Can Really Taste The Mindbending — Reviewing ‘Absolute Martian Manhunter’ #1

Move over big screen friendly universally known DC Characters. It’s time for the Absolute DC line to get absolutely weird.

Not in that strange want to run away from it weird way. No, this is the absolutely delicious let everyone cook type of weird that makes comic books grand.

Yes, we’re here to talk about Absolute Martian Manhunter, a glorious book that continues the Absolute DC line’s run of excellence. Not a shock when this comes from the minds of Deniz Camp, Javier Rodríguez, and Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou. There is no way a comic wouldn’t be out of this world with those three involved.

Holy crap is this a fine dining meal deserving of all the stars.

Camp is very astute when it comes to creating modernized versions of heroes wrapped up in grand messaging and development. Something this grand and weird is right up his alley.

Even with a script this weird and powerful, it takes the right artist to make the vision a reality. That’s not saying that artists are not capable of grand things all around. Some are just better at some aspects of creation than others. It’s the whole idea behind finding one’s style and niche to really hone their craft.

I’m not saying there isn’t someone else out there that could do what Rodríguez did here, but I am saying it wouldn’t hit the same way.

There is a dreamy quality to what he puts onto every page, a lightness that mixes beautifully with dense detailed imagery. It turns the regular or the mundane into something worth keeping an eye upon. Characters have presence and weight on every single page, no matter if they are at the forefront or background. Even when portions of panels are given over to just backdrop coloring, not a single ounce of that panel space goes wasted or unused.

Realistic facets dipped within the pool of whimsical coating is what you get anytime Rodríguez creates art. Beyond the surface though, there lies the true power in what he brings.

That would be the paneling and layout choices. Taking what could be a simple couple spread and turning it into something grander. Eschewing borders of panels and typical conventions. All in the name of achieving the best effect for the story moment in question. Creating varying levels as colorful filters and layers come into play.

Doing his own coloring likely helps greatly, because the right color palette is surely in mind the second imagery appears on the page. Swirling vivid colors that harmonize perfectly with the more toned-down colors make up portions of the background or regular world settings.  He creates the baseline color tones that will allow the grander beats to feel appropriately different and powerful.

Matching Rodríguez in vision is Otsmane-Elhaou, one of the best letterers around.

Visual language on the page needs to convey a couple of things. What the characters are saying, thinking, or the sound around them is just one level. When done to its best, it allows us to see and hear the voices of characters and their world in bold ways. Setting the tone, volume, and emotional levels. Much like the comments above about the color tones, the shifting usage of sentence cases creates a baseline and other.

Standard comic book all-caps creating the more normal speaking tone we’re accustomed to on a regular basis. Allowing sentence case and even bigger font to signify clearly altered speech patterns. As the moment intensifies or slows down depending on the direction the font’s growth might be going.

With this particular series there is even more room to really experiment with the lettering. Colors brought to bear in order to let font or bubbles to pop more. Matching the ideas of the colorful smokes on the page and the green of the Martian Manhunter itself.

Oh the Martian.

It would have been simple to just do a book about the usual Martian Manhunter story we know. Just modernize it and fit it easily into the world being built in the Absolute DC line. No, no, that is not the style of Camp though. What we get is hard to even conceptualize how the man’s brain reached this point. Here we stand though with the issue in hand and jaw on the floor.

Having John Jones the human merged (unknowingly) with the Martian entity that we normally know as J’onn J’onzz was pretty brilliant. It mixed up the dynamic for the character, who generally used the John Jones law enforcement persona to blend in amongst humans.

We spend so much of this issue in the mind of Jones, survivor of a suicide bombing in a coffee shop- Piecing together what happened, why he feels so detached, and why he’s able to discern things without people telling him. The clear but slow reveal of the combined status is so well crafted. It’s not too rushed and not dragged out to a degree where the audience wants it to be rushed, because the character and emotional beats are so prominent and powerful.

Within this issue we know so much about Jones and his views, his family, and the world. At the same time we know very little. Leaving so much room to really explore and build this world with subsequent issues. We don’t even “meet” the Martian till the very end, in a gorgeous intriguing page trick reveal.

I’m seated, I’m invested, and I’m ready for more of this series. Bring it all on.

Absolute Martian Manhunter #1 is now available from DC Comics.