1987 Cromy Super Amigos Match 4 Nueva Edicion Manhunter card #E3

"This Martian came to Earth as a result of a failed special experiment. Once here, he decided to ally himself with the forces of good."

There's definitely international representation for the Martian Manhunter in comics and merchandise, but not so much in the '70s and '80s. The Sleuth from Outer Space was largely out of print in the States, and a lot of overseas goodies were based on José Luis García-López's DC Style Guides, which did not substantially feature J'Onn J'Onzz. Solo Alien Atlas art was produced by persons unknown in 1984, presumably anticipating his inclusion in the Super Powers Collection. The Argentine company Cromy produced Super Powers licensed materials under the Spanish language Super Friends banner, carrying over from the long-lived TV cartoon, and serving as a catch-all term for super-heroes (Spider-Man gets mingled with this stuff, for instance.) Cromy produced things like small jigsaw puzzles and sticker albums in the '80s, but again, using art from earlier comics and the 1982 Style Guide. This included their 1984 match game, but later Super Powers additions were part of a "New Edition" offered three years later. Somewhat curiously, we did not get Detective Martiano, as was often the case in Spanish language territories, but instead simply "Manhunter." This despite the Goodwin/Simonson Paul Kirk having been previously trafficked in Argentina under that singular name. It was striking to see a relatively obscure '70s character in the mix, so I thought he must have been big down there. Not so much that he couldn't be supplanted by the Martian variety, who joined a refresh heavy on Gods and Teen Titans New.

2016 Cryptozoic DC Comics: Justice League - Model Sheets #MS8 - Martian Manhunter

You might say, "Hey Frank, aren't you glad to have another chase card featuring a classic style J'Onn J'Onzz to help fill out your month of posts?" If you know me at all, positivity is not my default, so who are you and why are you making suppositions on my blog? The base set is only 63 cards with 5 cards per pack and 24 packs per box. That means you're only getting one base set at most per box. The Model Sheets chase subset is one in three packs, so the odds favor your being at least one card short of completion out of a box. These cards are just reprints from the 1980s DC Style Guides, which were already fairly accessible online, have been used constantly on 21st Century licensed merchandise, and they've mostly all been collected in a hardcover edition within the past year (I bought two.) Having familiar stock images (which I'm not even confident are by the same artist) remixed on a trading card is not getting me high. Also, they keep making Manhunter the eighth card in these subsets, despite being one of the seven founding members. It irks.

New History of the DC Universe #2 (September, 2025)

Book One of this title threw Martian Manhunter a bone by still having him precede the Silver Age generation of DC super-heroes established Post-Crisis. Now as then, you had the World War II characters sans Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and Aquaman, then guys like Captain Comet and J'Onn J'Onzz in a gray middle period, with a Boomer-skewing "modern age" of the excised characters and the Silver Age revival heroes like Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkman, and the Atom. The Sleuth from Outer Space can now go off in a corner and tried to suck the marrow out of that bone, because the proper meat is served to Victor Stone.

Hypertime 2025 tries to squeeze as much of the Pre-Crisis material that the writer grew up on back into the continuities of the biggest DC icons, particularly with regard to Superman and Batman. Wonder Woman suffers under the attempt, referencing a "new" Barbara Minerva version of Cheetah without having Priscilla Rich appear in the Golden Age book, making the Valerie Beaudry Silver Swan share space with green jumpsuit Angle Man, offering some sort of dapper Tony Stark x Dr. Psycho from no time ever, and squeezing it all into a quarter page to save space for Bizarro, Sinestro, and '60s Batman rogues-- obviously of equal importance to the majority of Amazing Amazon history. So basically, the same five DC characters that always get to feast get that much more to chew on, while the ones the basic boys were never as into get the leftovers. I like the Mark Waid as a person and a professional, but he's basically a war criminal on Paradise Island. All this to say, it's not just the Alien Atlas getting crumbs, but that's where I'll pour the rest of the salt today.

Here's where we get very New 52/Snyder Murderverse. The Martian Marvel remains in hiding, or at least of the public board, even as the Challengers, Adam Strange, and the boy sidekicks that would form the Teen Titans maker the scene. Next, a proto-Justice League forms around the initial incursion of Darkseid/the Fourth World, during which Victor Stone suffers crippling injuries and becomes a proto-Cyborg. After that initial encounter, Stone is placed in some sort of suspended animation "for further healing" until he's released to show a lot more skin as a New Teen Titan. DC wants the credit in foregrounding an African-American super-hero as an original Justice Leaguer, but they don't actually want to integrate him into their broader history. You might say that he's separate but equal. Sure, Jan.

That leaves Martian Manhunter and the second generation Black Canary to formally found the Justice League during the Appellaxian Invasion. So they're technically co-founders after a previous grouping was retconned in, just as happened to Hal Jordan, Wonder Woman, Superman, and Batman. Plus, this time we're leaving out the "of America," so maybe there's another formality where the "JLA" was a separate team altogether?

From there, the continuity is largely classical and chronological. J'Onn's part of the first Earth-2 seanace with the DC Trinity, though this edition is very coy about the existence of a Multiverse, so we're probably talking more about being trapped in a different vibrational plane here. The campaign against the scourge of boy sidekicks in short pants continues to be fought with retconned full leggings. Another deeply annoying choice is to have Plastic Man treated as a crappy mid-'60s DC hero only worthy of a caption box instead of one of the greatest Golden Age heroes featured in WWII-era Quality Comics publications. I guess Jack Cole fans are relieved to not have to associate his creation with decades of DC mishandling their version.

There's no mention of Martian Manhunter as the book vaguely touches on key developments of the 1970s and early '80s. To be fair, very little solo material of any heroes are offered, so I should be pleased that the mod Diana Prince and Aquaman's reign/marriage/heir/infanticide got the attention that they did. It was mostly just rattling heroic debuts in partial page pin-up shots. It's... let's go with "amusing," that all of Black peopledom go on ice with Cyborg. Until suddenly, oh my stars, there's John Stewart, Nubia, Bronze Tiger, and a little on Black Lightning is one long rip. Hey, another WW nod, too. In this context, and with a sense of perspective, Martian Manhunter's existence being solely defined by League incarnations fits. The Satellite era is bundled up into the Red Tornado blurb, but the Detroit League rate half a page. Sorta. They left out a visual of Vixen since she already had a debut blurb (representation!) plus we had a top hat & tails Zatanna, New 52 Vibe, and second suit Steel (did we even see Commander Steel in the first issue?) For all the clean up and inclusion, the ethnic slur Gypsy remains, though she looks more like her early JLTF self.

The final three pages covers a thin gruel take on Crisis on Infinite Earths. Asian female Dr. Lights will live. Supergirls will die. And can we squeeze an Infinity Incorporated profile into this? By the way, Power Girl and the Huntress still don't exist yet? The art this time was by Mike Allred, who I love and is perfect for covering this era, and Brad Walker, whose style is jarringly incompatible. I enjoyed Walker's style back when he was going to do a Martian Manhunter mini-series, but this more cartoony style is an awkward compromise.

The backmatter co-written by Dave Wielgosz offers an insane amount of retcon review from the Post-Crisis period. The 2018 Martian Manhunter maxi-series that I gave up on a few issues in, with the latest already forgotten killer of all the Martians (second or third for that decade alone?) is the only J'Onn J'Onzz one given credence. Of course Mark Waid's own JLA: Year One is wedged in there, but that's a book people actually read and loved. Things start to settle into the actual Silver Age six pages in, but it's still pretty much just a list of character debuts. It occurs to me now that Iris Allen doesn't seem to die anymore? Oh, but Sue Dibny still gets assaulted by Dr. Light, at least in the liner notes? Mongul gets a brief nod, with a Starlin panel. The Despero erasure, tho. And don't get me started on Captain Atom.

Superman Treasury 2025: Hero for All

Dan Jurgens draws eight pages of his second treasury format Superman comic, having written and laid-out the entirety of 1999's Superman / Fantastic Four (with deeply compromised finished art by Art Thibert.) It's inked by Brett Breeding, and while the continuity is garbled by some lousy Rebirth-period flourishes, it is mostly a testament to the 1990s "triangle number" era. Anyone who read the books in the period surrounding "Reign of the Supermen" would be forgiven for feeling nostalgic. There's been online discourse since Standards Manual's rerelease of the 1982 DC Comics Style Guide that other artists draw a version of Superman, but only José Luis García-López draws Superman. That's particularly fair if you grew up with the Christopher Reeve movies and surrounding merchandise, but García-López rarely provided complete art for Superman stories-- mostly just the early issues of DC Comics Presents. Jurgens came up in the late Bronze Age, shared influences with García-López, and produced interior and cover art for nearly a hundred Superman comics. Jurgens was likely the closest fans ever got to a more substantial García-López run, which may help to explain why he was to many the Superman artist of his generation.

At least, that's how I can best rationalize it, because man, I am never going to "get" the appeal of Dan Jurgens to those people. To me, he'll always be a technically proficient journeyman, who was never the most appealing or interesting artist drawing Superman at any given point. He succeeded Jerry Ordway on Adventures of Superman in 1989, working alongside Kerry Gammill on Superman. A few months in, George Pérez returned Superman to Action Comics, when it was reclaimed from the experimental weekly anthology format. By 1992, Jurgens had taken over the core Superman title, but Tom Grummett had replaced him on Adventures, while Jon Bogdanove had launched Superman: The Man of Steel. I would favor every one of those artists on any given book over Jurgens. I've liked a few Superman stories written by Jurgens, but on a monthly basis, I usually preferred other writers as well (though he had good runs of The Mighty Thor and Tomb Raider.) And yet, DC always runs back to Dan Jurgens when they've had a "come to Jesus" moment in screwing up the Man of Steel... like when they killed off the New 52 incarnation and replaced him with Jurgens' Superman: Lois and Clark version, which gave us their son, Jon Kent.

I thumbed through the new treasury, otherwise drawn by Bruno Redondo, out of curiosity. Obviously this was put together to exploit enthusiasm for the 2025 Superman movie, as well as readers "of a certain age" with the disposable income to pay the premium on a publication format largely abandoned since the 1970s. I do like Redondo's art, as well as the coloring of Adriano Lucas, which often digitally replaces solid blacks with more animation-style cel coloring. Having come up in the Bronze and Chromium Ages, I've been spoiled by a level of rendered detail never before or since seen in comic book art, which could make the most of being printed at near to the scale of the original art board. I'm not even confident that the art in this book has a physical manifestation beyond the printed edition, and while attractive, the colors have a better claim of making use of the treasury dimensions than the line art. So if it's not an art book, that leaves it up to the story to justify the indulgent scale. This is a Dan Jurgens script. The odds were never in its favor.

The whole reason that I was primed to write this post was because I saw a lot of Martian Manhunter action in this book during that toss. I stopped partway through, once I'd committed to reading the thing. So of course, that stopping point for me was also more or less the stopping point for the Manhunter from Mars in the story.

A giant robot attacks Metropolis, prompting an evacuation of the city. Ma and Pa Kent are tasked with taking a still-adolescent Jon Kent out of town. I assumed that meant the story took place before Brian Michael Bendis squatted down to release his "embellishments" on Superman lore, but that crap was referenced later in the all-Jurgens sections. For all I know, they've de-aged Jon Kent in recent months. I gave up on following DC continuity a year or two into the New 52, so finer points like that would be lost on me. Superman has a surprisingly easy time taking out the robot, and then we're randomly(?) presented with a Smallville flashback deploying Ben Day dots. We see Pa Kent die in a tornado, ala Snyder's Man of Steel, and it occurred to me that the guy I saw with Ma earlier had a bit of Dale Gribble about him. Maybe she caught another feller as a widow in the modern(ish?) continuity? The '90s stunt implant Kenny Braverman was present in the flashback, as was young ginger Lex Luthor, which I'm aware was a Silver Age element returned to continuity in the Birthright mini-series (bought cheap used; yet to read.) A young adult Luthor was present for another flashback.

At the in-story present, alien invaders destroy the JLA... satellite? Watchtower? I don't know what they're calling it these days. Both Superman and Batman are initially missing from the action, but fellow super-heroes step up to defend a variety of global flashpoints in the invasion. This would be "the Martian Manhunter part." The actual invaders were semi-generic anime mech troopers in pale orange and green. They're like a very boring redesign of parademons. As best as I can tell, their main advantage is taking out Earth's communication technology. The Alien Atlas appears to battle the baddies on the Golden Gate bridge, and he is treated as the key to uniting Earth's metahuman protectors, via a massive telepathic network. There's also lots of token appearances by members of the JLA, JLI, Teen Titans, etc. A big deal is made out of Aquaman delivering the U.S. President and Congress to safety underwater, as though that was a relevant and beneficial action to the world order of 2025. Positively provincial.

As anyone familiar with how Martian Manhunter appearances in Superman comics go, J'Obber J'Onzz's off-panel defeat at the invaders' hands marks the end of the world's effective resistance to the aliens. It is here that the ultimate threat is finally revealed... Lady Maxima! And... um... the Cyborg Superman? See-- Dan Jurgens created Hank Henshaw as an analog for Reed Richards, who had to watch his astronaut family slowly die from horific deformities similar to those of the Invisible Woman, Human Torch, and The Thing. Instead of elasticity, Mr. Fauxtastic merged with machinery, which is how he survived. Using genetic material from Superman, he grew a partial clone body, with compensatory cybernetic elements. I don't know that it was ever explained why he couldn't clone a whole-ass Superman body, or at least doctor-up a completely human face, instead of looking like a T-800 Terminator wearing 9/10ths of a Superman body. The Cyborg Superman has been destroyed many times, but always seems to return to this SuperMetallo form. He was of course one of the ersatz Supermen during "Reign," was in at least one of the Doomsday revival mini-series Jurgens did, and was even a big part of Superman / Fantastic Four, owing to his being a Reed Richards rip-off. In this context though, he's only here as a life-sized "marital aid" for an alien queen who could never seal the deal with her Man of Steel.

Maxima's purpose here was to punish Superman for choosing Lois Lane over her, and making a baby with her. Now, Maxima was killed off in the 2001 Superman event "Our Worlds at War," but a revamped version arrived three years into the New 52, and then more or less reverted to a more faithful version in 2017. Jon Kent debuted as a decade-old in 2015, and was up-aged to 17 to serve as Superman's replacement a few years later. All this is to say, it's a bit rich that Maxima would react this strongly to a long-elapsed, rarely/never-expressed grudge from multiple continuities ago. While powerful, Maxima never seemed to work at this scale before, and I'd guess her usage as the villain was in honor of the still-tender passing of her co-creator, George Pérez. But also, Maxima was a member of the version of the Justice League that Dan Jurgens wrote, and Cyborg Superman is one of his pet creations, so... this.

Batman shows up mostly to prevent the killing/capture of Lois Lane, and to explain who Maxima and Cyborg Superman are to Superman's life partner. Some alien albino gal named Glyanna shows up to prevent the killing/capture of Jon Kent. Except that character was created in 2023, and Jon is back to being a boy, so I don't get this continuity. I do get the Ben Day dot "flashbacks" where Clark Kent never developed powers, became editor-in-chief of The Daily Planet, but watched Lois Lane become the twice-over babymama of Lex Luthor. See, this is Jurgens ripping off "For the Man Who Has Everything," badly, and never explaining why an illusion meant to placate a captive Superman (who never actually escaped from the giant robot's trap-body) instead catalyzed his jailbreak. Just as it's never explained how a couple of second-tier Superman villains and random alien invaders defeated all the metahumans, although somehow Steel and armored Lex Luthor have among the best showings of anyone. Simply, the key explanation is that Dan Jurgens was rarely a notable writer, and got by on telling Superman fans that theirs was the bestest boy! That's what we have here, yet again.

I didn't go wild for the James Gunn Superman movie, because it was a sloppy mess of comedy bits and fan service that crowded a post-1986 version of Superman that I've never fully embraced out of his own eponymous movie. I had the opposite reaction here, of loathing the Jurgens-era SuperDuperMan who rendered the entire DC Universe as mere supporting players in his stories. I know this will always be J'Onn J'Onzz's role, especially in Superman stories, but giving the business to Wonder Woman and other God-tier DC heroes is part of why I hated Superman events during the Triangle Number Era. I don't feel like most modern writers can tell compelling Superman stories, and there's a subset that try to make up for it by elevating Superman so far above his peers that every other hero may as well be Jimmy Olsen. Any time I feel bad for the contempt I hold against Dan Jurgens, I recall lame, derivative, condescending mediocrities like this, and feel validated in my decades of disdain.

History of the DC Universe (1987)

The first thing that you have to remember here is that Mars does not matter in the grand scheme of DC Comics continuity. Krypton does. Gotham City does. To a much lesser extent, Themyscira does. Casting a net more broadly, as has been mentioned in a couple of my podcasts, Atlantis matters to both Marvel and DC Comics. But Mars? I don't think rates all that highly anywhere, outside of Topps Comics. The 20th Century made a lot of dismissive mention of the Red Planet, and like the moon, the popular consciousness read it as a generic location of dubious value to fantastical comic book stories.


And so, the first half of the Post-Crisis on Infinite Earths revisionist history of DC published in 1986 is mighty concerned about Oa, prehistoric Earth, World War II... all those other places I mentioned. Without a comprehensive reread though, no mention of the planet Mars, or any of its denizens. Moving into the second half, they still devote a lot of pages to WWII, and a little bit of the post-war years. The one true Earth was still a cooling mass, however, so from there we leap to Task Force X and the conception of Aquaman. That famed rocket from a doomed planet had been launched in the first volume, and finally landed in a corn field near Smallville. A nigh-adolescent Bruce Wayne saw his parents gunned down, which gets a bit hinky with the relative ages of the DC Trinity. Phantom Stranger, Captain Comet, and the creation of Princess Diana arrive next. Well, one figure does fall between Comet and clay baby Wonder Woman...

Warrior J'onn J'onzz, exiled into the parched Martian desert, was teleported accidentally to planet Earth by the famous Professor Erdel. This Manhunter from Mars knew the time of heroes had not yet come, and so remained in hiding, disguising himself as a police detective until, at last, he could allow the world to know of his existence.

There's a lot to consider there. Firstly, that was two sentences. I choose to offer long, sometimes tortured sentences as part of my personal expression, so you might call me hypocritical for pointing that out-- but dang! Next, the fact that in a rare instance of DC offering mixed caps in a canon story, only the Js are capitalized. Okay, I might be "considering" too pedantically. How about how the late Silver/early Bronze status quo begun with"...And So My World Ends!" seems to still be in place, with that "warrior" bit in particular pushed back against by the 1988 retcon? We're also in a vague pre-heroic age, with the best marker being the conception of Raven on the next page. The creative team on this book had come up with that character to be a member of the New Teen Titans, and the book's artist was presumably working out how his Wonder Woman would also debut in her late teens/early 20s in her new history. Therefore, at the time of publication, it would be fair to assume Detective John Jones was around in the late 1960s. Couldn't be much further back than that, if we want to keep Superman and Batman around 28-30 years old. While a handful of stories alluded to a further period setting, it would be another eight years before parity with his initial date of publication was established in Zero Hour: Crisis in Time #0.

In another short-lived stand for this continuity, the entire World's Finest trio launches the modern heroic age, placing Robin ahead of the latest version of Flash, Green Lantern, the Atom, the Hawks, Aquaman, Captain Atom, Green Arrow, and Blue Beetle. We see Starfire as a child, Cave Carson, the Challengers of the Unknown, Adam Strange, the Sea Devils, and Dolphin. Curious chronology ahead of their key super-team revival...

This was now the Silver Age of heroes, and some of the greatest who ever lived banded together to fight evil on Earth and throughout the stars. Inspired by the wartime exploits of the famed All-Stars and the Justice Society, these young heroes took the name the Justice League of America.

Because John Byrne's Man of Steel had already rolled out, we knew that Superman would be excluded. Pictured as the core line-up were J'onn J'onzz, Aquaman, Barry Allen, Batman, and Hal Jordan. A scale Ray Palmer Atom was placed just outside the framing of this team inside the old badge logo of the JLA, with the floating heads of Oliver Queen and Katar Hol on either side. Not a bad guess, but this line-up was never properly executed in the comics. The Caped Crusader was eventually excluded, at least as a founder, though he inevitably engaged with the JLA early and often in this retcon. DC eventually settled on a quintet in 1988, capped by Black Canary.

Jemm, Son of Saturn got a mention as a contemporary of Firestorm, Firehawk, and the Warlord Travis Morgan, oddly predating the retroactive continuity armored Gardner Grayle Atomic Knight, as well as Baron Winters of Night Force. These were mostly continuity charity cases, only getting a nod here by proximity to publication date. Jemm was originally a Son of Mars, who played heavily in the fields of post-apocalyptic Bronze Age New Mars stories, and his Saturnians were eventually retconned into literal Martian clones by Ostrander/Mandrake. It's nice for us, since none of the solo Manhunter from Mars adventures rated a mention, nor his predecessor, Roh Kar. Instead, as ever, and another gift of the zeitgeist, the Alien Atlas is solely represented in this period through his affiliation with the mid-80s Justice League (generally appended with "Detroit" to define the line-up of Batman, Elongated Man, Zatanna, Steel, Gypsy, Vibe, Vixen, and Aquaman.

From there, we get into the weeds of para-Crisis on Infinite Earths material, with a heavy emphasis on developments during and spinning out of Legends, including the line-up of the first six months or so of the Justice League relaunch (soon-to-be-International.) So that's Dr. Light II, Captains Atom and Marvel, Mr. Miracle, Guy Gardner, Black Canary, Blue Beetle, and Dr. Fate. They're followed by the Suicide Squad and, ugh, Post-Crisis Wonder Woman. It makes my skin itch when people rave about the female leg of the DC Trinity arriving after freakin' EVERYBODY, just so Perez could treat his Simonson Thor retread as though it were a brand new shiny thing. And then from there is a toboggan ride through the potential futures, most especially the Legion of Super-Heroes 30th Century, that will be ripped to pieces to wipe the butt of every reboot from here through the next five decades and counting.

“‘J’ is for JLA / Justice League of America Jam”

Click To Enlarge


I'm coming late to an early week, so we're going zero effort. I'm not putting in any work, and that includes posting any original art that I at least labored to pay for. But I'm sure the owner of this piece paid handsomely across the nine years it took to complete! Featuring the work of Aaron Lopresti, Cully Hamner, Dave Johnson, Tom Cook, Barry Kitson, Scott Kolins, Andrew Robinson, Mike Grell, Trevor Von Eeden, and Kevin Maguire on Martian ManHunter, as lovely as it is, the patron has to weep a bit that Pat Broderick drew the wrong "Atom" character (and he has history with both-- c'mon man!)

Superman: Space Age (2022-2023)

Clark Kent's rocket from Krypton landed in Smallville, Kansas a bit later than in real life, offering a late teen debut of Superman in 1963 as part of an atomic age second act of the Cuban Missile Crisis. As with David Goyer's cinematic take, Pa Kent is averse to his son using his powers in any way, much less ever leaving home to do so, and warns him about unintended consequences with the story of his accidental wartime killing of a child. The flying farmboy in overalls nonetheless inserts himself into a moment of geopolitical panic that's ultimately responsible for the fiery death of the citizens of Coast City, California. Cue a rapper monotonously and repetitively intoning "this is the remix."

Clark Kent stumbled upon the Fortress of Solitude and begins training to become Superman, plagued by imposter syndrome over the recent circumstances, and his failure to live up to the hologram of Jor-El's minimum expectations of his child's development. The following year, Clark moved to Metropolis, where he took over Lois Lane's old "kooks" beat after she leveled-up to full reporter. It was here that he met Pariah ("this is the remix, uh-huh uh-huh") and was given a prediction of multiversal doom that will hang over the entire mini-series. Elsewhere, Bruce Wayne further develops a rejected pitch to the military into his Batman arsenal, jet fighter Hal Jordan downs Abin Sur's starcraft, and Lois Lane investigates the great events of the times, including the story highlight of spending time in jail with the Freedom Riders. Lex Luthor creates another missile crisis so that he can rule over the ashes, but is captured by Batman, and the actual nukes are redirected by the arrival of Superman. The characterizations mostly fit the Tom Mankiewicz mold, so you'd be forgiven for hearing the voices of Reeve, Kidder, Cooper, Beatty, and especially Gene Hackman while reading. The outliers are at Wayne Manor, as you'd more rightly hear Sam Hamm as read by Keaton and Gough, including the complete absence of a Robin. A month later, Wonder Woman is dropped into the U.N. to state the need for Amazonian intervention in any future crisis, and joins Green Lantern and the World's Finest at the new Hall of Justice. You can use whatever voice you want to while reading Princess Diana, because she's little more than an obligatory visual presence throughout this story.

Book Two leaps to 1972, and concerns itself with the impotence of colorful heroes maintaining the status quo in troubled times, within a story that is itself almost entirely bereft of non-whites, aside from stereotypical pimp and hos in the opening sequence. Maxwell Lord ("uh-huh uh-huh") takes over Wayne Enterprises, and runs it with such sociopathic criminality that Batman has to burn it all down in the end. Despite being the liberal voice of the Justice League of America for a generation, the appearance of Green Arrow, along with Aquaman, is purely token-- leaving the handwringing to the Dark Knight and Man of Steel. The Flash gets more attention, but in an already media-indebted work, painfully takes his cues from Ezra Miller's atypical ADHD neurotic. Clark Kent drops the ball on Watergate and is scooped by Lois Lane, who is constantly reinforced as his professional and moral superior. Kent does make a big show of finally acknowledging this, seemingly unlocking Lois' chastity as they finally embrace romantically, then marry, then procreate. It's a remarkably conservative trajectory, even for a Superman comic. The back third of this edition of an exceeding long trilogy of self-important 80-page tomes dispenses with the social concerns in favor of a lengthy Brainiac battle that sets the stakes of a final reckoning with the Crisis, along with the abrupt demise of Hal Jordan. Again though, nobody in this book really matters except Clark, Lois, and Bruce.

As with the Zack Snyder Murderverse, I'm more put out by the late inclusion of the Martian Manhunter than I would have been his total omission. It's explained by a contrivance of the story that no aliens are publicly known before the arrival of Brainiac, except Superman, and also readers saw Abin Sur and the Jor-El hologram, but whatever. He is joined by Green Lantern John Stewart, the Hawks, Black Canary (previously at Jordan's funeral,) Red Tornado, the Atom, and... Swamp Thing?!? Stewart gets the job of a Guardians of the Universe-informed exposition dump on the Anti-Monitor, and the insermountable Crisis coming in its wake. This is furthered by a multiverse of Brainiacs trying to recruit a multiverse of Superman...ses... after destroying their individual Earths for... natural resources, or something? It's a dumb play for such a bunch of... you know. In another straight lift from multimedia, Superman is girded into expanded action by the death of his terrestrial father by heart attack. Superman decides 19 years into the narrative to finally embrace hologram Jor-El and his inherited intellect to... take a few years off to master the human genome so that he can analyze every living being to create a pill that cures whatever ails them? It's ahh-- rather convenient-- and continues the telegraphing of the final resolution begun with one particular multiversal Superman at the top of Book Three.

In a nauseating turn that I'm thankful I read before the election, an Alan Dershowitz stand-in exonerates Lex Luthor for mass murder, allowing him to rebuild LexCorp, undermine Superman, and hire a rather Ledger Joker (complete with a Moore-biting origin story) to kill Batman... in an exhaustingly overlong tangent within an already tediously overwritten yet undercooked work that took me seeming ages to finish in one sitting... in a hospital waiting room, to boot. Trust that I was looking for a good distraction here. I had other books with me, but this thing ate up all the hours available for reading. Plus, the whole thing is just a set-up for a gag where Luthor claims victory just as the Crisis begins in earnest and he's forgotten entirely. Whomp-whomp. Here's hoping life imitates art. All I want for Christmas is a Big Mac-fueled coronary.

In a totally unobtrusive sequence where Allred definitely does not draw himself, friends, and family in as bystanders, most of the Earth perishes in lava as the planet breaks into pieces. For once, we don't actually see J'onn J'onzz die by fire, though he almost certainly burns. Just to twist the knife, Swamp Thing uses his stretching powers to save people in the final panel to bother with the props that were the JLA in this tale. Everyone dies, but Superman made a crystal that he stuffs through a hole in the multiverse made by the Brainiacs to land on an Earth where only a Superman survives. He uses it to repopulate everyone from the Space Age Earth as clones, including Lois and Jon Kent, who wonder why he made a golden statue in honor of himself. "That's not me, " the other Superman explains to extras from the forgotten 2005 Michael Bay thriller The Island. The End. So now you can't ask "Whatever Happened To...?" And I believe that I used every available Manhunter image in this blog post.

"Space Age" was by Mark Russell & Michael Allred, credits I copied & pasted from Mike's Amazing World of Comics, who it pleased me to realize was still with us long enough to catalog the book. I haven't had much experience with the writer, but was bowled over by his Superman meets Jesus Christ series Second Coming, which left me on the lookout for more. The artist I've enjoyed since buying the original Tundra Madman #1 in 1992, although I've mostly admired from afar.

Superman was one of my first super-heroes, as would be common for children "From the Thirties to the Seventies." Among my earliest exposures was the Superman #1 Treasury Edition, reprinting the initial Siegel & Shuster stories, so my perspective on the character may be a bit different from most. I don't think the Superman comics of my childhood were very good, and while my key periods of faithful reading were 1987-88 & 1993, I don't hold that material particularly dear. As a fan and retailer, I kept up with the Triangle Number period through heavy skimming and odd reads until it ended, and have dipped in from time to time, but ultimately firmly rejected the Post-Crisis interpretation of the character that persists to this day. My taste in Superman is informed less by the comic stories that I've read and more by the idea of him-- heavily informed by the Donner films, the Animated Series, and references/second hand recollections. I like the Kryptonian Superman-- the one who is more Kal-El than Clark Kent-- as seen in the Golden and Silver Age comics. On pure concept, as metaphor, and at the peak of popular cultural relevance, give me the 1950s Weisinger Man of Tomorrow. I think the further he's drifted from that ideal, with an ever greater corruption by acolytes of Stan Lee's heroes with feet of clay, the less Superman has had to say in distinction from any other idiot that wears their underwear on the outside. It's right there in the "Man of Steel" moniker that the emphasis should be on the super, man!

Russell struck me as a big idea type, and Allred loves playing in a groovy oddball mid-century space, so I really thought that this mini-series would finally serve me the alien intellectual Superman that I've been longing for. There is a little bit of that, mostly toward the end, but it slipped my mind that one of Allred's biggest influences was the foundational Spider-Man artist Steve Ditko, and that Russell's overt humanism lent itself more to Denny O'Neil than Otto Binder. I was crushingly disappointed to realize that Space Age was pretty much the exact opposite of what I'd hoped for, and would trod well worn deconstructionist ground. Thanks to its setting and style, it strongly recalls Darwyn Cooke's The Final Frontier, but undermines its heroes and exposes the underbelly of the nation instead of celebrating the progress made in that era. I now understand that the relatively muted response to this piece is probably because it's so similar to and so pale against other efforts. It was sort of a Justice League story with no interest in the team, a Superman story that gave most of the victories to Lois Lane or Batman, aimed for profundity with bumper sticker platitudes, was a Bronze Age Marvel story with Silver Age DC characters, used the fall of Camelot as an arch and unnecessary allegory for modern sociopolitical concerns, and was a comic book largely dependent on characterization from outside media, reading like pro-fic pitched directly at Walter Hamada's Warner Brothers. But most importantly, as with Snyder, it fundamentally misunderstands the icons it toys with, and the nature of their metafiction. Laura Allred's colors are a beauty to behold on her husband's delightful pencils, but it's all in service to a story that I hold in contempt, and was such a chore to get through that I'll only ever take it off my bookshelf to look at, never again to be read. What I don't need in this moment is a downer yarn about the Superman that failed.

Justice Society of America #2 (September, 1992)

"As senior statesmen... or mystery men, we should have a role in society-- as mentors or advisors or helping hands in an emergency. I've worked with some of the Justice League and they're good... real good. I'm proud to say that maybe my experience made them even better... but they're not invincible-- no one is! And God knows there's plenty of trouble to go around in the modern world." -Carter Hall

I did that thing where I missed a week again. In my defense, I had a couple of doable posts in mind and had time set aside to get them done, but circumstances changed throughout the week. I kept having to push things back a day at a time, until Friday approached, and I figured, why bother? So to make it up, I intend to do a longer post on Wednesday. I have to say that 2024 has been full of exciting challenges, both good and bad. It's made me one poor correspondent, so if I owe you an email, I'm sorry and hope to catch up in November. I have to say that I'm in the safest, most comfortable place of my life. But also, time changes everything, I'm not one to just sit on a lilypad, and even if I could, a lot is simply outside my control. Thankful as I am, I was looking forward to enjoying Halloween this year, but there's been too many horrors this October to feel like seeking any more out. I'm sure we've all been extra tense this month, but whatever happens in November, I'm set on shoring things up on my end. 2024 has been defined by self-imposed degrees of drowning, and I need to find healthier ways to blog, podcast, and pursue other creative endeavors. Hopefully, that will include fewer skip weeks, but you've heard that before...

WEBTOON Red Hood: Outlaws (2022-2023)

The Outlaws try to go legit -- and fail spectacularly. The Justice League has issued a challenge to DC’s Dark Trinity, forcing Red Hood, Artemis of Bana-Mighdall, and Bizarro to try and replace their goody-two-shoe counterparts as the heroes the world neither deserves nor needs. In this original series, the Outlaws will battle some of DC’s biggest Super-Villains and Super Heroes -- but their biggest battles are among themselves. Can this team last? And can they find their own identities separate from Batman, Wonder Woman, and Superman?

Per Wikipedia, WEBTOON is "a South Korean webtoon platform launched in 2004 by Naver Corporation, providing hosting for webtoons and compact digital comics. The platform is free, and is found both on the web at Webtoons.com and on mobile devices available for both iOS and Android." DC Comics has apparently farmed out some of their IP to the company, including the New 52's Red Hood & the Outlaws, under the recenty "Dark Trinity" model of wannabe bottom shelf Bat-Supes-WW. While doing research, I stumbled upon the project, and then suffered through it. I readily admit myt biases: I am an old. I like "Modern Age" North American comics, except most generations of readers are maybe fifteen years long and "modern" starts more or less in 1986, so it's an unweildy conceit. To be more precise, I like a combination of late Bronze Age world building/aesthetics but with "Dark/Chromium Age" mature and subversive elements. It would be especially ignorant and prejudiced to say that I don't like "manga," but I can say that I'm not big on stereotypical Asian storytelling tropes like massively decompressed storytelling and cutesy banter/romcom elements. I especially don't like when American super-heroes are forced into this model without regard for continuity. As an added bonus, the episodes are infinite scrolls optimized to be read on a phone, but I read on a desktop. This is not my jam.

The story is that the Outlaws are mercenaries hired by the presumed deceased mobster Franco Bertinelli to recover a stolen family heirloom on Dinosaur Island. Yes, that's the name of Huntress' father, and he looks the part, but this is just the sort of superficial nod to continuity that only serves to confuse and frustrate the kind of people that will catch the reference. Besides facing dinosaurs, the Outlaws also run a Raiders of the Lost Ark gauntlet of boobytraps to capture the "heirloom." Did I also mention that I hate overt references to obvious pop culture sources?

The first twist is that the "heirloom" is an artifact kept safe in this cave for "thousands of years" by Artemis' reckoning, so the premise of the entire mission is a lie. The second is that there is seemingly an African-American police officer on a date with a girl named Caitlin who resembles Babs Gordon and works nights, but isn't Batgirl. They're at the Mimic Coffee Bar, he orders a plate of Chocos sandwich cookies for their dinner, and the girl is actually into it. The cop has to exit the date, because his warning device that intruders have broken into his secret Dinosaur Island hiding place for a Martian artifact has gone off. This story is by a first time writer who is heavily invested in this work, so it gives me no pleasure to attack his work. However, "likes Chocos and gets ornery when you touch his Martian stuff" is the most basic, pathetic characterization for J'Onn J'Onzz, and that's about the level of every character in this strip. Also, Martian Manhunter hasn't been on Earth for thousands of years to mind the artifact, and I'm pretty sure his high tech detection and force field detention system are unrelated to the Ray Harryhausen reanimated skeletons also defending the object. There could be a story in that, but it's not told here. It's merely another plot contrivance, which starts with "why didn't you have the containment force fields set up for before someone stole the artifact?"

So Martian Manhunter captured and replaced Artemis, hanging out with Red Hood and Bizarro for hours, until Jason Todd deduced that "she" was not actually his teammate. They fought, and Bizarro beat Martian Manhunter, so J'Onn called the Watchtower for back-up. THe Outlaws got through the force field and back to whatever Western country "Franco Bertinelli" was in. The Outlaws take their wages, but then fight "Franco" to force him to explain what the real deal was with "his" scheme. It turned out that Franco was actually D'Kay D'Razz in disguise. Despite the story repeatedly referring to it as an "idol," and it vaguely resembling the New 52 Pandora's Box, "The Heart of H'ronmeer is the most powerful remnant of life on Mars. It hold the ability to replicate a fascimile of Martian life. A mirror. A bastardization." What this meant was that D'Kay turned a bunch of humans in the building into clones of herself. Why the Outlaws were exempt, I know, because plot contrivance. A trio of mercenaries held their own against a small army of Martian serial killer clones who keep homaging that Ivan Reis D'Kay D'Razz variant cover merged with Junji Ito in AI, and then the Justice League showed up. Despite this, the D'Kays escaped to Mars, and the condition will be permanent if The Heart of H'ronmeer touches down on the red planet. So now would be a good time for a Batman-Red Hood heart-to-heart where Bruce Wayne unmasks?

The story just stops when Red Hood insisted that the Outlaws were more effective than the Justice League, so Batman makes his former protegee agree to a deal herein the Outlaws will replace the League for a month using approved, non-lethal tactics. So the League stands down for a month, giving the mercenaries free reign of thew Watchtower. The Martian stuff gets dropped without resolution. I think the League went to Mars to stop D'Kay, the crux of the initial argument? And did I mention that the Outlaws were just hired by a presumed mobster to steal stuff with no qwuestions asked? Make any of this make sense.

Nearly twenty episodes and four months later, it made sense. The D'Kay D'Razz situation was resolved in a few panels with minimal complications, but did involve her literally backbiting Martian Manhunter off-panel. The Outlaws' adventures were all virtual reality simulations echoing the circumstances the Justice League were dealing with, and Manhunter was left on the Watchtower to guard them in their suspended animation. J'Onn J'Onzz used his telepthy to speak clearly with Bizarro and help him deal with an especially cruel false family scenario. By this point there were a team of additional artists, and you can tell. There was also a team of bounty hunters, mercenraies, and assassins after the Outlaws, now that Wayne was no longer protecting them, and he was a real pal to leave J'Onn J'Onzz to get caught up in all that. He claimed to be proficient in 1,827 languages while playing punch face with KGBeast and looking too much like Piccolo. Artemis took out Merlyn, Codename: Assassin, and Lady Shiva, who surrendered. At chapter 33, J'Onn had fought Lobo, then they both teamed up with Bizarro to save the Watchtower from falling out of orbit, and Artemis had taken out some Medusa chick who turned out to be the main baddie? I'll be honest, by this point I was free-spinning the scroll like a The Price is Right money wheel. I justy stopped when I saw green, as you do, and there were blessedly fewer Robin appearances to interfere with that process. Things got very talky and metaphysical, the chapters seemed to short, and I'd say the art improved (collectively?) I think Batman and/or Red Hood learned the error of their ways, even though they're supposed to be the heroes rather than the recidivists?

Episode 53 had another green blip. Artemis was being imprisoned and tortured. Red Hood got help from Martian Manhunter to get into the place where she was being held, under stipulation that J'Onn would have no further involvement without proof of criminal involvement, and that Bruce wouldn't get word of it. There was a sequence where you had to turn your phone sideways for an Oldboy hallway fight. Artemis got a Green Lantern power ring. There's a fakeout where Jason and Artemis appeared to get married, but it was actually Dick Grayson and Barbara Gordon. So the writer got a treat for spending three years of his life on a story that can never be collected in print and is certainly out of continuity. Oh hey, Caitlin from the date catches the bouquet, so finally a callback to all that.

In my frustration, my critique will be a reductive "this sucks." Not only do I hate all the scrolling, but it is actively detrimental to the storytelling. Every episode has sequences where you're just rolling past scenery of negative space. I think it might be a bid to control narrative time and mood, but it mostly feels like thumb isometrics. You can tell the artists are used to doing digital pin-ups, as they struggle with basic visual storytelling, and everyone is posed like Colorforms on vague backgrounds that they don't seem to inhabit. Without a break point like the turn of a page, unheralded flashbacks and dream sequences are jarring and utterly disorienting to the point where I thought I might have clicked on the wrong chapter, except "oh, right" I was still in the same chapter when things went pear-shaped. Money may have technically changed hands, but this is still fanfic in terms of craft on display. The story ended on 8/27/23, and is primarily credited to Patrick R. Young and Nico Bascuñan. You can read it for yourself here

Brightest Day #15 (Early February, 2011)

On Mars, twenty-five years later. There's a big ceremony celebrating what is essentially the resurrecting Messiah of Mars (as in he resurrected Mars rather than himself. In your face, Jesus of Nazareth.) The other, older members of the "Magnificent Seven" had been snuck on-world to join in the global celebration of the wonder that is Green Lantern J'Onn J'Onzz. As in the Green Lantern Corps, with whom Martians were positioned as having an adversarial relationship in a book edited by Pete Tomasi, and whose masters, the Guardians of the Universe, had altered the DNA of prehistoric Martians to be vulnerable to fire after they had been deemed too great a threat to other lifeforms? Yeah, so Green Lantern Corpsman J'Onzz had brought a lasting peace to Earth and Mars, to the gushing adulation of an entirely uncritical and deferential Batman.

Of course it's an imaginary story. Doi. I'm certain the writers did not expect the readership to be utterly clueless to this fact by the third page, and yet the story keeps on belaboring asserted facts that any experienced comics reader would dismiss on sight. It's hard not to get antsy reading pages of nonsense filler while waiting for the matter to resolve. So yeah, giant statue in Martian Manhunter's honor. J'Onn's family alive and expanded, with daughter K'hym herself now a Manhunter. Keeping the homicide witness family dog from earlier in the series as a pet, despite feeding it a steady diet of sandwich cookies, likely to cause daily severe stomach upset, pancreatitis, and chocolate poisoning. Batman feeling the need to list the ways in which every Leaguer but him is not entirely human, but failing to explain in the same panel why his head is in 3⁄4 but his mouth is a front view. I didn't know you could get punched that hard.

Getting shot with "pearl bullets" is actually what did Batman in, because a pearl necklace wasn't suggestive enough. Wonder Woman was hung from her lasso by a finger of the Manhunter statue. Aquaman drowned on Martian sands. They ran out of ironic deaths for Green Lantern and the Flash, so they just get dismembered, though Flash continued running like a chicken with its head cut off. Hardy-har. After invading the minds of all Martians simultaneously in search of clues, the yet surviving Superman was found in "the underground security bunker where our most powerful enemies are kept captive." A brief history of Martian imprisonment: In the Silver Age, they'd strap this flying belt thing on crooks and leave them floating at a stationary point in the atmosphere. Morrison stuck the White Martians in the Still Zone, a formless white void outside space/time. Malefic was held a gem-type thing. Here we have... Sciencells, but red. I guess it's a good thing that this is a Green Lantern story, then. Oh, and so many great Easter Eggs in the cells, with classic Martian Manhunter villains like Despero and... Starro... Johnny Quick? Various unidentifiable squiggles, though one is a girl, so, like, Bette Noir?

Superman was wearing a Kryptonite mask, and K'hym wanted to mentally probe his unconscious form for answers, as he was among the few beings capable of killing the League. J'Onn refused her, prompting a tirade about how he was okay with probing every Martian but not a single outsider, and how his loyalties are ever with Earth over Mars. A justifiable concern, but also D'Kay D'Razz's hand being tipped. More so when they line up all the corpses in a morgue, and all the cross slashes supposedly spell out the Martian words for "love" and "hate." Also, despite saving Superman's life, Manhunter randomly stabbed him to death with an undetected Kryptonite spike or especially powerful ring construct? Also, K'hym was inexplicably absent. And despite using heavy shadows as a handicap throughout the issue/run, the artist channels Ed McGuinness cartoon hyper-muscularity to depict Superman getting shived under lighting so bright that the only shadows cast on the entire pages were to highlight said inflated muscles. Being a sloppy second rate Doug Mahnke had gotten him this far, so is it too much to ask that we keep the artist we're deriving from consistent from panel to panel?

So, yeah, all of Mars burned again and M'yri'ah was unmasked (de-gloved?) as D'Kay, ending on the distasteful note of her on her knees being choked by our standing "hero" while the bones of Martian children were ghoulishly arranged in the background. D'Kay accused J'Onn of giving up on Mars. "I do not fight for lies of the mind, D'kay... and I never will!" How relatable. So inspiring. Smash cut to two pages of Scott Clark teasing the ongoing Firestorm story (which, remember, will ultimately be abandoned for the New 52.)

"Whatever Happened to the Manhunter from Mars?" was by writers Peter J. Tomasi & Geoff Johns, with art by Patrick Gleason & company. It is perhaps the worst Martian Manhunter story. You might dismiss that as hyperbole, and it's certainly not true at the level of raw craft, but bear with me. "For the Man Who has Everything..." and "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?" are considered to be two of the greatest comic stories ever told, a pair of Alan Moore's most well regarded tales, and typically at minimum top 10 Superman yarns (though both lose impact the further perception moves past the Silver Age model, into the ongoing Byrne Man of Steel period.) Martian Manhunter is widely considered to be mint-flavored Superman. Blatantly cribbing from major Superman stories, much diminished in length and talent, on a highly visible maxi-series that eclipses any audience the Sleuth from Outer Space ever commands on his own, conforms the bias held by many that the Alien Atlas has nothing more to offer than being a stand-in or jobber for the Man of Steel. Plus cynical ultra-violence, which is itself reheated '80s Moore. Plus the story just stinks, and the artist can't maintain quality or character from panel to panel. Plus, all those wardrobe changes, and they're all Green Lantern costumes. There may be objectively worse stories, but few more harmful to the Martian Marvel.

Red Robin #19 (March, 2011)

The Ünternet is some kind of VR world having to do with The Calculater and a dark web where super-villains can communicate with one another. Also Darkseid and Final Crisis? Whatever. The crook who took it over, Viktor Mikalek, "killed" virtual reality avatars of the Justice League, including Martian Manhunter. A VR version of Miss Martian (in an alternate costume) and other Teen Titans show up later. By Fabian Nicieza, Marcus To, & Ray McCarthy.

DCU Holiday Special 2010 #1 (February, 2011)

The Centennial Park Hero Award was being presented by Superman following the Thanksgiving Day Parade. The Man of Steel offers up a litany of heroes from sports, politics, first responders, the armed forces, "And, of course there are many metahumans I've battled beside... who are also worthy of such an honor." However, the award ultimately goes to Alex Monroe, a little boy disfigured by third degree burns over his face and much of his body while saving his siblings from a fire.

Superman in "Hero of Heroes" was by Kevin Grevioux, Roberto Castro, & Scott Koblish.

DC Universe Online Legends #4 (Late May, 2011)

"Gentlemen, I'm afraid your argument just became moot. We no longer have to take the fight to Brainiac... because Brainiac just brought the fight to us!" The JLA satellite was assailed by nanites and Brainiacs robot enforcers. Martian Manhunter saved Firestorm from the former with his laser vision. However, the robots were swiftly able to adjust to the Manhunter's invisibility, then infested him with nanites, with other heroes pained by his maintained telepathic link. Forestorm and Hawkman carried J'Onn to the infirmary. Oh, and in the future, The Ray lost his right arm to treachery by a revenge-driven Lex Luthor, as you do.

"Strike Force" was by writer Tony Bedard, pencils by Howard Porter & Adriana Melo, inks by John Livesay & Norman Lee. Nothing says consistency like alternating creative teams between issues in a continuing narrative. Also, that they're both meandering slugfests.

Justice League of America #54 (April, 2011)

At a time of grave crisis, the world's greatest heroes banded together to combat evil. The name of this team... the Justice League of America. Other heroes joined this group... other champions. The roll call changing year by year. And of late the roster has shifted yet again...

"Shadow Warriors" was by James Robinson, Brett Booth, and Norman Rapmund.

Brightest Day: The Atom Special #1 (September, 2010)

In the first ever sweeping revision of Ray Palmer's origin story, which was itself immediately forgotten (not unlike the Atom himself) in the sweeping revision of the DC Universe that was the New 52, we get a splash page for the Tiny Titan's time with the Justice League by Jeff Lemire, Mahmud Asrar, & John Dell.

Wonder Woman #41 (April, 2010)

Here's a tiny J'Onn cameo from a JLA/JSA meet-up, which Princess Diana recalls as she gets pressed into a fight with Power Girl. By Gail Simone, Chris Batista, & Doug Hazlewood

Wonder Woman #600 pin-up by Phil Jimenez (2010)

Click To Enlarge

Green Lantern / Plastic Man: Weapons of Mass Deception #1 (February, 2011)

Here's the bad news: a horde of aliens is living undercover on Earth, and they're smuggling weapons off-planet to fuel an interstellar war! Here's the good news: two of Earth's most powerful heroes are on the case, and one of them is the finest cop in the galaxy, Green Lantern! But here's the bad news again: the other one is Plastic Man. Sorry, GL. This is gonna be rough…

Just from flipping through the book, it looks like evil space duck frame Eel O'Brian, and for some reason despite their having no connection to one another that I can think of, asks Hal Jordan to help clear his name? Or maybe the ducks are space cops and there is someone else doing the bad stuff? I don't care. I've never known Marv Wolfman to be a funny writer, and I sure don't see Brent Anderson as a comedic artist, plus I hate when Plas is played for laughs. All I know is that Brightest Day-period Martian Manhunter has a one-panel cameo on a viewing screen, so there.

Tiny Titans #21 (December, 2009)

Here's another Martian Manhunter cameo, wherein the Tiny Titans request the use of the JLA's satellite base for their first Pet Club meeting, but the overabundance of loud, heavy livestock sees Green Lantern Hal Jordan deliver them to the moon, instead. By Franco & Art Baltazar

2023 Crisis on Infinite Earths #7 Silver Age-style homage commission by Kerry Callen

I'm trying to wrap up podcasting business after having spent the holiday weekend driving to and from a convention, so I wasn't sure about the if & when of maintaining my scant return to weekly podcasting. Gathering social media for the podcast, I stumbled upon a tweet that would serve for today, a U.S. holiday devoted to the fallen in battle.

Here is a little-seen DC house ad from 1970. Created by an intern fired after only two months. However, his original concept endured and became an ACTUAL series in 1985. Or, maybe it's merely my latest commission. If so, I should have picked a specific artist and aped his style.

For more, check out Kerry Callen Does Stuff!