Adam Graham's Blog: Christians and Superheroes - Posts Tagged "showcase-presents"

Showcase Presents: Martian Manhunter, Vol. 2 by Jack Miller

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This second volume of Martian Manhunter stories is not up to the standard of the first. The book starts out with 22 stories in Detective Comics where Manhunter is pretending to be John Jones, Detective. That set up was really played out. The strip gave Manhunter a pet/sidekick in the strange alien creature Zook. The character wasn't annoying but also didn't really help the series. John Jones was killed off as the series moved to being a back up in House of Mystery.

The House of Mystery strips were better. Most months, the idol-head of Diabolu would create some new nightmare creature for him to battle most months. Fighting monsters of the month aren't great comic stories, but they were fair.

The final House of Mystery stories were the best in the book as Manhunter tried to take down a criminal organization known as Vulture and discover its leader, the mysterious Faceless. I love the 1960s spy motif. These are mostly fun stories, even though the solution is utterly illogical.

Overall, this isn't a bad Silver Age collection, but there are a lot better ones. This isn't as good as the first volume.



View all my reviews