Over at DC, A J Lieberman and Al Barrionuevo take on the unenviable task of reviving the Martian Manhunter.

The Martian Manhunter is one of those awkwardly placed characters who hasn't had a big enough following to support his own title for quite some time, but who still gets to stand next to the A-list heroes simply because he's a mainstay.  (Marvel Universe equivalents would be Doctor Strange, Namor the Sub-Mariner or Nick Fury.)

Part of the problem, I think, may be that people just don't know quite what to make of the character, or have a clear sense of what he's meant to be about.  Superman is the big shiny archetypal superhero.  Spider-Man is the boy-next-door superhero.  Batman is disturbed but driven.  And the Martian Manhunter is... the guy third from the right in JLA group shots.  Who doesn't like fire.

Lieberman sets out to address that problem by going back to the character's unique selling point: he's an alien.  Yes, alright, Superman's an alien too, but it doesn't count because he grew up here.  The Martian Manhunter is an exiled alien and we are not his people.  That's the angle, and it's really that simple.  But it's been downplayed over the years as the Manhunter has been sucked into DC lore and become safe, reliable and overfamiliar.  He has been Martian in the same sense that another character might be French.

So this story goes back to basics.  The character has a slightly less human appearance.  The story involves nasty villains capturing other Martians and torturing them to try and make weapons for the military - hardly subtle, but at least it allows for the key idea of the story.  The Manhunter is (where possible) our point of view character, and he identifies with the other Martians, not with the humans.

Of course, there are unavoidable limits to what you can do with him, since he's saddled with some elements that no modern writer would ever have introduced - if you were creating this character from scratch today, he would never be a little green man from Mars, a hoary old cliche that should be avoided at all costs.  Fine for the 1950s, not so great today.  But there's nothing to be done about that short of dumping the character altogether and creating somebody broadly similar instead.  The book just about gets away with taking him seriously despite this central difficulty.

Judged purely as a story in its own right, it's not exceptional.  But as an exercise in refocussing a character who's lost his way and getting him back on the right track, it's a winner.

Rating: B+

back | continue