All of DC Comics’ Absolute titles have been swinging for the fences. The line, featuring classic characters reinvented for a darker universe than the main DC timeline, has been packed with stellar work. This past Wednesday, though, the final pages (or… page?) of Absolute Martian Manhunter #1 took things to a whole new level. Writer Deniz Camp and artist Javier Rodríguez wrapped their series launch with an art trick that can only be properly experienced if you’ve got an actual physical copy of the comic in your hands.
[Ed. note: The rest of this piece contains spoilers for the general plot of Absolute Martian Manhunter #1, because there’s really no way to describe the final page otherwise.]
Image: Deniz Camp, Javier Rodríguez/DC Comics
Camp and Rodríguez’s first issue is all about family man FBI agent John Jones, of the Stochastic Terrorism Task Force, whose recent brush with death seems to be triggering a break with reality. Everyone around him — doctors, witnesses, the people he walks by on the street — is emitting colored smoke that only he can see. The smoke is very real, however, and only getting thicker and more oppressive.
In the climactic pages of Absolute Martian Manhunter, John begins to choke on it, even as a soothing voice in his head encourages him to breathe in even more. Eventually, the strange truth becomes clear: The smoke is the thoughts and memories of the people around him, John isn’t alone in his head anymore, and he owes his life to his new passenger, the Martian Manhunter.
Camp and Rodríguez bring this home with a trick of double-sided printing: two pages printed back to back that, when held up to the light as instructed, combine four panels into two, and John Jones and the Martian Manhunter into one.
Image: Deniz Camp, Javier Rodríguez/DC Comics
Image: Deniz Camp, Javier Rodríguez/DC Comics
Image: Deniz Camp, Javier Rodríguez/DC Comics
Photo: Susana Polo/Polygon
It’s a banger of a way to introduce your new comic series, and one I knew I had to show around to the Polygon team — specifically Polygon’s own Oli Welsh, who’s had a soft spot for the psychic alien hero dating back to 1992’s Martian Manhunter: American Secrets, another reinvention of the character for another era.
Susana: DC’s Absolute line is definitely pitched to old readers and new ones alike: These are revamped characters in a new continuity, starting at the beginning of their stories. That makes you the exact target audience, Oli. What’d you think of the issue?
Oli: I really liked it. I’ll buy into anything Martian Manhunter-flavored; I don’t know why, but I just dig the character. I haven’t been an active comics reader since, God, the late 1990s. I remember J’onn J’onzz as a weary but indulgent straight man amid the chaos of Justice League International, and also a very cool reimagining of the character as a Cold War gumshoe in American Secrets by Gerard Jones and Eduardo Barreto. I love the idea of an alien detective, and of a superpowered character who mostly chooses to solve problems with his intellect. And I like that he’s just a bit of a boring nerd.
Absolute Martian Manhunter doesn’t have much of the “groovy green guy” factor I remember from those days, because he seems to be mostly a psychic presence in this one, and he’s inhabiting a real human John Jones, instead of using his shape-shifting powers to pose as one. So that’s a bit of a loss. But I love that it seems to fundamentally be a detective story — that’s what Martian Manhunter should be.
This is clearly a very different take on the Martian Manhunter character. What’s the deal with this Absolute DC line?
Susana: Oh, yeah, we should explain for folks who aren’t up on their Martian Manhunter lore: Martian Manhunter’s solo books often have him living as a human detective called John Jones. (His actual Martian name is J’onn J’onzz.) Sometimes John is an identity J’onn invents, and sometimes he’s a slain detective whose identity J’onn honorably adopts — John Jones the actual human detective, and J’onn J’onzz, the last Martian, don’t typically share the page together!
As for the Absolute line and the Absolute Universe, there are in-fiction reasons for this. (Darkseid did a thing, don’t worry about it.) But essentially, it’s a new parallel Earth in which everything is worse: Same heroes, broadly, but they’re all beginning their stories yards behind their usual starting lines. Batman is a city engineer, not a billionaire, for example. Wonder Woman was raised in hell, not an island paradise.
Image: Deniz Camp, Javier Rodríguez/DC Comics
That sounds pretty grim, but the effect — the Absolute Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman books have all finished out their first arcs already — is really just taking the most famous and powerful superheroes in DC’s stable and adding a heaping helping of the underdog status we don’t usually associate with them. The books are really good, the creative teams are all bringing highly creative ideas to bear, and they’ve been selling incredibly well. Absolute Martian Manhunter is one of three books in the second wave of titles; Absolute Flash #1 came out March 4, and Absolute Green Lantern is coming on April 2.
Oli: I was instantly wowed by the art — the bright, psychedelic color palette wasn’t what I expected of a story like this, in a good way, and the layouts are really clever. There’s a fantastic panel early on which is a close-up of John Jones as he comes out of hospital — he’s had a serious head injury, but he’s insisting on going back to work. You can see his wife’s appalled reaction reflected in his sunglasses. It’s both efficient storytelling and stylistically really cool.
Image: Deniz Camp, Javier Rodríguez/DC Comics
Also, the loose, inky, crime-y illustration style made me think of more down-to-earth alt-comics classics like Love and Rockets or (a personal fave) David Lapham’s Stray Bullets. Tell me more about Javier Rodríguez! I haven’t encountered his work before. What else has he done? Is it always this striking?
Susana: Rodríguez is a Spanish illustrator who’s been around in the U.S. comics industry for more than two decades now — and it probably won’t surprise you, given Absolute Martian Manhunter’s use of color, to find out that he usually works as a colorist. It’s always a treat when he steps up to solo the art on a series, like he does here.
My favorite thing he’s done recently is Defenders and Defenders: Beyond with writer Al Ewing. In it, the five colors of magic in the Marvel Universe are depicted as black (ink), white (the page), magenta, cyan, and yellow — that is, the colors that make up the four-color printing process that defined the look of American comics. It’s not hard to see a line from those Defenders books to the bright colors and playful use of physical printing in Absolute Martian Manhunter #1. It feels like writer Deniz Camp is just stepping out of the way so Rodríguez can show off.
That said, Camp has a real talent for making superhero books that have biting and pertinent things to say, without skimping on the fantasy of it all, so I’m looking forward to seeing more of what they’ve cooked up together.
Oli: It’s funny you say that, because the primary vibe I felt Camp was cooking up in this issue had less to do with superhero comics than it did with prestige TV detective shows. (Although that might just be about what makes a bigger part of my media diet these days.) You’ve got a central character who’s a detective, who’s in a weird headspace, who’s burdened with too much insight, and who’s going off the books to investigate a case on his own, to the detriment of his personal life. And the case, an apparent suicide bombing, is both grimy and a bit sad in classic prestige-crime style.
Reading it, I thought a lot of True Detective, a similarly trippy, paranormal take on police procedurals. I was so deep in this line of thinking that when I got to that incredible final page(s) and the final line, “We’re the Martian Mind****er,” my mind instantly interpreted this as a reference to David Fincher’s Netflix serial killer show, Mindhunter.
I imagine that’s not how you read it, though!
Image: Deniz Camp, Javier Rodríguez/DC Comics
Susana: Haha, not quite, although I agree that Camp and Rodríguez don’t seem to be cooking up a standard superhero adventure here — but then, the Martian Manhunter’s solo books aren’t usually standard superhero adventures! Trippy and psychic and visually mind****ing is exactly what I was expecting from these two on this book.
This first issue does a lot of setting up in limited time, and tucked in among the bold visuals are some interesting threads I’m looking forward to seeing play out. Like that the suicide bomber might be connected to a larger organization, for example, or an FBI division called something as superhero-y sounding as the “Stochastic Terrorism Task Force,” or the subtle indications that John Jones’ son Tyler struggles with his speech — that’s a parent-child gulf ready to be crossed by Martian telepathy.
It’s a great first issue, in a line with a lot of great books, and I can’t wait to get more of it.
Absolute Martian Manhunter #2 hits shelves on April 23.
