Discovering Mars Part Two

In my second encounter with the Martian Manhunter, I was to learn that he blows really hard.

No, really.

It was summer of 1981 and for the Dill family, time to move again. My father was in the Air Force and my childhood was comprised of a series of moves from Air Force Base to Air Force Base. From fall of 1978 to spring of 1981 we lived in a tiny town called Rochester, New Hampshire. At that point, three years seemed like forever and I had thought we were pretty much settled. But my father got orders and we were moving from New Hampshire to Montgomery, Alabama.

My mother, in her traditional effort of getting together a pile of ‘trip happies’ to keep us quiet on the long car rides, had bought for me a copy of DC Special Blue Ribbon Digest #11. It is one of the greatest comics known to man.



This comic evokes powerful memories from my childhood. There were two stories in it and to this day I think of them as two of the best Justice League stories ever. The Digest reprints Justice League of America issues 100 through 102, and in the back of the book, it reprints Justice League of America number 17. I read it in the car when we started off on our trip. I read it during the week we stayed at Ocean City, New Jersey with Grandmom Dill and cousins galore. I read it when we stopped off with Grandmom Lomax in North Carolina. I read it when we ended up at random motels along the way. I read it when we finally arrived in Alabama and sat on the floors of an empty house waiting for our stuff. My copy is still in my collection. Falling apart, bent, smelly, stained, and with hints of grains of sand.



LOOK at that cover. It is covered in heroes. And boasting “33 super stars in one epic adventure”. It’s a dream come true.



But, it’s worth it to note how very different it is from today’s comics. Yes, it’s got one three part story with 33 heroes and yes, it’s a bit overcrowded. But the writer was able to give each hero their own showcase, if even for a few panels. For instance, I remember that Aquaman’s few panels were finding the character he was to search for and swimming through a cave system that had become dangerously flooded.


The story splits the heroes up into smaller groups and sends them out on missions to accomplish one unified goal. This was the writer’s way of fitting in 33 heroes and giving everyone something to do. This was how super-hero group storytelling should be done. In today’s comics, story pacing and action scenes are completely different. Today, if I saw a cover blurb boasting the number of heroes in the comic, I would dread reading the overcrowded, boring slugfest within and expect it to have lots of splash pages with meaningless crowd scenes.

But when I was twelve and comic book writers knew how to craft a story with plot, well… that was wide-eyed gangbusters!

Anyway, among these 33 heroes and their well balanced story, Martian Manhunter made one brief cameo appearance.


At this point, he had already left the Justice League.

So still, I knew nothing. How disappointing.

Then I got to the back of the book and there was the reprint of an even older Justice League story. “The Triumph of the Tornado Tyrant”. This showed me that the Justice League story I had just read was actually a nod to the Justice League stories of the 1960’s written by Gardner Fox, who ALWAYS split the heroes up to get them those crucial couple of panels of solo focus. So I learned two very important things about this mysterious hero from Mars.



His weakness was fire.



He blows pretty hard.

And that was it.

So help me out with my inventory of 12 year old Chuck’s understanding of this new/old and exciting character.

1) He was green.
2) He was from Mars
3) He could fly
4) You could take him out with a match and some gumption
5) He blew

So, yeah. How was I supposed to pretend to be Martian Manhunter at Ocean City when doing my ‘super heroes versus the waves’ bit? (My Superman always got bowled over by the unrelenting waves. My Aquaman always swum through them with grace and action-packed aplomb.)

I would look at the oncoming wave, mentally change myself to the Martian Manhunter, check to the right, check to the left, make sure no one was looking, and I would blow at the wave. Cause… to the best of my knowledge, that was Martian Manhunter’s super power. I guess.

Still got a face full of wave, though.



Thanks,
DCD