Man Up, Martian Manhunter! Pt. 4: The villains of Salvation Run

Welcome to the latest installment of "Man Up, Martian Manhunter!" our occasional series on how the Martian Manhunter is constantly getting his ass handed to him by vastly weaker opponents. Today we're going to discuss Salvation Run, a terrible, terrible miniseries about the Suicide Squad capturing pretty much every supervillain on earth and then teleporting them to a cosmic Australia penal planet for a few weeks. It was collected as JLA: Salvation Run, and I reviewed it here if you want to know more about it.

Before we get to the scene in which the Martian Manhunter gets wrecked by a bunch of Flash and Batman villains, let's first review his vast catalog of powers:

—Super-strength, super-speed, super-vision powers, super-breath and invulnerability all comparable (but somewhat weaker then) Superman's

—The ability to change shape

—The ability to reduce his density to the point of complete intangibility

—Invisibility

—Psychic powers that allow him to read minds, communicate telepathically and control the thoughts of others to a certain extent

In other words, he's kind of like Superman with a bad cold + Charles Xavier + Plastic Man + The Vision, and most of his panels should last about two panels, and go something like this.

They never do, of course. And why is that? Is it because it is just too hard to write such a powerful character? Is it because most of the people who write stories featuring Martian Manhunter just aren't terribly creative people? Yes. Or maybe, just maybe, J'onn J'onnz has a death wish, and is always deliberately throwing fights in the hopes that someone will kill him. Suicide by super-villain. There's really no other way to explain some of his losses.

Like the one he suffers in Salvation Run.

So let's first set the stage. Martian Manhunter, who has changed clothes and the shape of his head since the last time we did one of these (if you want to find out exactly why, I'd suggest you read World War III, but really, no one should have to read that), has used his powers to disguise himself as a new version of the villain Blockbuster in order to infiltrate the villains on the prison planet and report back to Batman about them.

When Lex Luthor and the other villains catch Catwoman spying on them, she attempts to deflect their suspicion, by outting the Martian Manhunter. (She knew J'onn was disguised as Blockbuster, because she caught him resuming his normal shape to call Batman; apparently, he gets better reception when he's Martian Manhunter shaped).

Having been busted by Catwoman, he resumes his Martian Manhunter shape, raises his hand like a Shakespearean actor, and explains that he's infiltrated them to see why they were sent to this planet. At that point, Catwoman adds, "And what's more? He's got some kind of communicator!"

That's when someone bounces a piece of fruit off his face, and Resurrection Man villains The Body Doubles and Titans/Outsiders Mammoth attack him. He absorbs some physical blows that a guy who can turn intangible shouldn't have to, but nothing actually threatening to him.



I like how frustrated he is by the fact that the villains won't stop to listen to his explanation. If only there were some way he could communicate information directly to their brains without having to bother having the sound of his voice heard...

Catwoman narrates her escape, thinking that at least J'onn has superpowers and can take care of himself, whereas she couldn't have fought them all off. Although he has superpowers, he hasn't eyt deiced to use any of them besides flight, and continues to gesticulate grandly while Bane and Manticore grab his cape.




Finally convinced he's going to have to fight rather than talk with the villains, J'onn stubbornly refuses to become intangible or flee, but trades punches with his attackers.



J'onn continues to think to himself how this is getting him nowhere, while Luthor and the Rogues plot. Here things get a bit confusing. (This is written by Matthew Sturges, and drawn by Joe Bennett and Belardino Brabo, so if the narrative gets murky here, I guess we have to blame them).



"I can't even see the green punk!" Captain Cold shouts, which would make sense if J'onn had turned invisible which, remember, is one of his very useful powers, but he hasn't, as the reader and all of the characters who aren't Captain Cold are able to see him. Perhpas Captain Cold simply can't see him because the slots in his glasses are so thin?

Abra Kadabra broadcasts the plan by...shouting? A magic shout? Or something? J'onn, who, remember, is also telepathic and can read minds, so should be privy to any information passed between the villains, even if it wasn't spoken out loud, as it seems to have been on this page.

Anyway, J'onn finally realizes that it might be time to leave ("I've stayed too long. There's nothing more I can do"). Wonder Woman villain Silver Swan and DC's most famous rapist Dr. Light distract the still tangible, still visible Martian Manhunter, while Heat Wave, Effigy, Tarpit, Deadshot and whoever the guy in the third panel with the red visor is shoot their fire weapons at J'onn. (Fire is, of course, his only weakness).

That's followed by a two-page splash spread of J'onn falling out of the sky, and then he hits the ground...



...and Bane checks his pulse. They've done it! They defeated the Martian Manhunter! He's not dead, by the way, just knocked out in that last panel.

I like the first of those three panels though. Let's zoom in on a few specific parts of it.

Here's a close-up of J'onn J'onnz's crotch:



This is one instance where his new costume is actually preferable to his older one. With a full pair of pants rather than the little blue briefs he used to wear, he's now free to splay himself wide open without fear of pushing any comic books he's starring in into mature readers territory.


And in the background, there's former Batman villain, longtime Suicide Squad member and current Secret Six member Floyd "Deadshot" Lawton, doing the lamest thing he's ever done:


High-fiving Green Lantern villain—Kyle Rayner Green Lantern villain—Effigy.

So you see, the Martian Manhunter is not the only one to lose his dignity in the course of Salvation Run.



Related:
Pt. 1: Doomsday
Pt. 2: Superboy-Prime
Pt. 3: Bishop

Man Up, Martian Manhunter! Pt. 3: Bishop

As some of you noted during a previous installment of "Friday Night Fights" looking at the prelude to the JLA vs. X-Men rumble in All-Access #4, that battle between Marvel and DC's premeir super-teams was a horribly uneven match-up.

Not only could most JLA line-ups topple most X-Men line-ups without breaking a sweat (and if Jean Grey, Colossus and Rogue aren't on the team at the time, the X-Men are better off not even leaving the mansion), but this was the core of the strongest League (The Big Seven) vs. a particularly pathetic version of the X-Men (Jean Grey, Storm, Cyclops, Iceman, Bishop, Jubilee and friggin' Cannonball).

A lot of really dumb things happened during that fight, things that shouldn't have happened even if the five members of the Justice League with super-speed promised not to use it. You had Jubilee taking out The Flash. You had Iceman's ability to freeze things matching Green Lanterns ability to do anything. And you had Cannonball trading punches with Aquaman for panel upon panel.

But nothing was dumber than the Martian Manhunter vs. Bishop fight.

Now, remember, J'onn's powers are basically Superman's, plus Charles Xavier's, plus Plastic Man's, plus The Vision's, right? Bishop's power is to absorb and redirect energy. And he may also have superstrong wrists able of supporing one giant gun in each hand, and the Atlas-like stamina to support the weight of gigantic shoulderpads—I'd really have to check a Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe to be sure of those last two.

Here then is every panel of their fight, before Bishop wanders off to help Iceman against GL, and J'onn decides to put Cyclops in a full-nelson:












Sigh.

J'onn, I'm not even going to comment on this one. You know better than that. What the hell happened there, man? Did you show up to the crossover drunk or something? Did you just feel sorry for the X-Men and want to give them a fighting chance? Did Jean Grey psychically make you forget your other 13 super-powers before you guys got into it?

I just hope this story is out-of-continuity now. For your sake.


Related:
Pt. 1: Doomsday
Pt. 2: Superboy-Prime

Man Up, Martian Manhunter! Pt. 2: Superboy-Prime

There's no shame in getting beat up by Superboy-Prime.

Okay, actually, there's a lot of shame in being beat up by Superboy-Prime. Not only is his name Superboy-Prime (like "Superboy," only lamer), but he's a punk kid, a whiny petulant teenager who would rather destroy the entire universe than accept the fact that he's gay and totally in love with Alexander Luthor. (It's the 21st century here, SB-P. Just come out already, people will accept you for who you really are. And if not, you can punch their heads clean off).

But when you consider Superboy-Prime's power-levels, well, then there's relatively little shame involved in getting beat up by him. In fact, if you pull through the encounter without being vaporized, beheaded, bisected and in full-possession of all your limbs, then the argument could be made that you've done better than most against the Snot of Steel.

It took two Supermen to beat him into unconcsiousness at the end of Infinite Crisis #7, after all, and one of them died doing it.

Naturally Martian Manhunter got taken out by Superboy-Prime during his two fights with the kid. While J'onn has more powers and more experience than SB-P, the latter has far greater amounts of the powers he does have. And if you're infinitely strong, durable and fast, than that will always trump being near-infinitely strong, durable and fast.

Still, J'onn could have had better showings in both of these fights, if only he would have manned up a bit.

J'onn first encountered Superboy-Prime in JLA #119, the last issue of "Crisis of Conscience" and a lead-in to Infinite Crisis. While J'onn encounters him there, we don't. We only see J'onn react to someone arriving by teleporter whom he thinks is Superman. Next thing we know, the Watchtower explodes and J'onn's missing, later to turn up in Alex and SB-P's little Anti-Monitor corpse tuning fork tower.

While we don't actually see the fight, it's clear who won it. I'm not going to fault J'onn for losing to Superboy-Prime so quickly here. He was a victim of Superdickery, plain and simple. The teleporter read Superman's DNA, and he turned around to welcome his pal Kal to the Watchtower and just as he was thinking, "Woah, Superman looks thin" he gets a face-full of Kryptonian heatvision.

Because of SB-P's speed, which exceeds even J'onn's super-speed, it's not hard to imagine the heat vision striking him before he even has a chance to become intangible, thus setting his cape and maybe even flesh aflame when he hasn't steeled himself to have to deal with his own personal, power-dampening phobia. Superboy-Prime owns Martian Manhunter in a surprise attack at the end of JLA #119. There really wasn't much of anything J'onn could have done differently to turn that fight around.

In their next one, however, it's J'onn's turn to strike while his foe is unawares, and he again gets owned.

This one takes place in Infinite Crisis #6. Nightwing and Superboy have arrived and thrown a wrench in Alex and SB-P's plans, and their prisoners are escaping. J'onn attacks:





It's nice to see him using several of his powers in this fight, and even deliver a bad-ass little speech (even if it's not technically true; I mean, yeah, he's the last Martian, but it's not like it's because he personally beat up all the other ones or anything). Still, while he lasts longer against SB-P than Pantha, Wildebeest or Risk, he still gets taken out, as seen in a monitor within the Brother I satellite



Oh J'onn.

This time you can't fall back on the "I didn't know what hit me" excuse, J'onn. Phasing in and out wasn't a very smart strategy, given the fact that Superboy-Prime is so much faster than you. Whenever you're up against an opponent who can knock you--you--down and or out with his bare hands, you really gotta stay intangible and use your telepathic attacks. We all know, and you probably overheard more than enough whining to guess, that Superboy-Primes' not exactly the smartest or most stable guy with an S on his chest in the multiverse, and would presumably be even more vulnearable to a Martian mindfuck than others.

Still, this is Superboy-Prime we're talking about, perhaps the most powerful foe you've ever faced in hand-to-hand/power-to-power conflict. If you're going to get you ass handed to you in a fight, this is the fight you want to get your ass handed to you in. That way if Superman gives you crap about needing him to save you again, you can always just ask him how his Earth-2 counterpart is feeling after his fight with Superboy-Prime.

In fact, the only thing that makes your defeat here mildly embarassing is the fact that, a few pages later, the other, non-hyphenated Superboy totally shows you up:



Come on, J'onn. That kids' just a pubescent half-clone of Superman; he's not even a full clone! He's only had his Superman powers a couple of months, and he lasted three times as long as you against SB-P!

Oh well. It could have been worse. It could have been the fight from our next installment of "Man Up, Martian Manhunter!", which we'll cover tomorrow. In the meantime J'onn, man the hell up already, huh?

Related: Pt. 1: Doomsday

Man Up, Martian Manhunter! Pt. 1: Doomsday

On paper, the Martian Manhunter is probably the last person in the DC Universe you want to get into a fight with. Seriously, if the Justice League gave you a choice between two doors, with Superman kicking your ass behind one and Martian Manhunter kicking your ass behind the other, you’re going to want to go with Superman.

As J’onn himself recently explained on his blog* in discussin the current Justice League line-up, “I've got all of Superman's cooler powers plus mind-reading plus shapeshifting plus intangibility plus I'm not a monumental d-bag like Geo-Force. Ooo, lava blasts? Martian Vision, bitch."

Now, J’onn’s probably exaggerating a little bit there. I mean, he’s super-fast, almost as fast as Superman, but he can’t tie the Flash in a race like Supes can. And he’s extremely strong and extremely durable, but probably not quite as strong and durable as Superman. But for the most part, he’s like Superman with a head cold, or Superman on two hours of sleep...only with a bunch of other powers too, to compensate for not being able to beat Supes in a hundred-yard dash or juggle as many planets.

Think Superman and Charles Xavier and the Vision and Plastic Man all rolled into one, and that's pretty much Martian Manhunter.

I mean, he’s a guy who once took out Despero one-on-one using only his mental powersand just plain buried Ultraman, the evil Superman doppelganger from a neighboring antimatter universeYou hear him talking smack there? It’s not even a fight, the moment you think maybe you want to fight him, then bam! you’re DDDUUNNNNN, as Ultraman himself put it.

It’s a good thing for the supervillains of the DC Universe then that J’onn is a colossal pussy.

Really, that’s the only explanation I can think of for why a guy with that much power gets taken down constantly. At this point, he’s probably been rescued by Superman more times than Lois Lane. He’s been clobbered by such inferior opponents as Superboy-Prime and Black Adam. He’s been known to spend days at a time in space crying.

You can’t really blame the whole vulnerability-to-fire thing. While this has come and gone from story-to-story, in aggregate it would appear that fire is a psychological weakness of J’onn's, which, when he allows it to get the better of him, causes him to lose concentration on his powers and turn into a puddle of goo, but, when he’s concentrating (or has had his Martian version of Zoloft that day), it doesn’t hurt him any more than laser beams or lightning bolts.

J’onn’s perennial whipping boy status really seems to simply come down to a matter of a lack of confidence on his part. What he seems to need is a coach, someone to grab him by the shoulders, look him in the ruby reds and say, “Man up, Manhunter!”

That’s where Every Day Is Like Wednesday comes in.

For the first installment of our new feature, we’re going to examine an opponent J’onn should have been able to take or, at the very least, not gotten completely, embarrassingly destroyed by in a few panels.

His name? That’s right, Doomsday, the monster that killed Superman. Well, actually, he didn’t really kill-kill Superman; he simply beat Superman really, really, really badly, exhausting almost every ounce of solar energy Superman’s cells had gathered, draining him like a battery and sending him into a death-like state that lasted months.

As was revealed in Superman/Doomsday: Hunter/Prey (Collected in big, fat omnibus collection Superman/Doomsday: The Collected Edition, which I recently fishished reading), the big D was created over the course of centuries of brutal experimentation to be an unkillable killing machine. He has no internal organs and is almost solid throughout. He’s powered by solar energy, can survive any environment and, in the off-chance anything ever kills him, he returns to life, evolved so that he can’t be killed in the same way again.

In other words, Doomsday is one tough customer. In Hunter/Prey, dude shrugs off Darkseid’s Omega Effect (so named because no one shrugs that shit off), and mortally wounds the dark god. Orion’s astroforce doesn’t phase Doomsday, and in a short story we see a Green Lantern empty its ring on Doomsday, to little effect.

Now, given the level of awesomeness that is Doomsday (Superman only ends up defeating him at the end of Superman/Doomsday by having him hurtled forward through time to the absolute end of the universe), it seems logical that Doomsday could probably take J’onn in a fight, right? But at the very least, J’onn should be able to give the gray giant a run for his money. After all, an opponent can’t even punch J’onn if he goes all ghosty on them.The omnibus contained multiple fights between Doomsday and J’onn, and, I’m sorry to report, that J’onn does about as well against him as he did back when he was inadvertently impersonating Bloodwynd (Yeah, J'onn thought he was Bloodwynd for a while...it's a whole thing).

So, not counting that first time when the Manhunter thought he was Bloodwynd, J'onn and Doomsday first faced off in Superman: The Doomsday Wars, by Dan Jurgens and inker Norm Rapmund (also collected in the omnibus). The Watchtower Era JLA is responding a distress call from "the Georgia authorities," and it's a pretty serious line-up that goes to survey the damage. J'onn's there alongside Wonder Woman, Orion, Plastic Man, Green Lantern Kyle Rayner, The Flash (Wally West) and, um, the Huntress.

The Leaguers all split up and investigate, and, before you know it, Huntress and Orion find the rest of the team all laid out flat......except J'onn, who's not only knocked out, but hung up by his cape. Sigh. Oh J'onn...

Now Huntress doesn't realize it yet, but we the readers know that it was Doomsday that just pwned the whole Justice League. Actually, it's Doomsday with Brainiac's brain in him. Or mind. How is this possible, if Doomsday doesn't have any internal organs? I don't know, so let's ignore it. Well, let's first state that if Doomsday doesn't have a brain and/or a mind, then he should be invulnerable to J'onn's telepathy, meaning that J'onn can't give him the old Martain mindfuck that he used to take out Despero, nor can he read his mind to anticipate his moves as he did Ultraman. So maybe that explains why J'onn can't lay a glove on the guy.

Actually, J'onn makes some more excuses...Okay, we know Doomsday must be super, super fast, because he fights Superman hand-to-hand, and Superman's, like, Flash fast. And J'onn says he got nailed before he had a chance to phase. Okay, I'll buy that. Of course, I thinkt he Martian doth protest too much, because he also says he was protecting someone, which is another good excuse for getting beaten up by Doomsday and hung by his own cape...he couldn't phase because he was protecting a bystander, and if he went intangible instead of taking the punch, the bystander woulda been pulped. I'd buy that too. The two excuses don't work in concert, but whatever. This is a Dan Jurgens story, not a Grant Morrison one, so we let little things slide a little.

Okay so now J'onn knows he's up against Doomsday, the monster that killed Superman. He knows just how fast he is and how hard he hits. Now he's ready for him. Time to get back in there and show Doomsday what Martians are made of!Just four panels later, J'onn returns.Oh J'onn...

To be fair, GL, Flash, Orion and Wonder Woman don't do much better. We can assume Wondy's lariat didn't work because Doomsday's invulnerable, being mindless (although he has Brainiac's mind here) and he's invulnerable to GL because he's evolved around Green Lantern rings from his previous encounters with GLs and Guardians. There's no reason why Flash couldn't have pushed him at lightspeed and sent him off-planet though. Anyway, I only mention this to make more excuses for J'onn. Maybe it's not his fault he got taken down so easily here; so did a bunch of other people that should be able to take Doomsday out, if their powers were written as they were being written in JLA and their own titles back then.

Jurgens has the League fold like a a set of lawn furniture before the fury of Doomsday, and so the Brainiac-possessed engine of destruction takes them back to his HQ, putting them all in silly little traps that incapacitate their powers.

I don't know if anyone's pointed this out before, but Superman can kinda be sort of a dick sometimes, huh?

After storming Braniac/Doomsday's city, tearing off his shirt and resucing the League, he tells them that he's teleported Doomsday to the moon, and he's going up there to tackle him head on. When Orion's like, "Yeah, let's go get him," Superman gives him a patronizing..."Alright, fine, but don't come crying to me if you get impaled on a bone shard!" Dick.

The plan is for Superman to assemble a bunch of teleporter tubes and set them up in a loop, so Doomsday is in a state of constant teleportation. To do that, he'll need Orion and Martian Manhunter to buy him some time—one minute, exactly. He doesn't think that the two heroes, each of whom could go 100 rounds with Superman, can do it, but, as Jurgens writes the pair, hes's right.Sigh. Oh J'onn...

At any rate, Superman's plan works, and he saves the day. Yeah, Superman! Why can't you be more like that strange visitor from another world in a fight, J'onn?

J'onn would get another chance to fight Doomsday a few years later, during Lex Luthor's presidency (2001's Superman #175, to be exact). This story was written by Jeph Loeb and, like most Jeph Loeb stories, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense, and it makes much less sense when thought about in the context of previous stories. (This was also around about the time Loeb was either losing his mind, or testing to see just what he could get away with in a comic book script and still get paid for it; this issue, for example, is intercut with quotes from President Luthor's state of the union speech for some reason. Other Loeb-written issues from this period had random speeches from American history used as narration for "Our Worlds At War" chapters.)

Now at some point during the "Our Worlds At War" story, Doomsday was freed from the teleportation loop, skeletonized by Imperiex, brought back to life, and then, in this very issue, given Joker venom. Oh, and he can talk and think now and is, for some reason, really, really weak, to the point where Superman beats him down solo, somethng he's never been able to do before.

J'onn, on the other hand, still can't put up a good showing against the monster. He tries the old Martian mindfuck on Doomsday, and then throws a couple of punches. Now, we've established that Doomsday's probably invulnerable to telepathic attack already, right? Or else how else could he have taken the Manhunter out so easily during Doomsday Wars? Plus, he doesn't have a brain or mind, so telepathy shouldn't work, right?

Well, it doesn't. But this is weird. In the second panel here, J'onn says "Sentient!" Like he's suprrised that Doomsday's sentient. Like he just discovered it when Doomsday started talking to him. But if he didn't think DD possessed any sentience, why was he trying to mess with his mind on the last page?

Oh, and I like how Doomsday breathes fire all of a sudden here. When the hell did he get that power?

J'onn, as always, comports himself with dignity, even in defeat. "Ackkkk!" Sigh. Oh, J'onn....

Luckily, Superman flies in and saves J'onn's ass from Doomsday. Again.

For J'onn's sake, let's hope he never finds himself having to fight Doomsday again, but if he does, what should he do? Other than, of course, manning the fuck up?

Don't worry, J'onn, we're here for you. I say you shapechange to resemble Superman, but lower your mass until your intangible, so that Doomsday will be totally focused on you, but unable to hit you. Then you can lead him away from bystanders and into a trap of some sort you can arrange with your fellow superheroes via telepathy.

If you want to take a more active approach, you can always throw him into space (22,300 will put him in orbit of Earth, right? So that he neither just falls back down or goes hurtling into some other poor planet). Or throw him into the sun. And if you're afraid of grappling with him (hey, I would be too), you can always turn completely invivible, fly at him at top speed, and straight up knock him into space like that.

But most importantly J'onn, and I just can't stress this enough, the first thing you need to do is man up. Or Martian up. Whatever. Just get it together, guy.


*Okay, actually it was Facedowninthegutters.blogspot.com, but click on that link anyway because it’s hilarious. DC oughta get J’onn to write the introduction to “The Tornado’s Path” hardcover collection

Related: Actually Essential Storylines: Martian Manhunter