Today, DC Comics announced, via The Hollywood Reporter, that Steve Orlando (“Justice League of America,” “Apollo and Midnighter”) and Riley Rossmo (“Rasputin,” “Deathbed”) would be creating a new “Martian Manhunter” series. The 12-issue maxiseries will start this December. The series is both a detective story and one that ties into the character’s origins on Mars.
Martian Manhunter, aka J’onn J’onzz, debuted back in 1955, and has been a mainstay of the DC Universe more or less ever since. Currently, the character can be seen in the “Justice League” series by Scott Snyder, Jim Cheung, and Jorge Jimenez, as well as on Supergirl, portrayed by David Harewood. The last time J’onzz headlined his own series was the Rob Williams/Eddy Barrows series from 2015.
Orlando has been teasing a ‘dream project’ lately on social media, and has confirmed, via Twitter, that this is indeed that project. Orlando told the Hollywood Reporter:
He’s always been my favorite character since I was younger, so to be able to fire our best shot across the bow of doing an evergreen story with him, it’s super exciting. Everyday I’m writing, I just can’t believe it; there’s no character I wanted to work on more.
Orlando and Rossmo have worked together on two Batman-related titles: the ‘Night of the Monster Men’ crossover and the “Batman/The Shadow” miniseries. Rossmo had this to say about their working relationship:
I had so much fun with Night of the Monster Men. There’s a sequence at the beginning of it — the people at the morgue are infected and they start to bubble, and when I read that, I thought, ‘I like this guy.’ [Laughs] That was when I knew we’d do some good stuff. With Batman/The Shadow, we started with traditional script/art, but after the first couple of issues, we’d opened things up and there was a freedom that’s really exciting. I don’t feel constrained ever with Steve’s scripts.
Orlando shared the below cover by Rossmo, which is for an unnamed upcoming issue.
The book joins “Batman and the Outsiders” as major series launching from DC in December.
The Hollywood Reporter article also features some Rossmo process art, as well as a more in depth discussion as for what to expect from the series, plotwise.
