Background

Scientists have theorized that it’s possible life existed on Mars at some time in the past. In the world of DC Comics, it turns out they were right. Long ago, the planet was inhabited by just a bunch of globs and shapes. But then eventually they gained consciousness, feelings, and intellect and shapeshifted into the humanoid forms, becoming a race of “Martians”. Together, they built a thriving society and culture, but as is typical of comic books (and especially origin stories), nothing good ever lasts forever.

The Martians were wiped out by… pretty much any apocalypse imaginable, depending on your continuity of choice. War, greed, general decline, a telepathic plague known as Hronmeer’s Curse. Point is, things go to shit. Among the few survivors was J’onn J’onnz, a martian who had lost his wife and daughter to the apocalypse. Crushed by grief and survivor’s guilt, J’onn was left to wander what remained of his planet alone, attempting to find comfort in his shapeshifting by taking the form of all the martians who had died, especially his wife and child. Trying in vain to live out their lost lives for them, and convince himself that they were still alive, and that his daughter forgave him for not being closer to her when she died.

He wouldn’t be left to wallow in depression and solitude forever, though. Soon after this event, J’onn would find himself teleported to Earth in a machine, where he would come to live among the people under the guise of “John Jones”. Really breaking the bank on that name, isn’t he?

J’onn would come to spend several decades on Earth and use his martian powers to become a superhero, looking out for the little guy and making sure this planet doesn’t go through the same thing his own did. Eventually, he found himself a member of the superhero team known as the Justice League of America, and would defend the Earth time and time again alongside them. He didn’t immediately fit in, however. For a while, his lost family and race continued to haunt him, causing him to feel uncomfortable and emotional whenever he started fitting in with other people around him, because it brought back memories of the family he couldn’t save. Eventually, however, his time on Earth, his time as a hero, healed the wounds on his heart. After years away, he was able to return to Mars and face the past, forgiving the planet for what it did to his family, and finally forgiving himself as well.

Abilities

Martian Physiology

Being a martian, Manhunter gets a bunch of nifty abilities from his alien genes. For one, there’s the ever-so-classic flight. While humans have five senses, martians have an additional four. His body has a complex immune system that makes him invulnerable, and he once even stopped a plague by absorbing it into himself so that it wouldn’t spread to anyone else. He could likewise spread a virus through his own body himself thanks to his shapeshifting.

Previously, MM has said that his superpowers depend on the atmosphere of the world he's in. He’s superhuman on Earth but a regular person on Mars. I think they realized that that’s stupid though, given how much time the dude spends in space and how he’s got the same strength on every other planet he visits besides Mars.

Shapeshifting

Martians have complete control over their molecular structure (very literally right down to the molecules), allowing them to shapeshift into practically anything. Some parts of this list include:

He once shapeshifted into an exact duplicate of Wonder Woman, down to her central nervous system, before turning intangible and aligning his body perfectly with every cell of her, acting as a conduit to convert electromagnetic energy into psychic energy and channel it through Diana’s body.

His shapeshifting doesn’t just mean looking like something else though, as he can also grow in size and stretch his arms or even his whole body as though he were a piece of chewed up gum. He can alter the shape of his own brain to control how he thinks about things, and use his body as a weapon by springing globs of flesh at people. He can spring tendrils from them too to help his psionic abilities and move his internal organs, even creating entirely new ones. He once mimicked an atlantean's physiology so he could survive underwater.

He can be forced out of his shifted shape by fire, however, turning back to his usual martian get-up.

Martian Vision

Different from the previously mentioned martian senses thing, Martian Vision gives J’onn greater sight than even Superman. He can see through lead, unlike the old boy scout, and it can be used to verify whether or not someone is the real deal or an imposter. He can also see all the way into space from building-level or even normally imperceptible things such as vibrations. He can see brain synapses and things that are microscopic in size, as well as perceive things through smoke. Scaling to Superman, he should also likely be able to perceive things that are subatomic. Batman also directly backs up the notion that J’onn’s vision may be subatomic.

Laser Vision

Can shoot lasers out of his eyes that are hot enough to turn roads into tar. These rays of heat have been depicted as comparable to Superman’s heat vision, and have even been combined with Supes’ beams to create a heat pulse rivaling the birth of the Sun. Notably, Superman’s heat vision once contributed 1/5 of the energy needed to produce a Big Bang, interacted with and matched Darkseid’s Omega Effect, and has affected atomic targets as well as intangible ghosts/souls.

They can harm Black Adam, blast apart Fernus on a molecular level, and at one point were implied to be damaging Etrigan to a slightly greater extent than Doctor Fate’s magic blasts.

Super Breath

They sometimes refer to it as “martian lung power” but nah we’re calling it Super Breath. J’onn is so good at breathing, he can create a hurricane with his breath that topples over ships. Early Martian Manhunter was kind of a repainted Superman with two extra powers.

Invisibility

Martian Manhunter can turn himself invisible, going undetected by anyone without special sensory abilities. This lets him get the drop on foes and disorient them in combat. Though he has occasionally been detected by thermal vision while invisible, he has also shown to be capable of cloaking himself and others from thermal vision by lowering their core temperatures.

Intangibility/Phasing

Is capable of phasing through solid objects such as walls, even those designed to prevent phasing. He can also phase through Green Lantern constructs, and force-fields capable of keeping out Superman and Kyle Rayner. He has also used this ability to disrupt a target’s power flow or remove things from their body, as well as phase his arms through a target to bypass their durability. He can even phase through an opponent’s skull or pull out their brain.

With phasing, he can naturally render himself almost impervious to attack, though it is worth noting that when he turns intangible, he still retains some of his mass to keep his molecules from drifting apart, making those molecules vulnerable to manipulation. However, he has also phased through Kryptonian heat vision from Superboy-Prime, which is normally capable of affecting molecules and countering phasing. A “trans dimensional blade” was able to affect him while he’s in this form, whatever that means.

Regeneration

Thanks to his martian makeup and the shapeshifting thing, Martian Manhunter has a really good healing factor, capable of putting himself back together from scraps, total goo, and even just an arm. He has complete control over his own molecular structure, and as a result it has been implied that smashing every atom in his body one-by-one would be necessary to put him down for good.

Mind Reading/Empath Powers

J’onn is capable of reading people’s minds, extracting whatever kind of information he wants from them. By doing so, he can tell whether or not they're telling the truth. He can hide their mental presenses to keep them from being detected. By telepathically connecting with someone, he can talk with them (even everyone on Earth at once), see as they do and keep track of their consciousness as they explore people's minds. He can sense a person's emotions and find out if their mind has been tampered with. He even once telepathically scanned the JLA’s costumes when they were being controlled by aliens and managed to sense the perpetrators. This is because he senses the latent thoughts/feelings that come from objects and places, connecting with the past in places with significant landmarks.

He can also sense people who typically cannot be detected (ex: they're invisible) thanks to his telepathy skills. Conversely, even though he can turn invisible anyways, he can also control another person’s mind into not perceiving him. His telepathic power is so great, not only has he used them to scan while stuck in stasis, he can also scan the minds of every single person on Earth at the same time, and even the thoughts and feelings of every sentient being in the galaxy. Sure hope no one was doing anything he wouldn’t want to know about.

His probing can be detected and resisted, however. And it is possible for J’onn to be fatally hurt by probing someone’s mind if they’re in enough distress.

Mental Combat

J’onn is one of the most powerful telepaths in all of DC, ten times greater than other high-tier telepaths like Aquaman. He demonstrates this through a lot of fearsome showings in telepathic combat and attack. With enough power, he can telepathically invade a person’s mind and shut it down, even if the individual is a telepath. Against more resilient foes, he can engage in mental battles. He can telepathically make someone forget how to speak for a few hours, not unlike a minor stroke, but with no pain. He can interfere with information that a target is perceiving, such as Captain Marvel’s Wisdom of Solomon. Even for someone capable of resisting his telepathy, fighting back against his mental intrusion is very painful.

Potency-wise, his best showing of telepathy is probably affecting the mind of the fifth-dimensional imp, Mr. Mxyzptlk, causing him to subconsciously say his name backwards. This is especially impressive because in DC, “5D beings” is a bit of a misnomer. Rather than “beings who exist in 5 spatial dimensions”, it means “beings from the 5th Dimension”, which is a specific place that represents imagination, which actually transcends the DC multiverse as a whole. This includes cosmological structures such as the Bleed, which likely contain infinite spatial dimensions. Because of this, a being like Mxy’s mind should technically be much more complex (infinitely so) than a normal being’s mind, making J’onn’s ability to understand and alter it all the more impressive.

J’onn can also put up mental screens in his (and other's) mind to prevent them from being affected by mental attacks such as trances. He’s so good at it, even Spectre complimented him on them, and they held up against an assault from a White Martian. He can also resist having his “mental energy” siphoned off of him.

Memory/Perception Alteration

Manhunter is capable of controlling other people’s memories, forcing them to forget things if he wants. He can also do the Matrix thing where he downloads (uploads?) information to a person’s brain so that they can learn a new skill.

Synaptic Disabling

Manhunter can reverse the flow of a person’s synapses to knock them out for days or weeks. He has implied that he can knock people out telepathically and put normal humans to sleep.

Soul Manipulation

J’onn’s telepathy seems to have some degree of connection with the soul. For instance, when he became Fernus temporarily, it was established that he and Fernus had two separate souls which were locked in spiritual conflict for control of his body. He has also used telepathy to negate possession, forcing Harley Quinn’s soul out of a person’s body, as well as to seal Bette Noir’s spirit back into her own body, preventing it from manifesting again with mental blocks.

Psionic Blasts

Manhunter can create a concussive blast of psychic energy from his forehead.

Feats

Power

Speed

Durability

Skill

Weaknesses

Taking the crown for most inconsistent weakness in comic book history, we have the Martian Manhunter and fire! Though it has remained a consistent issue for J’onn, there has been plenty of hops back and forth between whether it’s a physical or psychological issue, or both. In some instances, merely being tricked into thinking he’s surrounded by fire has caused him to be stripped of his abilities and strength, weakening him as though it were Kryptonite. In other instances, he’s established to have pyrophobia due to the wars that occurred on Mars and that it is possible for him to overcome it.

And while he’s impressive with his mind tricks, he’s not the best of the best. Enemies such as Gorilla Grodd have beaten him in such contests before.

Ultra Death Battle and Screwattack blogs

Sunday, August 27, 2023

Character Analysis: Martian Manhunter (Feat Grand/Ultra/Swan)