Absolute Martian Manhunter #8: Time Away

The White Martian is at it again in Absolute Martian Manhunter #8. Unfortunately John is still mired in his personal life which has grown progressively more fraught since meeting the Green Martian. The new threat isn’t exactly clear. So far it’s manifesting in spouses reporting each other to the police, in kids reporting parents, in neighbors reporting neighbors. Rather than rush to get to the bottom of the problem, though, John goes out to drown his sorrows at a bar and insist that the Martian leave him alone for a night.

Absolute Martian Manhunter #8 is a busy comic. After the last issue delivered a relatively quiet experience coming back from hiatus, Camp and Rodriguez dial the intensity back up here. The issue’s opening pages are even confusing to a point as John’s boss and the Martian “talk” over each other about what’s going on. John’s boss’s lunch even gets involved in the “conversation.” The scene throws a lot at the reader, and the vague nature of what’s going on makes it difficult to follow.

Part of why this scene reads with such in-your-face intensity are the lettering choices. John’s internal monologue is in a caption box. His boss’s dialogue is ordinary bubbles. The Martian’s thoughts in John’s head are in a different and lighter font, presented in clouds. The chicken strips’ dialogue is colored text of yet a different font set against colored dialogue bubbles. These different presentations have the visual feel of a cell phone that’s blowing up with notifications–loud and insistent.

This new White Martian plot isn’t the story’s focus, though. Events have finally pushed John near a breaking point, and Camp spends the issue examining how John feels being joined at the hip to the Martian. The series has touched on this in brief moments in past issues, but Absolute Martian Manhunter #8 spends almost the entire issue on the subject. It makes for fascinating reading.

John’s desire to have time away from the Martian is understandable. The Martian isn’t merely a companion who constantly interrupts John, he’s the catalyst for a completely different sense of perception. John’s life is a loud one as a result. This is especially evident during the bar sequence in Absolute Martian Manhunter #8. John has gone to a dive bar to decompress after work. But rather than getting some peace and relaxation, his continued Martian Vision is letting him see his fellow customers’ thoughts in a psychedelic array and the Martian himself appears all over the place. Regardless of John’s intent in trying to relax, the bar is no less busy a place than everywhere else.

The result is John insisting on having a night alone, at which point he goes home to see his estranged wife Bridgett. With the Martian gone, the sequences featuring the two characters are visually ordinary. No strange images or colors intrude on them. It’s reminiscent of the earliest moments in Absolute Martian Manhunter #1 before John encountered the Martian. Rodriguez’s art is so expressive and unusual in most issues, it’s easy to forget how quiet and tender his compositions can be.

These bar scenes serve to underscore how integral Rodriguez’s work is to the overall storytelling. The fantastical coloring and images aren’t simply embellishment for the series. They let the reader experience the world as John does. The result is an abstract quality that can border on distracting at times (especially when the Martian is interacting with seemingly fluid surroundings), but the value of seeing through John’s eyes rather than simply reading descriptions can’t be measured.

Color is so important to the series that the issue’s closing pages, when the Martian is attacked by characters and weapons depicted in grayscale, are jarring. The Martian is confronted with something that feels completely foreign.