I want Mars, back. Love George Perez, as an artist and a Latino, ..but, his post-Crisis, Diet Vader Ares just isn't doing it, for me.
Mars's use of his cosmic agents, his 'Court' of War - Duke of Deception, Earl of Greed, Conquest, Crimson Centipede, Silver Swan (original) - is what distinguishes him, from Ares, as I see it. Little more, than armored buffoons and never particularly awesome or terrifying, the Duke, Earl and Conquest of the Marston days peaked in the Golden Age and have never been, in better, than those first, sci-fi heavy stories. Their sisters, Azzarello's gaunt Strife (Eris) ..and the original Silver Swan, a magically powered emissary of Ares, who battled Wonder Woman to a stand-still, would come decades, later, ..but has yet to be developed into the enigmatic, iconic antagonist, she potentially could be.
Don't think they've been used, particularly well, either, ..since Dr. Marston's passing in '47!
I like also that, in Marston's hands, Mars and his court could walk right into David Lynch's film adaptation of Frank Herbert's ..and fit, marvelously well. You could almost smell Marston's court of Mars! They existed in a dirty, sweaty place, blackened by the smoke of burning metals ..and of burning human souls, enslaved to Mars! His garish, savage loyalists - the Duke, Earl, etc - were demonic beings, with their grotesquely grinning faces and bloated physiques, ..but, they travelled to Earth and back to their world, as phastasms ..or in futuristic rocket ships, like what we've seen, in Flash Gordon movie serials.
There was metal, everywhere - it was an industrial horror, without question - but, just as much a shadowy, hellish stage, upon which to unfold Marston's vision. I like that Mars and his court were cosmic beings, who stalked the Astral Plane and the unseen realms of our nightmares, acting out the war god's insidious plots, through the unconscious minds of select, strategically valuable mortals.
Dr. Marston's Mars, the war god's fire-belching, armed camp, was a twisted, cosmic purgatory, without compare, anywhere in the DCU. I miss this! I miss the imagination! I miss ..Mars, ..but, I can do, without him looking, like a human being, as H. G. Peter rendered him. I would prefer he was made a little more abstract, than that. A solid being or a horrific apparition, as either, he should be scarier or more disquieting to look at, than Mr. Perez's Diet Vader.
I like Marston's use of the Planet Mars, as his Areopagus. I would be thrilled to think that Mars's famed, mythical hill was, through sorcery, actually the Red Planet, all along...and even in classical times? Wow!
It's a mess, but, that's all of it. And yes...I will go so far, as to compare the Golden Age Mars to an embryonic Darkseid! The unwrought potential, the gritty, industrial ore was there, in the Forties, to fully spawn Darkseid, presiding over his own Dune'ish Apokolips!