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DC's Absolute Universe has reinvented many of DC's most popular heroes, including Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, and Flash, with new concepts that turn the stories we know on their heads. But the most transformative Absolute title on the stands yet is Absolute Martian Manhunter by writer Deniz Camp, artist Javier Rodriguez, and letterer Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou.
Taking a wild, psychedelic approach to the eponymous character, Absolute Martian Manhunter completely reinvents the entire concept of one of DC's oldest heroes in a way that feels like the best argument yet for DC's Absolute line. And with Absolute Martian Manhunter #2 out now, I'm incredibly excited about the artistic potential that the comic represents for DC.
Many of DC's Absolute relaunches have had radical new takes on their heroes, but they ultimately take familiar forms - the last son of a dead world, the only warrior standing between humans and the monsters of myth, a traumatized man training his body and mind to rid his city of corruption, and so on.
But Absolute Martian Manhunter takes the reinvention of its hero even further, turning the extra terrestrial hero into a being even more alien than the classic version who debuted all the way back in 1955.
In the Absolute Universe, the Martian Manhunter isn't technically a "Martian" at all - it's a non-physical being from a planet so far from Earth that it may as well be another dimension who communicates through clouds of rainbow-colored psychedelic smoke.
This being is psychically bonded with officer John Jones when Jones goes through a life-and-death experience that leaves them inextricably connected. The action escalates as the so-called "martian" tries to use its powers of precognition to goad Jones into averting a tragedy, while Jones tries to simply make sense of the impossible visions unfolding before his eyes.
It's all gorgeously rendered by Javier Rodriguez, who takes the art from pencils to colors, a rare undertaking for a comic artist. Rodriguez starts from a tried-and-true comic style that channels the familiar tone of the Silver Age while also blasting it into psychic space with waves of color and blasts of violence that jar both the characters and reader loose from any sense of comfort.
In both art and story, Absolute Martian Manhunter feels like a serious attempt to both embrace the '50s sci-fi vibes of Joseph Samachson and Joe Certa's original creation while also using more modern theories of extraterrestrial existence to take the character in a totally new direction.
Like Jack Kirby, the all-time great writer/artist who created and co-created most of the Marvel Universe along with a good chunk of DC as well, Camp channels popular modes of esoteric thought into Absolute Martian Manhunter.
In Kirby's case, this took the form of the secret, alien history of the Marvel Universe using ideas drawn from America occultist Edgar Cayce and his contemporaries who wrote on lost mystical societies such as Atlantis and Lemuria, both long since incorporated into Marvel lore.
For Camp, this seems to mean embracing ideas pioneered by the likes of John Keel, best known for his modern occult journalistic tome The Mothman Prophecies, with aliens that are less physical beings in flying craft as in the popular imagery of the '50s, and more psychic beings from beyond the veil of physical reality taking shape in the popular consciousness.
Whether it's Camp's direct intent to channel these ideas, along with even more esoteric concepts like the idea of spiritual beings who impart morality to special receivers from another dimension, they come through on the page, culminating in the most daring and welcome reinvention of the Absolute DC Universe yet.
Absolute Martian Manhunter #3 goes on sale May 28.
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