Once Upon a Geek

About two weeks ago I wrote a post about FINAL CRISIS: REQUIEM and the relationship between Martian Manhunter & Hal Jordan. You may recall I felt that Martian Manhunter and Hal Jordan didn’t really have an established strong relationship and I felt some scenes in REQUIEM rang hollow. Well… the webmaster of “The IDOL-HEAD of DIABOLU, a Martian Manhunter blog” follow-up on my thoughts and expounded upon them in a post of his own.

Wow!  Frank Lee Delano (the webmaster of IDOL-HEAD) really knows his stuff!  He took my thoughts and really ran with them.  He reinforced my opinion with numerous facts and history between these two characters.

Stop by the IDOL-HEAD of DIABOLU and check it out!  While you’re there, take a look at all the other great posts about the history of Martian Manhunter.

I read “Final Crisis: Requiem” and one thing is really bothering me. There are three pages where Hal Jordan and Oliver Queen grieve together over Martian Manhunter’s body. Hal talks about the rage he’s feeling and the revenge he wants to inflict because of his friend’s death. What bothers me is that I don’t believe historically there has been a really strong connection between Hal Jordan and Martian Manhunter.

If you look at their respective JLA appearances, they don’t actually overlap much. Both were founding members of the League, however, Martian Manhunter left the League with issue 71. Of those 71 issues, Martian Manhunter only appeared in 43 of them. After that, every run of the JLA that featured Martian Manhunter as a member, Hal was not a member at the same time. If you add up Martian Manhunter’s time in the Detroit League, the JLI, Justice League Task Force, and the JLA (Grant Morrison’s series), that’s something like 230 issues that he didn’t appear with Hal Jordan.

I just feel that the writer is shoehorning Hal Jordan into the grieving, whereas there are many other characters that Martian Manhunter appeared with more frequently that would have made more sense. I think I know why they are using Hal Jordan.. to prepare for “Blackest Night” where numerous dead superheroes are supposed to come back. That is probably where we’ll see Martian Manhunter next, so it makes sense from a plotting point of view to use Hal Jordan. I just feel as a fan of Martian Manhunter, it could have been other folks. Maybe there were some nice character moments between Martian Manhunter and Hal at some point in history, I just don’t happen to remember them. There are many other characters they’ve shown time and time again to have a close bond with Martian Manhunter. For example, characters that have starred in the JLA with Martian Manhunter more frequently and have been shown to have a bond with him include: Batman, Vixen, Gypsy, Superman, and Wonder Woman. Believe it or not, even Kyle Rayner have appeared with Martian Manhunter more often than Hal Jordan. While Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman did feature prominently in this story, the big emotional scene was given to Hal and Ollie. I just didn’t work for me.

Okay, rant over. “Final Crisis: Requiem” was a decent read, its just this one point really stood out to me. I admit part of my rant probably comes from the fact that I’m still bitter they brought Hal back to life.

Oh yeah, it’s also worth mentioning that Aquaman had a really strong bond with Martian Manhunter and appeared more frequently with Martian Manhunter than Hal. However, Aquaman is current dead. Interestingly enough, apparently death wasn’t enough to stop Aquaman from coming to the funeral. Check out the Aquaman Shrine for details on this.

Since I’ve already had a couple action figure posts this week, I thought this might make a fun one.  

These are plushes I got from the WB store back when they were still open.  Man I miss that store.  They had the coolest merchandise.  In fact, you can find two other items I got from the WB store posted on my buddy Rob’s blog, The Aquaman Shrine.  The items are a JLA winter coat and a DCU animated picture frame.  While you’re there, poke around his site.  It’s really impressive (even if you aren’t an Aquaman fan).