Crisis Weekly #8

PAGE ONE

Panel 1

A Green Martian on the surface of Mars, throwing a glowing red diamond (it looks exactly like the one on Bloodwynd’s costume, as it…is) into the sky.  The Green Martian has a wild, determined look about him.  This Green Martian is in fact J’onn J’onzz, the Martian Manhunter, looking like the wild alien look DC artists have developed over the years, rather than the human look we’ve come to know, or even his present, Westmoresque look.

Panel 2

The diamond is rocketing out of orbit of Mars.

Panel 3

The diamond continues its journey through space.

Panel 4

The diamond now hurtles into the atmosphere of…Earth.

TITLE: “Man of Constant Sorrow”

WRITER: Tony Laplume
 

PAGE TWO

Panel 1
Martian Manhunter in the present, in the chambers of the US House of Representatives at the Capitol.  He’s in his superhero form, and beside him, in her civilian form, is President Reilly.  They’re standing at the speaker’s podium, where the State of the Union address is made annually.  They’re otherwise alone.  Reilly is staring out at the empty seats in front of them.

CAPTION: Chambers of the House of Representatives, US Capitol.

LORRAINE REILLY: Place gives me the creeps, even without considering the pressure I’ll be under in a few weeks, delivering the State of the Union…

LORRAINE REILLY: Or my many opponents, sorry, political colleagues, who’ll be filling it, sitting on their hands…

Panel 2

Reilly has turned to look at Martian Manhunter.

LORRAINE REILLY: Sorry, you were saying?

LORRAINE REILLY: Lost in my own little world.  I’m sure you understand.

Panel 3

Martian Manhunter gives Reilly a look.

Panel 4

Martian Manhunter begins to levitate in the air, clearly lost in thought as he begins to speak.

MARTIAN MANHUNTER: We called it the blood diamond.

Panel 5

A crowd of congressmen (to be clear, men and women) enters the chambers, startling Martian Manhunter and Reilly.

LORRAINE REILLY: Ah!  And here we were, expecting the place to ourselves.  A rare pleasure, I know, but still…

Panel 6

The congressmen are transforming into Man-Bats!
 

PAGE THREE

Panel 1

The diamond smashes into a tobacco field, at night.

Panel 2

At daybreak, we see slaves, in the American South, walking into that field.

Panel 3

The slaves are getting to work, with an angry overseer near them.

Panel 4

With the sun setting again, the slaves are becoming tired.

Panel 5

One of them stumbles across the diamond, which has dulled.

Panel 6

We see the slave still has it when he’s returned to his hut, and is holding it protectively, hiding it from the other slaves he shares the hut with.
 

PAGE FOUR

Panel 1

Martian Manhunter and President Reilly, who has now transformed into Firehawk, are fighting the Man-Bats.

MARTIAN MANHUNTER: It was the most deadly weapon we ever conceived, and it was used for one purpose.

MARTIAN MANHUNTER: To defeat, once and for all, the White Martian menace.

Panel 2

The fight continues.

MARTIAN MANHUNTER: Or so we thought.

MARTIAN MANHUNTER: Or perhaps merely hoped.

Panel 3

The fight continues.

MARTIAN MANHUNTER: To our everlasting shame.

MARTIAN MANHUNTER: Or, perhaps, merely mine.

Panel 4

The fight continues.

MARTIAN MANHUNTER: Madam President, I must say, I admire how you are throwing yourself at this.  One does not often think of commanders-in-chief leading fights so directly.

LORRAINE REILLY: C’mon, J’onn.  You know me better than that!

LORRAINE REILLY: Besides, I like to think of it as “aggressive negotiations.”

Panel 5

The fight continues.

MARTIAN MANHUNTER: Pardon me?

LORRAINE REILLY: Just something I learned from one of my favorite movies.

Panel 6

The fight continues.

MARTIAN MANHUNTER: Ah.  Quaint.  One of humanity’s quirks I have yet to master.

Panel 7

The fight continues.

LORRAINE REILLY: Quoting movies?

MARTIAN MANHUNTER: Movies in general.

 

PAGE FIVE

Panel 1

We see the slave returning to the hut after another long day.

Panel 2

The slave is making up his mind as he sits.

Panel 3

He’s now showing the diamond to the other slaves in the hut.

Panel 4

They share a conspiratorial look.

Panel 5

The diamond begins glowing bright red again.
 

PAGE SIX

Panel 1

The fight continues.

MARTIAN MANHUNTER: Our mutual friend once told me about his origins.

Panel 2

The fight continues.

MARTIAN MANHUNTER: It didn’t take me long to make the connection between the diamond my people once possessed and the one that gave him his powers, that he wore boldly affixed to his costume.

Panel 3

The fight continues.

MARTIAN MANHUNTER: But he still had much to tell me, and I found myself quite astonished. 

MARTIAN MANHUNTER: For although I knew what the diamond had been created to accomplish, clearly it had since developed…still more interesting properties.

Panel 4

The fight continues.

MARTIAN MANHUNTER: I almost don’t believe it even now.

Panel 5

The fight continues.

MARTIAN MANHUNTER: Later, when I wore the diamond myself, when we were…reunited, as it were, with Bloodwynd trapped inside it, I felt the new power myself.

Panel 6
The fight continues.

MARTIAN MANHUNTER: It was overwhelming.

 

PAGE SEVEN

Panel 1

The bright red diamond sits by itself at night, although the slaves are all huddled near it, almost as if it were giving them warmth (which it probably is, too), but perhaps more out of the hope it represents.

Panel 2

The diamond begins to glow brighter, lighting the whole hut.

Panel 3

This panel is red; the diamond’s glow has eclipsed everything.

Panel 4

The light has receded, and in its place…a baby.  A black infant, created by the diamond, perhaps out of all that hope.

Panel 5

The slaves have woken up and are startled by what they see.  The diamond has dulled again, exhausted for the moment from its labors, as it were.

Panel 6

The original slave we followed has picked up the baby, and is smiling, but a steely look in his eyes.  He suspects they will have a powerful new weapon to use against their masters.

PAGE EIGHT

Panel 1

The fight continues.

MARTIAN MANHUNTER: Somehow, the diamond had produced human life.

LORRAINE REILLY: Makes Bloodwynd’s origins sound almost like Diana’s.

MARTIAN MANHUNTER: I suppose.

Panel 2

The fight continues.

MARTIAN MANHUNTER: But Diana had the Amazons about her.

MARTIAN MANHUNTER: People who knew what she was.

Panel 3

The fight continues.

MARTIAN MANHUNTER: The people Bloodwynd was born into…neither he nor they were so fortunate.

Panel 4
The fight continues.

MARTIAN MANHUNTER: His was a painful childhood.

MARTIAN MANHUNTER: Diana’s mother fought to keep her daughter sheltered.

MARTIAN MANHUNTER: Bloodwynd had the weight of the world on his shoulders from the start.

Panel 5

The fight continues.

LORRAINE REILLY: I know a little of that.

LORRAINE REILLY: A little.

Panel 6

The fight continues.

MARTIAN MANHUNTER: Of course.  I nearly forgot.  No one should have a father like that.

MARTIAN MANHUNTER: Who put you through what he did.

MARTIAN MANHUNTER: Even if it made you who you are today. 

 

PAGE NINE

Panel 1

The young Bloodwynd, three years old, watching with his eerie white eyes as his “father,” the slave we’ve been following, leaves the hut, looking if anything more beaten than before.  Bloodwynd is crying.

Panel 2

Bloodwynd, roughly aged six, is standing beside his father, eyes clenched in concentration.  Clearly his father is expecting something from him.

Panel 3

Bloodwynd, roughly aged fourteen, in the fields with his father. 

Panel 4

An overseer is harassing Bloodwynd’s father, who is looking pleadingly at Bloodwynd, who looked horrified that he really can’t do anything to help.

Panel 5

Bloodwynd, same age, and father in the hut.  The father looks angry at Bloodwynd.

Panel 6

Bloodwynd’s father is throwing the diamond out of the hut.
 

PAGE TEN

Panel 1

The fight continues.

LORRAINE REILLY: I prefer not to dwell on the past.

Panel 2

The fight continues.

MARTIAN MANHUNTER: Granted.  And that is one of the many attributes I admire about you.

Panel 3

The fight continues.

MARTIAN MANHUNTER: I wonder, where is Karma, our fearless protector?

Panel 4

The fight continues.

LORRAINE REILLY: I also prefer not to be catty.

LORRAINE REILLY: But I’ve been thinking the same thing.

Panel 5

The fight continues.

LORRAINE REILLY: Karma, who shamed Wonder Woman into seclusion.

Panel 6

The fight continues.

LORRAINE REILLY: What else do you know about Bloodwynd?

 

PAGE ELEVEN

Panel 1

Bloodwynd, still the same age as we last saw him, is walking into the night, alone.

Panel 2

Clearly he wasn’t looking for the diamond.  He probably was never even told about it, about the circumstances of his birth.  All the same, his foot connects with it.

Panel 3

He looks down at the diamond.

Panel 4

He picks it up, looking intently at it.

Panel 5

The diamond begins to glow brilliantly again.

Panel 6

And Bloodwynd finds himself levitating for the first time, a startled expression on his face.
 

PAGE TWELVE

Panel 1

The fight continues.

MARTIAN MANHUNTER: At some point, he learned the diamond’s secrets for himself.

Panel 2

The fight continues.  (Here I almost feel it’s necessary to remind you that Martian Manhunter and President Reilly/Firehawk are fighting Man-Bats in the chambers of the House of Representatives.)

MARTIAN MANHUNTER: I’m sure it was a momentous occasion, learning the truth of oneself for the first time.

MARTIAN MANHUNTER: Martian technology is embedded with the same psychic qualities as the Martians had themselves.

MARTIAN MANHUNTER: I have no doubt that he knew as soon as he touched it.

Panel 3

The fight continues.  (See?  Fresh.)

LORRAINE REILLY: Must have made cooking extremely interesting.

MARTIAN MANHUNTER: Ah.  Quite. 

MARTIAN MANHUNTER: Perhaps explains my interest in Oreos.

Panel 4

The fight continues.

LORRAINE REILLY: So…then he led a massive slave revolt history never recorded?

MARTIAN MANHUNTER: You know, sarcasm is another thing I have yet to master.

Panel 5

The fight continues.

MARTIAN MANHUNTER: Obviously, that’s not what happened.

Panel 6

The fight continues.

MARTIAN MANHUNTER: No, the Emancipation Proclamation intervened.

 

PAGE THIRTEEN

Panel 1

From the sky, Bloodwynd watches as the ex-slaves leaves the tobacco fields.  He looks for his father in the massive crush of suddenly jubilant souls.  The diamond has taken its place on his chest, where it sits on his later costume as well.

Panel 2

He’s touching back down to the ground, parting the ex-slaves around him.  Everyone looks happy to see him.  They were freed and basically got Superman, years before Superman, all in the same day!

Panel 3

But Bloodwynd has now found his father, who unlike everyone else looks angry.

Panel 4

Obviously his father is letting loose a stream of insults at Bloodwynd, who has hardened his expression.

Panel 5

Bloodwynd is flying off again, alone, unnoticed.

Panel 6

Bloodwynd is once again hovering above the fields, which are now empty.  He looks sad.
 

PAGE FOURTEEN

Panel 1

The fight continues.

MARTIAN MANHUNTER: Here he was, having finally discovered his birthright, his destiny and…

Panel 2

The fight continues.

MARTIAN MANHUNTER: The war was won without him.

Panel 3

The fight continues.

LORRAINE REILLY: It’s not often I’m going to say this about the end of slavery in America, but how awful!

Panel 4

The fight continues.  A silent panel as they both try and process what they’ve been discussing.  And, y’know, concentrate on fighting Man-Bats.

Panel 5

The fight continues.

MARTIAN MANHUNTER: And from there…

MARTIAN MANHUNTER: He prefers not to talk about it. 

MARTIAN MANHUNTER: Drifting in Reconstruction America, the turn of the century, Jackie Robinson, the Civil Rights era, the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr…

Panel 6

The fight continues.

LORRAINE REILLY: And then he joins the Justice League.  A man without a past, a true man of mystery…

 

PAGE FIFTEEN

Panel 1 (splash)

The massive hand of Doomsday as it smashes, partially gloved in the green containment suit, partially exposing those gnarly spikes of his on the knuckles…It’s the iconic debut as readers first encountered him.

SFX: SMASH!

 

PAGE SIXTEEN

Panel 1

The fight continues.

MARTIAN MANHUNTER: And then Doomsday.

Panel 2

The fight continues.

LORRAINE REILLY: Then Doomsday.

Panel 3

The fight continues.  Another silent panel of contemplation.  And fighting Man-Bats.

Panel 4

The fight continues.  Finally we see a thinning of the Man-Bat crowd.

MARTIAN MANHUNTER: Has it occurred to you what we’ve been fighting all this time?

Panel 5

Reilly blasting one of the remaining Man-Bats.

LORRAINE REILLY: These weren’t Man-Bats at all.

LORRAINE REILLY: They were White Martians all along.

Panel 6

Martian Manhunter and President Reilly stand among the bodies of their fallen opponents, defeated, and indeed now in the form of White Martians…

MARTIAN MANHUNTER: Indeed…