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The Martian and the Chocolate Monkey

Sometimes comics pay homage by satire, though this can often do much to undermine the dignity of the target of such homage. However, truths about the core silliness of a concept don't always appear in full relief - naked and free of concealment typical of tact and euphemism - until the light changes.

John Ostrander, therefore, by the addition of a single new element, took the essential concept of Marvel's Hulk and made what tragedy remains (after recurrent exhaustions of the core idea) become ridiculous.

From tragedy to comedy, the transformation required no more than a cookie.

Peccish in a World He Never Made

If someone managed somehow to live a few years without ever running into a comic book or television show (or, for that matter, a video game or action figure) pertaining to the Hulk, we could nonetheless make such an innocent understand the concept with only a brief explanation. To conceive the essential Hulk - that core version underlying various interpretations of the character since the sixties - we need only mention the idea of a physically weak but brilliant scientist who, in times of stress or anger, becomes a giant green rampaging brute able to pummel his way through steel walls.

This equation has considerable potential for melodrama, particularly in the ability of such an affliction to ruin someone's life (as well as take the life of the occasional unfortunate bystander). However, if we transform the concept only slightly - from a crisis of temper to a ludicrous addiction - commiseration becomes derision in very short order.

So, then, we encounter the idea behind Ostrander's inversion of the Hulk premise. In Martian Manhunter #24, the Martian relates a new tale from the Giffen - DeMatteis Justice League period. True to form, the trouble begins with a puerile prank conceived and executed by Booster Gold and the Blue Beetle, who, hoping to work on the nerves of their leader, hide his Oreo-analog cookies.

The scope of the prank, however, goes far beyond this; the pair ferret out and dispose of a number of hidden caches of the mass-produced cookie which the Manhunter keeps on the Justice League premises. And, evidently (mis)using a convenient nest egg, the ill-intentioned duo dispose of that brand of cookie everywhere within several miles of headquarters, concentrating their haul in a warehouse a few miles away, lest the Martian Manhunter discover some supply and thereby forego Choco withdrawal.

Yet even this does not complete their evil master plan. What good would it do them to plunge the last remaining Martian into an abyss of chocolate-deprived misery if they could not benefit from seeing his misery in exquisite detail? Therefore, they patch Justice League telecommunications hardware into the video security cameras of various stores within the target radius, to sit and watch the hilarity as the Martian Manhunter wanders from store to store seeking his fix.

At the first store, Booster and Beetle realize something is going terribly wrong. The Manhunter, entering the store in human guise, embarks on a rant demanding his cookies, and, when the clerk admits to having no such item in stock, J'onn begins his Hulk-like rampage, turning huge and dumb, returning to his natural green hue, and starting to bust up the place.

No primal and infantile anger drives him, though, unlike Marvel's tragic creation of the sixties; no rage at man's inhumanity to man (and, for that matter, Martians); no sixties-hip inner demon evokes the rampage. Instead, an uncompromising need for cookies drives the Manhunter into a green-skinned postal episode. The Heart and Soul of the Justice League becomes a monster for want of chocolate.

Munchies and Rampages

At this point, the story enters full-Hulk mode, with a rampaging green giant - the chocolate-deprived Manhunter from Mars - storming through the city, demanding cookies, and bounding from spot to spot in a combined attempt to locate a package of the remedy to his affliction and to make his tormentors suffer for having deprived him in the first place.

But for the haircut - in general, the least important aspect of the various incarnations of the Incredible Hulk - the Martian serves as a ringer for the purple-pants era version of the tormented Bruce Banner. His speech degrades, with his intellect, to the ludicrous Hulksprach that made years of Incredible Hulk books an embarrassment for those caught reading them. His fists begin to fly, his clothing shreds, and he pounds through physical obstacles between himself and his goal.

From the first moment of the rampage, Booster and Beetle realize the fundamental karmic wrongness of the prank; consider, if you will, the consequences likely to attach to anything that provokes into a rage a being with strength within a power of ten of Superman's. However, the form of the Booster and Beetle story always involved the great gap between their powers of foresight (stunted) and hindsight (forced on them by the inevitable collapse of their plans).

The hapless pair of incompetent pranksters, thinking of damage control in the short term even as they dread the inescapable consequences they know will befall them in the long, lead the Martian to their warehouse stash. The mentally stunted Manhunter bites the bait they provide, plunging through a roof into the warehouse packed with cookie contraband, and the Martian then begins an eating rampage on a scale with the violent one he just left (a binge somewhat reminiscent of a number of similar scenes depicted by Gilbert Shelton in Wonder Wart-Hog and Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers tales).

Though the ground stops its troublesome shaking once J'Onn could fill his green face with Choco cookies, a parade of flashing lights and uniformed policemen arrive on the scene to contain and control the situation. Booster and Beetle realize the trouble that will follow, but the Martian Manhunter serenely refuses to acknowledge any particular matter having gone amiss, and the principals find themselves before a kind of internal Justice League tribunal.

Paying the Piper

In another day in another century, Present Harry Truman purportedly adorned his office with a sign bearing the legend The buck stops here. Decades later, in the eighties, as the fertilizer struck the fan blades over illegal arms diversions to Iran, Caspar Weinberger wrily claimed to have placed a sign on his own desk with the derivative slogan The buck doesn't even pause here. The Manhunter's reaction, in confrontation with assembled accusers Maxwell Lord and Batman, belongs well with the more contemporary reaction.

Departing again from the Hulk formula, the Manhunter faced his accusers Hulk stories sometimes did involve courtrooms, generally with Bruce Banner collapsing in a burst of self-accusation or proving the prosecution correct by engaging in a new round of green-skinned mayhem. The Manhunter, however, reacts not with contrition, nor with rage, but with denial. However, with Batman and Maxwell Lord leading the trial - or, as they called it, an intervention - J'Onn fails to achieve the sort of surprise absolution so typical of modern show trials; arguing from laboratory tests done on the side and an experiment with a cookie in front of the Giffen - DeMatteis League as experts, Batman and Lord demonstrate the Martian's problem.

Lord places a single cookie on his desk, in front of the Manhunter, and asks him how long it will remain there, as the Martian Manhunter looks on, denies having a problem, and serenely stares into space. However, looking the devil squarely in the eye frequently fails in cold-turkey attempts to acquit oneself of a vice; and, within a few panels, the Manhunter snatches the cookie into his mouth just as a frog might catch a fly, by thrusting out a sticky tongue like a harpoon.

At this point, the Manhunter lost any hope of blaming the entire matter on a Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy(TM), and serenely owns up, extruding from his person a physical manifestation of his addiction. After a few rounds of this addiction inhabiting (and embarrassing) various members of the Justice League, and Maxwell Lord himself, J'Onn reins it in and destroys it.

Texas-Sized Leg-Pulling

At this point, the tale fades to the present, with the Martian Manhunter explaining to Green Lantern that the whole anecdote had a point, and asking the younger man to derive it. Kyle, naturally enough, doesn't see any particular point, so J'Onn cast the whole matter as a study in the types and objects of obsessions and addictions.

With a baffled Green Lantern departing - scratching his head but tactfully claiming to have something to think about - the Manhunter looks on as Wonder Woman begins to pick holes in his story. The foremost objection involves her never having heard of this incident, despite her own activity in the Justice League around that time.

J'Onn, therefore, suggests that a good story justifies itself, in spite of truth (no longer named as Truth with a capital 'T' by the post-modern hero); then, as a footnote, J'Onn attempts to hustle the Amazon for a cookie. In the process, he shows another ability; Martians, it seems, can spin lies big enough for Texans.

Return to the Quarter Bin.
Email the author at ouzomandias@mailexcite.com.

Column 219. Completed 05-FEB-2001.