Absolute Martian Manhunter #11: Crack!

Absolute Martian Manhunter #11 demands familiarity with the series’ first issue. In truth, being very familiar with the entire series is helpful. But the first issue especially is essential because a key component of this issue is a question of John’s true relationship with the Martian which ostensibly began in Absolute Martian Manhunter #1.

Despero is in John’s head for almost all of Absolute Martian Manhunter #11. As has been the case since Despero came into the picture, he leans heavily into John’s potential for self-destruction. This time, though, Despero also pushes hard on the relationship between John and the Green Martian. This is where the need to be conversant with Absolute Martian Manhunter #1 comes in. Despero calls into question John and the Green Martian’s entire relationship as well as a lot of what the Green Martian has said. Was he reliable the whole time?

John and Despero’s interaction also delves back into John’s past, specifically a little bit more about how he ended up in this less glamorous job. This exploration gets worked into both John’s self-destructive tendencies and Despero’s claim that the Green Martian has been manipulating him. Absolute Martian Manhunter #11 is the deepest examination of John yet.

Accompanying Despero’s introduction in Absolute Martian Manhunter #9 was a marked increase in the series’ recent cracks visual motif. The crack visual clue began almost on the first page of Absolute Martian Manhunter #7. Jagged cracks themselves started appearing, often accompanied by an equally jagged CRACK sound effect. They did not start out especially subtle, but at the same time in a series as visually loud as this one, it was easy for these cracks to be lost in the background and forgotten. Absolute Martian Mahunter #11 pushes the cracks to the foreground, making them a dominant visual element throughout the issue. A crack even appears in a key location on this issue’s cover. The natural question, helpfully answered by Despero assuming one is willing to believe him, is what the cracks are.

Camp performs a wonderful bit of fourth wall breaking when Despero and John clash over the goodness of humanity. Despero offers readers the chance to prove their goodness by printing a kind of coupon on the bottom of a page that asks readers to cut it out to keep from seeing the violence on the other side. What comic book reader is about to do that?

The issue doesn’t spend a lot of time with John’s son Tyler, the seeming big bad of these second six issues. In the few appearances Tyler has, he is surrounded by white smoke, a growing visual motif in the series. Rodriqguez has built color up into such a key visual component of the series that its absence signals a threat of some kind. This was the case when the Agency captured the Green Martian and he was surrounded by black and dark shades of gray–a color scheme that extended even to the people. The white smoke is an opposite choice on the color spectrum though no less frightening as it surrounds Bridget.