Villain Profile: Ma'alefa'ak

Having siblings can be a pain in the butt sometimes, but I am very glad to say that my brothers, my sister, and I have a much better relationship than various siblings of fiction. I’ve covered this point a few time already, but the next post makes me real glad that none of my siblings have a never ending quest for vengeance against me, or me against them. But I’ll cover that in a second, on with the show.

Resting a throne of corpses, subtle.

Ma’alefa’ak is the younger twin brother of J’onn J’onzz. On Mars, twins are very, very rare, and are usually considered a bad omen. As such, older brother was named J’onn meaning Light to the Light, and younger brother was named Ma’alefa’ak meaning Darkness in the Heart. Sigh, I mentioned this in J’onn’s profile, but seriously folks, even if you know without a shred of doubt that one of your children is going to turn out to be evil, ya still shouldn’t give them a name that's the equivalent to Lucifer Beelzebub McBadguy. Self-fulfilling prophecies folks! Speaking of self-fulfilling prophecies, we pretty much have one here. J’onn went on to be a successful Manhunter (police officer) and philosopher, while Ma’alefa'ak was pushed to the fringe of Martian society. It didn’t help that he lacked the ability to speak telepathically, which is a Martian’s primary means of communication. Ma’alefa'ak’s lack of telepathy is what lead to his plan to get vengeance against the rest of Mars. This is getting to be too much of a mouthful. From now on, I'll refer to him as Ma'al for short. Ma'al created a plague, which he named after the Martian god of Death and Darkness, H’ronmeer. H’ronmeer’s Curse quickly swept across the face of Mars. Any time a Martian attempted to speak with someone telepathically they would pass the infection on. A mark appeared on their forehead, and within a few days the infected Martian would burst into flame. Considering that Martian’s have a deeply rooted fear of fire, even the smallest amount of fire can cause a Martian to freeze up in fear, this was pretty much the worst way to go for them.

I’m not sure if Ma’al was aware of this, but his brother J’onn was tasked with disposing of the infected corpses, which later included J’onn’s wife and daughter. If he was, that must have been gravy to the insane Martian. Eventually, Ma’al believed himself to be the last Martian on Mars. He lived on the planet comfortably for centuries, unware that his brother was still alive, and that he was later transported across time and space to Earth. After learning of J’onn’s continued existence, he traveled to Earth to see the end of Martians once and for all. You’d think being left alone on a planet for a few hundred years would have cooled his temper a little, but sadly no. He became one of his brother’s most persistent and dangerous enemies. During one of their earlier encounters the brother’s underwent the G’amal’khul ritual, where the two traded a small portion of their psyches with one another. Hm... having a small bit of a close family member permanently lodged in one's brain? A bit of Scott or Amy I could handle, a little of Matt would probably drive me insane. But enough of my familial hypotheticals.

Someone is trying too hard to look bad ass.

The bit of Ma’al that was in J’onn made it his life goal to destroy J’onn for the inside out. He twisted J’onn’s memories, both of Earth and Mars, and constantly urged his brother towards suicide. Why the bit of J'onn in Ma'al didn't make him a better person, I'll never know. Eventually, Ma’al took control of his brother’s body and started causing trouble. This worked until J’onn, strengthened by the bits of his wife and daughter’s psychic essence that was also within him, force Ma’al back. In a later story it is revealed that Ma’alefa’ak’s perceived genetic defect was not, in fact, genetic. Apparently back on Mars, before engineering H’ronmeer’s curse, he was still a pretty bad dude. He used his telepathic powers on J’onn’s wife to, well, psychically rape her. He was punished by the ruling council of Mars, who put up mental barriers to cut Ma’al off from the rest of Mars, and then modified his memories so he believed that this was always the case. Given what he did later, I think that the Martian ruling council may have come to regret this decision. I’ll get back to this in a second.

Eventually, Ma’al used his shapeshifting powers to pose as J’onn and attack the Justice League. He personally tortured another extraterrestrial hero named Jemm, before confronting his brother directly. The twins were evenly matched, but J’onn got the upper hand in the end. He used his own telepathic powers to remove the telepathic blocks on Ma’al. Now, you may be thinking that giving Ma’al access to his telepathic powers would be a stupid thing, but with his telepathic powers comes the Martian intense pyro-phobia. J’onn had undergone several years of rigorous mental and physical training to help him combat this intense, crippling fear, but Ma’al hadn’t. The completely terrified Ma’al was trapped in a spaceship in close proximity to the sun. He just watched in terror as his body burst into flame. Like so many other villains that I’ve covered before, Ma’al wasn’t gone for good, he’d eventually return to menace J’onn once again.

Ma’alefa’ak possesses nearly all of the Martian powers inherent to his species. He’s incredibly strong and durable. He has complete control of his molecular structure which allows his to shapeshift, regenerate, increase or decrease his density, become intangible and invisible. He can use “Martian Vision,” high powered energy beams of energy fired from his eyes. He’s also telekinetic. Because, why not? While for most of his supervillain career he didn't have telepathy, reasons may vary, this was in at least one a benefit. Lacking telepathy for whatever reason also freed him of the crippling pryrophobia that plagues his species. He can handle fire just like anyone else, well, like any other superbeing.

Ma’al is an underused villain, appearing only in one DC series thus far.

Ma'al is never amused. Which is a pretty awful way to live,
not going to lie.

In the direct-to-DVD movie Justice League: Doom, he’s recruited by Vandal Savage to destroy his hated older sibling. Fun fact, J’onn and Ma’al are played by the same actor, Carl Lumbly, most likely to highlight the fact that they’re supposed to be twins. Ma’al shapeshifts into a leggy blonde, and buys J’onn a drink. Hm… I’m thinking a therapist would have a field day with Ma’al’s strategy here. Whatever, he buys J’onn a drink, spikes it, and J’onn rather stupidly drinks it. He then reveals his identity to J’onn, and reveals that the drink J’onn ingested was spiked with magnesium carbonate. J’onn was made physically ill by the chemical, and worse, his body tried to sweat it out. Ma’al then set his brother on fire. For those who don’t know, Magnesium burns hot, and continues to burn even when dosed in water. So, yeah, J’onn is pretty much screwed. He’d have burned to ashes had Batman not given Wonder Woman and Cyborg aluminum oxide which they injected into J’onn’s body. The aluminum oxide counteracted the magnesium. After recovering, a little, from the ordeal, J'onn joins the League as they assault the Legion of Doom's base. During the battle between the J L and the L of D, the J’onzz brothers fought it out by shapeshifting into various animals and monsters. The fight ends when J’onn drops out, and Ma’al is burnt to cinders by a rocket. Got to assume that J'onn needed a few therapy sessions after seeing his twin burn to death. No matter how much bad blood there is between brothers, seeing that would mess ya up.

Like Mirror Master yesterday, Ma’alefa’ak is a character that I don’t really know well enough to judge whether I like or dislike the character. Based entirely on the Justice League: Doom, he’s an incredibly creepy and dangerous character. His shapeshifting powers and seeming unending hatred for J’onn makes him a character that is incredibly difficult to track and very unpredictable. I wonder if this between him and J’onn would get better if the two of them just tried to hug it out. Probably best to not try that one out, as Ma’al would just try to stab J’onn in the back. He’s the evil, malevolent alien from Mars, Ma’alefa’ak. Next time, Wonder Woman’s feline foe, Cheetah.

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Hero Profile: Martian Manhunter

Happy Holidays, everybody. If you are wondering why I didn’t do a Christmasy themed post on either the twenty fourth or fifth, the short answer is, once again, poor time management skills. That, and I really don’t know too many superheroes that are staunch enough Christians to warrant giving them the holiday spot like I did Magneto. So, there you go. On with the show. Today, I’ll be discussing J’onn J’onzz, the Martian Manhunter. This is going to be weird.

Do you have a problem with pants
J'onn?

Eons ago the planet we know as Mars was a world brimming with life. The natives called their world Ma’aleca’andra. Mouthful. The planet was home to two species of shapeshifters, the peaceful Green Martians, and the warmongering White Martians. The Greens, somehow, were the dominant variation of Martian. A Martian couple M’yrnn (male) and Sha’sheen (female) were given the odd gift of twin sons. Apparently, twins among Martians is almost unheard of, and as such the couple were… less than thrilled by the prospect. The older of the two boys was named J’onn J’onzz, which means ‘Light to the Light’ and the younger son was named Ma’alefa’ak, which means ‘Darkness in the Heart.’ Sigh, people, even if you are one hundred percent sure your kid will eventually be evil, you shouldn’t help them along by naming the child something equivalent to Satan Beelzebub McBadguy! Jeeze. J’onn grew up to become a Manhunter, the Martian equivalent of a police officer, as well as an amateur philosopher. He had a family and was all around a happy man…alien…thing.

Ma’alefa’ak was less happy. Apparently he lacked the ability to communicate telepathically, the Martian’s main form of communication. Regarded as a freak and a monster by everyone, great parenting J’onzz’s, Ma’alefa'ak grew to despise Martian culture. Being a lover of Irony, he devised a way to punish the greater part of the Martian society by using the ability denied to him by nature. He created a virus which he named H’ronmeer’s Curse. H’ronmeer is the Martian God of Death and Darkness, appropriate. The virus attacked Martian’s via their telepathy. Any Martian that telepathically communicated with the infected would they themselves be infected, receive a symbol of H’ronmeer on their forehead, and shortly after burst into flame. Martian’s also suffer from sever pyrophobia, so this was like a double slap of terror. J’onn was one of the last Martians left alive, and spent most of his time disposing of the dead. Before he could enact his vengeance on his brother, or succumb to the virus himself, J’onn was transported across time and space by Dr. Saul Erdel.

That's a scary face. Probably a scary punch
And scariest of all is that he can kill you with
a thought.

Erdel used ancient Martian tech to make what he thought was a communication device, which turned out to be a teleporter. J’onn came across about 500 years or so to end up in Erdel’s lab. Suffering from some understandably awful psychological scars, J’onn was half insane and incredibly unstable. Erdel was the first organism J’onn had seen in years that he was 100% sure was not infected and his mind instantly connected with Erdel. The link showed Erdel all of J’onn’s tragic history, and the cause of his psychosis. Over the course of a few weeks Erdel helped restore J’onn’s sanity and gave J’onn the idea to become a human champion. J’onn, being a Martian and thus a shapeshifter, took on a more human appearance and superhero costume. Erdel, being an old scientist that clearly didn’t get out much, had a heart attack and died. Damn.

J’onn created the identity of John Jones and became a police officer. For all those things that a police officer of the DC-verse can’t handle, he was the Martian Manhunter, a green alien of immense power. He helped form the Justice League and was the one member to remain with it through all of it’s incarnations. The Green man from Mars desires two things, to safeguard his new home, and to perhaps find survivors of Mars.

Martians possess a number of supernatural abilities. They can shapeshift into different people, organisms, sexes, grow or shrink to absurd sizes, and change colors. This also allows him to repair from immense damage, harden his body, and absorb just about any amount of kinetic force. Oh, and his superhuman, er super-Martian, immune system protects him from terrestrial disease. So, no War of the Worlds ending for J’onn. He can change his body to reflect light, rendering him invisible to the naked eye. He is both telekinetic and telepathic. He can fly, move at super speeds, see into the infrared and electromagnetic spectrum, hear from great distances, and breath with the force of a jet engine. He’s also an experienced detective. He’s basically what would happen if you took DNA from Superman, Batman, Mr. Fantastic, and Jean Grey, mixed them together and dyed him green. Scary as hell. Oh, and he can take his molecules out of phase, allowing him to pass through solid objects as if they weren't there. Like he needs more power.

See J'onn? Was that so hard?

Despite his immense powers, he has an intense fear of fire. It is something all but encoded in his DNA. And his experiences during the plague of his people didn’t help this. It’s a fear so intense that it causes him to lose his powers. If it is a particularly intense fire it causes him to lose control of his shapeshifting powers, turning him into a pile of goo. Messy. Also, he has an extreme addiction to cookies. They're like Crack to him.

J’onn is a very popular alien visitor, appearing in a number of DC material.

He was a founding member of the Justice League in the animated version of the series. In this version he’s the last surviving member of his race after a race of aliens assaulted Mars. He remained alone on Mars watching over the monsters, until humanity landed on Mars while he was in a hibernation cycle. The aliens escaped, assaulted Earth, and J’onn followed. He joined the JLA and became one of their most powerful members. In the episode Tabula Rasa, J’onn becomes disillusioned with the “selfish human race,” and spends most of the episode in his Martian form deep in a forest. To be alone with his thoughts. Naturally. His faith is restored when he witnesses a group of humans searching for a little girl and sees and ‘hears’ via telepathy, how far these people are going for someone they don’t even know. His last, greatest contribution is against he Amazo android. The machine has the power to copy superhuman powers, and for most of the episode the JLA keep J’onn away from the fight, fearing what Amazo could become if he got the Martian’s powers. When J’onn finally does join, Amazo uses his new telepathy to realize he was being used by the insane Lex Luthor, and leaves the planet.

The human John Jones. You only know
he's Martian when he's eyes glow red.

He doesn’t do much in the sequel show Justice League Unlimited, in fact he barely leaves the Watchtower for most of the show, and when he finally does go on a mission afterwards he goes on a sabbatical to reconnect with humanity for the rest of the shows run. Despite this, he is instrumental in fighting off Darkseid’s invading army in the series finale. Apparently, while on his sabbatical, he moved to China, got married, and enjoyed his sort of retirement. In his remaining scenes he is shown to be much warmer and open then when he left, even taking the moment to call his wife and assure her he’d be home for dinner. Good Guy, J’onn J’onzz. Er, John Jones. Or a Chinese equivalent to that.

He is an important character in the live action Smallville. In this he was portrayed by Phil Morris, whom had been Vandal Savage in the JLA series. In the first episode where he's introduced "Static," he saves Clark from an escaped alien prisoner from the Phantom Zone. He is formally introduced in "Labyrinth" where he saves Clark from another Phantom that entered Clark's mind in an attempt to gain control of his body. The Phantom creates a complex delusion to convince Clark that he's insane and the last six years of his life was part of an elaborate fantasy. Clark escapes partially thanks to J'onn, and partially thanks to the family dog. After this he serves as a mentor for young Clark for a good portion of the show. He has a great respect for Clark and his potential, even going so far as to fly him to the Sun to restore his powers, even though it cost J’onn his own. He’s just a Metropolis Police Detective, and friend of Clark's for the eight and half the ninth season, until the mystical Doctor Fate restored J’onn’s powers just before he was stabbed to death. This is also the one and only time that we see J’onn in his true Martian form, after Fate pushes him backwards we see a flash of him in his green skin and Mars before passing out..It's not the best design, but true to the character's roots. He helps the joint JSA and future JLA stop the villainous Icicle from killing them all. He also loves Oreo's, very true to his original character.

He appears a few times in Young Justice. In this version of events, he is the Uncle of M’gann M’orzz, aka Miss Martian, the YJ’s resident Martian and telepath. This show differs from the comics in that Mars is still heavily populated, in M’gann’s and J’onn’s relationship, and in the fact that I guess Martian’s have big families. Apparently J’onn has hundreds of nieces. Just. Nieces. If Martian families are that big, I highly doubt twins are that rare.

I’ve liked J’onn since I saw Justice League as a kid. He was mysterious, powerful, and, well, lonely. I really like the stranger in a strange land style of character. He’s seen the absolute worst that sentient life can do to itself, the horrors of genocide, and yet he doesn’t let it break him. All he wants is to protect life. And I have to respect that. The combination of immense physical strength and mental prowess is a rare one, and J’onn pulls it off wonderfully. He can rip you to shreds, shatter your mind, or hurl you into space, but he won’t do that because he’s a standup guy. He’s the marvelous, malleable, magnificent Martian Manhunter. Next time, I’ll be going in depth about one of my favorite super-powered ladies, Captain Marvel.

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martian_Manhunter

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