Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, the Flash. These titles are all self-explanatory. But what does it mean to be a “Martian Manhunter?” It’s a title that’s always felt like a little bit of a mouthful. I first got to know the character, like many of you, I’d wager, through the Justice League animated series, where that title is never used. In every episode, he was just “J’onn.” It was as if not even some of the greatest creative minds in that generation, the crew that helped define the DC Universe as we know it today, could justify saying that name out loud. Like “Captain Comet” or “Space Cabbie,” it feels like a retro-futuristic mid-century dream of a space age that never came to pass.

If there’s one uniting principle behind all the titles in the Absolute DC line, it’s the concept of examining the very core of a hero by defamiliarizing all our preconceptions around them. Here, in our fifth series entry, Absolute Martian Manhunter, Deniz Camp and Javier Rodríguez take that challenge on directly. And what we find is a stranger, more haunting character than any other we’ve seen to date.

What kind of person could be described as a “Martian Manhunter”? When we meet the very human FBI agent John Jones in this debut issue, we learn the answer to that question. Agent Jones has a wife and son. You’d be forgiven for calling him a family man, but the problem is that he isn’t. As he puts himself to work on his cases, John constantly feels detached from the reality around him, concealing himself from both his employers and his family. After surviving a traumatic explosion, John refuses to take any vacation. Then he tells his wife he wasn’t allowed vacation. John’s wife calls his bosses “monsters” under her breath—putting a point on just what she’d think of John if she knew the truth. Her husband is intentionally putting distance between himself, his wife and his child, whose art depicts his father as a distant, inhuman creature.

In other words, John Jones is more Manhunter than Man. A person who has come to define himself solely for his work in bringing criminals to justice, at the expense of the humanity within him. He’s called “The Martian” for his coldness. Without powers, without superheroism, without even an extraterrestrial origin, John Jones lives the sad and lonely life of a man who can only be described, with a tragic sincerity forgoing any irony or kitsch, as a Martian Manhunter.

And this is all without even addressing the fact that John Jones has been mentally bonded to an alien consciousness.

Absolute Martian Manhunter #1 does not explain how John Jones and this Cyclopean thought-form from beyond the bleeding edges of reality became conjoined. That’s, presumably, for future issues. Here, we experience only the full bewilderment, the distortion of perception and the intrusiveness of the collective conscious that John Jones himself does his best to gird his way through, stoically bearing what no sane being could or should be asked to comprehend.

Like defining who a “Martian Manhunter” is for Deniz Camp, portraying the heretofore unthinkable expansion of the mind on a comic book page is a task almost laughable in what it asks of an artist. The very conceit of Absolute Martian Manhunter demands a book that looks like nothing that anyone has ever seen before. And yet, that’s exactly the challenge that Javier Rodríguez meets.

If you’ve read Zatanna: Bring Down the House, you already have an idea of what Rodríguez is capable of. I’m here to tell you that you haven’t seen jack squat. The figure work, the panel layout, the coloring, and the way the book plays with the medium of comics itself is going to shatter every expectation of what you think a DC comic looks like. I’ve always been a champion of digital comics, for their accessibility and ease of use. But, if you can, you’re going to want to get your hands on a physical copy of Absolute Martian Manhunter #1. It literally does things I’ve never seen a comic do before. You’re going to want to experience it for yourself.

Trying to describe Absolute Martian Manhunter feels almost like being cast as the brain-shattered narrator of an HP Lovecraft story. It’s the impression of an awe so potent that you’re left with the impossible task of describing what cannot be understood without becoming fundamentally changed in the process. Absolute Martian Manhunter is an impossible comic. Camp and Rodríguez have made it anyway.
 

Absolute Martian Manhunter #1 by Deniz Camp and Javier Rodríguez is now available in print and as a digital comic book.

Alex Jaffe is the author of our monthly "Ask the Question" column and writes about TV, movies, comics and superhero history for DC.com. Follow him on Bluesky at @AlexJaffe and find him in the DC Official Discord server as HubCityQuestion.

NOTE: The views and opinions expressed in this feature are solely those of Alex Jaffe and do not necessarily reflect those of DC or Warner Bros. Discovery, nor should they be read as confirmation or denial of future DC plans.