Metaphysics seeks to understand the fundamental underpinnings of reality, where the nature of reality is called into question through an exercise in the aesthetics of cosmic horror. One feature of cosmic horror capitulates on the concept of trans-corporeality. This is a common strain of possession horror—demons in the body of children, ghosts inhabiting humans to ward off other humans—all these tropes interrogate the boundaries between oneself and the other, and the consequences of blurring corporeal reality with the transcendent. In Absolute Martian Manhunter, Deniz Camp, Javier Rodriguez and Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou draw upon study of relativity, and a metaphysical interconnectedness of humans to the primordial elements of the unknown.
Despite having only recently debuted in the 2016, Camp has quickly gained notoriety for his satirical but piercing voice on the pulse of today’s issues, while reshaping them for the superhero genre. Evidently, Deniz Camp has been no stranger to taking radical changes in his work. Of all the Absolute titles, Absolute Martian Manhunter is the furthest from the characters’ original narrative, and thank Camp for that. Martian Manhunter first appeared in 1955 as a green martian able to morph into his adopted persona, going from J’onn J’onzz to John Jones. Notably, this new iteration splits these two identities into two separate and polar entities…or so it appears.
The protagonist of this story is John Jones, an FBI agent with a cerebral but esoteric combination of scruffy ginger hair and piercing blue eyes set in a near permanent morose expression. He is recently recovering from an explosion, an incident that left him battered but otherwise intact. A final check-up at the doctor reveals no serious physical defects, save for one small, eerie detail. “Where’s all this smoke coming from?” he asks, a question that signals the beginning of his unraveling.
John Jones lives what appears to be a quaint life, free of major concerns. We meet his doting wife Bridget outside the hospital, and later their child in a nice, but plain, suburban home. Jones lacks any sort of neuroses; He is without want or need, and so while his general apathy makes for dry conversation, his detachment allows him to continue his duties as a behavioural specialist for the FBI. In his world, there must be little room for phenomena, making his indifference an almost necessary adaptation to analyse his targets without interference. Naturally, Jones’ personality doesn’t go unnoticed. His colleagues, noting his cold demeanor, refer to him as “the Martian.” Despite the normalcy he has earned thus far in life, he remains an outsider, or worse, an imposter.
The oppressive atmosphere seeps into every crevice, creating an underlying disgust and revelation: humans can be possessed. They are potential vessels for something else, their bodies will not always be their own. This idea is especially haunting in the context of the Jones family home. Designed as a sanctuary, it now houses something perverse, something oppressive. A wife feels she is sleeping next to an other. A child perceives something beyond the limits of childlike imagination. And the house itself is slowly filling with a dense and dreadful air.
The amorphous creature cohabiting this story defies quantification, its form is an ever-shifting mass, made of topographies of biomorphic goop. Jones’ son Tyler makes clay figures of himself and his mother in a simple recreation of reality. When John asks where his own image is recreated, Tyler points to an eerie statue. A green humanoid stretching its red arms, and staring out with a singular red cyclopic eye. Within the confines of house-shaped panels, the safety of the home is preserved, but outside, danger awaits. At the top margins of the page, Jones’ son fashions a tooth here, a primitive face there, and various colonies of bacteria-like clay, and below, the martian figure. It is as if something ancient, something foreign, is pressing through the seams of the known world. Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou’s lettering brings a novel energy to the dialogue of the Martian with a scratchy rectangular hand, invoking a style akin to both inscription and code.
Javier Rodriguez brings a sense of fluidity and ease in each page, pushing beyond the borders of the page. A benefit brought upon by being both artist and colourist is that both conform and complement the shaping of one another. Throughout his works, such as Mariko Tamaki’s Zatanna: Bring Down The House (2024), Al Ewing’s Defenders (2021) & Defenders Beyond (2022) and many more, Rodriguez has demonstrated time and again his ability to colour his work with meticulous control and restrain the page to communicate contrast in negative. Here is no exception. One striking instance shows a distant overhead view of the Jones family home. The black paved driveway adjacent to the house appears more like a shadow, giving the impression that the house is suspended in the air. The yellowed page being used as the white tile of a floor, the whites of Jones’ eyes, the outline of his portrait, all these instances economise the visual information of the eye to its rudimentary shapes, allowing a reader to engage and fill the gaps on their own.
Colour-wise, Rodriguez employs a yellow-tinted technicolour palette to set each scene to a careful emotion. Between dreary and monochromatic panels of John and Bridget’s interactions, vibrant chrome slips briefly into the panel as an intruder, before leaving the world as dull as it was before. As the story goes on, these streams of colour clog and suffocate more and more of the page. Colour becomes a medium in its own right, absorbing thought bubbles, materializing image and memory, and expelling text.
The real peril that follows John Jones’ to the end of this issue fittingly culminates in his meeting his tormentor and companion. Jones’ free will is threatened by the notion that he must submit to an entity entirely enmeshed with the world and its people. No longer can he be his own, but as the Martian invades his body, so too does Jones become subsumed into the world. His own thoughts mixed with the Martian’s, the thoughts of others mixed with his, you and I becoming “we”.
Absolute Martian Manhunter has been nothing short of a revelation to read. In one issue, Deniz Camp, Javier Rodirguez and Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou infuse a richness of visual language and writing that reveals more and more with every reread. It’s not often that I have had the pleasure of rediscovery in a single issue, but I wholly embrace it.