Let's make some Justice Leagues, part 2

(Continued from part 1)

            As discussed before there will be 3 teams, based around the "Truth, Justice, and the American Way (Liberty)" tagline used for Superman (and by extension the DC universe as a whole).  Since Wonder Woman has a lasso of Truth, she will lead the Truth Team.  Batman is always banging on about Justice, so he will lead the Justice Team.  Superman will be taking Liberty Team, because that is actually what fits him the best.  So each will lead their own team, but will need members to fill in for the others, Batman might need a flying super strong alien or a hero familiar with the magic of the Greek gods for instance, and Wonder Woman might need a ninja detective.  So we will need to grab characters that can fill these heroes roles and work well with others.  Today is the role of Superman.

1) The Supermen.

            Superman is one of the most copied characters in fiction, I can name 8-9 versions of the character off the top of my head (Sentry, Omni Man, Apollo, Gladiator, Mr. Majestic, Icon, Captain Marvel, Blue Marvel, Hyperion, Centurion, Samaritan, and arguably Thor and Martian Manhunter... 13) but since we already have Superman himself for a team now we just need 2 more.  So lets look at the 13 I picked and knock out any not from DC leaving us with Apollo, Icon, and Martian Manhunter.

In the New 52 universe Superman is much younger and more alienated from the rest of the world.

            Icon is an alien that fell to Earth back in the 1600's as was transformed to look like a human so as to pass in the world, he is virtually immortal and lived his life as a normal person until he was discovered to have powers by his current sidekick, Rocket, and convinced to be a hero.  He was also featured in the "Young Justice" cartoon show, which I love.

He was created by one of my favorite writers of comics, Dwayne McDuffie,

            Apollo is a genetic super being powered by the sun and was part of the "WildStorm" comics company and is not really tied into the regular DC universe.  His biggest feature was in a book called "The Authority" in which he killed super villains by the bus load and married his long term boyfriend Midnighter (who is himself a much more violent interpretation of Batman).

He would add some diversity in that he is a married gay man.  But since he uses lethal force regularly, he is not a good fit.

            Martian Manhunter was the last of the Martians, formally their societies version of a police officer he was brought to Earth by a scientist who was studying teleportation.  He is a shapeshifter, so J'onn J'ozz took on human form of John Jones and became a police officer on Earth.

He was a main character of the "Justice League" cartoon from a decade ago and was featured on "Young Justice".

            I think the best pick for this group should all be aliens because it opens up the story telling to include more extra-Earth threats, and allows for more general alien weirdness (though the New 52 has tried hard to make things very bland).  Icon, Martian Manhunter, and Superman are the 3.  Apollo will have to resign himself to the team he is already on, Stormwatch.

(Continued in part 3)

Intro to Comics: Martian Manhunter (Upgrade)

(I originally wrote this for my Facebook notes section last year, but have added a bit to this, I do not own the images and the character belongs to DC Comics)

            You may have heard of this character, but I doubt it.  He is the last survivor of a doomed world, except for all the evil members of his race that pop up from time to time.  He can lift fantastic amounts of weight, he can fly, and he can move at super-speed, he can even see through walls and fire powerful blasts of energy from his eyes.  He can also turn invisible, incorporeal, shape shift into anyone, read thoughts and connect minds so they too can communicate with each other.  Honestly, if it weren't for the fact that his super weakness is Fire (the everyday chemical function of combustion) he would be the most overpowered superhero ever, as is he is like number 5.  He is The Martian Manhunter.

"Why, yes.  I have been doing a lot of squats my last few trips to the gym."

            Eons ago the Martian race was the dominate life form of our solar system, but they were a race divided.  The stoic and peaceful Green Martians sought to explore the creation of life on other worlds, including the Red Saturnians and Humanity, the savage White Martians sought to wreak endless carnage, and spawned the White Saturnians to help them in their quest to rid the Solar system of the Green Martian legacy.  Ultimately the White Martians were defeated, with the White Saturnians left refuges in perpetual war with their Red counterparts.  But before the White's had been completely eliminated they tainted the experiment of humanity, robbing them of the extreme abilities the entire race would have possessed had the Green Martians been allowed to complete their experiments.  In other words, the White Martians are such douches, they are the reason cancer exists.  Wrap your head around that.

White Martians, they gave us cancer.

            Centuries later the Martian known as Ma'alefa'ak (or Malefic) a criminal and sociopath destroyed the Martian race with a terrible plague, leaving only his brother J'onn J'onzz and himself alive.  J'onn imprisoned his brother and was left to mourn his lost race and more specifically, his lost family.  Malefic, having been robbed of his telepathy (but also his Martian susceptibility to fire) sat growing ever more insane in confinement.  Because being free to walk around a dead desert Mars was any better for J'onn's mental health.

The chains are symbolic of him being imprisoned in his own mind and having been imprisoned on Mars.  That and it I believe it was still the 90's and "Spawn" was still in fashion.

            In our own recent history, many years after the fall of Mars, Dr. Erdel attempts to communicate with Mars, hoping to find and transport life to Earth, sadly for him he could not have envisioned the utter success of his experiment, and teleported J'onn to Earth.  The inhuman appearance of the visitor startled the doctor and he died of an undiagnosed heart complication.  Not J'onn's best day, the first living being he had seen in centuries and the guy drops dead the moment J'onn enters sight, still better than the day before when he just had to relive his wife and child melting in his arms because he is so consumed by loneliness.

This is basically how J'onn looks in his natural state, which admittedly is a little freaky for a scientist expecting to find (at most) some sort of Martian bacteria or mushrooms.

            Stranded on Earth J'onn shape shifted into a human form and went about trying to acclimate himself to the world, which mostly consisted of doing private investigative work under the name John Jones, squatting in a dingy apartment watching television, and eating a shit ton of Oreo cookies, I kid you not, it is ostensibly the only thing he eats, and he loves them.

Serving size?  The what now?

            Eventually other extraterrestrials took to the lime light, Superman especially, and J'onn adapted his look to be a mix of human and Martian, and his old Manhunter Uniform (Manhunter is a Martian police officer it turns out) into a Superhero garb.  He helped save the world... A LOT.  Including battling dozens of White Martian refuges that were going to take over Earth posing as a super hero team "Hyperclan", morphing his brain to become a good guy version of the Joker's insanity to escape a psychic prison modeled on Joker's thought pattern's, linking the minds of everyone on Earth and activating temporarily the dormant super gene left by the Martian race allowing everyone on Earth the powers of Superman for an hour so that the could battle the Anti-God machine Maggedon, and having to Kill his escaped brother Malific by throwing him into the sun.  J'onn was even turned evil breifly and transformed into the Martian God of fire, nightmares and suffering, "Infernus" before the entire Justice League banded together to stop him.  Superman saying "There are only a handful of people in the universe that can stand up to me in a fight, J'onn is at the top of the list."  High praise coming from Superman, a guy who has been to the end of the universe and pulled a dead god free from the mortar to use as a bargaining chip.

            J'onn helped found the Justice League, and remained on nearly every roster of the team, only recently taking a sabbatical on account of having been killed for a brief time and coming back first as a Super Martian Zombie Black Lantern, and now being brought back for real and trying to recover from the whole being dead thing.  His murder is widely considered to be one of the dumbest moments in the last ten years of comics, he is captured by three low level super flunkies and killed off panel just to establish that they mean business, sooooo lame.

J'onn as a zombie, beating the puss out of two superheroes who has also just been brought back from being dead, though, they had been dead for 20 years (Flash) and 15 years (Green Lantern) compared to 2 (J'onn).

            J'onn is the most under appreciated character in DC comics, and was my favorite character for years until they tried to give him his own series, which while having a lot of good ideas, didn't work out as well story wise.  He will, I imagine, soon get a new gloss of awesome thanks to the author Geoff Johns, who was responsible for the zombie monster and resurrection stories, but I think that with Green Lantern, Flash and Aquaman getting first dibs I doubt I will see J'onn getting his own series too soon.

This is M'Gann, or Miss Martian.  She is J'onn's sidekick and is actually a White Martian who has decided to turn her back on her race's murderous legacy to be a hero on Earth.  Though considering the White Martians are all imprisoned in the Phantom Zone, she was probably just being pragmatic about the whole thing.

            J'onn is considered to be a part of the big 6 DC characters, the others being Clark "Superman" Kent, Bruce "Batman" Wayne, Diana "Wonder Woman" Prince, Hal "Green Lantern" Jordan, and Barry "Flash" Allen.  Other big names that are usually added to round out the group are Dinah "Black Canary" Lance, Arthur "Aquaman" Curry, Kendra "Hawkgirl" Saunders, Oliver "Green Arrow" Queen, Ray "The Atom" Palmer, and Billy "Captain Marvel" Batson.  Really the only thing that holds him back is that he is a diet coke Superman in a lot of ways, but then again, so aren't most super heroes.

His latest costume.  Now with PANTS!