Via Yahoo! News: Martian Manhunter Need Not Apply
No, it’s not easy being green. Go ask Martian Manhunter.
As movie projects featuring founding members of comic book land’s Justice League of America ramp up, the green-skinned detective from our solar system’s fourth planet can’t get arrested in Hollywood.
Which begs the question: So, um, who’s Martian Manhunter?
“The Martian Manhunter is the Shemp of the Justice League,” says TV writer-producer and comics guru Mark Evanier.
More specifically, Martian Manhunter is one of the seven original members of the JLA, the all-star superhero collective founded by DC Comics in 1960.
The other founding heroes: Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, the Flash, Aquaman and the Green Lantern. Each character has a movie on the way, a deal in the works or a rumor in the mill.
You know, unlike Martian Manhunter.
Has anybody notified the Martian Anti-Defamation League?
J’onn J’onzz — the real name of the Martian superhero who goes by “John Jones” in his secret identity here on Earth — was always a second string hero.
It’s a shame because as originally conceived, it was a great science fiction concept, very much worthy of the science-fiction flavor found in a lot of D.C. Comics back in the “Silver Age” of the 1950s.
Of course, he evolved into just another superhero.
I’ve read a lot the early Justice League comics, and he was played like a second-string Superman. His powers and circumstances were almost identical (both were the last survivors of their home worlds). THey both has easy and convenient weeknesses. Superman could be waylaid by Kryptonite or the radiation from a Red Sun. Martian Manhunter could be rendered unconscious by fire. Someone striking a match in the same room could kick his ass. He was written out of the League for about a decade. Then old-time comics fan demanded his return, and he’s now still around, but he’s now a typically modern, angst-driven hero, sulking around bemoaning his status the last of the Martians.
In other words, he’s not a particularly interesting character. Which might, just might, explain why no studio is making a movie out of him.
And by the way, J’onn was part of the cast when they tried to do a tongue-in-cheek, live-action TV series version of the Justice League. I never saw the pilot, it is generally reported to be the most unintentionally bad treatment of superheroes in television and movie history. Imagine David Ogden Stiers — Maj. Charles Winchester from M*A*S*H — playing the Martian Manhunter while painted green and wearing a rubber head appliance. Yeah, that bad.
To add insult to injury, it looks like the Wonder Twins of Super Friends infamy will appear on the Big Screen before the Martian Manhunter. It’s enough to make you cry. If Martians had tear ducts, that it.
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