#martian manunter

[thevoidstaredback]

At exactly three in the afternoon, New Jersey time, the next day, Batman and Robin took the Zeta Tube up to the Watchtower to gather the waiting heroes for their promised tour of the Batcave.

Jason and Barbra were set up in the clocktower, watching the cameras Tim had set up the night before to record everything. Dick was at the Batcomputer, watching for alerts in case anyone decided to cut their fun short. Stephanie and Cass were on standby in the Manor with Alfred, setting up a movie night to watch the recordings before they were to head down to the Cave to interchangeably play Spoiler. Duke and Tim were both in the Cave, hidden in the rafters in their stealth suits. Kate and Selina had both agreed to help mess with the Justice League, neither actually knowing their identities, and were patrolling Gotham in place of Duke while they waited for part two of the plan.

The plan was set as follows, with room for improv and any missteps: -Batman and Robin gather the heroes from the Watchtower and bring them down to the Batcave -Nightwing meets them and joins in on the tour -Oracle calls Nightwing away for an emergency in Bludhaven -Batwoman would then call Batman away to help out against Red Hood in Crime Alley (that was so that they'd all keep thinking that Red Hood and Batman were still on bad terms. all the better to surprise Wonder Woman when she came to the Manor for the gala) -Steph, as Spoiler, would enter the Cave via the Lane and join Robin and the JL for a tour. She and Cass would then switch out at random intervals, basically gaslighting everyone - especially Superman - into thinking they're the same person -Nightwing and Batman would met up at the Clocktower to switch costumes. Dick becomes Batman while Jason and Bruce go to the Manor in civvies to show that they're under a residence -Duke and Tim, meanwhile, move things around the Cave as they please. At some point, Tim and Damian switch out, but don't acknowledge the switch -NightBat (Nightwing as Batman) comes back to the Cave, sending Steph and Cass back out and to the Manor in civvies, and Duke goes to take over for Batwoman and Catwoman -NightBat and Bruce meet in the locker rooms, while Red Robin distracts the JL, to change back into Batman and Nightwing -Batman rejoins the JL and RR while Nightwing goes back to get his bike and reenter the Cave via the Lane -Robin switches out with Red Robin who resets the Cave, putting everything back in its place as quickly as he can without being noticed -Nightwing comes back -Oracle calls out an emergency at the GCPD -The JL leave

Obviously, they all had comms in and were listening in on everything.

"Exactly on time." Green Arrow nods as Batman and Robin step out of the Zeta Tubes.

Wonder Woman smiles, "How are you doing today, Robin?"

Robin nods to her. "I am well, thank you. And yourself?"

"I am as well as I can be."

"That's good."

The group stands in place for a moment, Batman and Robin doing nothing to alleviate the nervous energy of the heroes in front of them. Eventually, it's Flash who breaks.

"Well, look at the time!" the speedster claps his hand together, "We don't want to be late, right?"

Superman nods in agreement. "Yeah." He turns to the two Gotham vigilantes, "Lead the way."

Batman nods and turns to put the coordinates for the Cave into the computer, authorizing the heroes to access the Batcave just this once. He motions to the Zeta Tubes and Robin steps in. Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Arrow, Martian Manhunter, Green Lantern, Flash, Cyborg, and Aquaman all take turns to follow him. Batman goes last.

Once in the Cave, the Gotham vigilantes allowed the Justice League heroes a few minutes to gawk. The cavern they were in was nothing special. It was a branch off from near the outskirts of the Cave, far enough away to stop any intruders that somehow got passed the Zeta security, but close enough that it only took a few minutes to reach the main cave. There were three Zeta Tubes set up in the small area with a security desk and computer to arm or disable any traps. A matching desk sat at the other end of the trapped hallway.

Entering the main area of the Cave, the JL took another few minutes to drink in the sight. Batman and Robin allowed them to. Nightwing didn't turn his chair yet, waiting for th perfect moment to announce himself.

"Is that- Why do you have a dinosaur in here?" Flash asked, having done a double take at the sight. The others join him.

Nightwing took the cue and spun the Batchair around dramatically. "To eat intruders."

The heroes turned to him as one unit, Lantern, Flash, Aquaman, and Cyborg openly gawking at the Batcomputer.

"Nightwing," Wonder Woman greeted, "It's good to see you."

"What the hell!" Cyborg cut in, holding himself back from running to the computer, though he speed-walked up to it. "It's beautiful."

"Isn't she?" Nightwing smirked, "B built her all by himself. The monitors are all TVs, custom wired to fit the frameless design."

"All seven?" Aquaman asked.

Nightwing nodded. "Yep! And the computer itself was custom, too! I helped with that, actually. It used to be a combination of three computers connected to the monitors, but I helped him condens it down to one shell connected to all seven monitors. RR keeps up the maintenance, though."

Green Arrow and Green Lantern also walked up to the desk. "It's an impressive display," Arrow said, "How long did it take?" He directed the question to Batman who joined the group, the rest coming up behind him.

"Three years and two months," the vigilante answered, "Two years to get everything together and wired properly. Another two months after Nightwing joined me as Robin to condense the three computers into one shell. A year to get everything coded and the firewalls up. As technology changes and programing gets better, so does the Batcomputer. She's intelligent all on her own, but RR and O are working on an AI for her."

"Who's-" Green Lantern was cut off by an alarm on the upper-most left monitor.

"Batcave, this is Oracle." she said, her voice coming through all the speakers in the Cave.

"Go ahead, O," Nightwing turned his chair back to face the computer, his hands flying between the three keyboards as he pulled up what the alarm was for .

"There's a problem in Bludhaven, 'wing, how fast can you be there?"

He pulled up a map of his home turf, seeing the false alarm at the BHPD. Though, what the Justice League didn't know wouldn't hurt them. "The bank on main, right?"

"That's the one."

"I'll be there in twenty tops."

"Alright."

Nightwing pushed the chair back, turning it and standing in one swift motion. Quickly, he made his way to where his bike was parked in the garage on the lower level of the Cave.

"Comms with Oracle," Batman ordered.

"As always!" he called back, pulling his helmet on before quickly peeling out of the Cave.

It was quiet as the sounds of the motorcycle faded out into the renovated cave system beneath the Crime Capital of the Country.

"Should we..." Martian Manhunter started, "Does he need help?"

Robin scoff lightly. "He will be fine. If he could not handle a minor bank robbery by himself, he would have died before transferring his mantle of Robin onto the next."

"Oh?" Aquaman turned his full attention to the child, "Who took the name after Nightwing?"

Robin didn't answer. Instead, he pointed to the dinosaur. "Our old costumes are kept on display downstairs by the penny. Would you like to see them?"

Wonder Woman, only falling second to Batman when children are involved, nodded. "Would you show the way?"

"Naturally." Taking the lead, Robin lead the group of heroes down the stairs and to the lower part of the Cave.

The upper, main, part of the Cave held the Batcomputer, the main entrances to the Manor, the Zeta Tubes, the lab, the meeting table, and the small med bay. The lower bar of the Cave was home to the training room, the displays, the large med bay, the Vault, the Batplane, and the garage.

"You really leaned into the whole gimmick, huh?" Superman nudged Batman with his elbow.

Cyborg watched him from the corner of his eye. "What do ya mean?"

The kryptonian pointed up. "There's about two hundred bats hanging up on the ceiling.

Flash flinched in on himself. "What?"

"This was their home before I took my name," Batman explained shortly.

Another alarm went off before anyone else could speak, though it was from Batman's gauntlet. He stepped away from the group knowing fully that they all could still hear.

"Hey, B!" Batwoman greeted, a smile evident in her voice.

"Batwoman," he responded. He hid his amusement as his coworkers stared at him in shock. "What's wrong."

"You remember Red Hood, right?"

"Obviously."

"Well, I've gotten into a bit of a pickle."

Batman cut her off with a sigh. "Send your coordinates, I'm on my way."

"Fantastic! Bring your grapple!" Then, she hund up.

"Is this a bad day?" Green Lantern asked, "We can leave and come back another day."

"Don't be ridiculous." Robin scolded, "I am more than capable of showing you around the Cave alone." He turned to his father, "Give Batwoman my greetings."

Batman grunted as he got into the Batmobile. Swiftly, he closed the door, turned the engine, and left the Cave.

Part 4 Part 6

[havendance]

(JLA: Classified #12)

Martian Manunter: As a telepathic species, we are... were aware of the possibilities of ideas. Ideas are viruses. contagious. and viruses are nothing but biological machines. We came to believe that the code hid a sequence of ideas arranged to work as a mechanism. Decoding the text would activate a memetic machine. And we were afraid of what the machine would do. The act of simply understanding the code...

Sumerian brain viruses? What is this? Snow Crash? (The sumerian isn't mentioned in these panels, but believe me, it's there.)

[ty-talks-comics]

Best of DC: Week of January 29th, 2020

Best of this Week: Justice League #39 - Scott Snyder, Jorge Jimenez, Daniel Sampere, Juan Albarran, Alejandro Sanchez, Hi-Fi and Tom Napolitano

Talk about a Cosmic Sandbag.

Shayne, the alt-future son of Hawkgirl and Martian Manhunter, gave his life and essence so that his father could return from the darkness. This book opens with the amazing return of Martian Manhunter as drawn by Jorge Jimenez with colors by Alejandro Sanchez. Manhuner hasn’t been seen since Justice League #28 when Lex Luthor absorbed him to become Apex Lex, so this return had a monumental feel, especially as the rest of the League looks upon him with awe. Jimenez makes this moment feel powerful as J’onn stands tall against Perpetua with his reds glowing vibrantly thanks to Sanchez.

As soon as Perpetua takes notice that J’onn has returned, she lunges after him. This is likely due to the fact that Martian Manhunter is legitimately one of the most powerful telepaths in the DC Universe and in the subsequent pages, he makes the choice to connect the minds of the people of Earth with his and the rest of the Justice League to try and swing them all toward the side of hope. 

This results in a wonderful double page spread where Jimenez poses Martian Manhunter like he’s about to use the Solar Flare from Dragon Ball and speaks to the people. Jimenez and Sanchez show the people on the streets and various members of the League looking towards the sky with smiles on their faces. Snyder scripts this amazingly by having Manhunter give the rousing speech of goodness and rising above that Superman would normally give. What makes this even better is that Manhunter, who usually suffers disillusionment from living amongst humanity, does an amazing job.

J’onn’s speech manages to rouse enough people that the Totality, the macguffin that could imprison Perpetua once again, begins to glow and surge with energy. Perpetua, starting to feel the fear of loss orders an onslaught of the League. Jimenez emphasizes the anger on her face, the fear on Lex’s and the intensity of the battle happening on the steps of the Hall of Justice.. Sanchez makes sure that the colors almost surge off of the page with flashes of red and blue.

As the hope of the people of Earth continues to grow, the tendrils of the Totality wrap themselves around Perpetua’s spindly body as she screams in anger and hatred. Tom Napolitano places Martian Manhunter’s thought balloons perfectly throughout these pages as Snyder ends J’onn’s speech with the people of Earth joining together in the feeling of heroism and hope. The Sigil of Doom begins to fade away and Perpetua has failed…

And then “KRA-KOOM,” Napolitano’s powerful lettering cracks across the page as Jimenez draws the Sigil of Doom firmly seared into the sky and made even stronger by the overbearing hum of Sanchez’s vibrant green. This is the kinda trope that Scott Snyder does well, but also kinda overuses in his grand scale stories: The Cosmic Sandbag. The heroes were on the very cusp of victory and it seemed like the people of Earth were actually believing in the hope that Martian Manhunter was talking about, but instead they gave into their fear, hatred and base instincts just like Perpetua thought they would.

Snyder utilizes this bait and switch technique to show just how influential Perpetua’s evil is and how at the end of the day it will take more than just a flowery speech to turn people, especially since they watched the Justice Leagues battle the forces of Doom and lose massively. Snyder used this in Dark Nights: Metal anytime Batman thought he had a chance in defeating The Batman Who Laughs and Barbatos. They would just pull nonsense out of nowhere and further plunge our hero into despair because he couldn’t anticipate the villain’s very next five moves. I love it and hate it because it helps to show hopelessness, which I am a fan of, but Snyder does do it a bit too much for my tastes (See The Batman Who Laughs mini-series).

The next thing we see is a Rita Repulsa-esque cackle from Perpetua and honesty this might be my favorite of Jimenez’s panels because he just makes Perpetua look so petty. She’s basically saying, “Bitch, you really thought!” before explaining how everything was by her design. She wanted to give humanity a choice to hear both sides and they still chose Doom. Manhunter tried to hide his mind from her, but he failed to realize that as the creator of the Multiverse, he could never think fast enough to avoid her. Perpetua is far more powerful than these heroes could ever have anticipated.

Jimenez and Sanchez absolutely kill the next few panels as Perpetua casts away the shackles of the Totality, breaking out of the tendrils as her black cape...hair(?) causes a gust of wind to shake our heroes while the background shows varying tones of blue, almost a mockery of their ideals of hope. She stands over the Earth while the void of space appears vast around it and with a flick of her wrist and a flash of yellow she wipes the Justice League from existence. Doom truly has won and she vows to create a new story from the ashes of Hope.

Though, the universe itself has other ideas. In the black of Space, green matter begins to coalesce into a form, then that form takes shape and appears to be Martian Manhunter. Daniel Sampere, Hi-Fi and Juan Albarran take over the art from this point and pose Manhunter as if he’s in a womb, reborn after being supposedly killed by Perpetua and saved by something else. I love that Snyder places such importance on Manhunter and his humanity. Despite the insurmountable odds that the League has faced up to this point, he still does everything in his power to call back to the Earth, to try to win the people back.

He is unable to, however, and it seems as though he’s not the only one unable to use his powers as the rest of the League shows up behind him. In an awesome splash page Sampere and Albarran show everyone as wearing black bodysuits, potentially symbolizing a loss of identity or power as none of them seem to be able to use their abilities. Hawkgirl seems to be the only exception because her wings are a part of her. Superman tries to rationalize that as long as they’re not actually dead then there’s still hope, but then he fails to fly, landing back on the moon.

Another awesome thing about this issue is how it calls back to the very first issue of the run with the Quintessence showing up. The Quinessence are a group consisting of Highfather, The Phantom Stranger, Hera, The Wizard Shazam, The Spectre and Ganthet of the Guardians of Oa. They are some of the most powerful beings in the universe and even they knew that this was how things were meant to be. They saw the same vision of Doom that Martian Manunter did and saved the League in the nick of time to prepare them for what’s to come, not just a war of Justice or Doom, but for Everything.

With everything that’s been hinted at as far as the next incoming Crisis, this is a really good inciting incident as far as things go. Perpetua wins and sets up the next true war for the Multiverse. Given there’s still things to sort out with The Batman Who Laughs, the conflict is set and the Justice League has to give their all to ensure that they can protect the Universe. Superboy Prime is coming back in the pages of Shazam, Wally West has found his kids and Dark Multiverse world of his own creation and this issue even references Doomsday Clock and kinda cements its place as an alt-Universe story, but acknowledges the importance of it.

Scott Snyder has set the stage for everything to come and thanks to his fantastic art team telling the story, he drums up the feeling that there’s still a way to see Geoff Johns original vision for Rebirth through. The hope is there, the League just needs to fight for it. I can’t wait to see what Robert Venditti can do as the writer for Justice League given the amazing work he’s done with Green Lantern and The Freedom Fighters series. Doug Mahnke also taking over as main artist is also a welcome change as he’s one of my favorite of DC’s regulars as well.

This was a high recommend and I can’t wait for the future!