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)