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Manga Khan

Comics character

Manga Khan
Manga Khan and L-Ron as depicted in Who's Who: The Definitive Directory of the DC Universe #3 (October 1990). Art by Joe Phillips (penciller/inker) and Anthony Tollin (colorist).
Publication information
Publisher	DC Comics
First appearance	Justice League International #14 (June 1988)
Created by	Keith Giffen J.M. DeMatteis Steve Leialoha
In-story information
Alter ego	Unknown
Team affiliations	The Cluster
Abilities	Alien being which exists in a gaseous state possessing telepathic abilities.

Manga Khan, originally known as Lord Manga, is a DC Comics supervillain and an intergalactic trader. A gaseous being, he relies on a metallic suit to give him form. He had a robot companion named L-Ron (before trading him to the Justice League), and was a foe of the Justice League in the early 1990s.^[1]

In one of his first encounters with the Justice League, Manga kidnaps Mister Miracle to open up trade relations with Apokolips. He is followed in a spaceship by Big Barda, G'nort, Rocket Red, and Martian Manhunter. Teamwork allows them to find Manga, which enrages him to the point of damaging his L-Ron. His robotic assistant is not too concerned, he then ponders what the 'fall line' of robotic forms look like.

Eventually, Manga Khan reforms and becomes an ally of the League, helping to imprison Despero after the Martian Manhunter devolves him and allowing L-Ron to join them.

InJustice League Europe #28, Manga takes the defeated villain Starro. Despero however escapes, but Khan hires Lobo to retrieve him. Lobo comes to believe that Khan's way of speaking has started to affect him: Khan suffers from a condition which causes him to soliloquy at random intervals, in a parody of comics from the sixties. In the same vein, he founds the Manga Khan School of Melodrama to teach similar speech patterns to other characters. One of his alumni is the Scarlet Skier.

Khan later works with Mister Miracle as part of a scheme to market soap all across the galaxy. At first it gets the two into trouble with the dolphin-loving Lobo. Khan suffers damage to his robotic shell but later recovers.^[2] Later, they attempt to market the soap to the denizens of Apokolips before Darkseid stops their revolution.^[3]

In his natural gaseous state, Manga Khan can communicate telepathically but cannot physically interact with anything. He normally wears an armored suit that makes him impervious to damage and grants him superhuman strength. Manga is a poor fighter preferring to talk his way out of combat. Manga is a master negotiator and barterer, thoroughly lacking ethics in his wheeling and dealings.

Many of Manga Khan's male (or "male"-personality) robotic assistants are named after science fiction writers: L-Ron after L. Ron Hubbard, Hein-9 after Robert A. Heinlein, K-Dikk after Philip K. Dick. In the 2003 miniseries Formerly Known as the Justice League, a "female" robotic assistant, J-Lo, was introduced, whose moniker is derived from a popular nickname for Jennifer Lopez. This same series saw Manga Khan speaking of strong feelings for L-Ron, which he referred to as "the love which can never speak its name". A portion of the storyline is dedicated to his attempts to recover the robot, who remains in the company of several of Earth's superheroes. The same storyline implied that J-Lo was interested in a relationship with Manga Khan, which the alien trader seemed to reciprocate. Although none of the robots have biological genders, their personalities are described as such, and they are referred to by other characters with appropriate pronouns.