What if DC made Martian Manhunter a villain?

[Lee Stone]

How would you react if DC made J'onn J'onzz a villain?

Pause.
Now continue...

Imagine the following:

DC proposes the idea that Mars is not dead, and that all the inhabitants have either turned invisible or have shape-shifted into rocks or space-debris.
A writer gets the idea 'what superhero would call themselves a 'manhunter'?'
The Martian Manhunter that rejoins the League shortly before the Detroit era wasn't J'onn, but rather an imposter who, acting as a soldier for Mars, is sent to gather data on the superhero community.

The Detroit era becomes the perfect opportunity to infiltrate the League because no one on the team really knew J'onn.
By the time the Big 7 are reunited in Morrison's JLA, the imposter had been J'onn so long that everyone believes him to be legit.
Meanwhile, the imposter J'onn got to experience the Detroit era, the JLI era and the JLA era.

While on his mission, he implants an alien artifact into Gypsy at the end of the Detroit era and then 'controls' Despero to hunt her down three years later and lead her to him so he can retrieve the device. The device gives J'onn the information he needs for the Martians to replicate more powers. Yes, this makes J'onn responsible for the deaths of Gypsy's parents. He also 'controlled' Professor Ivo and made him kill Vibe and Steel.
He chose not to have Vixen killed because he had feelings for her.

Unknown to the Leaguers, J'onn had also been recording their thoughts and transmitting them to Mars every day since his return before Detroit.
All their secrets are known by the Martians.

A major event kicks off when J'onn finally reveals himself as he kills Nightwing (the writer is pandering to Didio for a bigger chance to get green-lit).
During the event, the true J'onn returns and much of the remaining JLI and New Teen Titans characters are killed off.

If this sounds horrible, keep in mind that it's also very plausible.
This could happen at any time due to the current think tank at DC.

Think of this post as an exorcism.

DC trembles at the thought of readers knowing how something ends or the secrets of a story.
So much that they will force a writer to re-write an ending, even changing the villain's identity at the last moment.
I'm hoping that by posting this, I've helped nudge the negative energies at DC away from the idea of using J'onn as a master villain and ruining the heart of the JLI and Detroit eras.

Note: this post was also inspired by a dream I had last night.

[Agent Z]

I can't see this being taken well at all. It didn't go over well when DC tried this with Max Lord and the backlash to a more popular character like J'onn would be even worse.

[qwertyuiop1998]

If DC made MMH a permanent villain, Then I will hold up not my third finger,thumb,little finger or forefinger to DC

[j9ac9k]

Maybe not the story you're proposing, since there's a lot of retcons and a lot of death involved. And J'onn is a character where we've been in his head a lot and been privy to his thoughts - especially in his own series.

That said, I can imagine J'onn becoming something of a villain being a good thing - he'd finally be able to let loose and show how powerful he really is without overshadowing any Leaguers and he'd be the kind of villain where you would need a whole team to take him down. It would have to be something moving forward rather than a retcon. Perhaps Lex pushes him into it or something, but I'd still want him to be that "not totally evil" type of villain that DC needs.(as opposed to someone like Harley who seems to swing back and forth and is more chaotic an amoral rather than having a morality that goes against the heroes' ideas) When written well, someone like Parallax occupied a nice grey area where he challenged the heroes' notion of right and wrong. J'onn could be that - especially when you can write him as having a Martian sense of morality (whatever that might be) rather than a human one. I could see that being interesting.

And this would give Miss Martian a big boost in prominence.

[Desmark]

They kind of dipped into that pond earlier with the burning fernus storyline.

[Dark-Jacket]

He is too broken of a character to make him a villain.
The man could make 90% of the super heroes punch themselves in the head if he wanted. He is incredibly smart and was a detective for a long time. It is accepted if he wanted he could kill the trinity effortlessly.
And it'd bring nothing to turn him dark, J'onn is at his best when he is a become of light hope and love.

[Sutekh]

Given the nature of Martians, it would be amusing to discover retroactively that the 'invasion' from Mars happened decades ago, without anyone noticing. People were quietly replaced by telepathic shapeshifters. Their bodies were never found, because, like J'ohn, they'd infiltrated law-enforcement so thoroughly that even when the remains of someone they'd replaced turned up, the evidence led in a carefully planted false direction.

Thousands of them live in any major metropolitan area, as humans and human families, keeping to Martian customs only in private, and having a rich telepathic shared landscape and culture that the mundane world cannot even perceive, because it's all in their heads.

J'ohn's betrayal is that he knows of them, and was indeed seeded into law enforcement the same way, only revealing himself as part of a long-term plan to 'break it softly' and massage public opinion that there are shapeshifting telepathic martian aliens out there *and not to fear them* in case they were ever revealed en masse. He's had to mess with the minds of League members and allies who have tipped to this great secret (mainly Batman, who has an irritating habit of re-discovering it...) several times (and finds the irony of Zatanna getting flak for doing the same basic thing, darkly humorous).

The other big secret is that his level of power is tied to his psychic connection to his race. He isn't able to telepathically overwhelm the mind of anyone on earth, or scan the thoughts of entire buildings worth of people because he's the galaxy's greatest telepath, he's able to do these things because he can serve as the tip of the spear, bringing the combined psychic might of tens of thousands of Martians hidden all over Earth to bear on his current situation. (Similarly, they might reinforce his strength, psychically. Without thousands of minds worth of power to tap, under this tweak, he'd still be superhuman in all sorts of ways, but not nearly to Superman's scale.)

If nothing else, it could make for an interesting Elseworld. He wouldn't be a villain, necessarily, since the Martians would be quietly assuming human lives and not herding the humans up into camps, but he'd primarily be the 'hero' of an invading species...