DC in the 80s interviews Diabolu Frank: the "Martian Manhunter guy"

I first discovered Diabolu Frank's The Idol-Head of Diabolu blog about five years ago. Or maybe it was seven? It's kind of hard to tell because The Idol-Head seems to have been around for as long as I can remember. It's one of those blogs you take for granted, but would miss dearly if it were to ever suddenly stop existing. If you take a look at Diabolu's blog (which I highly encourage you do), you're going to notice an interactive, visually-stimulating, informative and meticulously updated blog — quite befitting for a founding member of the Justice League of America. I didn't make the connection until about a year ago that some of my *other* favorite DC character-focused blogs (Justice League Detroit, Diana Prince as the NEW Wonder Woman, The Power of the Atom, and The Flame of Py'tar) were also being curated by Diabolu Frank. All of these sites look amazing and are kept up-to-date. That takes dedication.

Not only does DC in the 80s celebrate DC comics, but we celebrate DC fandom.  The extremely articulate and interesting Diabolu Frank was generous enough to chat with us about his earliest memories of DC comics, collecting comics in the 1980s, surviving the 90s comic book "boom and bust" and how he became the "Martian Manhunter guy".

DC in the 80s: What was your first comic book memory?

Diabolu Frank: I'm literally a lifelong fan of the medium, so I have no conscious memory of being introduced to comic books. I had coloring books starring Captain America and Superman before I could read. Certainly the '60s & '70s DC Filmation and Marvel Super Heroes cartoons were introduced to me early, and I was around for the Batman, Wonder Woman, Spider-Man and Hulk live action shows in local syndication, plus I saw the first Superman movie theatrically. My uncle, mother and father were all into comics to varying degrees, so I had youthful psyche-scarring familiarity with [Marvel comics'] Bronze Age Dr. Strange, Adam Warlock and Howard the Duck comics. Mego Pocket Heroes were my jam; I may have had every one of those at one time. With my own spare change, I favored picking up team-up books like The Brave & The Bold and DC Comics Presents with a few nickle strips of Sixlets from 7-11 to get the most bang for my fractions of a buck.

DC80s: What cemented your love of comic books?

Diabolu: I grew up in a poor neighborhood without a library outside of school, so comic books and action figures were the cheapest and most age-appropriate on-demand entertainment option available. I had friends, but I was never big on group play, so comics were great fun when I was solo and helped me connect with the most agreeable partners for one-on-one friendships. When my mother married and we got traveled around the country with my stepfather, I could maintain my relationships with comic book characters wherever there was a newsstand in a way I couldn't with the neighborhood kids that always ended up in the rear view mirror. It wasn't so much a matter of cementing interest in a hobby as a psychological dependency I've carried with me longer and more intensely than I could manage with any of my human connections. Nobody I was close to before early adolescence is still in my life today, but the comic books are.

The Brave and the Bold #172 (1981) and DC Comics Presents #45 (1982)

DC80s: I'm going to do some quick math here — if you were buying issues of The Brave & The Bold and DC Comics Presents with spare change, then you were predominantly reading comics from the late 70s/early 80s. So I'm going to guess that you were probably in your early-to-late teens during the 80s, so the 80s would've been your 'formative years' of comic book collecting/reading. Actually, as I look over your list of blogs, Justice League Detroit is one that I immediately recognize as a direct product of the 1980s. Of the comics published in the 80s, what were you mainly reading?

Diabolu: I actually just restarted a bit of personal archaeology in the form of Comic Reader Résumé, a short-lived blog series and shorter-lived run of YouTube videos that I'm repackaging and continuing as an occasional podcast. I was able to pinpoint the precise month where I shifted from occasional to regular purchaser of comic books as January of 1982. The first two episodes of the podcast version cover books I remember picking up from before that point, and subsequent episodes will chart my monthly progress for at least the next several years of routine collecting. At many decades' remove, it looks like my initial approach was catch-as-catch-can between whatever I could find at convenience stores, three-packs at grocery, thrift, toy stores, and flea markets with an emphasis on the most commonly recognizable heroes, team-up/group books, and horror/fantasy titles. The good thing about starting with limited options is that there was no place to go but up. At the flea markets especially, I saw comics go from a pile at the back corner of random booths selling other stuff to maybe one devoted comic booth per market. By the end of the decade, I'd lived within walking distance of two devoted neighborhood comic book shops in strip malls, and that was before the real explosion during the speculation bubble of the early '90s when everybody and their mother was selling them.

DC80s: As a comic book fan who was 'right there' and could see the difference between the 1970s and 1980s books being published, what were the big differences you noticed?

Diabolu: I definitely remember starting out with Superman and Batman, but abandoning them early on. DC was in a really bad place in the early '80s, having been unsuccessfully chasing Marvel's market since the start of the Bronze Age with way over the hill veterans and guys who couldn't make things work elsewhere. Superman especially was a perfect gateway character, with the Christopher Reeve movies in theaters and all the TV shows still in syndication. So I'd pick up a Superman comic, and it would be drawn by a dull hack featuring the Man of Steel against some under-powered cornball wearing a tacky half-century old costume or saving his umpteenth alien race of dried asparagus people, and I'd put it right back on the shelf. I wasn't alone in that, from what I've gathered anecdotally and from the published circulation statements. At their best, probably due to the influence of Dick Giordano, they read like Charlton with a bigger budget, but at worse they still read like DC Comics from the Eisenhower Administration. Everybody's one big exception was The New Teen Titans, DC's most Marvel book by hot creators who left Marvel over their dislike of its Editor-In-Chief, but most of the rest of the line were your grandfather's comics. DC also had poor distribution throughout Houston, TX, probably because their sell-through was lousy, so even if you liked a certain book there was no guarantee you could consistently get your hands on it. In my neighborhood, it was all about X-Men, Secret Wars, Spider-Man, and the toy tie-ins like G.I. Joe and Transformers. It was a huge deal to see a cartoon advertising G.I. Joe comics on Saturday morning network television, and I've never understood why there wasn't more outreach like that.

Blue Devil #3 (1984) and Ambush Bug #3 (1985)

The main DC books I remember picking up before their big evolution was Blue Devil and Ambush Bug. I think DC had an easier time just letting creators have fun with a book that didn't have to involve all that self serious, continuity heavy modern mythology muck. There was one booth at one flea market that had lots of Blue Devil, probably through a subscription, so between its being a good time and having a reliable source I ended up collecting that until the well ran dry. Hardly anybody wanted anything to do with humorous comics, probably because they were almost never actually funny, and those with a talent for comedy in the industry were already at Mad Magazine or one of its many knock-offs. Keith Giffen was always an exception in that respect, and Ambush Bug was the perfect book to send up all the convolutions and pretensions of the comics at that time.

In 1986, I was still into X-Men and G.I. Joe, but I figure that was the year DC finally figured out their post-Silver Age identity. They started actively courting Marvel's top talent instead of handing out blank checks to whichever disgruntled expats walked through their door. They skimmed the cream off the top of the independent press, which included a lot of creators they themselves had displaced in the '70s, and offered new visions of their properties. The 'British Invasion' was truly beginning with Watchmen and proto-Vertigo. It didn't happen overnight, and Marvel was still selling truckloads of kiddie fare to the fanboys, but by the end of the decade DC was making surgical strikes into both the connoisseur and casual reader markets. The 1989 Batman film and Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns opened the doors wide for a surge in readership, and I bought my own copy of the movie adaptation out of a counter dump next to the popcorn machine at the theater. I got back into the DC Universe late in '87 with John Byrne's Superman and Justice League International, but my interest ebbed and flowed until the early '90s. I felt like Marvel was being strip-mined for easy profit and Image Comics were just telling the same sort of nonsense violent juvenile power fantasies as Marvel with flashier art and paper stock. I shopped around quite a bit, but DC was where I felt most at home, where I stayed the longest as a fan, and it's the universe I have the greatest emotional and intellectual investment in. It was a time when you could see Vertigo and Ultraverse ads on Sunday afternoon UHF channels, and every suburb had a half dozen shops conveniently located. I'd say 1986-1993 was the last shining moment where actual physical comic books mattered in the greater conversation of popular culture.

DC80s: Did the 'Direct Market' distribution system affect your buying habits?

Diabolu: Having access to comic shops definitely expanded my horizons, giving me the opportunity to raid back issues and try more independent titles. There was also greater representation in book stores, with growing shelves of trade paperbacks, and as a reader I often favored the latter since the shops were so preoccupied with stocking the latest hot single issues. Unfortunately, all the money from the speculator boom turned everybody into little Napoleons trying to sell entire universes with all the cheap gimmick bells and whistles (like embossing and foil stamping now reserved for boxes of cereal and toothpaste). Solid publishers like First and Eclipse went under quick while carpetbaggers like the collection of houses best known as Malibu cashed in for millions. DC had created a sustainable market for upscale books that should have broadened the audience, but they got swallowed up in the deluge of overprinted unreadable garbage that shifted the industry out of entertainment into junk bonds. It was a pyramid scheme that benefited the corporate raiders but destroyed us utterly.

DC80s: Maybe I misread something in one your bios, but at any point did you sell or become a comic book retailer? Or own your own comic book shop? Or maybe work at one? I may be wrong here... please correct.

Diabolu: And that was the point where I came into comic book retail, under tragic circumstances, just as all hell was breaking loose. As "mayfly" under-capitalized shops run by neophyte business managers were already prone to close without warning, I had subscription boxes at multiple stores to keep my options open, and I was typically spending enough at each to float a decent discount. Following a death at one of my favorites, I was asked to help out on Wednesdays to make sure the subscriptions were pulled in a timely fashion. Once it became obvious that I was the only one actually working and was knowledgeable and professional enough to interact with the public, I was asked to take over full time. Then about a year later, I was sold as chattel with the shop under the specific condition that I had to stay with the new owners — who turned out to be argumentative and unrealistic. After a cycle of quittings and firings I was finally brought over to a better shop (also following a death, but not a suspicious one, I swear.) That arrangement worked out much better, lasting six years before my partner and I were both sick of the monotonous hand-to-mouth existence of sustaining a small neighborhood shop carrying twelve years of debt load from three previous owners. We looked into finding a buyer, but everyone we talked to wanted at least one of us to stay on after the sale, so we just helped relocate our pull box customers to other shops and liquidated. It's a point of pride that I ran the only comic shop I ever knew to close correctly with plenty of notice and money still in the bank to keep running if we'd chosen to.

The Idol-Head of Diabolu's blog header was illustrated by Michael Netzer! How cool is that?

DC80s: Going to delve into your blogging. Your 'Diabolu Frank' persona entered my radar several years ago while I was googling something about the Martian Manhunter. Lo and behold, I stumbled onto your Idol-Head of Diabolu site. Now, 'The Idol-Head of Diabolu' is a reference to a story device used in DC's House of Mystery series (1965) in which J'Onn J'Onnz had to battle a new monster every month. What is your affinity to J'Onn J'Onnz? What made you decide "this is the character for me — the character I want to dedicate a site to"?

Diabolu: I've had a passing familiarity with J'Onn J'Onzz since the mid-80s through house ads and his having arguably the best Super Power Collection action figure sculpt, soon followed by guest appearances and reading his time on various Justice Leagues. I liked the character, but I was very put off by the first issue of his eponymous, experimental 1988 mini-series. Part of it was being priced out, since I was poor and they kept releasing hardly read Martian Manhunter books that elicited sticker shock, plus it was the '90s and he didn't have long hair or excessively stylized weapons or a cybernetic eye. Then in 1996 I read Justice League: A Midsummer's Nightmare #2, where his b-plot came to a head, and I cheered in my room when I hit the Jeff Johnson splash page where a soul-deep wounded Manhunter from Mars was about to show some murderous buffoons just how not okay he was with them.

JLA: Midsummer's Nightmare #2 (1996). One PO'd martian.  

It hit me all at once how often I'd enjoyed J'Onn J'Onzz in my comics reading without acknowledging what a deep and diverse character he was. The concluding issue of the mini-series kept up my newly heated interest in the character, and I started investigating him from there. Usually, if you wanted to find out more about a comic book character, you could pick up a Who's Who or a Handbook and get the gist, but Martian Manhunter's entry was full of references to stories and characters that were not readily available or followed up on anywhere else. As it happened, one of my customers had started donating large quantities of Bronze Age DC comics and '70s Playboys to my comic shop to clear out space at his house, so I gave him store credit and cherry-picked all the Martian Manhunter stuff I could find. I was able to get most of his 1970s and early '80s appearances from that one source, including Silver Age reprints in various 80-Page Giants, his World's Finest Comics one-offs, and a run of what we now call "Justice League Detroit". I was also starting to have internet access through WebTV, and noted an initial total absence of Martian Manhunter fan sites or resources. I began talking to retired Navy Commander Adam Benson on the DC Comics Message Boards because he was the only person I could find with a firm knowledge of Martian Manhunter's solo stories in Detective Comics, and that led me to pick up low-grade reader copies of the House of Mystery strip on eBay. By that point, there were a few fan sites, but nothing remotely comprehensive with regard to the Alien Atlas' overall career. I built my own shoddy one through WebTV, and about five years after I abandoned that, fan blogs like The Aquaman Shrine inspired me to reconstitute the project in that vein, where it still exists with occasional updates and new podcasts. Basically, by taking up following the Sleuth from Outer Space, I became embroiled in the mystery of his existence as a character outside of the oft-recited "Heart and Soul of the JLA." Now I'm looking at twenty years of being able to call myself a fan of the character, with nearly as long as a vocal online advocate, and nearly nine years with the Idol-Head blog.

Now as far as why? It kinda fell into my lap. I realized that I dug the character, wanted to know more, and reported my findings. I was the only guy doing it for a long time, it was an involved process, and as my work seemingly became a key point of reference on the wiki sites that were springing up, I found myself in an echo chamber where my own stuff kept coming back to me. I see my gaps and lapses and interests (or lack thereof) reflected throughout the web of resources related to the character. Scans I captured and commissions I paid for are all over the place. There are probably fans out there with a purer love of the character than I have, which is why I named the blog after a long forgotten adversarial artifact from deep in the character's history instead of something like "The Martian Manhunter Monument," but as the loudest and longest lived voice advocating for the character, I'm "the guy" by default. Which isn't to say I don't love J'Onn J'Onzz, but I also see the faults and failings. Very few of his stories are truly exceptional, most writers can't seem to get past his being a mash-up of Superman, Mr. Spock and the Cookie Monster, and I think most of his fans are so casual that's all they expect from him.

DC80s: How have you reacted to the evolution of the character of J'Onn J'Onnz over the years?

Diabolu: I for one am actually very happy with the New 52 redesign bringing him into the 21st century after he spent the second half of the 20th looking like a refugee from the first half. But J'Onn J'Onzz has so much potential — such a rich and byzantine history, such a menagerie of friends and foes waiting to be revisited. In the Silver Age he was this young dilettante adventurer fighting crime as a pastime while stranded on a world he was taken to against his will. Then his human form perished and he was off chasing a surprisingly well traveled Pandora's Box with an other-dimensional cartoon character who spoke in Pidgin English and controlled temperature. Next he predicted the coming of "grim n' gritty" by becoming a coldblooded spy battling a super-mafia in Europe. Next he was retconned into a global civil war where he was forced to address genocide and became a metaphor for Holocaust survivors in the diaspora. There is such an enormous sense of tragedy that surrounds the character, but also whimsy and fantasy and horror. J'Onn J'Onzz is extremely powerful and potentially dangerous on a cosmic scale, but he can be felled by a match and he's guided by a more resolute humanism than most super-heroes. As long as you maintain his core character as a true hero who understands the human race but doesn't always approve of its proclivities, you can tell virtually any story with this him. Martian Manhunter is the perfect utility super-hero within a shared universe encompassing any genre, but he's also great on his own as the mysterious extraterrestrial detective who can go where no human can to solve mysteries beyond the scope of the rational world. Plus, he's an effective metaphor of any unappreciated "other" in society that despite the best intentions is forced to work clandestinely within a hostile, oppressive society. He is both nakedly derivative and absolutely unique, which could describe both the Manhunter and the medium that birthed him.

DC80s: I also couldn't help but notice your blog dedicated to Despero — who is a somewhat obscure DC villain to begin with. How did that happen?

Diabolu: Despero happened to be in the only issue of Who's Who: The Definite Directory of the DC Universe I ever bought new, and I thought he was ridiculous. His head looked like a fuchsia Gila monster, and he dressed like a priest in a suburban cult that sacrificed pet rocks to a boiling vat of fondue.

Despero's 1985 Who's Who entry

I don't think I saw him again until the last limp mega-arc of the Justice League International era, "Breakdowns," and then again as a heavily armed anti-hero in "Judgment Day." It wasn't until I started collecting Martian Manhunter stories from the late '90s backward that I discovered Despero was worthy of appreciation. His story arc during Adam Hughes' run on Justice League America is justifiably seen as a high water mark, and for my money his first arc with the fin mohawk against the "Detroit" League deserves a similar evaluation.

Despero battles Justice League Detroit (1986)

Like the Avengers, the JLA doesn't have a great track record of generating villains, but Despero is equivalent to Marvel's Kang or Ultron. Despero was in their first issue, he turned up comparatively often, no one hates the team as much as he does, and he's very scary when you set him loose on lower powered incarnations of the team. Martian Manhunter and Despero are both garishly colored aliens from polar opposites of the emotional spectrum with deep ties to the League, so it's natural that they should have been pitted against one another so often. Personally, I'd have a lot more confidence in the Justice League film if they were both in it, instead of wasting the Fourth World the first time out, and by extension veer far outside the historical early days of the League. Ironically, Despero as revised by Gerry Conway and Giffen & [J.M.] DeMatteis would fit the [Zack] Snyder Murderverse fairly well, but I'd just assume not have to go there.

DC80s: What have been the most rewarding results of this? Your most cherished memories and achievements?

Diabolu: Mark Waid once tweeted out that my Martian Manhunter Encyclopedia was the favorite thing he found on the internet that one day, and when I interviewed J.M. DeMatteis he noted that he already knew about and had visited the site. I've had good experiences, meeting people through blogging and pod-casting that I like and am happy to know. Ultimately, I've enjoyed pod-casting more because it creates capsules of good times with people I love, plus there's still a vocal audience for tawky shows, where blogging is now just a depressing slog bereft of any positive reinforcement. I don't think either endeavor has had much impact though, and I'm still waiting to "level up" to doing something with legitimate meaning.

---end of interview---

I'm going to respectively disagree with the interviewee's last few sentences here, and state that Diabolu Frank's blog posts are some of the most entertaining and informative I've read on the internet. Frank is a natural-born writer; his work is filled with humorous observations and intelligent insights (and his grammar and spelling are fantastic). Among the other blogs listed in the opening paragraph of this interview, Diabolu Frank also writes for Crisis Building, The Justice League Blogosphere, the DC Bloodlines blog, and his own whatever-he-feels-like blog, ...nurgh.

You can catch The Idol-Head of Diabolu's podasts on the Rolled Spine network. And, if you are so inclined, you can also follow Diabolu Frank on twitter.

As you can imagine, a site as J'Onn J'Onnz intensive as The Idol-Head must provide a list of the definitive Martian Manhunter stories of each era - and they do. (Which I'm going to share with you, because the lists are THAT good):

• Martian Manhunter in the 50s
• Martian Manhunter in the 60s
• Martian Manhunter in the 70s
• Martian Manhunter in the 80s
• Martian Manhunter in the 90s
• Martian Manhunter in the 00s

I'm also going to recommend listening to Diabolu Frank's interview with John Ostrander & Mark Verheiden, which was recorded at Comicpalooza 2016.


-Justin

Brief review of the 1988 Martian Manhunter mini-series

The Martian Manhunter first appeared in Detective comics #225 (1955) and was created by Joseph Samachson (writer) and Joe Certa (artist). It’s interesting to note that Samachson was an accomplished chemist (PhD from Yale) and wrote for sci-fi pulp magazines (under a different nom-de-plume) before becoming a writer for DC comics in 1942.

The Martian Manhunter began as a combination of DC’s two most popular heroes at the time: he was a nigh-invulnerable flying extraterrestrial (like Superman) and a world-class crime-solving detective (like Batman). He even became a founding member of the Justice League of America in 1960 and had a prominent role in the JLA until 1968 when Batman and Superman became more actively involved with the team. Because, honestly, two nigh-invulnerable flying aliens on your team is two too many.

The Martian Manhunter laid low from 1968 until 1984 and only occasionally appeared when a DC character had an adventure in space. He made his big return in the pages of Justice League of America in 1984 and has pretty much been a key member of the Justice League throughout the 80s. He was even popular enough to merit an action figure of himself in the 1985 Super Powers Collection toy line.

Justice League of America v1 #228 (1984)

After Crisis On Infinite Earths, DC took the opportunity to revamp origins/past history of most major characters in order to fix continuity issues. In 1988 it was the Martian Manhunter’s turn. It should be noted that J.M. DeMatteis writing this mini-series was a good fit, as he had been co-plotting/writing Justice League of America stories with Keith Giffen since the Justice League relaunch in 1987, so if anyone had a good understanding of the Martian Manhunter it would be Dematteis.

Making major changes to a comic book character with a lot of history is always tricky, as you don’t want to do anything too drastic that will upset the long-time fans (ex: John Byrne’s Superman). In this particular instance, however, DeMatteis nailed it and the mini-series was well-received.

Changes to Martian Manhunter (as per the mini-series):

• His real name isn’t J'onn J'onzz 
• He is the last martian. All the others were wiped out thousands of years ago by a plague. 
• Mars is actually a dead planet. 
• His real form is a green cone-head creature. 
• All of his personality and memories were implanted into him by Dr. Erdel 
• Dr Erdel never died, it was all an elaborate trick. 
• Fire (previously his only weakness) isn’t deadly to the Martian Manhunter - it's revealed that the danger is all psychosomatic.

One of the reasons this revamp worked so well is because the character of the Martian Manhunter was never strongly defined to begin with, so there was lots of room for elaboration. Crisis on Infinite Earths essentially retconned Superman’s early involvement with the Justice League of America and it would as appear as if the Martian Manhunter was meant to fill that continuity hole (one nigh-invulnerable flying alien can substitute for the other). This leads to a few continuity problems (mainly anything to do with Martians invading earth pre-Crisis) but I’m going to overlook that since DeMatteis did an excellent job regardless.

As a Giffen/DeMatteis-era Justice League fan, I really enjoyed this four-issue mini-series. As a matter of fact, this mini is a direct conclusion to the events the happened in Justice League Annual #1 (1987). The Justice League International do make an appearance, but they only play second banana since the main focus is on the Martian Manhunter. I did not enjoy the art (but maybe you did/might). Mark Badger was the penciller and I found his illustrations too abstract/psychedelic for this type of story. I guess in my mind’s eye Kevin Maguire was the regular Justice League penciller and the only artist fit to do a Justice League spin-off mini-series such as this one.

Michel Fiffe (creator of COPRA) interviewed Mark Badger in early 2010. Fiffe was kind of enough to share an unpublished excerpt from the interview with us about Badger's work on the Martian Manhunter mini-series:

Michel Fiffe: "You had worked on the Martian Manhunter mini-series with J.M. DeMatteis. That seems to be the story where you began loosening up. The entire series works really well as one piece, actually, not just as a string of pages telling a story but as a visual whole. Was there a complete script or did you visualize the entire thing without outside direction?"

Mark Badger: "Plotting of Martian Manhunter was basically done in the basement of 666 5th Ave with Andy Helfer and DeMatteis over pastrami sandwiches. There was no grand plan, it was just screwing around and trying to do something fun. Comics hadn’t become big biz yet where writers and editors mastermind these crossovers to death. I think full scripts really do hurt the visual inventiveness of comics because in a movie, you can extend the time, and storytelling can be carried by sound and suggestion in a way that comics just can’t. On one hand, I understand artists no longer think in terms of storytelling but that’s because editors hire artists who don't think of storytelling. And then no one has the ability to teach anymore. Teaching demands not just saying “this is the right way to do something” but a loop of feedback where you assess what the person is doing to see if they understand the concept and then re-phrasing it and evaluating how you said it. Jim Shooter was a good basics teacher. He laid out a fundamental set of rules but he really had no way to talk about anything after those basics. So at one point, Marvel was buying all the white Zip-a-tone in NYC to cover up blacks in the background to provide depth in their comics. But the idea of atmospheric perspective conflicts with the idea of using black for composition ad spotting a figure against a black backdrop so they stand out. They’re both Renaissance ideas in composition and sometimes you need to have done the craft to juggle them when appropriate."

"I picked up from Walter Simonson, who laid stories out on a typing page with 24 boxes first, using words and maybe thumbnails. I stole that. So I was always thinking of the whole story first, not the one image of the story I can sell. When I started to learn how to code it, was able to see the overall structure of the project that made me successful, more than any math skills. (I spent 8th grade algebra drawing Conan after all, so I should never be able to code.) But at Parsons, we always thought in terms of the overall work and the project, not just the one painting. They were constantly pushing you to have this approach because you were building a body of work not one image to sell. Sometimes I get jealous of people who can think of cool drawings and that slick “I’m a tuff guy” illustration look to all their characters."

"I based the new Martian Manhunter on a David Smith sculpture. I figured if you’re a character capable of morphing into shapes, why in god’s name would you look like a body builder? I just felt like the ability to change shapes meant you would make beautiful Art Nouveau and abstraction, not guns. If you manipulate form, wouldn’t you be fascinated in what you can make? Then I had been reading about grid systems for graphic design, so I made up a small grid and then overlayed that on the Kirby six panel grid to split up the pages. So that drove the layout. Then there was a Roy Lichtenstein show of abstractions at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) while I was working on the Manhunter. So at the time I would go there look at the Lichtensteins, go up to the Henri Matisse room and look at the swimming pool cut outs and then go turn in pages."

"At some point I had been looking at one of the more generic artists at Marvel because they sent us all the comics in those days. I couldn’t understand what the heck the drawing was, it had no relation to the human form but it was a comic. When you looked at comic book drawing in those days it was really weird and comic booky, not the photo realism of today. I thought: man if you can draw that weird, I can draw any shape I want and it will work as a figure. Boy, was I dense! Comics drawing is built on a long tradition. Saying that Matisse is a justifiable part of that tradition is weird. Matisse’s approach to form is so much based at looking at the world and not drawing icons. Matisse would actually just let his drawing be based on the emotion of drawing. I think there was a show of Matisse drawings at MOMA that where charcoal line drawings, not just one line but grey pages where he had changed & changed & changed the drawing to finally get to one line. SO I was looking at those and thinking this is proper drawing. In comics, that’s not proper drawing and I didn’t understand the distinction. So that’s all the stuff I was looking at and trying to pour into my comics."

[If you want to credit any of the interview above, please credit Michel Fiffe]


Two great sources if you're looking for more info on the Martian Manhunter:

• The Idol-Head of Diabolo, a Martian Manhunter blog
• Fanzing's History on the Reboots of Martian Manhunter

You also might enjoy Mark Belkin's interview with J.M. DeMatteis (he briefly mentions Martian Manhunter, but talks about a lot of the other DC projects he worked on during the 80s.)



This article first published on the DC in the 80s tumblr in Aug 2013.

Mark Belkin interviews J.M. DeMatteis for DC in the 80s

J.M. DeMatteis is nothing less than one of our favorite writers here at DC in the 80s, and one of the best comic book writers of all time. From "The Blood Boat!" story which appeared in Weird War Tales #70 (December 1980), through his classic Spider-man tale “Kraven's Last Hunt", to his modern classic “The Adventures of Augusta Wind” for IDW Publishing, JM has been writing the stories we love to read. The books that really cemented his legacy with DC in the 1980’s fandom was his run on the Justice League International and Justice League Europe. These books redefined an era, and introduced a whole new way of storytelling in the comic book medium.

Mark Belkin received the honor of sitting down with one of his heroes at Albany Comic Con, and talking about JM’s influences, how spirituality colored his writing, ushering in the 'Booster Gold and Blue Beetle' era, and creating the comic book pre-cursor to a “show about nothing”.

Straight Outta Brooklyn: JM Dematteis

Mark: I grew up in Brooklyn as well. Did you grow up in Flatbush? How did that influence your writing?

JM: I was born in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn but, when I was four, we moved to the Midwood section (not far from Brooklyn College). Brooklyn was a huge influence in the sense where anyone grows up is a huge influence on them. Your environment, the kinds of people you’re surrounded with, either form your worldview or give you something to react to as you search for that worldview.

Mark: What makes a good adventure? In real life and in writing fiction?

JM: To me, the essence of a great adventure is one that encapsulates the search for self, for both personal and cosmic meaning, whether that search is psychological or spiritual.

Mark: How did spirituality play into your Doctor Fate work?

JM: The Doctor Fate v2 series [1988 - 1992] gave me a chance to — if I may lift a phrase from Douglas Adams — write about life, the universe and everything. It was a superhero story, a supernatural series, a comedy, a drama, and a tale of the spiritual search. It’s rare that you get a chance to put all those things together — and Doctor Fate really gave me an opportunity to express my entire worldview (or at least my worldview circa late 80’s/early 90’s) in one massive story. Even more amazing, as I look back, is the fact that Doctor Fate wasn’t a creator-owned series, it was a DC property; yet I was given the freedom to write exactly what I wanted in exactly the way I wanted. (And having the brilliant Shawn McManus along for the ride certainly didn’t hurt.)

I was able to pour my own spiritual experiences into the book — reflected in my relationship with my spiritual master, Avatar Meher Baba — and yet have that all balanced by the psychology, the comedy, the superhero adventures. It all worked together beautifully.

JM explores Life, the Universe and Everything in his 1988 Doctor Fate ongoing series

I don’t think you could do that in a mainstream comic book today. The reins are too tight. The fact that I was working with editors Karen Berger and Art Young was also an incredible boon. Doctor Fate was essentially a pre-Vertigo Vertigo book.

Mark: I know India was important to you.

JM: India is a very important part of my life, spiritually. As I wrote about in Brooklyn Dreams, I had this experience when I was 17. A consciousness-altering experience, an experience of God or the Divine or whatever you choose to call it. It opened me up to a point-of-view that really led me to Meher Baba and India. What’s beautiful is that, in India, all these paths come together. It’s not like you must be this or you must be that, Hinduism embraces everything. As does Avatar Meher Baba, whose followers were Christians, Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, Jews, etc. Because there’s a place, a state of being, where all these things are one, where all these religions are just a translation of an experience that we all share on this planet.

Meher Baba remains the central spiritual hub of my life to this day. I’ve traveled to India over 8 times in my life, but it’s been eleven years since my last trip and I’m very excited to go there in November for the convention. It’s amazing how the comic book culture has spread all over India and all over the world!

Mark: Supernatural comics seem to be important to you, like your work on Doctor Fate, Phantom Stranger [2013 - 2014] and the Spectre [2001 - 2003]. Were you ever able to translate these beliefs and energies in those comics?

JM: You absolutely see it in Phantom Stranger and the Spectre, in Moonshadow [1994 - 1995] and [Epic's 1988] Blood: A Tale, all my creator-owned work. It can’t help but creep in, even if not overtly. In Doctor Fate you see a character named the Guide who is basically Meher Baba. My interpretation... they’re not literally the same person.

I have to write about what I’m passionate about — and that’s our search for meaning, our search for identity, for Self. Whether that is psychological or spiritual, its about the search for God, which ultimately, in my own experience, is finding out that the God we have been searching for is within us. Psychology, spirituality, some bad jokes, and you have the perfect story!

Mark: Amazing. Moving on to what may be your best known work in the 80’s: Justice League. Justice League International was a huge hit coming out of the company-wide 1987 crossover Legends. It’s considered to this day to be one of the funniest comics ever written, and worked as a situation comedy in comic book form. What situation comedies helped you in structuring and influencing Justice League International?

JM: We didn’t go in as a situation comedy. It evolved by itself. Keith Giffen’s plots were infused with a sense of humor that played perfectly off the action beats. I picked up on that, but we never sat down thinking that JLI was going to be a funny book and it would play like a sitcom. We discovered that as we went along.

That said, once we got rolling, and with Keith’s brilliant and hilarious plots provoking me, I was able to set my inner Silly Person free. All my comedy chops came out. JLI really gave me a venue for that side of myself and my writing — and it all came out of the characters. It wasn’t just jokes; it was character-based humor.

Find this today and buy it if you haven't already. Right now, if possible.

Mark: What were your comedy influences?

JM: What influenced me? Marx Brothers, Monty Python, Mel Brooks. All the classic comedies. Dick Van Dyke Show, Mary Tyler Moore, All in the Family, M*A*S*H. Seinfeld is a favorite, but I didn’t become a fan until JLI was over. I always say we were doing Seinfeld before Seinfeld, we beat them by a couple of years. Stories — allegedly — about nothing. (And, if you look at any given Seinfeld episode, those things are jewels of plotting. They only seem to be about nothing.) Those are just a few.

I’m a huge fan of old radio shows from the 40s and 50s. The Jack Benny radio show, which I discovered at the time I was writing JLI in the 80s, thanks to my local NPR stations, is some of the best comedy ever done. All growing out of a memorable group of characters. If anyone was Seinfeld before Seinfeld, it was Jack Benny. Same thing as JLI: running gags, building from week to week.

Mark : Oreos and J’onn J’onzz.

JM: Right, exactly! Woody Allen is also one of my biggest comedy influences. Once we got the book going, all those influences came exploding out. To go back to when we talked about Brooklyn, the banter between our JLI characters was very reminiscent of my friends in Brooklyn, that sharp banter that goes back and forth in the streets. That all played into the Justice League stories.

Mark: Reading it in the 80s in Brooklyn, it felt like the world I was in. It had a reality that wasn't the  "dark and grim" of the other "real" books. It felt like an evolution of comics. Playing on that, were there any characters that you wanted to use that you couldn't use?

JM: Honestly no. There was a lot of freedom. There were so many characters that showed up in those books over the years. Batman, Superman, Martian Manhunter. In Europe, Wally West, Wonder Woman. There was never a "If only we could write so and so". It never crossed my mind.

Mark: How was it writing Blue Beetle and Booster Gold?

JM: The great thing with those characters — and all characters, really — is when you're in 'the zone', you’re not writing them, they’re writing you. People say “What made you put Booster and Blue Beetle together?” We didn't! They did it! Blue and Gold were in some scenes together and something sparked. We followed them where they led us and this wonderful relationship developed that exists to this day.

BFF's helping a co-worker move some things

Mark: Are you excited by the Booster Gold and Blue Beetle movie?

JM: Don’t know if Blue Beetle will appear in the movie, but I hope he does. It’s being written by someone who has become a Twitter friend, Zack Stentz — who’s written for the recent Thor and X-Men movies, as well as the Flash TV show. So Booster’s in excellent hands.

Mark: Have you watched J'onn on [CBS's] Supergirl? I know he meant something to you during your run.

JM: Yes. I love his portrayal on that show. Wonderful actor, wonderful writing. He deserves his own spin-off.

Mark: You’ve done a lot of television work over the years. I LOVE the recent Brave and the Bold cartoon series. It’s such a great bridge between children’s stories and the Silver Age of DC. You wrote episodes about the Green Lantern Corps and Despero, the Son of Red Tornado, Doom Patrol and Justice League International

JM: Brave and the Bold was great because it’s one of those shows where so many people come up to me and say “I watch it with my 6 year old and we both love it.” Its really gratifying.

Mark: You got to do the Doom Patrol episode, The Last Patrol.

JM: Which if any 6 year old was watching, he would have been traumatized. (Laughter.) They gave me a few of them that were really dark. Like the Red Tornado one where he basically does a mercy killing and has to turn off his son. But, for the most part, there was a wonderful balance of light and dark, humor and serious character work. That perfect balance was thanks to producers James Tucker and Michael Jelenic. Great guys. And it was a great experience writing for The Brave and the Bold.

Tears, Trust me.

Mark: They did 3 weeks in a row where someone dies. I wonder if Cartoon Network had that play into their decision making on the show.

JM: I doubt it. “Let’s do all the death episodes in a row and traumatize the kids!”

Mark: In the Justice League International episodes, did they want similar comedy in the show?

JM: Those were really, really fun to do. The comedy didn’t go as far as we did in the comics, but the show definitely had a light touch, and I had a wonderful time writing those JLI episodes. It was an interesting interpretation of our characters: it was them, but it wasn’t — which is what adapting material is all about.

There was talk that Brave and the Bold would segue into a Justice League International TV series, but it never happened, which is too bad. I would pay them to let me write that. Well, almost!

Mark: I could see JLI being perfect for Adult Swim. A little subversive and very funny.

JM: I have an animation writer friend who’s been pitching a Super Buddies/JLI show for Cartoon Network. With the second tier characters in a store front, the way it was in our Formerly Known as the Justice League mini-series. It could be a great show.

Mark: I know writing comics for kids is something that is important to you. Were you allowed to write comic books for kids in the 80s?

JM: In the 80’s, after I wrapped up Moonshadow and Blood at Epic Comics, I pitched and sold a comic to DC called the Stardust Kid. And what I realized, after I’d written a few issues, was that the marketplace at the time couldn’t support a series like that. It just wasn’t there. So I actually bought it back. I had been paid a lot, but I bought it back, because I didn’t want it going out there dying.

Doing smart, literate children’s comics became a crusade for me. This led me eventually doing Abadazad with Mike Ploog and then resurrecting the Stardust Kid with Ploog and our Abadazad colorist Nick Bell. Right now I’m doing an all-ages series for IDW called the Adventures of Augusta Wind: The Last Story — out in August — which is a sequel to a series we did a couple of years ago. I wrote a kids novel called Imaginalis. So this kind of material is still very high on my list, that’s something that’s kid friendly, something a parent and child can sit down together and read and enjoy together.

Mark: Going back to Justice League, did Giffen ever want to bring Ambush Bug in Justice League or a character who would break the 4th wall?

JM: That never came up, but if you look at Justice League 3000 you will find, in certain issues, Ambush Bug hovering in the background. One of Keith’s wonderfully crazy plans, which we never got around to, is if the book was canceled Ambush Bug was going to show up and shut the whole thing down.

Mark: Is Justice League 3000/3001 over now?

JM: Yes, Keith, Howard Porter and I have moved on to Scooby Apocalypse.

Mark: Could you work Ambush Bug into the Scooby series?

JM: Is Ambush Bug allowed in the Hannah Barbara Universe?

Mark: Ambush Bug should be allowed to do what he wants to do. When the JLI and Justice League Europe took off in the 80s and you traveled to cons, did you get to go anywhere you had always wanted to go or excited to go?

JM: At that time no, but now international conventions have really started sprouting up and they seem to have money to bring lots of creators over. Last fall I went to both Spain and Greece. I’ve got cons coming up in India, Mexico and Germany. What’s really interesting is people come up with stacks of JLI books, and my Spider-man run, my creator-owned work. Its incredibly gratifying to see my work isn’t just appreciated here but it’s traveled around the world. Its amazing to me and profoundly gratifying.

Mark: Changing the subject a bit, how did you being a big fan of the Twilight Zone affect your stories?

JM: I grew up with the Twilight Zone and I’ve often wondered if its worldview shaped mine — or if watching that show touched something in me that I already knew to be true. In any case, I love it, it remains my favorite television show. And the essence of it — that the universe is alive and interactive, that life is far more magical and strange than we allow ourselves to believe — is very much a reflection of what I believe.

Mark: Did you ever want to write for Twilight Zone?

JM: I got to write for an episodes of the 80s Twilight Zone revival. It was great because it was my first TV sale and it was for the Twilight Zone. It wasn’t Rod Serling, but it was still amazing.

Mark: Finally, Guy Gardner and Maxwell Lord represent a certain type of macho, insensitive, type of leadership.

JM: Maxwell Lord was more multi-faceted than that. Guy Gardner was intentionally one-dimensional, but even he had his love affair with Ice to add another dimension.

Mark: How do you see that leadership emerging in today’s world? Anyone in today’s political world exhibit these traits?

Keith: (Laughs) Never thought of it until now. I can see Guy Gardner and Donald Trump sharing some traits. Even their funny haircuts. I would love to do Guy Gardner right now and give him a Trump haircut. It would be sensational.

Making the Green Lantern Corps great again.

Mark: Could you tell us about Imagination 101, your writing workshop that you will be running July 15th to the 17th in Kingston, NY?

JM: It’s a three-day workshop, talking about writing for comics and animation — and really the entire creative process, which really applies to all writing — from both the practical and metaphysical angles. It’s small, intimate and a lot of fun.

If anyone’s interested in coming to the next class, or any future classes, drop me a line at imaginationworkshops@gmail.com or go to the “workshops” section of my website: jmdematteis.com.

Mark: Thanks so much for speaking to DC in the 80s blog.

JM: A pleasure, Mark. Thanks!

©All images courtesy of Warner Bros. Animation and DC Comics. Except for the image of the cover of The Stardust Kid - we're assuming that would be from Image comics.

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Mark Belkin is a freelance writer and one helluva guy. Look for more articles from Mark in the future!