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Showcase Presents: Martian Manhunter #1
Showcase Presents: Martian Manhunter, Vol. 1
Over 500 pages of classic adventures are included in this value-priced volume collecting stories from the late 1950s starring this charter member of the Justice League of America Adopting the Earthly identity of Police Detective John Jones, the super-hero known as the Martian Manhunter uses his incredible strength, shape-shifting abilities and other powers to combat crime
544 pages, Paperback
First published July 25, 2007
6 people are currently reading
79 people want to read
About the author
Jack Miller
69 books1 followerLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
January 15, 2009
John Jones, Earthbound detective becomes J'onn J'ozz, Manhunter from Mars. He fights Earth crime via invisibility and faux-Superman type feats. Jack Miller's writing and Joe Certa's art are strangely peaceful even though the stories try to go for an other-worldliness. Although every story is only six pages long they're all so perfectly written and drawn!
April 30, 2019
These stories ran from the late 50s through the early 60s, and they're very much what you'd expect. J'onn J'onzz is a Martian who takes the personality of Detective John Jones on Earth because...well, comics, man. He has to keep his identity secret from his boss and from the woman he has extremely chaste feelings for. Each very short adventure has him face a threat, give it a moment's thought, then use on of his seemingly random powers (invisibility, super-tunneling, the ability to look like someone else, and something with his breath that never made any danged sense) to quickly defeat the enemy...usually finishing the job with a panel of punching. He ends up in jail, on a movie set, or at the circus more than seems reasonable.
There's an extreme repetitiveness and a kind of crushing mid-century blandness to the whole thing that makes it hard to like. Even the art. Everybody pretty much looks the same. There's "woman." Sometimes she has dark hair, other times light, but she looks the same. Then there's two types of "man." Heavy and round, or trim and strong-jawed. It's like an American version of manga where there's only really 3 faces that get mixed and matched with different costumes/hair.
There's an extreme repetitiveness and a kind of crushing mid-century blandness to the whole thing that makes it hard to like. Even the art. Everybody pretty much looks the same. There's "woman." Sometimes she has dark hair, other times light, but she looks the same. Then there's two types of "man." Heavy and round, or trim and strong-jawed. It's like an American version of manga where there's only really 3 faces that get mixed and matched with different costumes/hair.
July 4, 2017
Avere una grande idea poi non basta. Queste storie, che vanno dalla prima metà degli anni '50 alla fine degli stessi, mostrano tutti i difetti dei fumetti di quel tempo. Possibile che Jack Miller fosse pagato così poco da non avere stimoli nell'impegnarsi maggiormente con storie che uscissero un poco dai cliché dell'epoca? Inoltre i disegni di Joe Certa sono solo raramente sufficienti.
Consigliato comunque ai filologi del fumetto supereroistico.
Consigliato comunque ai filologi del fumetto supereroistico.
July 6, 2015
What a tangled evolution of yet another middling 1950s/60s DC comics story. Evolutions that at best put the mediocrity in a comparatively improved package, at worst create bland tension and a flawed Superman clone (and Superman himself wasn't exactly a great comic in this era either).
"Batman #78" opens the book, and it's unique because J'onn J'onnz the Martian Manhunter or secret identity John Jones the incredibly effective "human police officer" are NOWHERE TO BE FOUND. But apparently this was what inspired DC Comics people to create a Martian superhero.
Predictably for Batman in this era, it was a little lame. There's a Martian bad guy, a Martian cop in pursuit, the animation was not very appealing and the story lacks a little oomph. Probably because no one seems to care that aliens are on Earth nor that this Martian cop character just went back to Mars. A little yawn and "oh well, another Batman and Robin case wrapped up."
Apparently America needed a major comic book of this, although I guess it was relatively minor to stick their fancy hero as a backup in "Detective Comics".
The best stories by far is his origin story or the fortunate times they randomly remember to bring it up. Prof. Erdel created a machine that can teleport things across the universe. So of course, he turned it on and randomly zapped something to Earth. Scientific method via DC Comics
He randomly plucked J'onn J'onnz, random Martian guyer, and then the professor died before he could figure out to fix his mistake.
This was a moment of clarity in storytelling. J'onn is stranded on Earth, waiting hopefully for Martians to someday figure out interstellar travel and rescue him to go back to his family. A clear purpose for his life on Earth. And they proceeded to IGNORE IT FOREVER.
You see, in the meantime of being stranded away from home, he uses his "Martian powers" to impersonate a human being and join the local police force. CUE 79 STORIES ABOUT BEATING GENERIC 'HOODS' AS A SUPERCOP.
Seriously. Unlike any of your boilerplate superhero comics, no supervillains or anything. The only generic things are criminals who don't seem to be able to use their crime skills with any clear success. A running log of guys in suits and fedoras who love robbing banks and failing the minute J'onn leans on them.
They even have similar names. Wilson, Slade, Jack, etc. The name "Biff" randomly gets used several times alone. No characterization of the criminal at all.
The best apparatus of the story is the first one. J'onn can make himself invisible, so he can sneak up on the crook and use superpowers, and it seems like John Jones is just kind of a lucky copper.
Those stories had a speed, a flow to them, that made for a better read. THAT HAS TO STOP. So after an incredibly convoluted plot device (like a switch on a Martian spaceship) it becomes physically impossible for him to use his powers and stay invisible at the same time. Not only is this plot point incredibly specific, it also renders Martian into much more of a Superman clone.
John Jones senses crime, so he has to change into his identity as MARTIAN MANHUNTER. At the very least, it saved the creative team of Jack Miller and Joe Certa one panel of work for his monthly change of identity.
Now Martian Manhunter is a regional celebrity, and predictably, this takes away plot elements of his own identity, villainy, or anything else. He's just so darn popular.
The "Manhunter Love" storylines add up. The police chief Harding has to tell John Jones about him. John Jones playful work nemesis Diane Meade, she has to hit on Manhunter, compare him to John Jones, and suspect he is John Jones (a terrible crutch of later stories is "John Jones is clearly Martian Manhunter says such and such...). And of course those cringingly uninspired winking lines like "John, it must be nice having Manhunter around..." "I know a thing or two about that guy WINK WINK"...
It's pretty blatantly similar to the tropes of the bad Superman stories presumably being written down the hallway. The most obvious is Superman is solely beaten by Kryptonite, while Martians are beaten solely by fire.
"Detective Comics #300" takes this pretty literally, as a "J'onn J'onnz museum" pops up, a simplified version of all those crazy references to objects in Superman's museum. And naturally, Manhunter outsmarts some hoods who "think they know" his secrets, in this case his weakness to fire. He
The last few stories expand in length, which seems to only imply there is more or more creative things going on, not really delivering them.
"Detective Comics #304" pits J'onn against a "Crime College" of criminals who study to try and be clever criminals. Like most of the ok stories in this book, it's kinda bad with some interesting touches. The criminals invent some cool looking machines and go for some clever scores of criminality, but the pitter patter of "John Jones in, Martian Manhunter momentarily confused, J'onn wins" is pretty suffocating.
Solid (but not extraordinary) artwork cover what literally feel like Superman's B-stories. But I think it is maybe slowly getting better, but I worry about the general cheesiness and stifling of plot structure.
"Batman #78" opens the book, and it's unique because J'onn J'onnz the Martian Manhunter or secret identity John Jones the incredibly effective "human police officer" are NOWHERE TO BE FOUND. But apparently this was what inspired DC Comics people to create a Martian superhero.
Predictably for Batman in this era, it was a little lame. There's a Martian bad guy, a Martian cop in pursuit, the animation was not very appealing and the story lacks a little oomph. Probably because no one seems to care that aliens are on Earth nor that this Martian cop character just went back to Mars. A little yawn and "oh well, another Batman and Robin case wrapped up."
Apparently America needed a major comic book of this, although I guess it was relatively minor to stick their fancy hero as a backup in "Detective Comics".
The best stories by far is his origin story or the fortunate times they randomly remember to bring it up. Prof. Erdel created a machine that can teleport things across the universe. So of course, he turned it on and randomly zapped something to Earth. Scientific method via DC Comics
He randomly plucked J'onn J'onnz, random Martian guyer, and then the professor died before he could figure out to fix his mistake.
This was a moment of clarity in storytelling. J'onn is stranded on Earth, waiting hopefully for Martians to someday figure out interstellar travel and rescue him to go back to his family. A clear purpose for his life on Earth. And they proceeded to IGNORE IT FOREVER.
You see, in the meantime of being stranded away from home, he uses his "Martian powers" to impersonate a human being and join the local police force. CUE 79 STORIES ABOUT BEATING GENERIC 'HOODS' AS A SUPERCOP.
Seriously. Unlike any of your boilerplate superhero comics, no supervillains or anything. The only generic things are criminals who don't seem to be able to use their crime skills with any clear success. A running log of guys in suits and fedoras who love robbing banks and failing the minute J'onn leans on them.
They even have similar names. Wilson, Slade, Jack, etc. The name "Biff" randomly gets used several times alone. No characterization of the criminal at all.
The best apparatus of the story is the first one. J'onn can make himself invisible, so he can sneak up on the crook and use superpowers, and it seems like John Jones is just kind of a lucky copper.
Those stories had a speed, a flow to them, that made for a better read. THAT HAS TO STOP. So after an incredibly convoluted plot device (like a switch on a Martian spaceship) it becomes physically impossible for him to use his powers and stay invisible at the same time. Not only is this plot point incredibly specific, it also renders Martian into much more of a Superman clone.
John Jones senses crime, so he has to change into his identity as MARTIAN MANHUNTER. At the very least, it saved the creative team of Jack Miller and Joe Certa one panel of work for his monthly change of identity.
Now Martian Manhunter is a regional celebrity, and predictably, this takes away plot elements of his own identity, villainy, or anything else. He's just so darn popular.
The "Manhunter Love" storylines add up. The police chief Harding has to tell John Jones about him. John Jones playful work nemesis Diane Meade, she has to hit on Manhunter, compare him to John Jones, and suspect he is John Jones (a terrible crutch of later stories is "John Jones is clearly Martian Manhunter says such and such...). And of course those cringingly uninspired winking lines like "John, it must be nice having Manhunter around..." "I know a thing or two about that guy WINK WINK"...
It's pretty blatantly similar to the tropes of the bad Superman stories presumably being written down the hallway. The most obvious is Superman is solely beaten by Kryptonite, while Martians are beaten solely by fire.
"Detective Comics #300" takes this pretty literally, as a "J'onn J'onnz museum" pops up, a simplified version of all those crazy references to objects in Superman's museum. And naturally, Manhunter outsmarts some hoods who "think they know" his secrets, in this case his weakness to fire. He
The last few stories expand in length, which seems to only imply there is more or more creative things going on, not really delivering them.
"Detective Comics #304" pits J'onn against a "Crime College" of criminals who study to try and be clever criminals. Like most of the ok stories in this book, it's kinda bad with some interesting touches. The criminals invent some cool looking machines and go for some clever scores of criminality, but the pitter patter of "John Jones in, Martian Manhunter momentarily confused, J'onn wins" is pretty suffocating.
Solid (but not extraordinary) artwork cover what literally feel like Superman's B-stories. But I think it is maybe slowly getting better, but I worry about the general cheesiness and stifling of plot structure.
September 2, 2018
Not as great as other Showcase Presents due to shorter stories since these were mainly fillers for Detective Comics. I like the character but shallow plotlines can't give a rich background.
September 26, 2013
J'onn J'onzz, the Manhunter from Mars was a classic DC character and early Justice League member. He began his career in 1955 in a back up feature to Batman in Detective comics in a series of page features. That's why this book can easily contain the first 80 of his solo adventures.
The book begins with a story from Batman #78 called the Manhunter from Mars from 1953. The story and character don't appear to have anything to do with the Martian Manhunter, but hey Batman reprints from the 1950s are somewhat rare.
We then meet J'onn J'onzz in Detective Comics #225. He a Martian, brought to Earth through a scientist's experiment. The scientist dies as J'ohn is stranded and decides to fight crime on Earth while waiting for a way back to Mars. He assumes the identity of John Jones and becomes a police detective (about as easily as Superman became Clark Kent reporter in some early stories) and sets out on an incredible career of fighting crime.
During the Manhunter's early years, the Superhero genre was in decline, so the Martian Manhunter was much more of a super powered detective than a superhero. He had to solve the case as John Jones and present criminals for prosecution. Six page comic book stories were often very poorly written, but these unsigned stories were actually very well done, with clever mysteries and some nice plot twists. What made it fun too was that the Manhunter did most of his work invisible. While other heroes had a secret identity, his entire existence was a secret.
Of course, there was some repetition. I lost count of how many times we were told the Manhunter's weakness was fire, but other than that, the stories were great.
The rise of the Superhero genre led to a change in the series. After 4 years, a Martian criminal (despite the fact that we were told in the first story that crime didn't exist on Mars) came to Earth and shot J'onn with a ray that made it so he couldn't use his Martian powers when invisible, and in order to save the day, the Martian Manhunter revealed his existence to the world.
From there, the Martian Manhunter becomes a much more typical Silver Age superhero story. I know that many alternate stories imagine 1950s Earth being hostile to the Manhunter forcing him underground as part of the constant beefing against the 1950s, but the way the book acts in 1959, people just thought, "Oh, he's from Mars, cool."
While the latter tales we're not as good, they were probably better written than many others. The length forbid the stories from getting too silly or too off-track for the most part. Of course, they did get a little longer. The stories changed from 6 pages to 7 with Detective Comics #280 in June of 1960 and leapt to 12 pages with Detective Comics #301 in March 1962.
The last of the 12 page stories in the book seemed to present the most problems. It was about a crime college where criminal students tries to keep up their grades while using outlandishly silly crime devices to commit robberies. In this story, the chief of Police mentions the Manhunter's weakness to fire (his only weakness) when the Manhunter had tried and succeeded from keeping everyone from knowing about it. In the last story, the chief knows but criminals don't for some reason.
Still even that story was fun. Which is a good word for the whole book. Of eighty-one classic comic book stories, there were a few weak ones, but overall this is just a truly fun enjoyable book taking a look at an underrated Silver Age character.
The book begins with a story from Batman #78 called the Manhunter from Mars from 1953. The story and character don't appear to have anything to do with the Martian Manhunter, but hey Batman reprints from the 1950s are somewhat rare.
We then meet J'onn J'onzz in Detective Comics #225. He a Martian, brought to Earth through a scientist's experiment. The scientist dies as J'ohn is stranded and decides to fight crime on Earth while waiting for a way back to Mars. He assumes the identity of John Jones and becomes a police detective (about as easily as Superman became Clark Kent reporter in some early stories) and sets out on an incredible career of fighting crime.
During the Manhunter's early years, the Superhero genre was in decline, so the Martian Manhunter was much more of a super powered detective than a superhero. He had to solve the case as John Jones and present criminals for prosecution. Six page comic book stories were often very poorly written, but these unsigned stories were actually very well done, with clever mysteries and some nice plot twists. What made it fun too was that the Manhunter did most of his work invisible. While other heroes had a secret identity, his entire existence was a secret.
Of course, there was some repetition. I lost count of how many times we were told the Manhunter's weakness was fire, but other than that, the stories were great.
The rise of the Superhero genre led to a change in the series. After 4 years, a Martian criminal (despite the fact that we were told in the first story that crime didn't exist on Mars) came to Earth and shot J'onn with a ray that made it so he couldn't use his Martian powers when invisible, and in order to save the day, the Martian Manhunter revealed his existence to the world.
From there, the Martian Manhunter becomes a much more typical Silver Age superhero story. I know that many alternate stories imagine 1950s Earth being hostile to the Manhunter forcing him underground as part of the constant beefing against the 1950s, but the way the book acts in 1959, people just thought, "Oh, he's from Mars, cool."
While the latter tales we're not as good, they were probably better written than many others. The length forbid the stories from getting too silly or too off-track for the most part. Of course, they did get a little longer. The stories changed from 6 pages to 7 with Detective Comics #280 in June of 1960 and leapt to 12 pages with Detective Comics #301 in March 1962.
The last of the 12 page stories in the book seemed to present the most problems. It was about a crime college where criminal students tries to keep up their grades while using outlandishly silly crime devices to commit robberies. In this story, the chief of Police mentions the Manhunter's weakness to fire (his only weakness) when the Manhunter had tried and succeeded from keeping everyone from knowing about it. In the last story, the chief knows but criminals don't for some reason.
Still even that story was fun. Which is a good word for the whole book. Of eighty-one classic comic book stories, there were a few weak ones, but overall this is just a truly fun enjoyable book taking a look at an underrated Silver Age character.
June 27, 2014
Some things simply do not match your childhood memories of them. One such thing is the not-wonderful Martian Manhunter stories in DETECTIVE COMICS. This collection, the first volume of two, is at a disadvantage in that MM stories are probably best consumed a month apart (or longer), and not one after another when their sameness becomes annoying. Another disadvantage is the art. Joe Certa was not the best story teller working at that time. His style is pleasing and clean, but lacks panache. Finally, this brick of a book is printed in black and white. Not only was the art designed to be colored, there was something that children found very cool about J'onn J'onzz green skin. It isn't green in this black and white reprint. There is some interest in seeing the type of story told evolve too slightly over the years and in the evolution of Certa's design for J'onzz/Jones, and more interest in the too rare glimpses in J'onzz's encounter with other Martians. What seemed so memorable in childhood is so forgettable now.
April 15, 2008
I really enjoyed the earlier stories in this book, but i thought the quality of said stories gradually declined as the collection went on. At first, Martian Manhunter was very interesting because his identity was a complete secret: not only did nobody know John Jones was the Martian Manhunter, they didn't even know there was a Martian Manhunter. Once his presence is revealed to the world, it basically becomes a Superman knock-off, and Superman in the silver age wasn't terribly interesting.
Another thing: while the six-page story size is convenient, it isn't very practical for telling detective stories. A detective story needs room to breathe and grow gradually. Hence, these are incredibly rushed stories.
Batman's brain in Superman's body, that's how i would describe Martian Manhunter at this point in time.
Another thing: while the six-page story size is convenient, it isn't very practical for telling detective stories. A detective story needs room to breathe and grow gradually. Hence, these are incredibly rushed stories.
Batman's brain in Superman's body, that's how i would describe Martian Manhunter at this point in time.
June 23, 2012
Honestly, these stories from the late 50s-early 60s aren't very good. One of the things I enjoyed most was seeing all the different super-powers J'onn J'onzz uses; things like Martian Angle Vision and Martian Hearing (that can be tuned to short wave). Most of these powers get used exactly once.
May 29, 2008
I cannot defend the literary merit of these Silver Age tales, nor can I explain what it is about them I enjoy. And yet enjoy them I do.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews