Absolute Martian Manhunter

I don't buy nearly as many comic books as I once did. The price (most are $4.99 an issue or more now) is part of it, but the biggest part is that most titles either don't catch my interest at all or don't hold it for long when they have caught it. Case in point: I was excited about DC'S new Absolute line. I picked up Absolute Batman #1, found it absurd but a little bit interesting, and have continued with the title to date, having just read issue #11. I don't think I'm going to last much longer, though. Other than the fact that this Bruce Wayne is mountainouly large and his Batmobile looks like one of those huge mining trucks, this is beginning to seem like the same old shit to me. Same old villians, too.

Same for Absolute Superman. I've stuck with it through #8, but that might be it for me. And I never even picked up Absolute Wonder Woman. Not because she's a woman, but because the art was so fucking ugly. (I might read it for free on hoopla, though. Speaking of which, a lot of these Absolute titles are available on hoopla. Nudge nudge.)

When the second wave of Absolute titles broke, I was excited again: Absolute Flash (by one of my favorite writers, Jeff Lemire), Absolute Green Lantern, and Absolute Martian Manhunter. I read the first two of these titles for a couple of months, then just didn't care anymore. Martian Manhunter, on the other hand...now THAT was something really different. In fact, it's kind of mindblowing in a way that comics haven't been for a very long time...maybe since Bill Sienkiewicz was pulling out the stops on The New Mutants. 

First off, the premise is pretty weird: John Jones isn't an alter-ego / disguise for the Martian Manhunter. John Jones is a regular human being, an FBI agent, who has been possessed by the Martian Manhunter. JJ doesn't seem to fully understand what's going on, though he is aware of the possession, and it's fucking up his mind quite seriously. It's also fucking up his perceptions, as we can see in this page from issue #3:

In that first panel, JJ is just walking across the lawn to get to his house, but there's all kinds of weird shit going on (in technicolor), and there's a very odd-looking Martian (Manhunter) looming over him. That continues in close-up in the second panel, then the third panel shifts to the observer's point of view, wherein JJ's wife watches him crossing the lawn in a very bizarre fashion, stepping high over what seems to her to be nothing at all...hence her puzzled expression in panel 4. Then we have the pullback in panel five, from JJ's point of view, and we wonder how the hell he is ever going to get into his house. That continues in the final panel, wherein his perception is that his house has levitated completely off of the ground.

And that's not even the strangest page of art. There's a constant influx of color and distortion, as if John is on an acid trip.

I love this book. It's only scheduled to last 12 issues (😡), and I have to admit that I'll be stunned if it makes it that far...but I'll be buying this one as long as DC keeps making it. It is a thing of beauty and a joy forever. 

Oh, look, a video!