The Case for Mr. Jones

I don't usually get much help here writing the Absorbascon, so imagine my surprise when one of the DCU's darkest stars contacted me asking politely (with gun in hand) to do a guest column, or two. Apparently, his interest was sparked by all the recent chatter on the likely impending doom of everyone's favorite ice-cream conjurer, J'onn J'onzz. And who am I to say no to an armed lunatic?

So, with no further ado, I turn it over to former District Attorney Harvey Dent, who present in the next day or two the Cases For and Against the Martian Manhunter.

Thank you, Scipio, for your kindness in permitting me this public forum; call me "Harvey" again and I'll shoot you in the leg.


The Case for the Defense, by Two-Face

Today, you are being asked to decide whether Mr. John Jones, a.k.a. the Martian Manhunter, should die.

But for what crime? Has he violated the heroic code by killing, just as Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman have all done in the past? No. Mr. Jones is being condemned simply because he is in the wrong place and the wrong time. He's significant enough for his death to provide great impact and gravity for DC's latest orgy of cross-contuity, Final Crisis (itself the mad scheme of a writer known for his lunatic excesses), but not popular enough to stave off execution. He is guilty of no crime of character himself, but is the scapegoat DC is sacrificing to keep its more salable icons alive, like some bizarre form of Shirley Jackson's Lottery.

The only true crime here is the impending execution of Mr. Jones by the Editorship of DC Comics -- a waste of inhuman life and character potential it entails.

Mr. Jones is a heroic icon of the DCU, consistently holding his own alongside its greatest heroes. Indeed, while it would be naive to place him on the same level as the Heroic Trinity of Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman, it can be argued that he is above Flash and Green Lantern in status. They have been repeatedly replaced, becoming almost roles more than characters; Mr. Jones, on the other hand, remains one of a kind.

Mr. Jones is an outstanding character. He has shown himself to be infinitely adaptable and usable in a wide variety of stories and situations. He works well in a group or in short solo adventures and he can do high drama or dry comedy. He can be a hardboiled gumshoe, and international spy (as he was during his Marco Xavier days), or a sci-fi marvel. He can be a tragic loner or a well-adjusted mentor. He is as versatile a character as Batman or Superman. More so, in fact, which probably accounts for his longevity and multi-media exposure (despite getting second-class treatment from the Editorship).

The Prosecution may seek to turn Mr. Jones' success on its head, trying to convince you that a character so unable to fulfill his potential after 30 years has lost his right to live with his fellow JLAers. But isn't that the point? Isn't that the crux of Mr. Jones' problems? When we speak of Mr. Jones, we do not compare him to the lesser lights of the DCU, the 99 percent of our fellow characters who are less famous, less intriguing, less adaptable. Do we compare him to the Huntress, or Liberty Belle, or even Firestorm? No; we compare him only to DCU's first rank of heroes (Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern, and Aquaman). Who among us would not suffer by such a comparison?

Although most characters have never made it to another medium, Mr. Jones is continually before the public eye. He was a stand-out character in both the Justice League Unlimited animated series and animated film based on Darwin Cooke's New Frontier, two of the most popular iterations of the Justice League since its inception. He guest-starred on Smallville and was the central figure in the unaired JLA pilot. If the paper page has not favored Mr. Jones, the television lens loves him, and that alone should be reason to preserve him!

It's true that the Defendant has never had sufficient popularity to maintain his own series for very long. But is that a crime, and one punishable by death? If so, most heroes in the DCU would be dead. Now that his series is over, will we be putting Krypto to sleep? This madness must stop, ladies and gentlemen of the jury. Misguided editorial bloodlust has already claimed Mr. Jones' longtime close friend, Mr. Curry. And we did nothing. We stood by and watched, and were simply relieved it wasn't us. If DC's Pen of Death can fell the likes of Aquaman and the Martian Manhunter, then are any of us safe? Am I next? If we do not stop this sort of thing, how long before we are reading something like "Batman R.I.P."?

I submit to you that if Mr. Jones' deserves to die, then so do all those of us not among the top six of our respective roles, be they hero, villain, or supporting castmember. Is that the kind of universe you want to live in or read about?

The writers of the past, the men who created me, Mr. Jones, and perhaps you, were men of limitless imagination, who often colored outside the lines of what some might call "continuity". They could put more interest and potential meaning in a five-page Martian Manhunter back-up story then went into the entire run of Countdown. Yet we deride those men as hacks, just because they were more interested in telling an intriguing story than in real-world-style plotting. But they knew the difference between the horse and the hay; they knew that "continuity" is simple fodder for feeding stories, not the other way around.

But now our destinies are controlled by "writers" whose main tool for character development is character assassination (in either sense of that phrase), with Mr. Jones their latest victim. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, make no mistake. I am not trying to convince you that Mr. Jones is without flaw or his continuity record spotless. Far from it. But he is interesting, iconic, and popular. Don't let DC waste that; make the Editorship challenge a writer to use Mr. Jones to his full potential rather than bumping him off for a month's worth of shock value. Do you want literature and philosophy in your comics or merely bread and circuses? How you decide on the fate of Mr. Jones may very well determine exactly that, so consider wisely the ramifications of this debate, not just for Mr. Jones, but for yourselves as well....