Martian Manhunter: Ultimate Pickup Artist

This is one of my more bizarre thoughts about comics and super heroes. Unfortunately I blame my misspent youth for this entry, because this is something I thought of quite a lot in high school. Which super hero would have the easiest time getting girls? Ergo, which hero would I have most liked to be. Now there are many worthy candidates but after careful examination the best choice for me is The Martian Manhunter.

Okay, for those who aren’t familiar, The Martian Manhunter is a martian (duh) named J’onn J’onz (John Jones) who is stranded on earth after an experimental teleportation beam plucks him from his home and then explodes. In addition to the teleporter breaking, the scientist who invented the beam had a heart attack, further dooming J’onn to a life stuck on earth. He adopts a human identity (Detective John Jones) and fights crime (which was his profession on Mars as well) until the revelation of Superman inspires him to adopt a super hero identity as the Martian Manhunter.

As a Martian, J’onn has any number of amazing powers. He can fly, has super strength (comparable to Superman), heat vision, and density manipulation (he can become intangible and walk through walls). He also has two other important abilities and these are what make him the ultimate pickup artist. Shapeshifting and telepathy.

 Why are shapeshifting and telepathy the best super powers to pick up women (or guy if you sway that way) with? Put simple, you can be the perfect date. Telepathy, the ability to read minds, allows you to learn everything about your potential date. Their likes, dislikes, what their ideal date should look like. You can perfectly prepare yourself to completely charm your date.

And, should you desire someone who is particularly shallow, shapeshifting allows you to turn yourself into whatever your date would desire. Does the girl of your dreams like tall guys? Blondes? Muscular? You can shapeshift into anything.

The only drawback to being the Martian Manhunter is his weakness. J’onn Jonz, like all Martians, has a debilitating physical and mental problem with fire. Exposure to fire causes his cell structure to completely lose all cohesion. I believe in the comics they explain it as being a purely psychological weakness due to the fact that Martians worship a fire god. But all that means is no candle light dinners.

Is Profiting Off of Being A Super Hero Ethical?

In my entry about Secret Identities (See here), I talked about how as a super hero you don’t tend to make a lot of money. But some heroes do manage to make a profit from their alter egos. And I have to wonder if that is morally ethical. I’m not trying to condemn anyone for trying to make a living but as I said in my Political Entry (see here) there is supposed to be something superior about the behavior of super heroes. Doesn’t monetary gain in some way negate or corrupt their true motivations behind their desire to do good?

 

Two characters that indirectly benefit from their careers as super heroes are Superman and Spider-Man. Coincidently both work in the field of journalism. Clark Kent is a reporter and Peter Parker is a photographer. Their careers do not solely depend on their heroic deeds but they do benefit from them. Clark writes exclusive stories about his escapades as Superman and Peter takes photos of himself in action as Spider-Man. They do cover other events and stories so they do not solely cash in on their identities.

A person who more closely benefits from his heroic deeds is Tony Stark, aka Iron Man. Much of Tony’s intellect is dedicated toward improving his Iron Man armor. However, he then will take some of those new designs and implementations and see how he can use them to benefit the rest of his company. Also, Tony uses the Iron Man identity as a bit of a corporate brand. So Tony Stark is getting some monetary gain from his exploits as Iron Man. But the monetary gains just seem like a benefit from being in the line of duty. Tony Stark put in the hard work to develop the technology so he certainly should benefit from its use.

To really find an unethical use of a super hero identity for profit we need to consider what constitutes a direct connection between profit and identity. Essentially I believe it would be an instance where one is actually paid to be a hero. By putting on a mask and tights, an individual ensures themselves a paycheck. Which makes me immediately think of the super team simply named Heroes for Hire.

 

For those unfamiliar with the comics, the Heroes for Hire originally consisted of Luke Cage, aka Power Man, and his best friend Danny Rand, aka Iron Fist. Luke Cage is an individual with bullet proof skin and Danny Rand is a master of martial arts who can focus his chi into a devastating strike known as the Iron Fist, hence his name. These two heroes work in low-income neighborhoods and defend people from criminals. For a price. They charge for their services as super heroes. Or I should say, Luke Cage charges for his services. Danny Rand is actually independently wealthy (yet another billionaire turned vigilante).

But even though Luke Cage charges for his services as a hero, can that still be considered unethical? Mr. Cage does perform the service for which he charges. If he is hired to remove drug dealers from a neighborhood then they are removed. And he does not charge exorbitant fees for this service. Usually whatever small amount is offered to him is enough of a retainer.  Can he still be condemned for profiting off of being a hero?

"Too much?"

For me the ethics of earning a profit only comes into play if the quest for monetary reward supersedes the noble motivations of the hero. As long as the hero places the saving of lives above the saving of profits, then they deserve a small compensation. Police and Firemen earn a paycheck and they perform the same duties we assign to super heroes.

Death in Comics: How Events Took Over Stories

If you’re a regular comic book reader you know that when a character dies in the comics it is rarely if ever permanent. Throughout my twenty plus years of being a comic book fan I can count on one hand the number of characters who have been killed off and stayed dead.

Prior to the early nineties, death in comics was a rare occurrence. The few characters that had died prior to then had managed to stay dead for decades. There was a respect to killing off a character. It wasn’t like today when character deaths last as long as celebrity marriages, and usually generate just as much sensationalism. When Captain America died in 2007 it was featured in national media. Even more than when Superman died in 1992.

And it was with the death of Superman that the Pandora’s box of super hero death was opened. Because the issue where Superman died sold huge numbers. DC Comics realized that the easiest way to generate sales was with big event comics. And there is no bigger event than a hero’s death. But in actuality it wasn’t so much the death that ruined it for mortality in comics. It was the Resurrection.

Superman’s death was the type of death a hero should have. An unstoppable foe, Doomsday, comes along and completely defeats all other heroes leaving only Superman standing. After page after page of a drawn out slug fest Superman finally defeats Doomsday with one devastating blow before finally succumbing to his wounds and dying in the arms of Lois Lane. That is the type of glorious death we should expect when a publisher says it is going to kill off a beloved character.  And it was a satisfying death.

But then it came time to bring Superman back. As I said, the Death of Superman was an event and events make money. So if killing a hero is an event then bringing them back must be an event too. And that’s where things get sketchy because the team at DC couldn’t quite decide how they were going to bring Superman back. So rather than getting one resurrected Superman we got four watered down kinds of Supermen. All four meant to be red herrings while the writers held back the real Superman until the last possible moment.

In the wake of the Death and Return of Superman we saw characters being sidelined left and right. Batman was crippled, Iron Man was killed, Green Lantern (Hal Jordan) sacrificed himself to save the earth, and many many other heroes have passed through the revolving door of super hero death. In fact Superman’s resurrection had such an impact on comics that characters who had been killed off years, and in some case decades, before were brought back. Both Jason Todd (Robin II) and Bucky Barnes (Captain America’s WWII sidekick) were both brought back from the grave despite the fact that comic book readers had long accepted their passing and saw no need to want them back.

"Put me in coach! I'm ready"

Death in comics have now become just a stop watch for fans asking how long until they bring a character back. So far to my knowledge only one hero since the death of Superman has managed to stay dead and that is Ted Kord, the Blue Beetle. Of course the only reason I think that he has stayed dead is because they replaced him with a younger hipper version of the character. Had the new Blue Beetle failed to garner fans, Ted Kord would have been resurrected faster than a Timelord.

Vampires: What the Hell Happened?

When did vampires stop being monsters? Seriously. If you watch TV and movies nowadays, vampires have stopped being the threat they once were. In fact in many stories they have become the hero. And I have to ask, when did this happen? When did our culture decide that it’s okay to drink blood if you save a couple lives every now and then? I remember watching The Lost Boys and Dracula growing up and there was never any confusion. The vampires in those stories needed to be killed.

Now there was always a bit of a sexual nature in the portayals of Dracula, but he was still a monster. He killed innocent people. There was no illusion that the world would not be a better place if Dracula died. Vampires were horrible monsters and need to be killed. In Bram Stoker’s Dracula, by Francis Ford Coppola, the character of Dracula even asks to be killed at the end of the movie. He realizes what he is and he tells Nina to chop off his head. He knows he is a monster and accepts it.

Years later we would get the Anne Rice novels. These were vampires a bit more removed from the Lost Boys and Dracula. These vampires were tortured and miserable and only stopped whining long enough to sake their thirst for blood before whining all guilt tripped about living forever. But they were still monsters. Very whiny, effeminate monsters, but still monsters. They were just as deserving of death as their predecessors but sadly no one seemed to have the decency to put them out of their misery in those novels.

Anne Rice’s vampires could have definitely used Buffy Summers, aka Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The brilliant creation of Joss Whedon, Buffy was the typical high school girl who prior to this would have been the victim of vampires instead was mankind’s best defense against them. As much as I love Buffy, she introduced what was probably the biggest game changer in the vampire mythos. Teen angst. Vampirism and teen hormones seemed to be forever intertwined after miss Summers plunged her first stake and watched her first vamp crumble into dust.

The sexual tension between Buffy and Angel (a vampire who was good because he had a soul) was the beginning of the end for vampires as monsters. Angel was a monster, but he was a monster trying to atone for his monster past. He was determined to be a hero and worked along side his “mortal enemy” for a chance at redemption. And Buffy crushed on Angel hardcore. A vampire could now be someone that you pursued not with the forbidden lust of the past, but with the adolescent crush that everyone has experience at least once in their life.

These vampires scare me for a different reason

And it is because of Buffy that we now have True Blood, The Vampire Diaries, and yes, Twilight. Twilight is essentially Buffy without everything that makes Buffy cool. If Buffy had never been a slayer, she probably would have been like Bella in Twilight. Vampires aren’t even monsters that need to stay out of sunlight. They don’t burn, they sparkle. Nothing about the Twilight vampires are threatening. Even the werewolves in those films are cute and fluffy.

There have been brief attempts to return vampires to their monster roots, From Dusk ‘Til Dawn and 30 Days of Night being good examples, but sadly those films did not succeed critically or financially. It seems that the world prefers the defanged and love interest vampires to the blood lusting and scary vampires. I fear the vampire as monster has been staked and burnt away in the sunlight, to never be resurrected.

Batman is The Most Badass Super Hero

Since the Dark Knight Rises is out in theatres, everyone is talking about Batman (despite the horrible tragedy, see my thoughts on that here). But instead of spoiling the plot to the movie, I am instead going to break down why Batman is such an amazing hero. A hero so great that he survived Joel Schumacher.

The most basic reason why Batman is so amazing is that he is normal. He is a normal human living in a world with people who have the powers of gods. And he holds his own against them. Pushing his mind and body to the absolute limits he has turned himself into the ultimate fighting machine through sheer force of will. He has mastered every form of martial arts on the planet and trained under the best fighters in the world.

Not only has Batman trained himself to be the ultimate crime fighter, he has also trained others to join him in his fight. Between four Robins, three Batgirls, two Azraels, one Catwoman, one Batwoman, plus a Huntress, and also the establishment of Batman Incorporated (an International fund that sets up a Batman-like character in every major city around the world), Batman has created a veritable army of vigilante crime stoppers. Plus there is his financial and strategic support of the Justice League, which safeguards the whole world.

It is with the mentioning of the Justice League that the next amazing trait of Batman is revealed. Batman is prepared for everything. As revealed in the Tower of Babel storyline in JLA and the animated movie Justice League: Doom, Batman has contingency plans to take down his own teammates should they ever turn rogue. That may seem paranoid but as explained in a previous entry (see here) the possibility of heroes turning bad is always there and Batman is merely prepared for them.

Now while one amazing part of Batman is his training, another amazing part of him is his gadgets. In the movie Batman Begins it is established that Lucious Fox, an employee at Wayne Enterprises, supplied Batman with most of his gadgets. But in the comics, Bruce Wayne developed all his crimefighting gear himself. He had to. Other than his trusty butler Alfred, no one else knows Batman’s true identity. If you can’t tell people why you need something that means you’re doing a lot of DIY.  Not just inventing but maintaining. Batman has to be his own mechanic, performing regular maintenance on the Batmobile. Even just being a gearhead makes him a bit of a badass.

The final thing that makes Batman a total badass is a time honored tradition that puts him up there with James Bond. Women. Despite the jokes made about Batman hanging out with a little boy, Bruce Wayne has an impressive amount of notches on his belt. Not just quantity but also quality. A brief list of his conquests is Selina Kyle, Vicki Vale, Talia Al Ghul, Zatanna, Wonder Woman, and, in one brief flirtation, Lois Lane. And those are just to name a few.

So in the end, Batman is a badass because of his strength of will, his ability to lead, foresight in planning, inventive ingenuity, and his basic sex appeal. In essence, Batman is a symbol of everything an action star, or any man, should strive to be. 

What Makes The Perfect Super Team?

Recently I was at the movies and saw a trailer for this film called Rise of the Guardians. For those who haven’t seen the trailer it basically supposes that Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, the Sandman and Jack Frost, along with performing their traditional holiday rolls also join forces to protect the children of the world. Essentially they form a super team. This got me to thinking about other classic super teams and what exactly makes them so great.

The keys to a great super team are its members. There are certain important archetypes that a team needs in order for it to be triumphant fighting force. You’ll see these same figures in the Justice League, the Avengers, the X-Men and even the Teen Titans. Without these different archetypes the team gets thrown out of balance and doesn’t quite work.

The first of these is something I like to refer to as the Legend. This is the team leader. The man or woman that all the other heroes would follow to hell and back. He inspires the other heroes when things are at their worst. Superman and Captain America are legends. They may not always be the most powerful members of the team, but for some reason when they talk, everyone else listens. And you need someone with that level of encouragement to lead others in battles. Super heroes regularly engage in life or death battles where the possibility of them not surviving is always present (see my death in comics entry). If there was not some clear voice motivating them to plunge once more into the breach they might just pack it in and go home.

Now while the Legend leads the troops, someone needs to come up with the actual battle plan. This is where the Tactician comes in. The Tactician is the brains of the group. They are the one with plans within plans within contingencies and has a back up for everything. A perfect example of the Tactician is Batman. Batman is famously paranoid in the comics. He has a plan not just how to take out every villain he comes up against but also his team mates as well (famously portrayed in JLA: Tower of Babel and the animated movie Justice League: Doom).

Following through on the Tactician’s plans and following the Legends lead is the Powerhouse. This is the big gun that just barrels right into battle punching and swinging wildly at every enemy that crosses their path. Excellent examples of the Powerhouse are Wonder Woman and Thor. Now I talked about Wonder Woman in a previous entry (see here) so I am going to focus on Thor. Thor is the god of thunder. He takes that hammer and smashes anyone in his path. It’s what he’s good at and it comes naturally to him. Just like Wonder Woman, Thor grew up in a warrior culture and was taught to fight at a young age.

Another important ingredient of the super team isn’t exactly an asset from a fighting standpoint but from a storytelling standpoint. This is the Rookie. The rookie is usually someone young and inexperienced, in many ways the opposite of the Legend, but who has the potential to someday be a great hero. The Rookie is the team member who is most like us the audience and helps bring us into the world of the heroes. In the Rise of the Guardians movie that character is Jack Frost. In the Justice League it can be someone like Black Canary or Green Arrow. For the Avengers, especially the movie, it was Black Widow and Bruce Banner (before he became the Hulk, then he shifted into Powerhouse position). Most of the time, the Rookie is out of place in the group, but rises to the occasion and proves they deserve their spot on the team.

Admit it. You'd try the same thing.

A final spot on the team is one I consider optional for most super teams but is fun to have all the same. That is the role of The Comedian (no, not the character from Watchmen). The Comedian is pretty self-explanatory. He or she is the comic relief. They are there to lighten the tension when the more ambitious egos on the team start to bash heads. Famous Comedians have been Flash and Plastic Man for the Justice League while Spider-Man usually tends to fill that roll for the Avengers.

At the same time these roles are important for a great super team, there doesn’t always have to be these exact versions. Some teams will have multiple Powerhouses or Rookies making up the support staff. Sometimes a single character will fulfill multiple roles for a single team. Reed Richards could easily be considered both Legend and Tactician, while Ben Grimm has been both Comedian and Powerhouse. Jonny Storm however is usually always the Comedian but he has been known to be the Rookie sometimes. It all comes down to how well these characters are used together.

A Brief Reflection on Reality

At 1:03 am on Thursday, July 19, a mad man (that is the only description he deserves) opened fire in a sold out showing of The Dark Knight Rises. Twelve innocent people (as of this typing) lost their lives and countless others were injured. This truly horrific scene seems like something that almost belongs in the fictional world of the film that was playing during this tragedy. Sadly it was all too real.

As more and more facts are revealed as the investigation continues, I am sure nothing will be able to make sense of this. It is a senseless event. When people lose their lives in battle, society somehow justifies it as part of some noble pursuit. But innocent civilians being shot for nothing other than sitting to enjoy a highly anticipated film? There is no way to justify that.

The cruelest of ironies is that these people were shot while watching a film about a character that disparages the use of firearms. I know much politicizing will be done on both sides of the aisle of the gun debate, and I will most likely be sickened by both sides. The twelve who died do not care what side of the debate you are on. They can’t anymore. That right has been robbed from them.

Instead of fighting to find someone to blame (beyond the shooter who I was happy to learn is in custody) I think that this tragedy should make us all reflect on the world around us. We must not become the thing that destroys us. This tragedy was the act of a mad man. Let us not become mad men trying to stop another one from occurring. Hug your loved ones on this day of mourning.