5. What we know about their history

5. What we know about their history Spoilers for Absolute Martian Manhunter #1–12. I also want to talk about the historical side of the Martians, but we have to be careful about which history we're talking about. The Absolute version doesn't give us permission to pull in the whole history of Mars from the regular DC books and treat it as established here. The name itself is an accommodation for John. Camp describes the entity looking through John's mind and using the alien image that makes sense to him. So the green figure and the name Martian are part of the way this much stranger being becomes understandable to a human. They don't establish that it grew up on the planet Mars. [Camp's interview](https://www.dc.com/blog/2025/03/25/absolute-interview-martian-manhunter-is-twice-the-hero-he-usually-is) What the series develops is a conflict happening through consciousness. The Green Martian tries to connect people and reach them through understanding. The White Martian works through destructive impulses, and Anti-Life becomes a much larger part of the situation. The setting allows inner experiences to have consequences across people's lives and, eventually, the world around them. [DC's overview of the first arc](https://www.dc.com/blog/2025-12-05/absolute-martian-manhunter-shows-you-your-absolute-self) The bigger background comes into view in #5, where Darkseid is connected to the destructive idea behind this conflict. The whole Absolute setting already has his influence built into it, and this book brings that influence into the way people think about themselves and each other. That gives the struggle a cosmic origin, but it doesn't establish a literal family line between Darkseid and the Martians. [The Darkseid revelation discussed in issue #6 coverage](https://comicbook.com/comics/news/dc-absolute-martian-manhunter-6-review/) Later, the Agency shows that humans have their own involvement in that territory. Its operatives can identify psychic activity, pursue the Martian, and imprison it. Their methods are tied to controlling which ideas are allowed and maintaining an accepted version of reality. That gives us more background on the world the Martian is operating in, even though it doesn't supply a complete history of where the Martian originally came from. [The Agency's role in issue #10](https://comic-watch.com/comic-book-reviews/absolute-martian-manhunter-10-color-or-consensus) The personal history gets complicated in #11. Despair claims the Martian has shaped John's choices throughout his life. It is using that claim to break him, alongside the false claim about Tyler's death. That's a very questionable source for an objective biography. [Despair's claims in issue #11](https://thecomicbookspot.com/absolute-martian-manhunter-11-comic-review/) There are still gaps. The material established here doesn't give us a reliable ancient chronology, a full family tree of these beings, or a complete set of laws for their original society. Those would be things to explore if another story actually supplies them. Filling them in with lore from a different continuity would just make the explanation look more complete than it is. Behind the creative approach, Camp went back to the early detective stories and the character's alien perspective. He also named Thomas Pynchon and Philip K. Dick as influences. That background fits the attention to perception, identity, and unreliable understanding. So the useful historical picture is still developing. We know a lot more about how this being encounters human life than we do about an entire civilization it supposedly left behind. The story is deliberately working from that unfamiliarity.