifting powers to conceal his condition until now. Once again, Bloodwynd's blue-tinged possessed head is seen over Nightwing's shoulder. I'll have to incorporate that pairing into my slashfic on Reddit*. Along similar lines, Eclipso got all Brian Yuzna with the meat sacks under his sway, until Superman and all the light-based/sun-tech characters break down the door. Eventually, they zap all the heroes until they're liberated, and Bloodwynd is seen standing in front(!!!) of Metamorpho (I ship it!) Bronze Tiger continues to stand behind a lower class of character who have to be way further in the foreground, because he's pretty tall. Pantha's head makes a cameo appearance, along with the rest of her still-attached body, which is my preference for Pantha. She's not a Highlander.

Starman made the ultimate sacrifice of having his trademark passed to the next legacy while seeming to be dead before inevitably being resurrected. I didn't see Bloodwynd standing behind anyone else, probably because they focus on injured people on cots and tables. Bloodwynd isn't one of those, so I'll take it as a win. Brought to you by Keith Giffen, Robert Loren Fleming, Bart Sears, and a bunch of inkers.

*Please don't tell me that Reddit is not a preferred avenue for slash fiction. I don't know or want to know to what degree my joke is reflected in reality.

The Adventures of Superman Annual #4 (1992)

In one of his annuals, Superman became possessed by Eclipso, known as being "eclipsed". During the night, Eclipso could force the Man of Steel to do whatever he pleased (like putting Captain Marvel in the hospital,) but had to hide him from sunlight, or else Eclipso would lose his hold. Booster Gold, Fire, and Ice acted as Justice League America during this period, with Bloodwynd's whereabouts unexplained. The necromancer simply reappeared mid-story among the rest of League America at their headquarters as they gathered with Baby Wildebeest to determine the current location of the compromised Man of Steel... living inside an active volcano?

Aquaman, Metamorpho, Black Canary, Justice League Europe, Hawkman, Nightwing and L.E.G.I.O.N. all convened onto Kīlauea to plan their confrontation with the Man of Tomorrow. They were soon joined by Guy Gardner, who in his first solo Reborn mini-series tricked Lobo into helping his acquire Sinestro's Qwardian power ring to replace the Oan one he'd surrendered to Hal Jordan. Lobo's L.E.G.I.O.N. boss Vril Dox kept him from exacting his revenge until the more pressing matter at hand was addressed.

Dox & Hawkman chose Bloodwynd, Guy, Fire, Lobo, Strata, Booster, Metamorpho, and Phase as being best suited to withstand the volcano to reach Superman. "...The mystical nature of my powers serves to repel the molten lava from my body!" Boy, Martian Manhunter sure would benefit from a power like that! Reaching the Kryptonian, sans conscience and reserve, Lobo is swiftly felled by super-speed, full strength punches. Gardner fares a bit better, but is still bounced right out of the volcano. Bloodwynd and company try to rush Superman, but he repells them, in part by using Strata's crystaline body to repel powers like Fire's back at her teammmates like Bloodwynd. Not sure why plain fore would have an impact when freakin' lava didn't, though.

Bloodwynd exclaimed, "The sun is sinking beyond the horizon!" I hope he pronounces "horizon" like Ludacris. Anyway, without solar energy, the heroes would be unable to exorcise Eclipso from Superman's body. The heroes, led by a revived Lobo, continued to contain Superman in the dusky night after they're all blown out of the volcano by an eruption. All those lesser powered heroes focused on evacuating villagers, while Bloodwynd was felled by a freezing blast from a black diamond. "Allow me to show you the darkness of the human heart, 'hero'."

Superman had dismembered The Element Man and was poised to slay Ice when Guy Gardner returned to the scene. He had been ordered by Dox to collect actual solar matter, and though he protested at great length and volume, the ex-Green Lantern finally came through. It still took a while to drive Eclipso out, including a fall back into the volano, but ultimately Big Blue emerged restored. While most of the heroes next traveled to the moon to spy on Eclipso's lunar castle and get rooked by an eclipsed Starman masking his possession, Superman stayed behind to do science stuff, as you do. Well not you. Nobody would want Superman to hang back in that situation, but they had to pad out another annual and set up his disappearing before the grand finale in Eclipso: The Darkness Within #2. "In Blackest Night" was by Robert Loren Fleming & Bob McLeod.

I started covering Bloodwynd appearances in 2008, the second year of the blog, and about 16 years after his debut. It's been nearly that long since I started the posts, and I more or less abandoned them the following year. Part of it was a misguided plan to cover a bunch of the Eclipso annuals simultaneously and link between the posts. Part of it was also trying to cover the main Justice League America series at the same time on my Atom blog. Also, "The Death of Superman" was coming up, and I've never owned or read the whole thing (although I think I now have the cheapie trade collection on my bookcase.) I didn't even read all of the Superman annuals from the Eclipso event. I just found a partially completed draft of the first paragraph of this post sitting in a queue since 2012 and added this coda with the intent to fill in the middle. I think maybe I got tired of linking out to all the referenced characters. Mike Kooiman's old Cosmic Teams site apparently 404'd last year, but at least he wrote The Quality Companion for TwoMorrows in the meantime. Nobody ever asked me to write The Martian Manhunter Companion. I've clearly wasted my life.

Conjurors #1-3 (April-June, 1999)

There's a popular assumption that conservatives are bad at comedy, because you can't punch down from a position of authority without working against most of the populace's interests. I don't entirely buy into that, as evidenced by both sides having traction for laying claim to George Carlin, still one of the greatest and most prescient comedians to ever live. Comedy thrives in finding lines and then crossing them, and lines divide two ways. Most of my favorite funny people of the '80s landed on the wrong side of my personal line, but they're as much a product of their time as anything, and changing times change the context of the humor. If you don't adapt, and social norms have definitely trended leftward since peak neoliberalism, you get left behind and easily treated as though you never were funny to begin with. Carlin's dancing back and fourth across that line is where his immortality lies. Based on comedy routines alone, Bill Cosby wouldn't have been cancelled today, but Pryor and Murphy would have.

I think a similar if much less well reasoned or researched argument could be made that conservatives can't do high fantasy. You can point out plenty of regressive politics in the genre, which is why I'll put most of my weight on the "high" part of the claim. A lot of fantasy is just historical fiction married to a romanticized vision of feudal existence, when the men were men and the women were chattel. Bill Willingham capped his career and popularized unto cottage industry taking fairy tales and forcing them into a hard reality modern world. Chuck Dixon & Eduardo Barreto's Elseworlds mini-series Conjurors mini-series tracks similarly. It posits a world reliant and fidelitous to magic in the same way ours is to technology. It gets muddy from there, because I suppose medicine overlaps with mysticism, so they seem to have all the same stuff we have. Actually, they have all the same buildings and clothing and everything else we associate with mid-to-late 20th century life, emphasized by increasing globe-trotting toward the end, and flashes of cosmic consequences at various points in the world. One of the defining principles of conservatism is a belief that we pretty much got everything right, so the status quo should be defended. Conjurors is more like Harry Potter, wherein a micro-community practices magic in secret, except here it's the broad public default. A boy might get busted reading Popular Science during school hours, but he's still dressed like Beaver Cleaver in a classroom lined with individual desks and a marm at the helm. But with wands, see? At the end of the book, all the magic users deprived of their sorcery have ready access to airplanes and helicopters to meet at Machu Picchu. Despite the shift from our world to a magical one taking place in pre-history, it is still recognizably our world, only mildly stunted in its stigmatized technology by a few decades at most.

I remember the mini-series arriving with a bit of a stink on it. It debuted outside the top 100, outsold by the $5.95 Doctor Midnite prestige format mini-series that would have typically been used for an Elseworlds. This was a $2.95 double-length floppy, and there's no break point in any of the issues to indicate that it was ever a six issue mini-series, not that it wouldn't have also been a telling format change. DC Comics simply did not produce books like Conjurors the way it actually came out. Also, Chuck Dixon was still a draw, but with mainstream audiences, mostly on books involving well armed, non-powered urban vigilantes, not the Vertigo crowd. Dixon is a justifiably well regarded scripter, but this isn't his wheelhouse, and it shows.

The book co-stars Zatanna, except it's Jennifer Morgan from The Warlord instead. A stage magician who is part of the 10% of the population naturally gifted with real magic, who spends much of her free time playing detective within the mystical community. There's a guy who vaguely resembles the Jared Stevens Fate with his rad long hair and eye tattoo... but he's a stage magician called Brother Power. It feels like people never gave or revoked approval for the familiar character types, maybe because Paul Dini had dibs on Zee, and Fate was getting aced to launch JSA? And wouldn't stage magicians be like paying to watch mathematicians or engineers at a blackboard? Could 10% of the population even support the magic needs of the other 90%, and does that mean the kid was in a classroom of only the 10% adepts? That's the initial pleasure but overall frustration of this mini-series. You spend the first issue trying to figure out which established IP have been shoehorned into a generic, often inappropriate role in a world where you're constantly second-guessing the premise. But then in the second part, Dixon gives up and just goes back to his comfort zone with the Challengers of the Unknown running around in a bi-plane on an rugged adventure. That schoolboy ends up offering a big information dump, and then just lingers on the periphery to react to stuff until the whimper of a finale. Why even?

I bring all this up because I only bought Conjurors second-hand as a discounted set to eventually cover it here for its novel inclusion of Bloodwynd, who appears in costume on a square inch in the background of the first cover. In the actual story, he's a bald black guy in a business suit who captures a spirit in a bottle. Eventually, the spirit escapes, and sends Bloodwynd out a skyscraper window to fall head first to his death. He was basically JLI-era Dr. Mist, but I guess Bloodwynd had more *snicker* commercial cache? Or more simply, THIS IS THE REMIX, so the entirely gettable Mist uses somebody else's moniker. And then is disposed of off-panel, because the status quo dictates that the best kind of inclusion is tokenism.

The Death of Superman 30th Anniversary Deluxe Edition variant cover by Ivan Reis

I still count the arrival of 1992's Superman #75 as part of my "childhood," but it's on that same sliding subjective scale of whether you consider Brett Kavanaugh an attempted rapist or just a "curious youth."* I'm basically declaring that I've touched base in a schoolyard game with my own mortality, pretending that any monumental date now three decades past doesn't mean I had to sidestep an open grave to get there. It's a little lie that I can still tell myself, though even I'm incredulous at the assertion. I officially stopped living anywhere but Texas past this point, and the anniversary is twice over any legal shielding for a felony here, plus the years needed to acutely recall the period. I am one of the olds, or in Ethan Hawke terms, “I’ve definitely made the turn from being an old young person to being a young old person.”

So anyway, I read a Newsarama article** that's clearly an unproofed first draft paraphrasing of DC's press release for the Generation X equivalent of a catalog relist for a story that wasn't that great in the first place. "The Death of Superman" was a morbid cash grab stunt that partially works as an indictment of the practice, with its threadbare story inching we(a)ekly toward an all splash page dudebro punch-out. What was supposed to be a reminder that DC was still around while drowning in Chromium Age excess got picked up by the media as the four color equivalent of the JFK assassination at the peak moment of comic book penetration of every urban and suburban area. Even then I was too jaded to fully buy in, but the hype was enough that the shady lady I was living with insisted that we travel to one of the many neighborhood comic shops to stand in line to buy a copy each of Superman #75. Quantities were limited, and I think we had to drive to Deer Park to find a shop that still had copies available to the public. When I caught a ride with my parents to go to the flea market where I had my pull box that Saturday, I was wearing the black armband. Unfortunately, the guy who ran the booth insisted that I buy my newly arrived Kelly Jones Sandman t-shirt before I got any comics, so I only had enough money for that and a spare copy of Superman #75 that I would soon trade in for store credit anyway (probably about $8 worth. Put me through college.)

I bring all this up because guys like Dan Jurgens (who takes a Stan Lee-sized portion of the credit for Jerry Ordway's tongue-in-cheek recurring suggestion at plotting sessions) love to tell you how many new readers this thing brought in, despite sales going off a cliff within two years and getting progressively worse with little abatement ever since. I'll admit that editorial and creative recognized the rising tide and offered the highly regarded "Funeral for a Friend" in the aftermath, but for many of us, Superman #75 was mostly a collection of pin-ups in a week starved for actual story. Also, the featured cover reminds readers that the Jurgens-created Bloodwynd was a separate character, despite Jurgens' own inadequate storytelling often leading online resources to assume they're one-in-the-same to this day. Also, despite my cynicism, I'm totally going to buy this stupid thing, if only to see Jon Bogdanove illustrate John Henry Irons again.

* It's academic because he's still sexually violating women with the full weight of the "Supreme" Court today. Go have a good cry at a Landry's steakhouse if you don't want to hear about it. You can't boycott what has only ever cost me money to begin with, and Martian Manhunter's story is about championing justice on this earth.

** I quit Comic Book Resources when they were forcing people to whitelist them to see articles, and stayed away because of their penchant for spoiler headlines. Newsarama is very lame, but the visual aesthetic is jazzier than The Beat and I don't go down any editorial rabbitholes, aside from mocking their moldy reheated listicles.

*** After nearly a quarter century of blogging, I still can't spell "separate" without spellcheck. Is it my accent?

2021 “Justice League Extreme #1” Bloodwynd fanfic commission art by Brad Green

2015 Bloodwynd Amazing Houston Comic Con Jam Sketch Detail by Oliver Banks

It's been over four years since Bloodwynd was referenced in a significant way on this site, and even that was to defend him against accusations of being the Second Worst Justice Leaguer Ever, which was majorly harsh. I like Bloodwynd well enough to have a solo commission, and certainly wanted to include him in a jam of associated characters. Bloodwynd has an undeservedly bad rap, and I really need to get his biography page done to help vindicate the character (though legitimizing his messed up origin will take a better man than me.) Speaking of, artist Oliver Banks did an even better job here than on the previous year's Green Lantern Guy Gardner, and it's a shame it took me two years to spotlight his work. I dig the dude's attitude, imposing size, and the way his cape drapes around the character below him. Banks also incorporated the thick gray border around that character into shading on Bloodynd, which unfortunately doesn't translate well to the scan. I was able to contrast the blacks solid without completely obliterating the shading, but it's darker and much coarser than in the original, and I apologize for the distortion. He does look spookier for it, though.

Banks wrote of the piece, "High class collaboration," and if you'd like to see his Martian Manhunter, look no further.

Oliver Banks

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Podcast: Martian Manhunter's 60th Anniversary Special Part One (1955-1993)

Episode #15

Martian Manhunter's 60th Anniversary Special:
A Celebration of the Alien Atlas

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New York Times Program Synopsis:
A special which pays tribute to The Manhunter from Mars, the least popular co-founder of the Justice League of America and one of the greatest hanger-on associates to pop culture heroes of all time. The special interweaves memorable moments from J'onn J'onzz's television series, cartoons and comics highlighting his super powers, secret identity, acts of heroism, and personal life. Also included are comically inept text-to-audio vignettes featuring unrecorded guest stars discussing the best super-hero ever of Middletown, U.S.A.

Audio Source Credits

• Theme music "Blacksheep - alien" by Cyril.G Pereira from the album The Revenge of Glory (2007) with additional music from the album Diabolic (2012)
• "Entre Montañas" from the album Aigua by Deimos
• Mark Waid courtesy of Comic Zone Radio (2007)
• Paul Kupperberg courtesy of The Aquaman Shrine (2007)
• Oliver Queen courtesy of Green Arrow #88 (1994) & The Brave & The Bold #50 (1963)
• Steve Englehart courtesy of Dollar Bin Comics.net (2014)
• Jenette Kahn courtesy of Chicago Humanities Festival (2013)
• Jim Starlin courtesy of SiDEBAR (2008), Victor Rodgers (2014) and The Gorgeous Geeks (2010)
• Alan Moore courtesy of Comic Book Artist #9 (2000)
• Dave Gibbons courtesy of Word Balloon (2008) and Millarworld (2015)
• Arthur Curry courtesy of Justice League of America #239 & Martian Manhunter #6
• Gerry Conway courtesy of We Talk Comics (2014) and The Fire & Water Podcast (2009)
• Bruce Wayne courtesy of Justice #3 (2006), Detective Comics #715 (1997), Justice League #6 (1987), JLA #2 (1997) and Justice League America #42 (1990)
• Ted Kord courtesy of Justice League Quarterly #1 (1990)
• Orion courtesy of Justice League America #50 (1991)
• Nathaniel Adam & Scott Free courtesy of Justice League International #8 (1987)
• Stuart Immonen courtesy of Sequential Tart.com
• Dan Jurgens courtesy of We Talk Comics and The Fire & Water Podcast Episode 85 (2014)
• Howard Porter courtesy of Wizard's JLA Special 1998
• John Ostrander courtesy of Comics Continum.com
• Matt Kindt courtesy of Nerdlocker
• Darwyn Cooke courtesy of Absolute DC: The New Frontier
• J. M. DeMatteis courtesy of Justice League America #60 (1992)
• Phil Morris courtesy of KryptonSite (2007)
• Valerie D'Orazio courtesy of Occasional Superheroine.blogspot.com
• David S. Goyer courtesy of Scriptnotes Episode: 144 The Summer Superhero Spectacular (2014)
• Howard Chaykin, J. M. DeMatteis, Mike McKone & Peter David courtesy of Rolled Spine Podcasts
• Additional audio clips from the television and home video programs The ABC Sunday Night Movie (1962-1998), Justice League of America (1997), Justice League Unlimited (2001–2006), Smallville (2001–2011), The Batman (2004–2008), Justice League: The New Frontier (2008), Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths (2010), and Batman: The Brave and the Bold (2008–2011)

We enjoy dialogue on the red planet, so here are our non-telepathic contact options:

• Tweet host Diabolu Frank directly, or probe @rolledspine as a group.
• Email Diabolu
• If the main Idol-Head of Diabolu blog isn't your thing, try the umbrella Rolled Spine Podcasts.