Steve Orlando Teases What's Coming Up For 'Martian Manhunter'

Steve Orlando's Martian Manhunter, coming in December with artist Riley Rossmo, will be a love-letter to Martian literature, including some pretty cool nods to not only the history of J'Onn J'Onzz, but to science fiction storytelling going back to the 19th Century.

The series is a big swing both storytelling-wise and artistically for Orlando and Rossmo, who worked together on DC and Dynamite's successful Batman/The Shadow crossover. The acclaim that project earned, combined with the success the publisher has enjoyed from Tom King and Mitch Gerads's Mister Miracle, has opened the door to a deeper, more involved exploration of Martian Manhunter than DC might have approved in years past.

Orlando joined ComicBook.com at New York Comic Con to discuss the series. Martian Manhunter begins in December.

It seems like you have been ending series or launching series nonstop this year. Do you ever get time to take a break?

Well, the funny thing is that my rent doesn't ever give me a break, so I also do not get a break. No, you're always pitching. One of the bromides of comics -- like, 'How did you break into comics?' Well, you're never not breaking in. That part is true. You must always be thinking about making your current project great, and then thinking about how to build on it next.

I've been lucky at DC, about because they've helped me do that. You can watch the evolution of the Riley and Steve partnership from accomplishing the Night of Monster Men to, 'Hey! These guys really do well together, let's try them out on Batman and Shadow.'

Their whole series to now, Batman/The Shadow was one of our most celebrated crossovers. Let's give them, sort of, carte blanche to tell an amazing story, like we did with Tom and Mitch on Mister Miracle. Let's you know, sort of, frame them, and position them, and support them as a creative team and a creative work. So we're always thinking about that.

That's what happened to Martian Manhunter, and that's what happened to Electric Warriors. It's all about what you're doing, and then how to build upon that, and build your foundation, and put the next floor in the house. You know?

What is it like being mentioned in the same sentence as King and Gerads? No pressure, right?

That's true, and you know, Riley and I...well, he's Canadian, so he's much more polite than Mitch, being from Arizona. [Laughs]

No, we can't outdo them. What we can do is hold them up as examples any time we're told we can't do something. I'm like, 'But look what Mister Miracle did.' 'Oh, you can't do that in Martian Manhunter.' Well, they showed a birth on screen, so we can do anything.

No, the real answer is it's- I like to joke about a comic with Tom, but we're just trying to make the best books possible, and they have really opened the door for things like this.

Things like Mister Miracle and Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters, these more creative team-driven projects -- there's a place out there for readers to engage with them and celebrate them. I love Mister Miracle, and I actually just recently sent a very long message to Tom, because I re-read it on the plane back from Chicago, and I think it's moving. I think it's an incredibly unique book. So we didn't want to do the same thing as that- we wanted to an analogous thing as that, but for something that is true for Martian Manhunter, and true for the story of J'Onn J'Onzz, and, well, I'm just hoping, in December, you're going to see it.

The last few volumes of Martian Manhunter have been good comics that didn't find an audience. Does it help that you and Riley are a known entity?

Well, it does, and also, we're not shooting for the same hoop. I loved Rob's book. I loved Mandrake and Ostrander, and it bears mentioning, as well, that beautiful, beautiful, Martian Manhunter work that Tomasi and Gleason did on Brightest Day, as well.

The aim with Martian Manhunter, now, is to tell this evergreen, timeless story, sort of like we have in Mister Miracle. So there's- in many ways, the pressure is off. This is 12 issues, it's a complete story, and it's the Martian Manhunter story. We hope that it's going to define the character, and tell his story, and spread his story to new readers about why he's special.

So I've read all those runs, I've read his Showcase appearance, and his Detective Comics appearances before that. Obviously, his appearances in Justice League, but the nice thing is that, for better or worse, we are having the same great opportunity tell this story with the support from publishers, knowing it's going to be 12, and making sure that everybody gets, exactly, a beautifully well-structured story in that period of time, instead of always thinking, 'Oh, but what about 13? What about year two?' No, this is what you get.

Every issue is as perfectly folded into as greater narrative as it can be, and at the end, you'll know better who J'Onn is than ever before.

Both J'Onn and some of his bad guys are shapeshifters, and so you've got the potential to tell, very much like what Bendis did with his Secret Invasion crossover, stories about paranoia, stories about distrust of the other, and things like that.

Yes, but from a different limb. Certainly, the story is still there because the real struggle for J'Onn is J'Onn's paranoia and distrust of himself in Martian Manhunter, and because of his perceived failure to save Mars. You know, we say that John has a character arc that he hasn't had before, and he's not a perfect cop on Mars, but he's not responsible for the death of Mars.

That said, being the last survivor of something, you can't help but feel responsibility, and we all want him to see, you know, you did as much as you can. Sometimes, as adults, we know that doesn't work out, but at the same time, he needs to get over that.

His Martian form he associates with all of those things. He associates it with the failure to save his family, most of all, but the death of Mars in general, as well, and so the paranoia and the otherness, that is all in Martian Manhunter, but he's othered himself, essentially, and he's found solace in this life of Detective John Jones, a man who hasn't made the mistakes that he made.

Unifying those personalities and becoming the hero that we know he is, that's the struggle of the book.

Is it tricky writing a book that is essentially "for" the bookstore market but still has to work in comic shops?

Yes and no. I think in today's day and age, you want people to know, sort of, going in, what they're getting into, but I think that's the balance. Tell people or not about this story we're trying to sell, and what we're trying to say, and then, yeah, the minutiae, the implementation, the greater subtext- you go to the book for that, but this is not JLU Martian Manhunter, a version of the character I love.

This is a version you haven't- it's the deepest dive into who he is that probably we'll ever get time for in the comics. So the character study, what you see, that's what I want people to know they're getting into. This is not things blowing up, Martian Manhunter, in many ways, because I love that happening in Justice League of America in the 90s.

We are telling a new kind of Martian Manhunter story at the same time. It is a throwback, a deep dive, a love letter to who he always has been. So I think it's good. I think people need to know where they're entering a story, and you need to show them the door, and that's what we're doing, and they can go and explore the rest on their own.