TOMASO HA MANGIATO TUTTI I MIEI OREOS

Good morning, lovely readers. My, you look adorable. Welcome once again to my fetid and dank BARGAIN BASEMENT OF DOOOOOM, which houses some of the gems that may be mouldering, all sad-faced and unloved, in the 50p section of your local comics emporium. As regular visitors may remember, I’ve recently been wading waist-deep in a red-dirt swamp, following the relatively obscure adventures of my favourite comics character of all time – the Alien Atlas himself, the MARTIAN MANHUNTER. In today’s third and penultimate instalment of this extraterrestrial extravaganza, I’m going to look at the ongoing MM series that ran for 38 issues (and two annuals – one great, one crap) between 1998 and 2001.

While the preponderance of big guns and pouches and Leifeldian DeathBloodForceStryke atrocities made much of the ’90s a low ebb for comics in general, some great stuff was also being produced – and for me, Grant Morrison’s JLA was probably the best of its era. Among many, many wonderful things about that series, one of my personal highlights is the fact that Morrison finally gave J’onn J’onzz the respect he deserved but had so rarely been afforded. Here, J’onn’s place as one of the Big Seven of the DC Universe was firmly cemented (even if he always seemed a little out of place among his far more iconic and marketable peers), and his profile had never been higher. Following the DC One Million event, he was finally spun off into his own ongoing title, scripted by John Ostrander and drawn by Tom Mandrake (a dream creative team that had previously collaborated to great effect on The Spectre).

Despite having been around since the early 1950s, the Martian Manhunter remained something of a mysterious, inscrutable figure, a brooding background or second-tier presence in Justice League context (even as the team’s leader), and with most of his pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths solo adventures as a back-up in Detective Comics and House of Mystery seemingly too full of Silver Age silliness to be considered part of continuity. Once Morrison had rectified this, Ostrander set out to clarify and flesh out his history and character, as well as establish his position in the modern DC Universe.

Confusingly, before #1 came out, the series began with #0 and #1,000,000 – the former retells and expands upon J’onn’s origin; the latter (a DC One Million tie-in) flashes forward to his far future and foreshadows some of the events to come in the series. Under Ostrander’s pen, the story of the Martian plague that robbed J’onn of his wife, daughter and people is rendered extremely vivid and traumatic, even if elements of it are at odds with the origin provided by DeMatteis in the 1988 mini-series. The plague is revealed to be telepathic in nature – in order to survive, J’onn is forced to isolate himself from his family and from the communal Martian rapport. As he puts it in #0: ‘I had to kill myself to live.’ 

One of the more interesting aspects of the series is Ostrander’s handling of J’onn’s private life. As a shapeshifter, there’s no reason why he should be restricted to one identity. And indeed, it is revealed that, in addition to his usual human guise of Detective John Jones, he has had many over the years – from the deliberately incompetent supervillain Big Doof to the unknown pre-JLA hero the Bronze Wraith; from a Japanese businessman to an Italian cat.

 Whereas most characters in both DC and Marvel exist in a kind of rolling present – they’d have to, or Bruce Wayne would be pushing a hundred years old by now – J’onn’s history is permanently tied to the 1950s, making him the first superhero, chronologically speaking, of the post-war era. As such, Ostrander is able to insert him into various parts of DC history, retconning him into supporting roles in the back-stories of Superman, Batman and Green Lantern, like a jolly green Zelig. He also establishes close ties between the Martians and the Saturnians, bringing the obscure ’80s crimson J’onn-alike Jemm, Son of Saturn into the book as a supporting character. He even finds a neat way to incorporate and explain J’onn’s goofy Silver Age sidekick, Zook.

Ostrander also sought to establish a personal rogues’ gallery for J’onn. However, while the likes of Headmaster, Belle Noir and Antares were unusual characters, and made for interesting stories, they were, alas, destined for comic-book limbo. Only J’onn’s evil twin brother (no, really) Ma’alefa’ak (or Malefic, in a great case of convenient Earthling-speak nominative determinism) leaves any lasting impression, and would later appear in animated form in Justice League: Doom.  

Most of the issues are pencilled by Tom Mandrake, whose extremely fluid, dark and unsettling imagery is as perfectly suited to J’onn’s mutable and fiery world as it was to the grimly occult setting of the Spectre (who also makes an appearance). Just as Ostrander delights in coming up with increasingly imaginative and bizarre ways for J’onn to use his multifarious powers, Mandrake clearly has a ball with the visual possibilities inherent in a protagonist who changes shape, turning him into an armoured beast, a giant kaiju warrior, a planet and all manner of abstracted and perverted forms along the way.

 Aside from a couple of sub-par fill-ins, the entire series is remarkably consistent, and consistently good. The tone is really varied, ranging from high sci-fi to supernatural realms to pure superheroics and down-and-dirty detective work. The settings switch between the ancient past, the far future and the present, between Mars and Earth and Apokolips. Particular standouts are the #4–9 run, in which Malefic viciously takes down his brother and the whole JLA; #11 – a touching Bradbury-esque sci-fi yarn, guest-starring Swamp Thing and sumptuously guest-rendered by Bryan Hitch and Paul Neary; #17, in which we learn more about J’onn’s multiple identities; a JSA team-up and showdown with Darkseid in #18 and #19; and #24, a frankly ridiculous flashback to the Giffen/DeMatteis Justice League days, in which the normally stoic J’onn experiences some literal Hulk rage when pranked by Beetle and Booster.

Despite his lengthy history, this was the first time that the Martian Manhunter ever had a solo ongoing title. But will it be the last? To be honest, the signs aren’t good… He was the only DC big gun not to get his own book in the New 52 relaunch. He didn’t even make it into the Jim Lee Justice League (possibly mercifully), instead being awkwardly relegated to Stormwatch, and later a lesser, ersatz JLA.

Grifter got his own New 52 title – but not J’onn.

GRIFTER, I tells ya. A git with guns who drapes a loincloth over his face in lieu of a mask gets a series, but not J’onn. I despair of humanity.

Next week or thereabouts: the final chapter of the Martian invasion. Arm yourself with a common cold.

(originally published on The Big Glasgow Comic Page)

GREENS UNDER THE BED

Greetings, carbon-based soilpigs. Well, it seems like it’s time once again for me to seize you roughly by the philtrum and drag you downstairs to the BARGAIN BASEMENT OF DOOOOOM. As promised in the previous instalment, the basement has gone green – and I don’t mean environmentally friendly, given the tarlike fumes currently exuding from the… unpleasantness. No, it means another showcase focusing on my favourite seven-foot extra-terrestrial: the delightful and pine-scented J’onn J’onzz. This week, we’re going back to 1992, for the three-issue prestige-format mini MARTIAN MANHUNTER: AMERICAN SECRETS. 

Even among aficionados of the Alien Ace, this series seems dimly remembered. Certainly, it doesn’t have the experimental flair or character-defining authority of the DeMatteis/Badger series, nor the gravitas, scope and general bad-assery of the 1998 Ostrander/Mandrake ongoing series (of which more at a later date…). However, it’s an intriguing and unique title in its own right. Written by Gerard Jones (Justice League, Green Lantern) and drawn by the late Eduardo Barreto (Birds of Prey, Marvel Knights and various licensed properties for Dark Horse), the book places J’onn in the period setting in which he first appeared – 1950s America.

The story follows J’onn (who mostly appears in his human guise of Denver PD Detective John Jones) stumbling into a murder case that, via a vague and increasingly bizarre trail of clues, leads to a sinister conspiracy (which I won’t spoil here). Along the way, he teams up with a young girl in peril and an Elvis analogue by the name of Preston Perkins, meets a retired Golden Age adventurer, visits Vegas masquerading as a mix of Colonel Sanders and Colonel Tom Parker, wanders into a creepily idyllic white-picket suburb that’s not all it seems, and even heads to Cuba, where he encounters Che Guevara and Fidel Castro.

At times, American Secrets seems like a game of ‘How many 1950s references can we cram into three issues?’ We also get a rigged game show scandal, Leave it to Beaver, jukebox payola, Bobby Kennedy, McCarthyism, J. Edgar Hoover, monster movies, Mad magazine, etc., etc. Even J’onn’s first-person narration is written in the hard-boiled Raymond Chandler style. Check out the opening monologue:

“He reached for me as the bullet broke his breastbone. Who else could he reach for? He’s a stranger. I’m a stranger. Not just strangers to each other, but even bigger strangers to the cold stone eyes of the city. He’s a beatnik. I’m a Martian.”

 HELL YES. I AM BUYING THAT.

As it turns out, the diabolical conspiracy uncovered by J’onn represents mainstream American culture of the 1950s – the forces of consumerism, conformity, capitalism, of the numbing panacea of bland entertainment, of the fear of an alien other. And it takes precisely that alien other to stand against it. J’onn even suggests that Martian society was a truer form of Communism than has ever been seen on Earth – given that the popular culture of the 1950s sublimated fear of Communists into fear of aliens, this arguably puts him in the unique position of being both an allegory and precisely what that allegory represents. He is indeed a threat to the prevailing culture, because he seeks the companionship and warmth that that culture denies him. In the end, J’onn finds his own path, neither Communist nor capitalist, but as a subversive, counter-cultural figure, as befits his outsider status.

In #3, J’onn meets and has a conversation with a retired member of the Justice Society. And here’s where it gets pretty interesting… but it requires a bit of historical context. After the end of World War II, superhero comics, including the Justice Society (in All-Star Comics), were severely on the wane. Publishers turned to Western, horror and romance books, with Action Comics and Detective Comics being pretty much the only caped titles left standing. Further blows were dealt to the industry by Frederic Wertham’s Seduction of the Innocent, a treatise of moral panic about the violent, occult and sexual content of the era’s comics, which eventually led to the creation of the Comics Code Authority. Most folks would have you believe that the resurgence of the superheroes, the Silver Age, began with the first appearance of the Barry Allen Flash in Showcase #4 (1956). However, J’onn J’onzz appeared almost a year before that. There is a case, therefore, for saying that the Silver Age began with the first appearance of the Manhunter from Mars in Detective Comics #225.

Aaaaanyway. So he meets the Justice Society member, and they chinwag, over an old issue of All-Star Comics, about the sense of boundless optimism that gave birth to the Golden Age heroes, how this went sour after WWII, how the heroes vanished, how a new age is coming. It’s framed in terms of the Red Scare, but the entire conversation is also a thinly veiled account of the real-world comics history of this period, with Wertham in the McCarthy role. It’s a brilliant and unexpected metatextual interlude, serving to reinforce J’onn’s status as the first hero of the post-war era. It also ties into an underlying theme of the story – his isolation. This is post WWII and pre-Justice League. As far as post-Crisis on Infinite Earths continuity is concerned, J’onn is not only the last Martian, not only the only alien on Earth (as far as he knows), but the only costumed hero of his time – both in his fictional reality and, pretty much, in ours. As one eyewitness says, upon seeing him transform into his green form and soar into the sky: ‘I didn’t think there were any of your kind left.’

One problem with the series relates precisely to J’onn’s history and where this fits into established continuity. Among other things, as laid down in the DeMatteis mini (see last week’s column), J’onn didn’t find out about his true Martian form until he was a member of the JLI in the late 1980s. Here, however, we regularly see him in his slenderised stringbean shape. Given that the 1988 series is the basis for much of his character, American Secrets can probably be regarded as out of continuity and non-canonical –consider it an Elseworlds or a What If?, should such things matter to you. 

Finally, mention must be made of Eduardo Barreto’s art, which combines a modern approach with a heavily evocative sense of period. His clear, forceful, if slightly workmanlike Romita Sr-esque style is equally well suited to the book’s two default settings – 1950s detective pulp and B-movie sci-fi/monster flicks. However, his rendering of J’onn in beetle-browed Silver Age superheroic form is sometimes oddly clunky and out of place, which you could read as an expression of the protagonist’s awkwardness and alienation, if you were being charitable and pretentious. There are some real moments of visual genius though, including some brutally visceral, sinew-tearing fight scenes and an amazingly bold (and funny) sequence with minimal dialogue that reprises the same point-of-view shot over 24 panels. There’s also a strangely familiar profile shot of J’onn sitting in a seedy apartment watching TV – clearly the inspiration for the similar, iconic sequence in The New Frontier.

I must confess, when I first read this back in the day, it did little for me. For one thing, the MM purist in me was aggrieved by the callous disregard for JJ’s scant continuity. For another, the covers are unbelievably crap – they’re not only badly designed, but all three are EXACTLY the same except for the colour scheme and an ill-advised vintage cheesecake pin-up. However, revisiting it now, it’s a really satisfying read, a lot meatier and more ambitious and multi-layered than I remembered… a prime candidate for rescue from back-issue bin purgatory.

That was long. Thanks for reading. Have an imaginary Oreo.

(originally published on The Big Glasgow Comic Page)

BEN IS FROM MARS, JERRY IS FROM VENUS

Greetings, spindly-fingered spendthrifts, and welcome once again to the BARGAIN BASEMENT OF DOOOOOM. Frankly, it’s about time that I stopped fannying about in the minor leagues and turned my attention to the big guy. The greatest of them all. You know who I’m talking about – the lean, green, and rarely mean MARTIAN MANHUNTER.

The great thing about being an obsessive fan of a character who’s not quite as staggeringly popular as the Batmanses and Spideymensches and Wolvereenies of this world is that his books tend to crop up regularly in the 50p boxes, and therefore are an ideal subject upon which to expound at arse-numbing length in this semi-regular celebration of all things cheap and wonderful. So, unless I’m restrained by a court order, this will be merely the beginning of a whole month of Martian-oriented goodness. You might want to grab yourselves some fire...

Up first is MM’s first-ever solo book. This four-issue mini-series from 1988 was written by JM DeMatteis (Justice League, Amazing Spider-Man, Daredevil) with art from Mark Badger (Power Pack, Question Quarterly, Batman: Jazz).

First, a bit of background. J’onn J’onzz, the Martian Manhunter (or Manhunter from Mars, if you prefer) first appeared as a back-up feature in Detective Comics #225, way back in 1955. Created by pulp author Joseph Samachson and artist Joe Certa, J’onn was certainly a product of his time, a crude mish-mash of B-movie sci-fi and hard-boiled detective fiction – a strange and powerful visitor from another world masquerading as a maverick noir-lite cop. In his first appearance, J’onn is accidentally teleported to Earth by a mad scientist, Dr Erdel, who drops dead of a heart attack upon seeing his green discovery. Stranded on Earth, J’onn takes on the form of a dead policeman and fights crime (as you do). His Silver Age adventures are as wacky and ridiculous as any of the era, with J’onn hanging around with a cute alien sidekick (Zook) and creating ice-cream out of thin air using ‘all the powers of space’ (no, really). 

Despite there being little demand for dairy-based superpowers, he ended up being a founder member of the Justice League, and stuck with the team until #71, when he was finally rescued by his fellow Martians and went back home. In the following years, J’onn resurfaced here and there, usually in space-based stories, but it wasn’t until 1984 that he returned to Earth full time, repelling a Martian invasion in the process, and rejoined the JLA.

After a reasonably lengthy stint as leader of the arguably (or arguably deservedly) undersung Justice League Detroit, J’onn then became a pivotal, senior member of the Giffen/DeMatteis post-Crisis Justice League (one of the finest comics of all time). Just a year into the new JL’s run, J’onn’s first-ever solo series hit the shelves, and fundamentally shook his world.

The story follows on from Justice League Annual #1, in which the Martian Manhunter used his own body as a prison for a sentient spore hell-bent on taking over the minds of all humans on Earth. At first, J’onn could safely contain the spore, but at the start of his solo series, the spore is breaking down his defences – feverish, confused, terrified and losing control of his shapeshifting powers, he is wracked by terrible visions, his body warping into grotesque monstrosities. As he fights to regain control, he finds himself encountering the ghosts of his past.

In the process, almost everything about the character’s history is subverted – Dr Erdel didn’t die, but the entire population of Mars did, including J’onn’s wife and daughter. His traditional superheroic form was a lie, a sci-fi cliché made flesh, a more palatable version of his less humanoid natural shape. His memories of Mars were also false. His weakness to fire was psychosomatic. J’onn J’onzz wasn’t even his real name.

With this series, DeMatteis gave J’onn life. Although he’d been around for more than 30 years at this point, he’d been something of a blank slate – a clunky amalgam of Superman and Batman, with little personality to call his own, and a backstory straight out of pulp novels. DeMatteis took J’onn away from being a nondescript green-skinned superchap and established him as a truly alien, complex and deeply tragic character. Like Batman, he lost his family – unlike Batman, he lost his soulmate and child. Like Superman, he’s the last survivor of a dead world, a stranger in a strange land – unlike Superman, he saw it die in front of his eyes and came to Earth as an adult, rather than being brought up as a human. Virtually everything we know about the modern Martian Manhunter (or, at least, the pre-New 52 version) – from his fear of fire and his yearning for his family to his elegant, elongated true form and the philosophical/mystical Martian culture – stems from these four issues.

Visually, it’s quite remarkable, especially for its time. Mark Badger’s art is experimental, wild, psychedelic, scratchy and abstract, equally beautiful and horrifying. True, his depictions of the guest-starring Justice Leaguers (Batman, Booster Gold, Mister Miracle, et al) suggest that he’s not so keen on drawing superheroes and human anatomy, but his depictions of a constantly shapeshifting alien in the midst of traumatically febrile hallucinations are distinct and intoxicating.

Particularly when you consider that this series emerged out of the largely comedic ‘Bwah-ha-ha!’ era of Justice League, Martian Manhunter is a very peculiar book – one that in tone, style and form has much more in common with the titles that would come out of the Vertigo line during the following decade. Indeed, moreso than any other mainstream DC universe big gun, J’onn’s liminal outsider status allowed him to cross over into weirder worlds, where bigger box-office icons feared to tread, appearing in early issues of both Sandman and Animal Man. It’s a thoughtful, artistically-inclined work, framed by poetry, full of abstract imagery, closing with a fitting dedication to Ray Bradbury. There’s no villain to fight, no adventure to be had – ultimately, it’s a genuinely touching story about grief, loss, loneliness and acceptance. Oh, and a big green bald bloke wearing basically just his pants.

(originally published on The Big Glasgow Comic Page)