The next morning I got my morning cup of coffee and pulled out this book to read. At first, the history lesson was just "okay," but I quickly changed my way of thinking when I found something totally original in this story. At least it is to me. If I'm wrong, scold me later, but for now work with me. In this day and age we find ourselves surrounded by sickness and diseases. With a seemingly new disease poping up every once in a while. In this story there was a fatal disease transmitted through their telepathic minds. To us, it would be the equivalent of a disease spread through breath as we speak, and it's not too hard to imagine when given the outbreaks of our higher level, more deadly viruses, that this Martian race could have easily perished by this.
Every once in a while I find something that's new and intriguing incorporated into comics. But then there are also the "been there, done thats" like the ending of this first issue. I mean really, for a guy that's supposed to be the last Martian, there sure has been a lot of rival Martians finding there way into current story-lines. Can't we find some other type of bad guy for him to go up against??? In one hand they want you to feel sorry for J'onn J'onzz because he's so alone. But their hands don't wash, because in the other we have another handful of Martians. At this point whose to say that a giant space armada of Martians didn't high-tail it out of there before the fall-out; maybe they�re even in a tiny bottled city; Yeah, that's it.
"In Elseworlds, heroes are taken from their usual setting and put into strange times and places - some that have existed or might have existed, and others that can't, couldn't or shouldn�t exist. This is one of them..."
All right, that little piece is found on every Elseworlds book. Now, what do you think? Is the Tangent Universe an Elseworlds? I think that during what seemed to be the height of Elseworlds popilarity, they created a new one, without really knowing what they�ve done (or perhaps they did), and ran with it. Well, that run has turned into a crawl. It's time to take the characters in the DCU's Elseworlds and shake them up again, and when the dust settles, we might even have an ongoing series for these Elseworlds. Wouldn't that be great? There were so many better Elseworlds tales out there that I'd like to see expanded, and there's so many new ways to go. Each issue could be something fresh or a continuation from an Elseworlds that's already created. I get excited just thinking about the possibilities.
Back before the Showcase title was canceled I wrote in a suggestion to the Editor to help sales, which were slumping. My suggestion was since the first/main story was on a major player in the DCU e.g.. Batman and Superman, and the second story was for a lesser known DCU character e.g.. Blue Beetle and Aqualad, how about for the third we use an Elseworlds story. I submitted this idea packaged with an Elseworlds submission. Both were rejected. I take no conciliation in the book being canceled, but I do feel that if that idea was used, that book might still be around, and it might of even paved the way to an ongoing Elseworlds series. Since the Showcase book was supposed to showcase new talent, lesser known writers and artists could get a crack at a DC character. But now that the book is gone, it seems so is the biggest chance to break into DC.