In promoting his new DC comic book series Martian Manhunter, self-professed DC Comics fan and professional comic book writer Steve Orlando recently told the Hollywood Reporter:

One of the reasons people have not connected to [Martian Manhunter] is that he was a perfect upright cop on Mars, and yes, his family died but it was no fault of his own, and then he came to Earth and he was perfect. Our favorite characters, that's not them, you know? Spider-Man let the burglar go. Bruce Wayne was too afraid to save his family.

He what now? I don't know Steve Orlando from Clark Kent, but may I suggest to DC that anyone with such a poor grasp of Batman's origin story probably shouldn't be writing your comics.

For reference, this is how Batman's origin story looked when it appeared for the first time in "The Batman Wars Against the Dirigible of Doom" in Detective Comics #33 (1939). If it looks familiar to you, that's because it hasn't changed AT ALL in the intervening 79 years.

Somehow, according to comics historian Steve Orlando, that tragedy is all young Bruce Wayne's fault. What boy wouldn't jump in front of the bullets aimed at his parents? Coward! He deserves to be an orphan.

Orlando is correct to say that Martian Manhunter has always been kind of a bland character through "no fault of his own." That's no doubt due in part to his first appearance dating to 1955, the year after Frederick Wertham's Seduction of the Innocent called the relationship between Batman and Robin "a wish dream of two homosexuals living together." Yikes. You were wise to steer clear of that controversy, Manhunter!

However, trying to correct for over a half century of blandness by injecting entirely new and tragic elements to Manhunter's origin is a story I don't need. I happen to like Martian Manhunter just the way he is, a noble, rational, and compassionate champion for justice.

Unlike that crazy piece of shit, Bruce Wayne.

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