Fire Weakness

The Martian Manhunter was one of the most powerful beings on Earth.

He could lift a truck with one hand. He could read minds. He could turn invisible. He could change his shape — into a cat, a bird, a stranger in a crowd. He could fly through the cold dark vacuum of space without a suit. He could phase through solid stone, walking right through walls like a friendly ghost.

But every great hero has a weakness. And J'onn J'onzz had one too.

Fire.

A small candle flickering on a birthday cake. A campfire crackling in the woods. The orange glow of a fireplace. Things that to you and me are warm and friendly. To J'onn, they were the most terrifying things in the world.

Why? Why would a being who could fly through space be afraid of a little flame?

The answer was a sad one, and it had to do with the old story of Mars.

Long, long ago, when J'onn's home planet was still alive, a terrible thing called H'ronmeer's Curse swept across the Red Planet. It was not an ordinary fire. It was a psychic fire — a fire that burned not just bodies, but minds and souls. Wherever it spread, Martians died. They died telepathically connected to each other, and J'onn, who was just one Martian among millions, felt every single one of those minds go silent.

Imagine listening to a great choir — and one by one, the voices stop. Until only your own voice is left singing.

That was what fire meant to J'onn.

So now, even on Earth, even centuries later, when J'onn smelled smoke, or saw a candle flicker, something deep inside him remembered. His concentration would waver. His shape-shifting would falter. In the presence of a really intense fire, his very molecules would become unstable, and he would shimmer and weaken and sometimes crumple to the ground in pain. He, the mightiest of beings, could be brought low by something as small as a struck match.

His enemies knew this. The bad ones, the cruel ones, would carry flamethrowers and torches into their fights with him. They used fire because they had learned it was the one way to bring down the Martian Manhunter.

It hurt him. It frightened him. It reminded him of the worst day of his life.

But — and this is the most important part of the story — J'onn did not give up.

He spent years training his mind to face the fear. He sat in quiet meditation chambers high above the Earth on the Justice League Watchtower, and he practiced. He started with the memory of a single candle. He breathed through the panic. He learned to feel the fear without letting it own him.

His friends helped, too. Batman built him special equipment — small protective patches, breathing filters, suit linings — to give him an edge in fights where fire might appear. Superman would step between J'onn and any flame whenever he could. The Flash would race in to put out a fire before it grew. Wonder Woman would press her warm strong hand to his shoulder and remind him, simply, that he was not alone anymore.

Every single time J'onn faced a fire and did not back down, it was a small quiet victory over the worst day of his life.

There was, however, one extra layer of trouble.

Long ago in Martian history, before J'onn's peaceful people existed, there had been a much older race — the Burning Martians, fire-breathing ancestors. Their fire was inside them. Their fire was part of who they were. Most Martians, including J'onn, kept that fiery part of themselves locked away DEEP, behind walls of self-control.

But sometimes, when J'onn pushed himself too hard, when he reached too far into his fear, the lock on that ancient door would rattle. A part of him called Fernus — the Burning Martian — would try to wake up.

Fernus was the destructive part of J'onn's own heritage. It was angry. It was hungry. It wanted to burn.

So J'onn had to fight on TWO fronts. The fire outside him. And the fire inside him.

And every day, he kept BOTH fires gently, kindly, firmly closed.

There was a strange beauty to it, if you thought about it long enough. The thing J'onn feared most was also the thing he had to hold inside himself. The thing that had killed his world was also part of his own biology. To be the Martian Manhunter was to live with both — to make peace with both — to refuse to let either one win.

His friends sometimes asked him, gently, "How do you keep going, J'onn? When fire is everywhere on this planet — every kitchen, every car, every fireplace?"

And J'onn would answer, in his soft deep voice:

"Because every fire I face and survive is a fire that did not take someone else."

So on the front lines of every Justice League battle, the Martian Manhunter still stands. He knows the flame will always be there, flickering at the corner of his eye. He has accepted it as part of his burden.

He is a man from the stars who is afraid of a match.

And he faces it.

Every. Single. Day.