Characters I Like -- Martian Manhunter

Since everyone's favorite 4 Color Martian was laid to rest not too long ago, I thought this was as good a time as any to express why I liked the Martian Manhunter and was somewhat sad to see him killed off.  My route to being a fan of the Alien Atlas is a strange one, indeed.  You see, when I was first introduced to the character, I had no idea who he was.

My first memory of Martian Manhunter was as a kid, when I had his extremely cool Super Powers Collection action figure.  But, since he wasn't featured on Superfriends, and I don't remember ever reading the little minicomic which came with him, poor J'Onn (along with the similiarly unknown-to-me Dr. Fate) ended up being the scrub jobbers of my superheroes, beaten up by Darkseid real early and left laying while Flash, Green Lantern, and Aquaman saved the day.  So while he got a lot of playtime, I never really knew just who he was or what he could do.

A few years later, when I got into DC Comics for the first time in the post-"Reign of the Supermen" era, I learned about the Manhunter proper, and was impressed by this Martian powerhouse.  He seemed like a character that had tons of potential, and could be cool to read about.  Only, DC never gave me much to read about the character.  And so, he slipped back into my subconcious -- I was always aware of him, but I had so little concept of him beyond his majorly cool appearance and his massively strong powers, that I never gave him much thought, up to and including his solo series, which I have never read.

That changed when, in 2001, the long-awaited Justice League series debuted on Cartoon Network.  And who was front and center on the show but Big Green himself.  Not only that, but he made a heck of a showing for himself -- showing off his telepathy, intangibility, shape-shifting, and downright brute strength at different times.  Being the outsider of the team allowed him to get a good deal of attention from the series creators, and really have a chance to shine.  He quickly became a favorite on the show for me.

What can be said about the Martian Manhunter that other, more talented folks than I haven't already said?  His ability to work in different genres is astounding, his personality able to shift between inscrutible alien, caring friend, driven hero, and dryly ironic comedian with ease, and the way he spins the "strange visitor from another world" cliche on it's ear is commendable.  It's unfortunate that since his solo series ended in the early 00s that DC has seen little use for the character.  His post-Infinite Crisis miniseries was a failure primarily because it moved away from the known aspects of the Manhunter and pushed him into an angrier role which did not suit him.  Every scene of Justice League: The New Frontier featuring J'Onn somehow became more poingnant, more meaningful, as we saw him try to find a place for himself on a world which is not his and does not want him.  And the Martian Manhunter we saw in Final Crisis: Requiem was the J'Onn I knew and loved, only it was obviously too late at that point.

This being the world of superheroes, J'Onn's death is only temporary at best.  We know at some point or another the Manhunter shall return, as green and beetle-browed as ever.   Perhaps, as I have said, his death is for the best, an opportunity for this character to rest and take a break outside the public eye, to be fully recharged and make his return in a few years to the triumphant shouts and calls of a public who is reminded that sometimes the best heroic character is the one you never even noticed was right under your nose.

This is Martian Manhunter, and he is a character I like.

Characters I Like -- The Forever People

One thing that you can definitely say about the current state of comic book readers -- especially the ones who take the time to blog about it -- is that there certainly is a big heaping helping of Kirby Love out there. While most of Jack's creations were popular right out of the starting block, a good chunk of his later work is only really being fully appreciate now, nearly fourteen years after his death. One of those creations is my focus today, a quintent of adventurers from beyond the stars who didn't fit the normal heroic mold. They fought against injustice, yes, but they just as often preached peace and tolerance, and a greater understanding of just what lay around you. They were the Youth From Space, a perceived threat to the establishment for their age more than their origins, but who desired only the best for all. Unleashed upon the comic world in 1971, the Forever People were doomed to be the least popular stars of Kirby's "Fourth World" opus.


Along with The New Gods and Mister Miracle (plus the already established Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen), The Forever People told part of the saga of the New Gods, a powerful pantheon of alien beings involved in their own mythological struggles. Among this group, we had the "civilized savage" Orion, the wise Highfather, the cruel Desaad, the fun loving Scott Free and his tough-as-nails wife Big Barda, and of course the tyrannical Darkseid. But stranger than all of these were this group of five young Gods, come to Earth on their space-faring motorcycle, in order to find out what this "humanity" thing was all about, and spread their message of tolerance. Think about that for a moment. Was "The King" having a little too much of the Happy Smoke when he concocted this crew?

It all sounds very Hippie-like, admittedly, and that's probably one of the reasons why their title dropped off quickly, sales-wise, once the ball was rolling. But it's an unfair assesment. The Forever People aren't Hippies, they're a Kid Gang, just like the Newsboy Legion or the Boy Commandos before them -- a group of youths operating without direct adult supervision for adventure or what-have-you. They may have been a little older than the Newsboys, but the concept and motivation was the same. Kirby was always intrigued with youth throughout his creative days, and that is most evident to me in the Forever People.

Let's meet our cast, for those of you unfamiliar with them, as I was not too long ago. First off we have our handsome leading man, Mark Moonrider. He's not the most interesting guy you'll ever run into, but he's the closest thing we have to a "by the book" character in these pages. Moonrider can fire blasts of Kirby-energy from his hands, dubbed the Megaton Touch. His de-facto girlfriend is Beautiful Dreamer, who can create illusions and pull other psionic tricks. She's a real sweetheart, one of my favorite "Kirby Girls" in that she seems your typical waif (unlike Barda, who was a powerhouse), but holds her own with just about anything Darkseid throws at them. The brains of the outfit is Vykin, AKA Vykin the Black as he was initially called. The first major Black character in DC Comics, Vykin is well spoken and smart, and also sported magnetic powers as well as the team's Mother Box. (Really quickly, a Mother Box is a living, sentient supercomputer which acts as a sort of mentor and guide to various New Gods.) The muscle of the group comes from Big Bear, replete with his mane of wild hair. In the mold of Kirby's other strongmen like The Thing, Big Bear is not just a one dimensional lunkhead; in his massive frame lurks a joyful and boisterously poetic soul. Rounding out the crew is the youngest and most naive, Serifan, a big fan of Westerns who comes equipped with his mysterious Cosmic Cartridges, each with a different effect.


I'd be remiss not to mention Infinity-Man, the gestalt member of this group. Using the Mother Box, and by shouting the word "TAARU!" (alternately, "Tarru!" or "Taruu!"), the Forever People switch places with the immensely powerful Infinity-Man, older brother of Darkseid and a much more traditional cosmic hero. Infinity-Man has those sort of vaguely defined powers which work so well in the 60s and 70s but rarely fly today. He's the heavy hitter, called in when things are at their darkest and violence is the only resort.

And therein is what makes the Forever People so very interesting to me -- the exact thing which one would expect to turn me off to them. One of the strengths of the Fourth World saga is the sheer number of characters (let no one ever say that Jack Kirby didn't have a lot of ideas) involved in it. This allows both your heroic and villainous characters to come in all shapes and sizes, with all sorts of motivations and methodologies. Orion was harsh and brutal, while Lightray was free-wheeling and fun-loving; it's also important to remember that Darkseid was calculating and analytical, disinterested in Desaad's malicious and sadistic torture traps. The Forever People were a band of idealists, believing in the power of friends and reason. Their fight was just as much with their words as it was with their fists. This dichotomy makes these characters (as written by Kirby) stand out from a lot of other fare from the era. Kirby recoknized that the youth of the late 60s and early 70s thought they could be a positive influence on the world and make it a better place. But he also knew that words can only do so much, and that to affect change there must always be conflict. And so when the words and deeds of the Forever People are not enough to stop Darkseid's agents, they must call upon Infinity-Man, as even the most peaceful of goals inevitably must be hard fought; it seems that their motto must be "To secure peace is to prepare for war."

Powerful scenes abound in their initial series. Darkseid's agent Glorious Godfrey proclaiming from his pulpit the teachings of Anti-Life, wherein you may enforce your will upon everyone around you; Beautiful Dreamer casting an illusion for an untrusting older man, showing him that they are just kids, and not a threat; Serifan utilizing one of his cosmic cartiridges to demonstrate the depths of universe. This was an off-beat book in a series of off-beat books, a little left of center and all the better for it. It's not one dimensional like a lot of so-called "Hippie Lit" was at this point, raising drugs and music to deity-like levels, but neither is it a jackbooted, "love-it-or-leave-it" creed either. (I mentioned a while back that Moonrider saying that the Forever People could "wage war" freely on Earth was strangley militaristic comment for him, and I still hold by this.)


Like all of the New Gods, the Forever People are currently involved in the Death of the New Gods story (which inevitably will tie-in to Final Crisis), and seem primed to be madeover for the new century. And why not? The concept of these mobilized, active peaceniks is just as relevant today as it was 35 years ago when they were made. Think about your resident angry young left-winger -- couldn't you make something superheroic out of that? I bet you could. And with any luck, maybe the powers that be at DC will realize what made the Forever People special, and not jettison that in the next year.

These are the Forever People, and they are characters I like.

Characters I Like -- Wonder Man

As I said in the first one of these, there's a decent number of superheroing characters I like who the "general populace" of the online comics community tends to dislike. Some of this comes from when I started reading comics, true, but a good part of it comes from my personality and background, too. I think that is where my fondness comes from for one of the seemingly most-maligned Avengers ever, Simon Williams, AKA Wonder Man.


Wonder Man hit the scene very early on in Avengers history, being created, pounding on the Assemblers, and then sacrificing himself to save them all in the span of 22 pages of Avengers #9. Initially created as a one-shot baddie, this would be his only real appearance until about four years down the road, when his connection to the Vision (via copied brainwaves) and the Grim Reaper (via brotherhood) started to play big parts in the series under Roy Thomas. But even then, Simon was little more than a stiff on a slab with a viewing window -- a pawn to blackmail Vizh or bulletin board material for the Reaper to attack the Avengers again. He would pop in '75 as the mind controlled slave of Immortus, but the following year he would return proper, re-animated by Black Talon as a psuedo-zombie, then controlled by the Living Laser until finally, some twelve years after the fact, regaining himself and becoming an Avenger. Sort of. Actually, he wouldn't officially join the team until 1980. Simon would be a fairly regular member of the team, paling around with the Beast, until he moved out west with Hawkeye as a founder and stalwart member of the West Coast Avengers, getting his own fairly successful series, and then Force Works in 1994, before he died. Again.

Wonder Man would make his comeback in the "Heroes Return" relaunch of Avengers, going all ionic in the process and once more serving on the team. Since then, he's been primarily seen in that title, although he pops up from place to place occassionally. Once Brian Micheal Bendis took over the Avengers' reins, Wondy has returned to a place of some minor prominence, and now has a pretty high profile in the post-CW Marvel Universe.


Simon has a rather unfortunate history when it comes to wardrobe. Starting with his classic red and greens, he cycled through a few questionable looks -- including the infamous safari jacket, and the Wacko-exclusive suit with the jetpack -- before settling on his current red and black look. Unless you read Mighty Avengers, of course. Personally, I like the original look, and the red and black uniforms. But as bizarre as some of these looks are, they seem to fit the slightly buffoonish Simon, and have become something of a running joke for the character (or at least, they used to be).

I was introduced to Wonder Man in Avengers v.3 when Busiek and Perez brought him back from the dead for the second time. From that intro, I don't think it is hard to like him. With his crazy ionic-energy look and powers, he was interesting from an action standpoint. But his connection to Scarlet witch interested me too. He obviosuly cared for her, but he wasn't pushy or a jerk about it, but it still brought him into conflict with Vision. Longtime readers bemoaned that it was the same-old triangle again, but when I started reading Avengers Simon was already dead, so this was fresh and cool to me. Later that year, when Wanda was able to bring Simon fully back to life, there's a great scene between Simon and Vizh, which nailed the character for me. His boundless enthusiasm and affection for his mechanical "brother" speaks to the heart of Wonder Man as a character, man who doesn't always make the best decisions but who always tries to do what is right, and is loyal to those he cares about. (There's also a great bit in #14 where the Beast discovers his old friend is alive.)

As of late, Simon has been popping up in big events like House of M and Civil War, as well as regular spots in Ms. Marvel and Mighty Avengers. I don't like Bendis' work in general, but one thing I do like is that he seems to share a similiar appreciation for Wonder Man. So it looks like the ionic powerhouse is, for the time being, here to stay.

This is Wonder Man, and he is a character I like.

(BIG props to Wonder Man: Cooler Than Superman, far and away the best Wonder Man site out there.)

Characters I Like -- Black Lightning

I was thinking about who to spotlight this week when my fellow blogger Rick over at Black Lightning Limited announced that he was going to be on a bit of a hiatus while tackling some real-life work. The obvious inspiration hit me, so here's a look at a character who has more upside than a Wide Receiver in the first round.

Black Lightning

Jefferson Pierce, AKA Black Lightning, has a very unusual real-world origin. Initially, DC was set to publish a new series starring a character named the Black Bomber, who would be their first Black solo star. There was one problem here -- the Black Bomber was actually a racist White bigot who transformed into a Black hero. The first two stories evidently revolved around the Bomber rushing to help an innocent in danger, only to discover (to his dismay) that they were Black! Eventually, clearer heads prevailed, the Bomber was shelved, and DC brought in Tony Isabella to salvage the series. Isabella, pretty wisely, declared the character unworkable, and created Black Lightning as a last minute replacement. And boy, are we glad that he did!

Lightning is often compared to Marvel's Luke Cage, their first Black character to star in a solo title. Outside of that historical connection, though, the characters are as different as night and day. Cage was an escaped convict, living under an assumed name to avoid the police. Pierce was an Olympian and teacher, a well respected member of the community. Cage dared not return to his home neighborhood lest he be recognized; Pierce came back to the very high school he graduated from. Both Cage and Lightning spoke "jive" style, but Jeff's was an affectation, part of his heroic disguise (this was later retconed to be the case for Luke as well, ironically). And most importantly, while Luke Cage created his persona of the Hero For Hire to finally take something back from the world which he felt had wronged him in so many ways, Black Lightning defended the streets of Suicide Slum to protect the innocent from the vile inroads being made by gangs, drugs, and corruption. Black Lightning wasn't out to line his pockets, he was out to take out the garbage.


And therein lies Lightning's main appeal. In a sort of superhero twist of Welcome Back, Kotter, Jefferson Pierce sees himself in the kids he teaches, and sees all the potential pitfalls facing them. He managed to escape the ghetto, but with The 100 pushing dope in every alley and muscling in on every corner, what chance do they have? And so he dons his costume and puts his life on the line every night. This is a hero in the same mold as Superman and Batman, who unfortunately has never quite caught on to the same level as even B-listers like Green Arrow.

There's more, as well. In a universe where most of the heroes got along pretty well with each other, Black Lightning rejected an invitation to join the Justice League, saying that he couldn't be hopping around the world when Suicide Slum needed him right here. He's a character who sticks to his guns and sticks to his ethics. Even to this day, despite a recently-patched-up setback thanks to a storyline from Green Arrow, Black Lightning is a hero one can emulate and look up to.

Currently, Black Lightning is a member of the new Justice League of America, finally joining some 25 years or so after he turned them down. He had a key scene in the hugely popular Infinite Crisis, and was recently the star of a story in Outsiders. We're finally getting an official Black Lightning toy -- even if it is with his new, shaved head look, and there is a Black Lightning: Year One miniseries on the schedule. With this high-profile gig, hopefully the PTB at DC will realize that this is a character with his best years ahead of him -- a character with literally unlimited potential, with the drive and grit of Batman, but with superpowers to mix things up. Black Lightning is primed to hit the big time, if only DC doesn't drop the ball.

This is Black Lightning, and he is a character I like.

Characters I Like -- Spear

One of the tropes of the Silver Age which carried over into the Bronze Age (and to a degree, even into the early modern era as well) was that each hero, no matter how high or low on the proverbial totem pole, had his own gang of baddies whom he would regularly tangle with. Sure, everyone might throw down with Doctor Doom from time to time, but month in and month out there was a subset of villains who our favorite crimefighters might interact with. One of my favorite Marvel characters is Luke Cage (same name syndrome), and he, like everyone else, had his own set of foes who he would face down. And today, I'm taking a look at one of his coolest, if not exactly enduring, enemies.


SPEAR



Spear started out as a mysterious man in the shadows terrorizing Dr. Noah Bernstein, the man who created the Power Man Process, which made Luke Cage into the skull-breaker we all know and love. Turns out that the good doctor had tried an earlier prototype of the PMP on Spear's convict brother, wh owas suffering from a brain tumor. Needless to say, things took a turn for the worse, and Spear, like pretty much anyone who was wronged in any way in a Marvel comic from 1962 until about 2001, developed a costumed identity with which to get revenge.

As far as gimmicks go, Spear is pretty well covered. He has a high powered speargun (natch) which he uses to launch various types of spear-like projectiles. Since he apparently has the same armorer as Hawkeye, Spear's arsenal includes his normal trident like spears, plus explosive spears, gas-filled spears, napalam spears, and message delivering spears. And his speargun was powerful enough that he could hurt Cage with it, a mean feat considering that Luke normally laughed off bullets.

Spear had another odd quality -- his costume was seemingly designed twice for the same appearance. Inside the pages of Power Man, he sported his yellow, orange and purple duds, but on the covers, it was a green and purple ensemble that he rocked.



In the end, Spear (along with his other brother, the brutish wrestler named Mangler) only appeared for one storyline in the pages of Power Man (#33-35), then disappeared. Why he has never popped up again is a mystery to me. His costume needs a little freshening, but Spear always struck me as a character who would make a good hired gun, especially against characters who aren't near the top of the superhero food chain -- he'd get a good fight from Daredevil, or Captain America, for instance. Creators and fans bemoan the lack of good villains in today's comic books, but I think that there are plenty of foes with lots of upside if you just look.

Personally, I am hoping that he pops up at some point in Marvel's current Heroes For Hire series, which is a haven for characters like Spear. Because, let's face it -- Shang Chi fighting Spear would be undeniably awesome.

This is Spear, and he is a character I like.

(I obtained the top image from the most excellent Appendix To the Marvel Universe -- check it out!)

Characters I Like -- Fate

I started seriously collecting comic books in the early 90s. I mean, I was aware of them in the 80s as a kid, and I watched "Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends" and played with my Super Powers toys. But around the end of 1991 into the beginning of 1992, this tween got himself into the comic book habit hard.
This does explain a lot of things about me, including why certain characters still hold a special place for me despite their, shall we say, questionable origins? Maybe I'm the weird one, but I like Doomsday and Bane, thankyouverymuch. So this entry is a tribute to another such character who I enjoy despite all eveidence (and potentially, good taste) to the contrary.

FATE





The 90s were a strange time. With Image first hitting the scene, mega macho mystery men with giant arsenals and super-sexed vamps with impossible anatomy were all the rage. Marvel bought into this whole hog (witness: Thor With A Gun), and eventually DC got into the act, as well, revamping and updating their roster of characters to make them hipper, younger, and (ostensibly) edgier. One such revamp was Jared Stevens, AKA Fate.

Introduced during "Zero Hour," an event which as a DC neophyte made absolutely no sense but remained extremely awesome nonetheless, Fate wasn't your usual mumbo-jumbo spewing mystic. No, a former mercenary (ever notice that comic book universes are teeming with mercenaries?), he got down and dirty with demons and monsters, and had the foresight to melt down the Helmet of Nabu and turn it into a giant, golden blade and some ankh-shaped throwing daggers. He was very "kewl" and "gnarly" and all other sorts of words like that. And for someone like me, who was so naive in the ways of DC, reading about a new character -- one whom I had the first appearance of, and knew everything about -- was very appealing to my 14 year old self.

The result was a series which was pretty much straight action with a magical twist to it. It might seem bone-headed in retrospect, to take a character like Dr. Fate and morph him into a Big Knife weilding mercenary with a mullet and ink. But at the time, it was my favorite DC title. It was different, at least to a 14 year old, from all of the seemingly anonymous Image or mutant books out there, and with Jared being a newbie and outsider, it allowed the reader to gain insight as well. I always thought a team-up of the classic, spell casting Dr. Fate with the gruff, harsh Fate would make for interesting reading.

"Fate" was not a very successful title, and certainly never mentioned in the same breath as it's fellow "ZH" title "Starman." In the end, Fate was given two shots at solo stardom before fading away, eventually getting himself killed in the first issue of the relaunched "JSA." After that, he would pop up from time to time inside Fate's amulet with the other former weilders. But for a while, there was a time when the main magical character in the DCU didn't just wave his hands at you and spout gibberish.

No, there was a time when he would mess you up.

This is Fate, and he is a character I like.