MANHUNTER 387
Contemporary Japanese Society. London: Routledge Curzon, 2000; Schodt, Frederik.
Manga! Manga! Th e World of Japanese Comics. Tokyo: Kodansha, 1983.
Robert O’Nale
MANHUNTER. Manhunter is the name given to a group of vigilante crime-fi ghting
heroes appearing in DC Comics since the 1940s (not to be confused with the DC
superhero J’onn J’onzz, known as the Martian Manhunter). Th ere have been four sig-
nifi cant versions of the character. Th e fi rst two Manhunters appeared during the 1940s.
Quality Comics introduced its Manhunter, Donald Richards, created by Tex Blaisdell
and Alex Kotzky, in Police Comics #8, March 1942. Paul Kirk, National (DC) Comics’
Manhunter, fi rst appeared in 1940 as a non-costumed private detective in Adventure
Comics #58. In 1942, Joe Simon and Jack Kirby revised the character, giving him the
familiar blue-and-red costume and the “Manhunter” name in issue #73. Th e two char-
acters share little else but the name. DC purchased the Quality Comics characters in
the late 1950s, and the two characters only retroactively interacted in the 1980s All-Star
Squadron and other DC Comic titles.
Dan Richards, with his canine companion Th or (later revealed to be a Manhunter
android in the 1988 Millennium crossover), became a mystery man to hunt down
the killer for whose deeds his brother was framed. Afterwards, the Richards Man-
hunter’s adventures involved crime fi ghting otherwise ordinary thugs and criminals.
Th e character is killed by Mark Shaw in the 2004 Manhunter series.
Paul Kirk, a big game hunter and private detective, becomes Manhunter after the
death of his close friend and city police commissioner. His Golden Age adventures
are of relatively little note, though he is historically important, if only because he was
a creation of Simon and Kirby. Archie Goodwin and Walt Simonson revised the
character in the 1970s as a backup story for Detective Comics (beginning with #437
and ending in #443).
Placed in suspended animation by a secret organization, Kirk re-emerges to work
as the organization’s assassin, trained in the martial arts and embedded with a healing
factor. On discovering their goal of global domination, Kirk turns on his benefactors
and dies by the end of the story arc. Th is version is seen as a product of its time and
represents seminal work on new characters to transition superhero comics away from
their Silver Age innocence. (A clone of Paul Kirk appears as Manhunter in Kurt
Busiek’s Power Company series.)
Th e 1988 DC crossover Millennium launched the next incarnation of the Manhunter
character, in a series written by John Ostrander that ran for 24 issues into 1990. Attor-
ney Mark Shaw turns on the Manhunter cult that recruited him. Th e Shaw Manhunter
works as bounty hunter and his antagonist is Dumas, a shape-shifting mercenary. Th e
series reveal is that Shaw is Dumas and that his split personalities are a result of govern-
ment experimentation (a plot line that would be fi nally resolved in the third 2000-era
series). Another Manhunter series, written by Steven Grant, was launched in 1994 after
the Zero Hour crossover and lasted 12 issues.
