White Martians
1195 - B’lanx, a Martian community leader, is stricken with an alien psychic fungus. He begins believing in the ethnic superiority of Martians from his home continent. His beliefs begin infecting other followers who share his thoughts. They adopt a white-bodied appearance, calling themselves White Martians.
1241 - The White Martians stage a terrorist attack on Roh Kar City on Mars, killing hundreds of Green Martians.
1430 - The White Martians campaign of ethnic war is stopped by the Green Lantern Corp. The psychic fungus that initially created their belief in their ethnic superiority is removed. The White Martians are integrated back into Martian society, but their beliefs continue to persist as a psychic virus within their shared psychic mind.
1468 - A rogue tribe of White Martians, afflicted with their belief in their ethnic superiority, firebomb Mar's atmosphere, securing themselves in suspended animation in an underground stasis chamber, including the newly hatched M'gann M'orzz. The population of Mars, all afflicted with Ma'alefa'aks psychic virus and unable to defend themselves from fire, is wiped out.
3 years ago - The White Martians are awakened by human astronauts. They pose as alien heroes the Hyperclan and attack the Justice League, decimating it's ranks, forcing J'onn J'onzz to assemble the Watchtower, who defeat the White Martians and place them into the Phantom Zone. J'onn takes in M'gann M'orzz to begin teaching her in both the Martian and Human tradition.
The White Martians are, naturally, primarily Martian Manhunter villains, but the reality is that Martian Manhunter stories are largely defined by his place in the Justice League, so it's unsurprising that the White Martians were, until one of them became a Teen Titan, almost entirely depicted as fighting the League.
We got a little weird with this one. I hope it doesn't read like we're on a soap box here, but there are some ideas that we think the White Martians are really perfectly set up to incorporate that give them a more complex role in the story and also resolve some ideas that we find just a little problematic. Tell us what you think!
We got a little weird with this one. I hope it doesn't read like we're on a soap box here, but there are some ideas that we think the White Martians are really perfectly set up to incorporate that give them a more complex role in the story and also resolve some ideas that we find just a little problematic. Tell us what you think!
The White Martian's Comic HistoryThe first appearance of the 'Pole Dwelling' Martians, as opposed to the Green Dessert Dwellers, is in Justice League of America #71 by Denny O'Neil, the issue in which J'onn leaves the League to return to Mars to try to help his people. In the issue we discover that Mars ( a planet of shapeshifters, lets not forget) evidentially has an ongoing war between people from different parts of the planet, who are differentiated by their skin color. It's here where we're introduced to Commander Blanx, who would attempt to stage a genocide of the entire planet. Later, in 1978, in an oversized Collectors Edition comic called Superman vs Shazam, we meet another White Martian villain, this time a sorcerer named Karmang.
Like a lot of Justice League villains, it's really in the pages of Grant Morrison's JLA in 1997 when the White Martians as we know them today really take shape. They start the story by posing as alien heroes coming to Earth to replace the League but quickly reveal themselves and their monstrous form as they decimate the previous Justice League. This version of the White Martians, mindwiped and living as humans on Earth, would become a recurring story element for years, but remained more or less a background idea up until Geoff Johns created a new member for his Teen Titans. |
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Miss Martian was introduced to the Titans after Infinite Crisis and the one year continuity skip after the 52 series, and was revealed to be a White Martian after a few issues. This was a fairly big evolution in the concept of White Martians, as M'gann was notably NOT a horrible monster, although a constant thread of her story was her fighting against her own nature, because as a White Martian she was, of course, predisposed to be evil.
M'gann became a major character in the Young Justice animated series, elevating her to a fan favorite status and putting the whole concept of the racial differences between Green and White Martians in the center of a lot of stories where we all learn valuable lessons about how it doesn't MATTER what the color of your skin is, or where you come from. M'gann would even go on to stop hiding her status as a White Martian in later seasons. All of which is great. Good lessons all around... although... I do think it's at least worth pointing out that this all is predicated on introducing the concept of races that all have predispositions to being good or bad, peaceful or violent. Is that really a thing we want to bake in here? |
Racial Bias In Genre FictionSo I don't need to tell you guys that it's problematic to depict any racial group as some sort of monolith, but it tends to be something that happens a lot in the worlds of fantasy and science fiction, from Orcs in Dungeons & Dragons to Klingons in Star Trek, but it's more than a little bit coincidental that we're talking about races of Mars here, since one of the first examples of this sort of thing is in one of the earliest (and best) Sci-Fi novels, Princess of Mars, featuring the adventures of John Carter among the green and red men of Mars. The book was from 1912, when ideas of ethnic bias were very normalized (the book even begins with Carter being pursued by a nation of bloodthirsty Apaches), and of course a lot of the ideas about the Green and White Martians also come from a time when this sort of thing was acceptable.
So, look, I understand that conceptually, the White Martians are intended to be a different race, but this is a species of psychic shapeshifters. They are practically a hivemind, and can look however they want. Imposing ideas of racial or ethnic differences on them is... limiting to a ridiculous degree? The enemy here isn't a different race of Martians. It's the very idea of ethnic superiority. So that's what our White Martians are. They are a people on Mars that have literally been afflicted with a dangerous, vicious idea. Something that works like a virus in their psychic minds, and ultimately led to their downfall... but that is no less dangerous here. |
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Our White Martian StoryWe are NOT changing a lot here. The White Martians are a group of Martians who, because of their toxic belief in the superiority of one group of Martians over another commit an unthinkable violence that results is the annihilation of practically their entire species, until only they are left. The only exception is J'onn, who was snatched from their planet centuries before. The specific group of White Martians responsible for their genocide are awakened by human astronauts, and come to Earth where they attack the Justice League.
The biggest change we're making here is just in the nature of what the White Martians are. Rather than making them a different race or ethnic group on Mars, we just find it far more compelling if they are the manifestation of the toxic belief of racial superiority. We deliberately made sure that the Green Lanterns have removed the original psychic fungus infecting the White Martians that caused this perversion of their psyche, so it's possible for White Martians to exist without these ideas... but the ideas themselves persist, and are toxic. This is one of the main reasons we love that J'onn takes in M'gann as an infant. She is susceptible, just like anyone on Earth, to these dangerous, destructive ideas, and it falls to J'onn to teach her how wrong and ultimately self-defeating they are. |
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