In every installment of Abandoned Love we will be examining comic book stories, plots and ideas that were abandoned by a later writer without actively retconnng away the previous story. Feel free to e-mail me at brianc@cbr.com if you have any suggestions for future editions of this feature.
Today, we look at how Martian Manhunter became part of Stormwatch and then, well, became NOT a part of Stormwatch.
When DC launched the New 52 in 2011, one of the big parts of the company-wide reboot was that the characters from the Wildstorm Universe, who DC had acquired years earlier, were now integrated into the DC Universe as if they had always been a part of the DC Universe. One of the other major changes was that the entire DC Universe superhero history was roughly five years old and therefore, there really was no longer room for the original Teen Titans AND a current group of Teen Titans, let alone an original Teen Titans, then a New Teen Titans and then the current Teen Titans, so DC decided to just excise the earlier iterations of the Teen Titans. Once they did THAT, though, that then freed Cyborg (of the New Teen Titans) up to move up and become part of the “big leagues.” So Cyborg was now a founding member of the Justice League. Whose place did he take? Well, none other than the Martian Manhunter.
So since Martian Manhunter was now no longer a founding member of the Justice League (or a member of the Justice League at ALL), then that made him available to be part of one of those Wildstorm imports I mentioned. So he was part of Stormwatch, which was more like the Authority than anything else, but still called Stormwatch (Paul Cornell launched the book and he clearly had all sorts of ideas about the history of Stormwatch and likely tying it into his Demon Knights series, but since he left the book so early, who knows for sure?). The book was launched by Paul Cornell and Miguel Sepulveda.
Since continuity had been rebooted, Apollo and Midnighter were new characters again, and the first issue saw Martian Manhunter and his Stormwatch teammates trying to recruit Apollo…
However, after a year (and a new writer, with Peter Milligan taking over from Cornell), DC decided to take Martian Manhunter out of the book and have him join a new Justice League of America relaunch…
And rather than have him just, you know, join a new team, he instead decided to erase his time on Stormwatch from everyone’s minds, starting (in Stormwwatch #12 by Peter Milligan and Will Conrad) with Jenny Quantum…
He then did it to Apollo and Midnighter…
He did it a few more times that issue, but I think you get the basic idea. So now Martian Manhunter was off of the team and it was like he was never there to begin with – story officially ABANDONED.
That’s it for this installment. If anyone else has a suggestion of an interesting abandoned comic book plot, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!
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