EP0091: Showcase Presents Martian Manhunter, Volume 2, Superman Action Comics: Booster Shot, Avengers Infinity Classic

Summary: We cover the second half of Martian Manhunter’s solo Silver Age Adventures in Showcase Presents Martian Manhunter, Volume 2.<br> Superman goes back in time in a buddy team-up with Booster Gold in <a href="https://amzn.to/2ShwRjs">Superman, Action Comics, Volume 5: Booster Shot</a>.<br> And Thor and a group of lesser-known heroes team up with the fate of the Marvel Universe at stake in <a href="https://amzn.to/2U3lVrt">Avengers Infinity Classic</a><br> Affiliates linkes included.<br> Transcript:<br> We take a look at the final series of Martian Manhunter stories from the Silver Age, the final installment of Dan Jurgens recent run on Action Comics, and then we conclude by taking a look at Avengers Infinity Classic, straight ahead.<br> <br> So, we’re going to start the show out by taking a look at Showcase Presents Martian Manhunter Volume Two. Now a lot of folks do not like Showcase Presents; in fact, if you take a look at either Showcase Presents or Marvel Essential, you’ll have someone complain that comics are all in black and white. And I guess because of those complaints both of those lines have been discontinued, but I personally enjoyed them and what I like is that they often covered characters or stories that did not have reprints elsewhere. One example of this, of course, they printed a whole book of Elongated Man stories, and they can do that because the production costs were less expensive, and it was less expensive for readers to be able to easily access these strips even if they were in black and white. <br> And I actually really enjoyed the first volume of Martian Manhunters stories – Showcase Presents: Martian Manhunter, Volume One. And it actually is interesting because Martian Manhunter didn’t start out as a superhero. He was introduced prior to the start of the Silver Age of comics and essentially the character was an attempt to combine science fiction with detective stories, and so you had this Martian who comes to Earth through a machine and decides to fight crime, and go undercover as Detective John Jones. And I think you had a pretty good variety of stories focusing on those kind of sci-fi themes and also on the detective work. I think that this became less true as the story went on and Martian Manhunter joined the Justice League, and this led to public revelation of his identity. <br> And this book starts off with that status quo, collecting first of all Detective Comics 305 to 326, and these are generally just pretty straightforward superhero-fighting-monster type stories with not a whole lot of style to them generally. The big thing that they did do in this book is introduce Zook. Zook is a strange-looking alien who is often described as Manhunter’s pet, though often functions as a sidekick. He has his own power set, including the ability to freeze people; and I don’t think he’s an annoying character but he doesn’t really solve whatever was wrong with the Martian Manhunter strips in Detective Comics, in that there was very little imagination or real strong stories coming out. <br> They did try to give him his own super villain which is actually a Batman super villain named Professor Hugo, and you actually get a cameo by Batman in the first Professor Hugo story. Professor Hugo was just a big-headed mad scientist, and there are about three or four stories with Professor Hugo in the whole book. And he’s not a particularly memorable character nor did he have a really long history. He made his first appearance in 1962 in the Detective Comics run concluded in 1964. And the way that concluded is that John Jones appeared to die to the world although, of course, the Martian Manhunter lived on. Now the reason why he didn’t try to explain away the apparent death and keep John Jones alive, there don’t really make an attempt to that. I think that is just realized that this whole situation with him as a detective and he had ...