DC Histories: J’onn J’onzz (The Martian Manhunter)

Here at DC Histories, we try to make sense of the continuity that perplexes, befuddles, and intimidates. We discuss what worked and what didn’t. This week, we’re talking about the universe’s last Martian, J’onn J’onzz otherwise known as the Martian Manhunter.

Created by Joseph Samachson and Joe Certa in a backup tale in 1955’s Detective Comics #225, J’onn J’onzz arrived on Earth when a scientist on our planet created a teleportation device that pulled across vast distances in space. Though he wasn’t exactly sure what would happen, Dr. Erdel turned his machine on and gaped in wonder as a green-skinned Martian materialized in front of him.

This was J’onn J’onzz. Pulled from his home on Mars and deposited on Earth, J’onn was all alone on a strange, new world. The shock of pulling J’onn to Earth gave Dr. Erdel a fatal heart attack and the machine the scientist used burned out after a single use. Realizing that he had abilities no earthling had, including flight, telepathy, intangibility, “Martian vision,” and shape-changing, J’onn set to work making a home for himself until his fellow Martians could come pick him up.

Discovering that his true Martian name was similar to the American name John Jones, J’onn adopted that moniker as he moved through an unnamed city in his shape-shifted guise of a typical white, American man. Knowing he needed something to do while he waited for contact with Mars, J’onn got a job at a local police department as a detective. Apparently, the lack of a Social Security number, resume, or credentials of any kind wasn’t considered a problem for 1955 detectives.

It was with the police that J’onn realized how prevalent fire was on Earth. Fire was the one thing that could sap a Martian’s natural abilities and could, if they were exposed to it long enough, even kill them.

Thus began J’onn’s adventures as an undercover Martian living and working as an American detective. His early stories dealt with him being a secret Martian Manhunter, tracking down scum while using his abilities in secret. Occasionally, he found a way to contact Mars and talk to his loved ones there.

However, most of J’onn’s adventures were spent chasing down human crooks. It didn’t seem fair to have a normal person go up against someone with Martian powers, but maybe those thieves and murders should have thought of that before they committed their crimes.

Things started to get a little more complicated for J’onn a few years later. When the Justice League of America formed in 1960, J’onn jumped in right alongside his fellow heroes. The very first person J’onn teamed up with was Wonder Woman as the pair attempted to beat back the deep space alien Starro.

Now a member of the Justice League, it was a little unclear as to why J’onn didn’t immediately return to Mars. After all, he worked alongside Superman, a being who could fly to Mars in a blink of an eye. Surely, he could allow J’onn to tag along during one such jaunt. Aside from Superman, there was also Green Lantern and even a host of foes from outer space who occasionally brought the League with them into the cosmos. J’onn’s solo stories reacted to these changes to his status quo by doing the only thing they could: They ignored them. In his backup tales, J’onn never mentioned his Justice League side-job.

The occasional Martian did pop into J’onn’s life. His younger brother, T’omm, came to Earth for a single adventure before J’onn returned him to Mars via Dr. Erdel’s newly fixed machine. Just like the first time, teleporting T’omm back to Mars broke the machine and left J’onn stranded.

As the years passed, J’onn’s time with the League faded. He disappeared almost completely from the DCU in 1968 when his series of backup tales ended in the pages of House of Mystery. The final story ended with Martians coming to Earth to finally pick up their lost traveler. J’onn went with them to set up a colony known as New Mars.

Though he occasionally appeared in titles like Justice League of America, J’onn was no longer a major player in the DCU. He was a guest star and nothing more. That all changed when a group of Martians made moves to conquer the Earth. J’onn returned to his old allies in the Justice League to combat his people. The invasion was stopped, but the battle destroyed J’onn’s leadership role in the  Martian community. It also destroyed the Justice League, who disbanded after the battle but were quickly reformed by Aquaman. This was the beginning of the so-called Justice League Detroit. Alongside characters like Gypsy, Elongated Man, Vixen, and Vibe, J’onn chose to defend the Earth and leave Mars behind.

A few years after the Crisis on Infinite Earths, a four-issue miniseries changed everything in J’onn’s life. There, he learned that Dr. Erdel wasn’t actually dead. He also learned that Mars, now called by its Martian name of Ma’aleca’andra, was a destroyed world. J’onn was the last living Martian. On top of all of that, the green skined, beetle-browed form J’onn had been living in for decades wasn’t his true form. His real body was more angular and alien looking. J’onn’s usual look was a mix between his natural look and a human.

All of J’onn’s previous thoughts about Martian culture had, in fact, been implanted in his brain by Dr. Erdel. When J’onn first came to Earth, he had barely survived a holocaust which had wiped out every other Martian except him. Finding J’onn to be nearly catatonic, Erdel began telling J’onn stories found from old pulp novels. J’onn accepted these as his own and created his own backstory. He also convinced himself that Erdel had died when he left the scientist’s care.

In the next few years, it became apparent that this retcon of a story was itself retconned. The shock of J’onn’s arrival on Earth was said to have killed Erdel just like readers were told back in 1955. His appearance in this story was later ignored.

Though everything he knew was a lie and he was the universe’s last Martian, J’onn returned to the Justice League with nary a problem. He was occasionally seen in his natural form, but he still preferred to be in his composite form when spending time with earthlings. Still, J’onn’s alienness was front and center on a handful of occasions. For example, when Despero came back to battle the relatively new Justice League International, J’onn used a once-in-a-lifetime mental command known as Mayavana.

It was an abrupt story point but it did help showcase J’onn’s differences from his fellow heroes.

After a time, J’onn became viewed as the heart of the Justice League. After his return just prior to the creation of the Justice League Detroit, J’onn was a member of every incarnation of the League afterwards. He was the elder statesman of the group, happy to battle alongside novice members as well as the heavy hitters. In the mid-1990s, he was even granted his own League offshoot in the form of the Justice League Task Force, which was comprised of newcomers like The Ray, Triumph, Impulse, and many others.

One of J’onn’s more distinguishing characteristics while a member of the Justice League International was his penchant for off-brand Oreos called Chocos. Several years after the JLI split up, J’onn remembered a time when Booster Gold and Blue Beetle bought up all the Chocos in a five mile radius around the JLI headquarters and watched J’onn flip out.

Soon after this raging tantrum subsided, J’onn admitted that something in Chocos’ composition was addictive to Martians and he promptly stopped eating them. After telling this story to Kyle Rayner, J’onn admitted to Wonder Woman that the whole story may have been a bit of an exaggeration.

The Justice League International’s various agencies eventually folded and the original members of the Justice League reformed in the pages of JLA. Shortly thereafter, J’onn was given his first ongoing series. Written by John Ostrander with nearly every issue penciled and inked by Tom Mandrake, the series lasted 36 issues. More depth was given to J’onn’s alone time. Here it was revealed that J’onn kept a number of secret identities around the world. These were all mostly the lives of real humans who were murdered. Using his Martian abilities, J’onn took over their lives and tracked down their killers. After giving these people’s souls some closure, J’onn occasionally lived parts of their lives for them. In this continuity, this is how he became John Jones, detective. Jones had been a real detective who had murdered during the course of an investigation and J’onn stepped in to fill his shoes.

The Department of Extranormal Operations discovered the Jones / J’onzz connection. They were able to piece everything else together from there. The DEO threatened to reveal all of J’onn’s secret identities to the world if he didn’t tell them who the rest of the JLA were. He refused and Cameron Chase went on national television to reveal J’onn’s secrets.

It was quite the political tale, which should come as no shock to those who read Ostrander’s run on Suicide Squad. In the end, many of J’onn’s identities became useless to him, so he slowly created new ones.

During this series, the truth behind the Martians’ death was revealed. While J’onn had a brother named T’omm back in the Silver Age, it was revealed during this series that he had a twin brother named Ma’alefa’ak. This new, and now only, brother sold the Martian people out to Darkseid. After a pitched battle with the ruler of Apokolips, J’onn brought his brother back to the Martian people to stand trial. There, Ma’alefa’ak was found guilty of treason and given the harshest sentence on Mars: he was stripped of his telepathic abilities. He was made an outcast from society.

It was this sentence by the Martians that lead to their death. So angry was Ma’alefa’ak that he found a way to introduce a virus into the Martian consciousness. Named H’ronmeer’s Curse after an ancient Martian god, this virus spread from Martian to Martian via their telepathic bond. It caused their bodies to burn from the inside out, killing them horrifically. Only J’onn survived by breaking the link between himself and his wife and children. Doing so nearly caused J’onn to go mad. Ma’alefa’ak, having no telepathic abilities, was immune to his own creation. After Mars’ decimation, Dr. Erdel’s machinery spirited J’onn to Earth.

After J’onn’s solo series was cancelled, he remained a member of the Justice League. There, he made a concentrated effort to remove his weakness to fire. Realizing that it was mostly a psychological problem rather than a physiological one, J’onn spent time with a fire-based villain named Scorch. The two of them attempted to help the other fight their fears. Unfortunately, the training awakened an ancient race of Martians named the Burning Martians, who overtook J’onn’s body.

The story ended with J’onn being immune to most fire, except for that which is somehow tied to passion. The flames created by an arsonist could harm J’onn but an ordinary campfire would not. This distinction was almost immediately ignored by every other writer and J’onn’s aversion to flames quickly reset itself.

After the Infinite Crisis, J’onn’s status quo changed once again. His status as an alien being was made more manifest by his decision to leave the Justice League and create a new look for himself. Now possessing of a longer head and more modest outfit, J’onn discovered a group of Green Martians supposedly held in secret on Earth. Further investigations found that these were White Martians, offshoots of their more sedate Green cousins, and a race which was not extinct. However, the person behind the charade was a female Green Martian who blamed J’onn for not killing his brother. By keeping Ma’alefa’ak alive, J’onn doomed his people.

The story ended with the female Martian disappearing and hiding out somewhere on Earth.

Two years after he was given this new look, J’onn died at the hands of Libra and a new version of the Secret Society of Super-Villains. It was his weakness to fire that did him in.

At the end of Blackest Night, the next massive DCU crossover, many dead superheroes and villains returned to life by the power of the White Lantern. Among them was J’onn. Once again sporting his original look, J’onn attempted to discover why he had been brought back to life. In a storyline that had several similarities to J’onn’s miniseries from 2006-2007, another female Green Martian was shown to have survived their people’s death. Completely unrelated to the female Green Martian J’onn fought just a few years earlier, this new Martian’s name was D’kay. Instead of wanting revenge against J’onn, D’kay wanted to mate with him and repopulate Mars. Knowing that she was a psychopath, J’onn declined D’kay’s offer.

That’s where we last saw J’onn before Flashpoint wiped away his past once again.

The first time J’onn appeared in the New 52, it was as a member of Stormwatch. Sporting a look similar to his post-Infinite Crisis outfit and head shape, J’onn appeared more alien and distant than ever before. In an early issue, it seems to be stated as fact that J’onn was a member of the Justice League at some point in his past. A few issues later, he claims that this was said in error, and he was never a member of that organization.

While J’onn was now never a member of the Justice League in the past, he is a member now. Last month, J’onn was recruited to the Justice League of America, a new organization working for the American government. Under the guidance of Steve Trevor and Amanda Waller, the JLA is the United States’ response to the power and might of the independent operators found in the Justice League. J’onn seems stronger and more aloof here than he ever has before.

It seems that much of J’onn’s past in the New 52 are shrouded in shadow. Where the old J’onn was open to his friends and colleagues, eager to gain their friendship and companionship, this New 52 J’onn is guarded and more than willing to wipe the minds of those he doesn’t trust. He’s a new character with a new set of goals, all of which are currently unknown. We’ll have to find out together where he goes from here.

 

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Jeff Reid likes the idea of J’onn talking to his parents over interplanetary Skype. Occasionally, Jeff talks to his family via Twitter.