Martian Manhunter

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The **Martian Manhunter** was a Martian peacekeeper named J'onn J'onzz who lived and worked on the planet Mars before his brother unleashed a pyrokinetic plague upon the planet's populace that caused nearly every citizen on the planet to burst into flames. Left to wander the desolate planet's surface for years, J'onn was brought to Earth by chance via a teleportation machine malfunction.

With strength and power on par with Superman, in addition to his own martian abilities of telepathy and shape-shifting, in the years since his arrival, J'onn has taken steps to fit into Earth's society by turning his hand to heroics as a charter member of the Justice League of America.

## Biography

Centuries ago on the planet Mars, the green martians known as M'yrnn J’onzz and Sha'sheen J’onzz gave birth to twin sons, an event that was uncommon among the martian culture. Gifted with the ability of forsight, their mother, Sha'sheen, gave the first of the twins the name "J'onn J'onzz" ("Light to the Light") after forseeing his future as a champion of the people, her second son, however, was born without a martian's ability to communicate telepathically. Seeing a darkness in him, she named her second son "Ma'alefa'ak" ("Darkness in the Heart").

As the twins grew older, J’onn followed in his mother’s footsteps to become a manhunter and philosopher while Ma'alefa'ak followed their father's example to become a scientist and priest despite the feelings of being ostracized from his fellow martians that his disability caused.

One day Ma'alefa'ak made contact with the New Gods of Apokolips and soon after the gods arrived on Mars where they learned the concept of the Anti-Life Equation from Ma'alefa'ak and J'onn's father, M'yrnn. After the New Gods informed Darkseid of the equation, they raided Mars, using Parademons to overrun the martian society. Many manhunters were killed while attempting to resist them, eventually J’onn and the remaining manhunters joined their minds to force the Parademons back to Apokolips.

The New God of New Genesis, Metron, blamed the martians for giving Darkseid the idea of Anti-Life and J’onn volunteered to go on a solo mission to Apokolips and halt Darkseid’s plans and in the process free the martians that had been captured during the Parademon attack, which included his father. On Apokolips, J'onn was betrayed and imprisoned by Kanto before being freed by the New Genesian, Himon, who had already freed a martian woman named My’ria’ah and a number of martian children. Together, they freed the rest of the martians and J'onn sent them, and My’ria’ah, back to Mars before finding a number of dead and dying martians, including M’yrinn and Ma’alefa’ak, in Desaad’s torture chamber. Only able to save his brother, J’onn remained on Apokolips and spent years interfering with Darkseid’s quest to discover the full Anti-Life Equation before a deal was brokered between Apokolips and New Genesis where Darkseid would cease his search for Anti-Life and New Genesis would not declare further war on Apokolips.

Returning home, J’onn became reacquainted with and began a relationship with My’ria’h. Eventually, the pair were married. J’onn and My’ria’h had a daughter, which they named K’hym, and settled to live an idyllic life beneath the windswept martian plains.

One day a martian invaded My’ria’h's mind, traumatizing her. J'onn's mother told him that a number of other minds had also been violated and that Ma'alefa'ak was the primary suspect due to his attempts at gaining telepathic powers for himself through artificial means. As Sha'sheen confronted her son, telling him to stop what he was doing, Ma'alefa'ak killed her and fled to Venus. As J’onn pursued him the two brothers fought and J’onn brought Ma'alefa'ak back to Mars for judgment. However, in a final act of vengeance against a society he felt ostracized from, Ma'alefa'ak devised a telepathic plague, which he named after H'ronmeer; the martian god of death and darkness. Designed to attack its victims via their telepathic abilities, the plague struck whenever a martian attempted to use their psionic gifts or commune with each other through telepathy, abruptly setting their skin afire and causing the victim to burn to death.

Discovering the plague but unable to stop its spread across the planet, J'onn tried to keep My’ria’h from using her telepathy, but she was unable to resist mentally reaching out to her daughter, K'hym, and both mother and daughter erupted into flames as J'onn looked on.

Virtually every martian on Mars was consumed by the plague that became known as "Hronmeer's Curse". After burying the bodies of his wife and daughter, J'onn confronted Ma'alefa'ak again and killed him in retribution.

Left to wander on what remained of his dead planet, carrying his dead daughter in his arms, J'onn was eventually, and spontaneously, transported through time and space to Earth by Dr. Saul Erdel around the 1950's. When J'onn fell unconscious after destroying the machine in a panic, Erdel nursed him back to health and buried his daughter. Soon realizing that J'onn was trying to suppress his memories of Mars, Erdel reshaped his memories into something less horrific and faked his own death in order to prompt J'onn into venturing out into the world.

Trapped on an unfamiliar world, J’onn was drawn to secretly observing detective John Jones, who had appeared to investigated Erdel’s "death". Secretly following the detective for a year, J'onn recognized many facets of Jones' job being similar to his own and learned much about humanity through him. His appreciation for Jones was such that, when Jones was killed by a group of corrupt police officers, J’onn took on the detective's identity as a detective in the Middleton Police Department near Denver and avenged his unwitting friend's death.

After discovering an empty Kryptonian birthing matrix in Smallville, J'onn accessed it’s A.I. and learned about Kryptonian history. Discovering that the Kryptonian child that had been in the matrix had been adopted by local farmers Martha and Jonathan Kent, J'onn feared that the Kryptonian would one day use his powers to remake Earth into the cold, sterile image of Krypton and decided to keep an eye on him.

Years later, after the Justice Society of America's retirement, J’onn felt inspired by the team and assumed the superhero identity "Bronze Wraith", joining the amateur hero group Justice Experience on a number of cases. However, the villain Doctor Trapp eventually set a series of personalized traps against each member of the team and managed to kill all of the members except for J'onn, who Trapp exposed to a flame and left him near-death and amnesiac. J'onn wandered America for two years as a homeless man until his memories returned after which he joined Starman and Green Lantern (Alan Scott) in avenging his team and defeating Doctor Trapp.

Deeply affected by the deaths of his friends, J'onn abandoned the Bronze Wraith identity and assumed several new ones across the world. Spending some time in space battling aliens that wanted to devour Earth, J'onn returned to find that Clark Kent had grown up and taken the identity of Superman. After testing the hero to ensure that he meant the Earth no harm he felt that he could trust Clark with protecting the Earth.

When J'onn, as John Jones, and his partner Diane Meade, went to Gotham City to investigate the death of Diane’s brother Brian. They learned that he was investigating the Batman urban myth upon his death. Flushing out the vigilante, J'onn learned that Brian had been killed by crooked cop Paul Ross while he was investigating media mogul Rupert Maggs. While the pair worked together to bring Ross and Maggs to justice, Batman admitted that he still didn't trust him but would not reveal his identity to the world.

Shortly thereafter, J'onn and Diane investigate the deaths of the Cipriani crime family and meet Jim Corrigan (the then-current host of the Spectre), who had been tracking their killer. Teaming up to catch the killer, the Spectre tries to kill the murderer only to become bound to J'onn who attempts to use the Spectre's power to resurrect the Martian race on Mars; failing due to the resurrection being against the natural order of life. After J'onn gave the Spectre-Force back to Corrigan, Jim erased his memory of the events.

Becoming caught up in the public reveal of a new generation of super heroes, J'onn took on the superhero identity "Martian Manhunter" and became a founding member of the Justice League of America.

While willing to work with his new teammates, J'onn felt it necessary to keep files on the metahumans he had yet to become familiar with in case they intended the Earth harm; secretly observing and interacting with them in various civilian identities. While his actions were later discovered by the team, which caused a temporary rift within the team members, he was forgiven following their defeat of the Appellaxians and the Locus organization.

As team members came and left, J'onn remained in the Justice League as it changed headquarters from Happy Harbor to a Satellite, and then reformed as Justice League Detroit and then reformed again as Justice League International. Following the disbanding of Justice League International and its splinter groups, a superhero group known as the Hyperclan arrived on Earth. While initially offering peace and actively working to make the planet a better place, the newest incarnation of the JLA deduced their true motives to enslave the world and that they were actually White Martians. After thwarting their invasion, the JLA built a new perimeter fortress on the moon while J'onn acquired the white martian fortress Z'onn Z'orr to use as his own headquarters.
Some time later, J'onn had left the Denver police force to run his own private detective agency alongside fellow detective Karen Smith, however, when J'onn was forced to reveal his martian form during a case, Karen did not take well to the revelation that her partner was an alien and took to investigating what other identities J'onn might have before she was murdered by Ma'alefa'ak posing as J'onn.
Following an attack by Lex Luthor's Injustice Gang, J'onn took the Saturnian Jemm to Z'onn Z'orr to be healed only for Ma'alefa'ak to torture the Saturnian as J'onn. After convincing the D.E.O. that he was innocent of Karen's murder, J'onn escaped the JLA, who believed J'onn had tortured Jemm, and confronted Ma'alefa'ak in Z'onn Z'orr; using the facility to send his brother into the sun.
Aiding in ensuring a treaty between the White and Red Saturnians by protecting Jemm and the White Saturnian Princess Cha’Rissa from a group of conspirators, J'onn later also aided in defeating Mageddon; an Old God superweapon.
After being split from his John Jones personality by Morgaine le Fey, J'onn allowed "John Jones" to run the Private Investigation only to realize that his double did not possess a soul after his old partner Diane Meade almost died because of Jones' grandstanding. After Jones sacrificed himself to stop the New God assassin, Kanto, J'onn employed Diane as his new partner in his private detective agency before needing to contend with the White Martians again after they had regained their memories following a subconscious wish J'onn had made over not being alone. After the White Martians again tried to take over the planet, J'onn and the JLA exiled them within the Phantom Zone.

Following the return of the Kingdom of Atlantis after being enslaved by Atlanteans 3,000 in the past, the JLA took a brief sabbatical, with J'onn approaching Aubrey Sparks (aka Scorch) about curing his fear of fire in exchange for healing her mind. However, as J'onn's relationship with Scorch grew and his weakness against fire receded, J'onn transformed into Fernus the Burning; the original form of the Martians before the Guardians of the Universe altered their genetic makeup to make them less of a threat for the galaxy. As Fernus was defeated by the JLA and J'onn returned to his normal form, the league was faced with moral dilemmas following the murder of Sue Dibny by Jean Lorring and the revelation of the ethically questionable mind wiping that the JLA performed during the "Satellite Years". The breakdown of the team reached its zenith and the team disbanded again, leaving it to J'onn to rebuild the team with Superman's blessing. While in the process of this, J'onn is attacked by Superboy-Prime, who destroys the Watchtower and captures J'onn to use as part of Alexander Luthor Jr's plan to revive the Multiverse.

Following the Infinite Crisis, J'onn confronted Black Adam following his massacre of Bialya; whom he blamed for aiding those who killed his wife, Isis. Unable to quell Adam's rage, Adam subjected J'onn to the horrors of the citizens of Bialya's final moments. Overwhelmed, J'onn fled from the planet to escape the torment and remained recovering in orbit as Adam continued his rampage.

As he recovered, J'onn struggled to reason why he should keep helping the people of Earth when all they do is continually try to kill each other. Coming to the decision that, despite all the evil he has seen, the ones who did good were still worth protecting, J'onn returned to Earth to join the hero community's final battle against Black Adam in China.