2025 James Gunn “Chocos Inc” Skeet

A certain Martian will be happy to hear Chocos Inc is going strong in #Superman. See it on the big screen now!

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

The Martian Manhunter in Zack Snyder's Justice League (2021)

So, I guess my first question would be, do the makers of modern super-hero movies all have Oedipal Complexes? I mean, I'm of the opinion that Rosemary Harris, aged 75 years in 2002, was the best cinematic Aunt May. Sure, she's sweeter and prettier than the sentient prune Steve Ditko drew, but this was still the same Hollywood that cast Arnold Schwarzenegger as the protagonist in Philip K. Dick's "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale". I thought Sally Field (65 in 2012) was too young and attractive for the role. Now we're at Marisa Tomei, barely 52 during filming, who has yet to have a picnic with Tina Fey, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Patricia Arquette, and Amy Schumer. At least Hope Davis' Maria Stark was from a quarter-century flashback! But move over to the DCEU with Nicole Kidman as Aquamom and Diane Lane as Ma Kent? There's some serious kinks at play here. The age difference between Lane and her "son" Henry Cavill was the same total years of life as the teenager he was dating at 33 after Man of Steel wrapped.

Hopefully, that tangent was enough spoiler space ahead of discussing the reedited extended cut of a 2017 movie wherein the director already spoiled everything via social media and the trailer. There's a scene from Josstice League, written and directed by Joss Whedon, where Ma Kent visits Lois Lane in the Daily Planet break room to discuss mourning her dead son and her would-be daughter-in-law's doing "light duty" reporting since. In the original version, Lois had taken an extended leave of absence, and Ma visited her at the apartment she shared with her would-be fiance. Ma urges Lois to return to work, which Lane ultimately agrees with, but not before spending a final day visiting the Superman Memorial. At the end of this scene, it was revealed that Ma Kent was really a disguised Martian Manhunter. Because there's two similar scenes in twin edits of the movie, I want to head cannon one as the real Ma and the other as Manhunter, even though it is impossible within the circumstances of either film, but said hopeless attempt makes more sense than the actual Snyder scene. It accomplishes nothing for the plot, and betrays a scene some had found emotionally rewarding, all for a sad grasp at the gasp fans inhaled in an episode of Supergirl two years earlier.

Back in 2013's Man of Steel, somebody saw African American actor Harry Lennix wearing some sort of x-shaped harness, and perhaps recalling Phil Morris' gun holster on Smallville, theorized that he would be revealed as J'Onn J'Onzz. That didn't come to pass, and given that his character of General Swanwick let thousands die in the Kryptonian invasion, then agreed to nuke Superman in Dawn of Justice, I would hope that was never the plan. In a recent issue of Vanity Fair, Snyder revealed of the closing moments of the revised film that, "We shot a version of this scene with Green Lantern, but the studio really fought me and said, 'We really don't want you to do Green Lantern.' So I made a deal with them, and they let me do this..." Need I remind you of screenwriter David Goyer's take? My guess is that Snyder was well aware of the old fan theories, and exploited them. Otherwise, Goyer was trolling us, and Snyder just had terrible ideas and no continuity in deploying the 6′ 4″ Lennix as an Alien Atlas.

Setting aside that as written, the Martian Manhunter (ironically his only given name, given Goyer's insistence that it would never be used on screen) is a nonsensical coward, what are my thoughts on Snyder's take? It stinks. They gave him glowing red bobbing googly eyes that make them look like an old dashboard liquid compass with an LED light inside. Lennix's voice is fine, but there's too much of his face in J'Onn's, so that it looks more like cosplay bodypaint than an actual alien. All of the ritual scarring lines all over his body make him look like cherimoya. The iron cross cape clasps make him look like a Nazi, and the x-shape on his chest is crude and ugly, By the end of the movie, Manhunter is the third member of the Justice League in an all-black costume with a cape, which is hella drab. The whole Tars Tarkas vibe means he'd probably explode perps brains with his telepathy like in Scanners, and it's altogether inferior to what the CW have managed across six years of UHF television. Any comic design would improve upon this. I'm sorry that this happened, am thankful that it technically isn't Manhunter's cinematic debut, and wish that it never darken our screens again.

Batman '66 Meets the Legion of Super-Heroes (September, 2017)

In another one-shot comic book continuation of the Adam West / Burt Ward television sensation, Batman is transported by teenagers from the future to the year 2966 to solve a time-heist engineered by one of his dastardly fiends of 1966, Egghead. At one point, "Bat-Gramps" argues for deductive reasoning over computer logic with an overly-dependent Brainiac 5, which plays out in the form of a board game. Mr. Mxyzptlk cameos as a series of misdirects on the board.
"Concerned Citizen Recalls Seeing Bald-Headed Man," Go Ahead 2.
"Same Citizen Saw A Suspicious Bald Man On Mars," Go Ahead 1.
"He May Be Bald, But He's Also Very, Very, Green," Return To Earth.

To my knowledge, this is the only small appearance of J'onn J'onzz in the TV show continuity, and also a nice nod to the unused JLA Monopoly art of the special's creator, Michael (& Lee & Laura) Allred.

Speaking of slight appearances, September 1st marked the twelfth anniversary of this blog, and I believe that this is the first year that it went unmentioned. If not for the Salvation Run coverage this past summer, you'd be forgiven for fearing the worst. September was always a slow month for the blog in terms of readership, vastly more so since I stopped regularly updating. Frankly, I had other things I needed to get done more this month. That said, the original Z'Onn Z'Orr: Home of the Martian Manhunter and Martian Manhunter: Rock of the JLA Web TV fan pages would also be celebrating their 20th anniversaries around now. I won't pretend to foretell the far future after so many false starts, but an awful lot of artists have waited a long time to see their commissions turn up online. Wouldn't it be nice if I got out a weekly post every Martian Monday going forward?

Justice League: Mortal Leaked Cast Costume Test Photo

Half a decade ago, I pulled together a Martian Manhunter-specific look at what would have been the first JLA movie, featuring 6'2", sixty year old Australian Hugh Keays-Byrne as J'Onn J'Onzz. A couple of years later, when a picture of a latex mask produced for the film was finally released, I did an awkward, halting podcast adaptation of my earlier piece. That photo was part of a wealth of new information offered about the film in anticipation of the production of a documentary on it, George Miller’s Justice League: Mortal. They were even canny enough to create character posters for the doc, including the one seen in the header image above.

Unfortunately, it appears that Warner Brothers did not sign off on allowing any of this material to be used ahead of their actually completing a Justice League flick that wasn't as bad as you heard, but still landed with a thud on screens last year. I haven't heard of any movement on the project for a couple of years now and its official Twitter account went cold in September of 2016.

Don't ask me how toy photographer James Garcia got a very low definition picture of a full cast costume test (possibly here or here?), but such a thing apparently got tweeted out with the condemnation Yeah, can’t say I’m disappointed JUSTICE LEAGUE: MORTAL didn’t happen, then continues later in the thread with "I honestly thought it was from that old failed 1997 Justice League TV show when I first saw it. These look like cheap Halloween costumes". Also, the since-Golden-Globe-winning actor Armie Hammer, who would have played the Dark Knight, noted Not quite.... The bat suit isn’t right and also The Green Lantern was black. (@common was going to nail that role). The consensus of the thread was that the suits were bad, but Martian Manhunter looked the best, and the suits on the Justice League porn parody were better. (Note to self: why haven't you seen the Justice League porno yet?)



For my own taste, with the exceptions of Wonder Woman and Superman, I definitely prefer the looks and character selection of Mortal over the Snyder/Whedon jam. The Alien Atlas is clearly based on his short-lived Brightest Day costume, and is obviously made of rubber muscles in the old school 1990s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles/Corman Fantastic Four Thing mold that I'm iffy on. It's a very classic look for J'Onn that I'm not confident would have been well received by general audiences, who may have dubbed him a cheapjack Hulk. I'm a defender of the New 52 redesign, which I think would look fantastic and distinctive on the silver screen, and we now have a proof of concept via the television show Supergirl's excellent but too little seen One Year Later rendition. I've never been wild about the comics used as source material for the screenplay (save "Tower of Babel," which is a sequel story, not a launching pad) or the word that it would have played like an excessively violent Injustice: Gods Among Us grimdark interpretation of children's heroes. All that having been said though, I still kinda wish Mortal had come out. I feel it would have been lambasted and underperformed in a manner not dissimilar from the 2017 attempt, but could have taught Warner Brothers lessons that may have provided positive guidance on Man of Steel and averted Dawn of Justice entirely.

All in all, J'Onn J'Onzz making his "cinematic debut" eleven years after the fact in a sketchy behind the scenes photo from an aborted film featuring the entire "true" Justice League of America in an untold proto-formation story is just about the most Martian Manhunter way this could have played out. Mortal is like a real life "The Origin of the Justice League-- Minus One!"

DC in the 80s interviews Diabolu Frank, the "Martian Manhunter guy"

Click To Enlarge


The crew over at the DC in the 80s; including Mark Belkin, Michael Alan Carlyle, Susan Hillwig, Gracja Nowak, and frequent shower of Diabolu Twitter love Chris Sheehan; have been doing great work the past couple of years stoking the fires of nostalgia for one of the best and most important decades in comic book history (especially for Detective Comics Comics!) I particularly love their use of uncommon and rare promotional artwork in relation to coverage of various releases, as seen on their swell tumblr. Why they'd want to louse up their winning streak by talking to me I'm sure I don't know, but webzine editor Justin Francoeur decided to poke around in my idle-head until a lengthy interview popped out (and I also think he let The Doom Shadow loose again, but that's another story.) It's all terribly ME-centric and "inside baseball" beyond even my previous indulgences here. I talk a lot about my early collecting history, perceptions of the rise & fall of the direct market, why this blog/podcast exists, and some general info on Martian Manhunter and Despero. You can read the interview here, which is probably asking a lot of folks given the lame-o who vomits up most of the words, so you might prefer to just skip ol' Frank and go right to following the quality 'zine via Twitter or Facebook!

Podcast- Adjudicating J'Onn J'Onzz (ComicsVerse v Martian Manhunter)

Episode #28

Look for us on iTunes, ShoutEngine or directly download an art-tagged MP3 from the Internet Archive

The website Comicsverse, "your source for in-depth comics analysis" very very briefly ran a series of podcasts (exactly two to date, the last one in January) under the banner "Best Underrated Characters in Comics." Mind, this is out of 80 shows in total, and there've been 19 since, so perhaps they just abandoned the premise. I tend to think that's for the best, since I find the title misleads one into thinking they're going to select a character they find deserving of attention they haven't received and tell you why they're boss.

Unfortunately, in the episodes shining a white hot interrogation lamp on two heroes I'm very fond of, the shows instead felt like inquisitions to determine whether they are in fact underrated, or just poo (with the moderator's thumb on the scale weighing toward poo in both cases.) One was Doctor Strange, and you should know by the subject of this blog who the other was...

Join me for a special feature length episode with Diabolu Frank for the defense in the case of ComicsVerseS the Manhunter from Mars, but you should lead with the prosecution's case before you allow me to retort! Superman, Batman, Aquaman, and the rest of the Justice League will be called into question and occasionally treated as hostile witnesses as part of The Trial of the Incredible Hulk Sleuth from Outer Space!


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.

2016 Change.org Martian Manhunter Justice League movie petition

Our buddy Rafa Rivas of Ralph Dibny, the World-Famous Elongated Man has started a petition asking Warner Brothers to include Martian Manhunter in their upcoming Justice League movies, and asked me to help promote the effort. I'd actually see Ralph & Sue as a better fit for Zack Snyder's creative vision, which aligns more with Identity Crisis than anything in a Showcase Presents... I haven't seen Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice yet nor will I anytime in the near future. I'm perfectly happy watching J'Onn J'Onzz on CBS's Supergirl instead, but please sign on if you want the Alien Atlas to get the big screen treatment the rest of his JLA friends will soon experience...

SIGN THE PETITION

TV's Martian Manhunter is a Marvel Zombie

#NotJudging #StatementOfFact

Podcast: John Jones in Smallville, Part 1

Episode #18

Look for us on iTunes, ShoutEngine or directly download an art-tagged MP3 from the Internet Archive

Beginning this episode: an irregular series of shows covering appearances by the Sleuth from Outer Space on the WB/CW's long-lived Superboy Clark Kent developing into Superman TV show Smallville. This initial installment looks briefly at the show's formative development, then summarizes John Jones' cameo debut in the sixth season episode "Static," followed by the launch of the Martian-less not quite a "Justice" League, and finally the full debut of the Manhunter as portrayed by Phil Morris in "Labyrinth."

Episode Art Tumblr

@CommanderBlanx pic.twitter.com/SNfORmX9Tb

— Martin Gray (@MartGray) November 14, 2015

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.