J'onn J'onzz has always been DC Comics' proverbial stranger in a strange land. And with the launch of his latest series, the Martian Manhunter is not only getting stranger -- he's getting scarier.

That's the mission behind Rob Williams and Eddy Barrows June 17-launching series. As the writer explains to CBR News, the team is taking care to take as much advantage as they can of the publisher's newly-instituted, rule-breaking mission statement. "The really nice thing about coming to the Talent Conference that DC had was that this idea of loosening up really came across," he told CBR. "Talking to some of the other people working on the other books, I think there's been a great willingness to go more out there and tell adventurous stories. I think the company is willing to embrace a lot of different approaches and styles, and they're really saying to people, 'Just go with it and give us what you've got.' I think it's exciting and refreshing to be involved with that.

Williams is known for dividing his time between genre-pushing original stories like the recent Vertigo series "The Royals: Masters of War" and various serials for 2000A.D., and classic superhero tales in titles like "Adventures of Superman." As he told CBR News, "Martian Manhunter" will start as the latter but quickly push into the former. The series is designed to cast J'onn J'onzz as the ultimate DC outsider -- a character whose own secret past as the supposed "last Martian" sets him at odds with the Justice League and draws him into a global conspiracy where nothing can be trusted, and no one is safe.

CBR News: As the DC relaunch was shaping up, how did Martian Manhunter become the character you connected with? He has such a strong history at the publisher, but is also very scarce when it comes to long solo runs, mostly making a mark on wider DCU stories. Was the untapped potential factor a part of the draw?

Rob Williams: I think that's part of it. It was partly the fact that Dan DiDio asked me if I wanted to do a "Martian Manhunter" book, but I got excited about it immediately. I've had a big soft spot for the character going back to one of my favorite runs of all time -- the "Justice League International" comics of Keith Giffen, JM DeMatteis and Kevin Maguire. They used J'onn really, really well. I reread recently "New Frontier" in its gorgeous Absolute edition, and Darwyn Cooke did great things with him there. A lot of people still feel very strongly about the John Ostrander series. ["Midnighter" writer]Steve Orlando was raving to me about that when we were in Burbank.

Usually, this is a character who's absolutely great in a group dynamic but not necessarily a lead himself. So it's exciting and refreshing to have a chance to push him to the forefront. I'm trying to get under his skin -- literally, in a way -- and trying to say, "Who you think this guy is? There's much more to him than that." He's still that classic Martian Manhunter, but all is not as it seems. One of the ideas on the table was, "Let's make him a little bit more three-dimensional. Let's get at what makes him tick and show who he really is." Without giving too much away, we're going deeper into J'onn and pulling him in some directions that people have never seen before.

While J'onn J'onzz has been defined by his status as a team member for many years, and while we do know something of his life with a wife and child before arriving on Earth, I feel like the core theme of the character has always been his alienness -- the idea that he is alone amongst the DC characters. Do you plan on exploring that?

Yeah, the alien thing is something I was quite big on. I feel like the wrong way to go with him would be to just have him as a big, green, different version of Superman. His costume almost implies that, on some level. But really, he's a shapeshifter. He can look like anything he wants to. So why does he choose to look like that? You might say that he wants to play the superhero, but then you start to think of the idea that he's truly alien. It's not just that he looks different from us. It's a different mindset. It's a different emotional core.

This series is trying to show that this character is of an entirely different mindset and from an entirely different world. The reality is that maybe he's been looking the way he has because he doesn't want to frighten us. The reality of who he is is something we'll find out, because there's something a little too easy about the tragic story of how he lost his wife and child. Maybe that's not all there is to it. You'll find out more as we go along.

For now, he is a loner, and the last of his kind. There's a line I wrote this week where he says, "I am the last of my kind. But I never told you what that kind really was." That's what we'll find out.

There has been this sinister edge to the character since the New 52 happened, where it was revealed that J'onn had been in the Justice League but there had been this falling out, and that's why he ended up in the more shadowy Stormwatch group. Are those threads you'll be reflecting at all?

I think I'm coming at it from a similar viewpoint. He's not the big cuddly figure he was in "Justice League International." He is a scary kind of presence -- as he would be! We're talking about a character who can shapeshift and walk through walls and be invisible. That's all inherently kind of sinister. He's really one of the big hitters in the DC Universe, and you'll see what he can do in this series. There's a sense where you kind of hope that he's a force for good, but what if he's not? And if there is a more sinister plan to him being here, then that's really bad news for everybody. He could take down more than half the DC Universe on his own if he wanted. And, as someone notes in the book, he can change minds! How do we know that all this time we haven't just been thinking about him what he wants us to think?

This all comes down to the fact that with any book, there's got to be a battle of good against evil. That's definitely here, but it's part of who he is. You're talking about a story that's about the battle for the soul of an individual.

Your artist on the book is Eddy Barrows, who can definitely deliver that classic DC superhero style. But given the nature of this story, is he changing up his approach in a significant way?

You'd have to speak to Eddy to see if he agrees, but I think this story is pulling him in some directions he's never gone before. There is that classic kind of superhero thing to it, but we're going to open with that before we really undercut it. We pull the rug out from under that very quickly, and you're going to see certain worlds and certain characters in this which are brand new. These new characters are really not superheroes. There's one aspect to it that's a noirish, detectivey, political thriller edge to the storyline. And then there's another that's a kind of a Miyazaki/Studio Ghibli thing -- it's almost a Roald Dahl sort of character, who I'm really excited about. He's brand new, and he's called Mr. Biscuit. He's very jarring and strange.

I feel like at our entry level, we wanted to start where he was in the past, this big, alpha-level superhero. And then, when we start to find out who he really is and get a feel for his inner core, we go off into some really unusual areas. I guess you'd expect that because he is an alien. He's not a straightforward character. But Eddy has done amazing work here, handling the different story styles and design aspects, and I think people will see a different aspect to his work with the character stuff we're doing. Eddy's storytelling on the page is superb, too. The script's nuances are all there.

Some of what you're describing seems to have a conspiracy theory or paranoia element to it. We know that Superman and some of the Justice League will be showing up as the book moves along -- does that tone put them in a more antagonistic role?

I think it all becomes established very quickly -- the idea that he could be a major threat. Our inciting incident in Issue #1 is an event called the Epiphany, where there's a load of different terrorist events happening across the globe all at the same time. When the authorities look at this, they realize that they all happened at the exact same second, and the fact of the matter is that logistically, that's impossible. These terrorist groups don't work together. They have no common cause. Why would they do this? So the entire world we're setting up is overcome by massive paranoia. It's kind of pushing the world to what could be war, and in the middle of it, J'onn sees something that throws his worldview into flux. He has to make a very painful decision for himself, which the Justice League get involved with in order to stop him. They're immediately at odds, but not in a way where someone is going "Behold... now I'm evil!" It's not that at all. It's just that J'onn wants to do one thing while the Justice League wants another.

Really, I wanted a way to show how much of a formidable presence he is up front. He's not the mascot of the team at all. You're going to see what he's capable of, and it's kind of frightening.

A lot of your recent work, whether it be a Vertigo series like "The Royals" or your 2000A.D. stories, have been shorter runs. This is an ongoing series, so does that potential length at all affect how you approach your story?

I think you try and serve both masters, really. You plan things for the long term, but you're also canny enough to be aware that you can't keep people waiting too long. In this market, books don't always last. So you need to have your immediate story hit, but you also want to plant seeds that could go on further.

It's interesting you mention this, because I do think there's something to be said for an arc where you define it completely. "The Royals" was six issues, and we did it all in those six. We could have gone a lot longer, but there's a lot to be said for that approach, because you have to condense the character beats, and that gives an energy to it.

But with "Martian Manhunter," we're going in with little two-issue arcs, and they'll continue to roll on through the whole series. It's a different way of pacing it, but I'm really hopeful that people react well to it and keep it going for the long term. There's just a huge amount of scope here, and like I said, we're introducing these brand new characters. There's a lot of people who are working on these DC books in June that are very keen and enthusiastic to put new stuff on the page. Hopefully it hits with people, and you'll have a brand new army of great new DC characters.

"Martian Manhunter" #1 arrives June 17 from DC Comics.