Martian Manhunter #12 Review and *SPOILERS*

I Wasn't Built As A Weapon, I Was Built To Have People Inside of Me

Written By: Rob Williams
Art By: Ben Oliver, Gabe Eltaeb, Tom Napolitano
Cover Price: $2.99
Release Date: May 18, 2016

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

It's been a long strange run of Martian Manhunter in his attempt to bring back the dead Mars from the past..... and at times seeming like he was trying to prevent it as well, but it's all over now folks.  No more Martian Manhunter....... and I blame you.  Yeah, that's a dick thing to say, but it's crazy to me that this book didn't do better because this is definitely one of the best books to come out of the DCYou last June.  The story so far is all about getting the Martian refugees that have been brought back with the Mars from the past off the planet before it's destroyed and thanks to Alicia showing the living embodiment of the planet that people aren't all dicks, the being lets the barriers around the planet down and Martian Manhunter and Pearl....... in the shape of gigantic war city mechs attempt to get to safety.  Too bad that Mr. Biscuits wasn't around for this because who wouldn't have wanted him talking about cookies at the end of this book.  Let's jump into this issue and see if Earth is saved and if Martian Manhunter can live his dream of not being the last of his kind.  Let's check it out.

Explain It!:

Our final issue of Martian Manhunter is pretty straight forward in that our hero is trying to enter the beam that the moon Phobos is blasting at the Earth and where I wasn't to sure what was going on with Phobos in the previous couple of issues, here it seems that this blast is acting as a gateway between Mars of the past and Earth of the present.  That's why only our magical heroes could see Mars colliding towards Earth because it wasn't actually in the same time........ at least that's the way I understand it.  This book, for as straight forward as it is when we begin is still out there and Martian Manhunter's complex inner monologue doesn't do much to help that out.  What I do know though is that Mars is dying as it was in the past and the living embodiment of the planet plans on returning it to its rightful time and place so that it can die like it original did...... and or should.  Besides for the complex nature of this book, one thing that really threw me off was the fact that Agent Wessel just falls over and dies here because after we saw the dead Mr. Biscuits give him a telepathic..... or subconscious pep talk, I really thought that Wessel was good, especially after he came to the rescue in the nick of time and killed Ma'alefa'ak.  That's something else that I didn't see coming.  Not only is Mr. Biscuits actually dead, but so if Ma'alefa'ak.  Martians sure do seem to die easy in this book.  Before Agent Wessel shuffles off his mortal coil, he asks the embodiment of Mars to send Alicia back to Earth so she can be a child again because no one deserves to grow up in a war torn land and I know that we've got blood magic going on and planets making themselves look like children, but this seems like a tall order........ but it's the final issue and I'm not about to start trying to make sense of something else here.  I'm just going to sit back and enjoy myself until something crazy happens.

Oh shit!  Something crazy happened.  After Pearl and J'onn crash land on Earth in their giant war city mechs, Martian Manhunter becomes his old self again and I was thinking while reading this that no one in that mech survived because of how hard the impact of the landing was, but that becomes a mute point when we find out that all of the Martians that J'onn was trying to save didn't make the trip across time and space and when the embodiment of Mars shut down the gateway and went back to die, all of the Martian refugees were sent back to their rightful time and place as well.  That's a harsh ass burn to our hero.......... but goddamn the hits just keep on coming.

In the end, Martian Manhunter finds out when he's confronted by a psychic image of Ma'alefa'ak that he in fact has gone crazy after all those millions of years in isolation and has created not only the good separate personalities of himself, but he's also created Ma'alefa'ak and all the White Martians so that he could play out a crazy narrative, while all the while forgetting that he had created them.......... that's right, Martian Manhunter is fucking nuts......... If that wasn't enough, we also had to take care of Pearl, who survived this issue and to add to the rest of the "WTF" moments, she pleads to be able to stay human and Martian Manhunter simply re-absorbs her.  As our issue closes, we look at Martian Manhunter a little stranger, but Alicia gives us hope that J'onn will keep up being a good guy because she's back to her child self and still believes in the stick legged insect man who wanted to be good. 

That's it for this series of Martian Manhunter and Rob Williams didn't hold back anything for this run of our favorite Martian.  All these concepts were so out there for this character, who before this series I thought I knew, but goddamn did Rob come around and reassure me that I don't know shit.  While at times this series was a struggle to keep up with what was actually going on, it rarely ever got boring and like this issue, I had a good time pretty much the whole way through.  This is just the craziest ending though and I think it's going to split its audience by being something that's really loved or something that's really hated because it comes out of nowhere....... kinda...... This ending is so crazy that it makes sense that Martian Manhunter would be too and even though I think the audience for this will be split, I ended up really loving it in the end because it told an interesting story and still was able to put Martian Manhunter back in the toy box as good as new for when someone else wants to play with him.  The art, like the rest of the series was great and this is definitely a issue to check out and since this is one long story arc from the first issue to this, you'd be better off picking up the whole series.

Bits and Pieces:

Martian Manhunter came along this issue and broke my heart by it simply being the last because man was it a good series.  It's been a long hard road with this run, what with its far out concepts and what can generally be called mind fucks, but like this issue it's been a fun ride and hardly boring.  Everything you thought you knew about J'onn is flipped on its head here and with amazing art all the way through, this is definitely a finale you won't want to miss.

9/10