Off to a wedding...

Can't blog today.  I have to go to a wedding.

Ugh.

I really, really dislike weddings, which involves having to deal with large groups of people, dancing, talking to people I don't know, and keeping sarcastic comments to myself.  This last one is really, really hard for me.

One wedding that I wouldn't mind going to?  This one:

Now wouldn't THAT be fun?  The fact that it appears as if some Rannian high priest is performing the ceremony is worth the price of admission alone.

A Guide For Writing the Rebooted Martian Manhunter Part 7

Top Ten Things Writers Need to Remember When Writing the Martian Manhunter

In case you missed the previous entries in our riveting count down.  (Okay, it's not really a countdown because I'm making this up as I go.)  Here they are: Number 10, Number 9, Number 8, Number 7, Number 6, and Number 5.

Wow, that means I'm more than halfway through in my list of ways to return J'onn J'onzz to his Silver Age glory days.  (If there ever was such a thing...it's all subjective.)  Anyway!

4.  Get the ethics right.

[Intones in a grave voice]  With great power, comes great responsibility....whoops.

Hold on, let's start over.

J'onn is, no doubt, one of the most powerful and versatile characters in the DCU.  He's perhaps the only hero who could run around solving crimes and defeating bad guys by mentally controlling them, and then erasing their memories that any such mind-control ever took place.  Not to mention the shapeshifting, which is a whole other can of ethical worms.  Theroetically, there's no end to the kinds of damage (both psychological and emotional) he could do to a person.

Take for instance, this 90's appearance:

That's Private Eye Jones "mentally nudging" (a.k.a. mind controlling) a policeman friend to give up some information to help with his own case.  I'm no lawyer, but I'm pretty sure that's all kinds of illegal, but let's ignore that for now.  How would you feel if your "friend" made you give up information that could jeopardize your job instead of just asking you for a favor?  I don't know about you, but I'd feel a little used.  I'm not sure I'd comply with that favor, though, and maybe that's J'onn's problem--he doesn't trust us.  Or, a third option, he's just plain lazy.  Either way, it makes our hero seem...gee, I don't know...not heroic?

Occasionally there were hints made at J'onn not wanting to pry into minds because of Martian ethics, and then there was that whole "mind rape" thing involving his brother, so it's not like creators hadn't thought about applying ethics to telepathy before.  It's just that some ad hoc ethics "code" tacked on by writers doesn't really sell it for me.  I'd rather see J'onn come to his own conclusions about his own personal ethics based on the kind of guy he is, not on some artificial law applied to him.  He's a principled guy, so let's see him act that way.

As always, I seem to choose the Timmverse version of characters over many of their comic book interpretations.  Bruce Timm just gets it right with characterization (except for one of my other favorite characters) usually by simplification.  The recent Crisis on Two Earths DVD handled the ethics of telepathy rather elegantly: J'onn is standing next to a young woman and accidentally "overhears" her thoughts, answers her own question and then immediately apologizes and explains how he knew what she was thinking: occasionally he'll overhear thoughts when they are unusually strong.  He managed to wipe his conscience clean and not look like an eavesdropper all at the same time.  (Did I happen to mention that Martians are smooth operators?)  Also, he doesn't go around in the movie mind controlling anyone.

But what about crime fighting?  When I was watching SciFi Science last night, Michio Kaku asked some policemen if telepathy would be helpful in solving crime.  Well sure, they said: we can read images from witnesses to get a better mental picture of the suspect, and then we can read the suspect's mind.  It's a little Orwellian.  But should J'onn probe someone's mind if it means helping someone?  I don't know.  It depends.  DC needs to set some ground rules on how telepathy should be used and what J'onn's own opinions of having that kind of power amidst us non-telepaths are.  I would want him to use telepathy if it was important, and only if he couldn't get the information any other way (unlike in the above example), or if lives were directly on the line.  (i.e. there's a bomb about to go off in Middleton and the suspect isn't talking.)  Reading a guy's mind would be less dangerous than dangling him off a building.  (Or would it....?  That's for you to think about.)

Anyway, get crackin' DC.  Let J'onn examine the ethics of his situation and come to a conclusion, and then stick to it.

J'onn J'onzz is the Ideal Crimefighter, Because Michio Kaku Said So

My new favorite show is SciFi Science hosted by Michio Kaku on the Science Channel.  Basically the show consists of Michio, who is both an amusing guy and a physicist, trying to find ways to make science fiction a reality.  Tonight's episode was about creating a superhero suit.

Of course the show opens with clips of the old Superman TV show and references non-powered humans who have built crime-fighting suits like Batman and Ironman.  The standards for the suit are super strength, "super" vision (X-ray vision and the ability to see in low visibility), and telepathy.

Wait, telepathy?

Now, I wonder which superhero out there is super-strong, has X-ray vision, and can read minds?  (And who wasn't mentioned on the show, of course.)

Martian powers for the win.

Interestingly, Michio spoke with the police about how telepathy would be invaluable in revealing accurate witness testimony and/or getting information directly from the suspect.  I don't know how that last one holds up in court or if it's even ethical.  The one caveat is that the person needs to be thinking about what you want to read from their minds.  But the atomic magnetometor that Michio decided to use for the mind-reading part of his his suit was pretty darn cool: it's the size of a sesame seed, not the size of a room like an fMRI machine.

But, I digress.  I suppose all of these powers combined makes J'onn J'onzz the ideal crimefighter.  That just warms my heart.

Of course, the show decided to throw a wrench into the mix at the end by adding in mechanical arms attached directly to the crimefighter's spine controlled with the mind.  But that's not a good idea!!  That's what made Doc Ock go crazy in that Spiderman movie!!!

A Guide For Writing the Rebooted Martian Manhunter Part 6

Top Ten Things Writers Need to Remember When Writing the Martian Manhunter

Here's Number 10, Number 9, Number 8, Number 7, and Number 6.

5.  Develop (and stick with) a unique Martian fighting style.

Part of what makes a hero exciting is his or her fighting style.  Now, the Martian Manhunter is uniquely poised in the DC universe to have a very unusual fighting style, which has the potential to be visually striking.

J'onn has the powers of intangibility, shapeshifting, and telepathy (amongst others), so let's give some thought to how that would play out.  Possessing intangibility (passing through solid objects and likewise having them pass through him) means that bullets, fists, anvils, and anything else lobbed at our hero will go right through him.  Throughout the new Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths DVD, J'onn's fight sequences really shined and took advantage of his powers.  One sequence relied on my favorite Timmverse move--a villain smashes J'onn with a heavy object, he disappears, and comes up through the floor behind the guy and knocks him out.  It's something that (to an extent) showed up in his Silver Age appearances:

Imagine how much the sight of a big green guy bursting through the floor would scare the crap out of criminals?  It's so cool and visual exciting it just never gets old.  (Though I prefer he would do it without the property damage...) It's something the writers should stick with and exploit to its fullest.

As for the shapeshifting, it hasn't been handled in comics too well because it often descends into cheesiness--like J'onn taking the form of a saxaphone-playing Bill Clinton (I am not making this up) to scare villains.  It's got to be more than just taking the form of scary Martian "monsters" to instill fear--it's got to be a little more organic and practical (e.g., Alex Ross's Martian sea creature to make swimming easier) or something that lets us peak behind the curtain into J'onn's psyche and cultural memory (e.g., J'onn's shapeshifting sequence as he chases Earth-2 "Green" Arrow down an embankment in the Crisis on Two Earths DVD, where the terrifying forms he takes seem to be expressive of anger.)

Also, we've got the telepathy, which I've complained about before.  Telepathy would probably give him enhanced awareness of his enemy.  Meaning, if someone's behind him they shouldn't be able to sneak up on him and punch him because he should know they're coming.  I'm not really hard-set on the telepathy staying around anymore, and if we have a hero who never can get hit, well, that's going to get boring fast.  (At least we've got the common weakness of fire to balance out all that insane power.)  He definitely shouldn't get hit as much as he does just because of the intangibility.  (Unless the writers want to add some more rules to that superpower as well--it takes concentration, etc.)

Anyway, my personal favorite fight sequences of J'onn always seem to come from the Timmverse, both the JLU cartoon and the new DVD.  They always seem to get it right, with few exceptions, and I think comic writers should take note.

Ta-Da! (Or, The Results of Loopiness Brought On By Sleep Deprivation!) Now with Updates!!

(Update: A third version now appears at the bottom of this post.)

I just had a revelation.

Well, it's 3 a.m. and I got lots of revelations this time of night, but anyway...

Regarding that bright red in J'onn J'onzz's costume.  Let's take out that red and replace it with a color more analogous to green, shall we?

Ignore the purple halos around the medallions, please...that was an accident.

Yeah, that's right.  Purple is green's analogue.  And if any male hero gets to wear purple, it's J'onn.  I think I'd darken the cape and boots a bit and then I'd be happy.

Compare with the original:

Ow!  My eyes!

Okay, so I darkened the cape a little and tried the make the medallions silver (gray, really), just to see how that would look:

Now he matches my blog's color scheme!

I'll probably start playing around with the Black Lantern costume, but for that I'll have to bust out the pencil and paper, so that'll actually take some effort....

A Guide For Writing the Modern Martian Manhunter, Part 5

Top Ten Things Writers Needs to Remember When Writing the Martian Manhunter

Here's Number 10, Number 9, Number 8, and Number 7.

6.  The non-question of J'onn's costume.

Trying to decide what the Modern, post-Blackest Night Martian Manhunter will look like will be easy.  The question of "what should he look like?" shouldn't even enter your minds.

Just go back to what works.

Here's what works:

And here's the modern version of what works:

For the costume: navy blue cape, red cross-straps, blue boots, gold medallions, popped collar or folded collar (artist's choice), and the "pie" belt buckle.  As for our Martian friend himself, he's got a superhero physique, a prominent brow, and green skin.  He looks different enough to be recognized as an alien, but not too far removed from a humanoid form to be relatable.

Edited to add: I'm not hard-set on the costume's color scheme per se, and as long as there are no bodysuits involved, I'll probably be happy.  But I am dead-set on how J'onn himself looks.  Keep the beetle brow, of course, but by all means, get rid of the conehead.

And when going icognito in his secret identity of John Jones?  Then J'onn wears a suit, a trenchcoat (with popped collar--isn't he stylish?), and like all proper noir detectives, a Fedora.  Let's not forget the tie.

A classic never goes out of style.

Jaunting about town?  J'onn still wears a suit, sans overcoat.  It doesn't matter what color, really.  Usually it's blue, but I've seen him take a chance and wear the occasional burgundy suit.

As you can see, he rotates his ties in addition to his suits.  And the pocket hanky?  A must.

Now.  Let's look at a modern mishap, shall we?  This is what J'onn looks like after he decided he'd parade his natural Martian form in public:

Is he supposed to be Nosferatu?!

What IS this?  What is this saying to the reader?  I believe in intuitive character design: at first glance, you should get a pretty good handle on what a character is all about.  Is he good or bad?  Can you tell by looking at him?!  Why is he so angry?  What's with the grabbing hands?  The dark bodysuit?  Is he an assassin?  What's with the conehead?  Does he use it for sonar reception?  I know J'onn was off "finding himself" during this period and wanted to stop compromising his appearance based on satisfying the public conception of what a Martian looks like.  But J'onn never harbored dislike for humanity--he was distant, yes, but never unapproachable, and his looks reflected that.  Changing his look to the alien conehead look throws out the unapproachable bit right out the window and gives our hero an air of "I don't care what you think about me," and I don't think that's who J'onn is deep down.  The conehead looks just looks sinister to me, and if there's a shapeshifting telepath from Mars running around, the last thing I'd want is for him to look unfriendly.  Not to mention that it also throws the sanctity of the true Martian form right out the window--something that used to be private, even back on Mars.

Really, he looks like Nosferatu:

I found your reference photo!

And by no means should J'onn ever been seeing wearing a T-shirt and jeans while barbecuing/spooning with Scorch.  (T-shirt + bald = Mr. Clean!)

Don't ask.  You don't want to know.  Trust me.

Why is all this important?  Clothes make the man...or Martian.  J'onn is a classy kind of character, he's formal and probably a traditional kind of guy.  So he should dress that way: a nice sharp suit (not striped), with a Fedora to clue the reader in to his being a detective.  Just like I think all comic book journalists should wear press passes in their hatbands, all detectives should wear Fedoras.

As for his superhero costume, J'onn is the gentle giant of the Justice League.  His costume should represent that.  He shouldn't look angry or distant or emo or too alien--in post-Crisis continuity he choose his traditional look as an amalgam of his true Martian form and what humans expected Martians too look like.  (Pre-Crisis, well, that's what Martians looked like and how they dressed.)  The Martian Manhunter should never look pissed off unless he has a REALLY GOOD reason to be, and that coneheaded guy up there looks like he'd rip your lungs out if you so much as looked at him crossed-eyed.  I suspect that's why he's reaching out like that....

In short: to return J'onn to his classic roots, return him to his classic duds.  Classic superhero costume, and a sensible suit (with hat) while in human form.