Martian Manhunter has been a part of the DC Comics lineup for years. Now writer Steve Orlando and artist Riley Rossmo want to explore the character with a new series that takes the hero into the heart of a brand new mystery about his past.

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“I’ve been calling this my dream project online for more than a year,” Orlando told The Hollywood Reporter. “I started talking to DC about it at San Diego Comic-Con 2017. He’s always been my favorite character since I was younger, so to be able to fire our best shot across the bow of doing an evergreen story with him, it’s super exciting. Everyday I’m writing, I just can’t believe it; there’s no character I wanted to work on more.”

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The Martian Manhunter series will span 12 issues and will focus on Manhunter’s alter-ego Detective John Jones attempt to solve a murder which may have connections to his own past on Mars. “In the past, J’onn has been too perfect,” Orlando said. “One of the reasons people have not connected to him is that he was a perfect upright cop on Mars, and yes, his family died but it was no fault of his own, and then he came to Earth and he was perfect. Our favorite characters, that’s not them, you know? Spider-Man let the burglar go. Bruce Wayne was too afraid to save his family. This book gives J’onn that moment, and that’s the keystone as to why this book will be, is, the Martian Manhunter story, because we finally know the why. Why he strives to be so good on Earth, why he has this journey, because he’s never really had one before. All of our favorite characters overcome their faults, and we hope he’s going to do it here, but he has to have them first.”

The project seems to be really important and personal to Orlando and the story that he and Rossmo plan to tell deals with the Manhunter searching for redemption for his failings as a father and husband and whether or not he can become the hero he strives to be.

Martian Manhunter launches this December from DC Entertainment.

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