Retro Review: Manhunter #1-24 By Ostrander, Yale, Rice, Miehm & Others For DC Comics

Columns, Top Story

Manhunter #1-24 (July 1988 – April 1990)

Written by John Ostrander (#1-4, 6-12, 14), Kim Yale (#1-24)

Co-plot by John Ostrander (#15-18, 20, 22)

Plot Assist by John Ostrander (#19, 21, 23

Pencilled by Doug Rice (#1-4, 7, 10-12, 14), Kelley Jones (#3), Mary Mitchell (#5, 11), Pablo Marcos (#6), Frank Springer (#8-9), Sam Kieth (#12), John Koch (#13), Grant Miehm (#15-24)

Inked by Sam Kieth (#1-3, 12), Kelley Jones (#3-4), Romeo Tanghal (#5-6), Pablos Marcos (#7-15), John Statema (#16-24)

Colour by Julianna Ferriter (#1-17), Carl Gafford (#18-24)

Spoilers (from thirty-three to thirty-one years ago)

By the time Manhunter launched, I was digging deeper and deeper into the DC Universe, and had figured out that John Ostrander was one of my favourite writers there.  I was absolutely loving his Suicide Squad, and thought his Firestorm was very cool.  There was no question that I was going to go all in for this series, which he co-wrote with his wife Kim Yale.  

Manhunter featured Mark Shaw, who was last seen in the Suicide Squad as the Privateer, a minor character with a strong tie to the Manhunters who were the focus of the Millennium event (which was responsible for introducing me to a number of DC titles).  I never really got the Manhunters – they were human shaped androids that predated the Green Lanterns, but had also planted sleeper agents all over the Earth, mostly in the superhero community.  It was a weird concept, and it led to the development of the truly terrible New Guardians comic (which I need to read again some time).

Anyway, Mark Shaw reclaiming the Manhunter name, dressing as a cold weather ninja, and working as a bounty hunter, sounded like a great concept to me.  My memories of this book are shaky.  I think that it was a lot slower than the Suicide Squad, but I don’t really remember.  I’m looking forward to diving back into this to see how it holds up.

Let’s track who turned up in the title:

Villains

  • The Penguin (#1)
  • Dumas (Stephen Forrest Lee; #1-4)
  • Captain Cold (#1, 24)
  • Mr. Devree (Vancroft’s assistant; #2)
  • Akira Shiamura (Devree’s associate; #2)
  • Interface (Ashley Mavis Powell; #5, 10)
  • Mr. Falcone (Argent; #6)
  • Zeke Pikara (#6)
  • Dr. Alchemy (#7)
  • Colonel Kapek (#7)
  • Count Vertigo (#7)
  • Durlans (#8-9)
  • Jeremy/Jeremiah Heep (#10-12)
  • Major Zastrow (KGB; #10-12)
  • Maxon (Lexcorp; #10-12)
  • Margo Wister (Lexcorp; #10-12)
  • X-Agon (#10-12)
  • Rocket Red #8 (#11-12)
  • Cat-Man (#13)
  • Blackadders (Kobra ninjas; #14)
  • Mirage (#15)
  • Outlaw (John Henry Martin; #16)
  • Sportsmaster II (Victor Gover; #17)
  • Dumas II (#18-23)
  • The Grasshopper (#18)

Guest Stars

  • Amanda Waller (Suicide Squad; #7, 14)
  • Mary West (Flash’s mother; #8-9)
  • Flash (Wally West; #8-9)
  • Chunk (#8)
  • Fidel Castro (#8-9)
  • Rudolph West (Flash’s father; #8)
  • Checkmate Knight (Garrett; #10-12)
  • Batman (Bruce Wayne; #17)
  • Alfred Pennyworth (#17)

Supporting Characters

  • Lt. Lucius Best (NYPD; #1, 5, 7, 11-12, 15, 18, 20, 24)
  • Rose Shaw (Mark’s mother; #1, 3, 15, 18-20)
  • Eleanor Shaw (Mark’s sister; #1, 3, 13, 15, 18-20, 24)
  • Jamie Shaw (Mark’s brother; #1-3, 15, 17-20, 24)
  • Eliot Shaw (Mark’s stepfather; #1-3, 15, 18-20, 24)
  • Eiji Hasegawa (Daiichi Doku Yakuza Clan; #3)
  • Kazuo Hasegawa (Daiichi Doku Yakuza Clan; #3, 10-12, 18-20)
  • Sylvia Kandrey (NYPD; #5, 11, 13, 15, 18, 21, 24)
  • Sister Sassie (#6, 13)
  • Anna-Marie Vere´ (this is how the accent was written; #6)
  • Gary DeVries (Southern Cross Salvage Corps; #10-12, 21-24)
  • David Challoner (Southern Cross Salvage Corps; #10-12, 21-24)
  • Mandisa Best (Lt. Best’s daughter; #12, 15)
  • Bua Best (Lt. Best’s wife; #12, 15)
  • Mark Phelps (Warrant officer; #13, 21, 24)
  • Flo Crowley (Suicide Squad; #13)
  • Oracle (#13, 17, 19)
  • John Economos (Suicide Squad; #15)
  • Ryu (Daiichi Doku Yakuza Clan; #19-20, 24)
  • N’Lasa (#21-24)

Let’s take a look at what happened in these books, with some commentary as we go:

  • Mark Shaw stands on a rooftop, tracking the Penguin, who has stolen a valuable necklace.  He lets him return to his lair, and while waiting, suits up with his stylized Manhunter mask and improved power baton.  He leaps across the street and enters Penguin’s apartment, where he’s indulging in a bath.  Cobblepot appeals to Mark as a fellow criminal, but Mark rejects that.  He takes him to his contact on the NYPD, a Lt. Best, who doesn’t seem to like Shaw that much.  We learn that he’s been busy catching criminals with bounties on their heads.  In Canterbury, a priest from South Africa goes to see his old mentor in a huge cathedral.  The mentor pulls a gun and shoots him dead and escapes before the priest’s guards can get inside.  As the killer drives off, he calls his handler and reveals that he’s actually the assassin known as Dumas.  Back at his apartment, Mark prepares for his evening by dressing like a chauffeur.  He drives a fancy car out of the city and into Connecticut, where a party is winding down.  It’s the home of his family – his mother, Rose, his sister Eleanor, his half-brother James, and his as-yet unnamed stepfather.  They had a party for Eleanor because she passed the bar, but Mark had to wait for the party to be over so he doesn’t sully his family’s name due to his criminal past.  James is upset that his father likes Mark more, and Mark retells his origin.  He talks about being inducted into the Manhunter cult, and eventually both working with the Justice League as the Privateer, and fighting them as the Star-Tsar.  While in prison, Simon LaGrieves (psychiatrist to the Suicide Squad) helped Mark figure things out, so now he’s the Manhunter again, and doing good.  He gives Eleanor the fancy car he came in as a gift, and heads for the train station to go home.  Later, he stakes out a Mets game, figuring that Captain Cold, who is a baseball fan, would be in attendance.  When he spots him, he follows him home, and then sees him going out for the night in his supervillain getup.  Manhunter follows, and ends up having to ride on the back of a subway train while Cold rides on top.  He watches as Cold is about to rob some guys doing a drug deal, but a TV newsman approaches the dealer and records their transaction.  That’s when Cold decides to rob them, but there are also a bunch of cops on-scene as well.  Manhunter doesn’t want to lose the collar, so he jumps in and kicks Cold.  When Cold fires his gun at him, Mark blasts it with his baton, and Cold is knocked out.  The reporter asks Mark if he’s related to Paul Kirk (the former Manhunter), and he denies it.  Elsewhere, a woman named Olivia Vancroft calls an employee to say she wants Manhunter’s mask for her collection (she has quite a few) and wants to hire Dumas to acquire it.
  • Mark is at his stepfather’s office, discussing a job he wants him to do.  Basically, Eliot Shaw wants Mark to go to Japan to serve some subpoena papers to a guy.  It’s not Mark’s typical job, but he likes the idea of a trip to Tokyo so he agrees.  His brother (who has been called James, Jim, and now Jamie across two issues) tells him that someone wants to buy his Manhunter mask (I’m not sure how people know that Shaw is Manhunter).  When Mark refuses, Jamie gets angry, and calls Mr. Devree, the man that approached him about the mask.  Devree works for Olivia Vancroft, and now that he knows he can’t just buy the mask, he and his Japanese associate, Akira Shiamura, go to see Dumas.  Devree explains that Dumas is a mysterious assassin with the ability to change his appearance (when he doesn’t concentrate, his face kind of melts).  Devree and Shiamura look around Dumas’s collection of Kabuki masks.  The assassin greets them and agrees to do the job; we learn that Devree is behind the subpoena too, and has arranged for Mark to come to Dumas.  Later, Mark arrives in Tokyo, and explores a bit before it’s time to get to work.  Dressed as Manhunter, he enters his target apartment, and is attacked by Dumas.  He falls out the window, and uses his baton to push himself back into the building before he hits the ground.  He tries to get away using the elevator shaft, but Dumas follows.  Mark figures he’ll do better changing back into his street clothes, but he’s surrounded by police.  When he raises his hands, Dumas, unseen, tosses a knife between Mark’s fingers and kills a cop.  Mark tries to get away by riding on cars, but Dumas approaches him and they fight briefly.  Mark falls into a crowd and uses his baton to escape.  Close by, Dumas, now looking exactly like Mark in his civilian identity, opens fire on the crowd that’s gathered, and then drops his passport while escaping, framing Mark.  Mark rests on a rooftop, waiting for his power baton to recharge when Dumas approaches him again.  He explains that he was hired to steal Mark’s mask and to kill him.  Mark offers the mask, but that’s not enough for Dumas.  They fight again, and Mark recognizes that Dumas is trying to herd him towards his hotel, where the police are waiting for him.  Mark throws his baton at Dumas, but he catches it.  Mark runs, leaving his baton behind.  Mark is exhausted as he hits the street.  Dumas starts climbing down a construction site to get to Mark, but Mark flips on some electrical equipment and fries him.  When Dumas comes to, he sees that Mark is gone again.  Mark tries to hide out in the seedier side of Shinjuku (which he calls The Shinjuku), and is approached by some Yakuza, who tell him to come with them.
  • Mark is brought before Eiji Hasegawa, the lord of the Daiichi Doku Yakuza clan.  He tells Mark that he owes him the debt of giri-nijo because of the actions of Mark’s stepfather.  Hasegawa tells him a long story about how difficult things were in Japan following the end of the World War, and how the occupying American forces did little to help the people.  The Sangokujin, a group of black marketeers from Korea, China, and Taiwan were growing in local influence.  Eliot Shaw was sent to Japan as a young legal aid to a colonel involved in the government section of the occupation.  At the same time, Hasegawa pledged himself to an oyabun.  One day, while Mark was being driven through a town, he stopped a group of Sangokujin from raping a young woman, and had the lead man arrested.  He checked in on the woman, but was annoyed that the US government wasn’t interested in pursuing the case.  Eliot had the trial anyway, and that’s when he met Hasegawa, because the woman was his wife, and she was pregnant.  Eliot was sent back to the US after that, but Hasegawa has always felt a debt of giri-nijo towards him.  That’s why he’s now arranged for Mark to leave Japan safely (although it doesn’t explain why everyone knows who he is).  He is taken to a boat, but Dumas is waiting on the deck for him.  Hasegawa’s son, Kazuo explains the family’s connection to Dumas, who disappears.  When Mark returns to America, he heads to see his stepfather, who is with Jamie and Eleanor at the office.  Mark accuses Jamie of setting him up, and then Eliot explains that he was also involved, although unwittingly.  He explains that he was contacted about the subpoena by Olivia Vancroft, a once-famous woman who has lived as a recluse for decades in a very expensive house on a cliff.  Mark’s mom calls, and tells them that Dumas is holding her hostage.  Mark prepares to head to the house, but his family insists on coming with him.  In the car, Jamie declares his love for Mark.  Mark changes into his Manhunter gear and enters the house where he finds Dumas.  As they talk, Jamie comes busting through the window and Dumas shoots him.  Mark attacks Dumas and they fight while his dad and sister come in and start shooting at Dumas.  Dumas flees.  Mark realizes he owes his family giri-nijo, and swears to hunt down Dumas.
  • Mark approaches Cliff House, where he’s arranged to meet with Olivia Vancroft.  The house is all automated, and Mark follows a series of speakers before he encounters the shockingly young-looking Vancroft.  She explains that she is rich enough to stave off aging.  She shows him her mask collection (which somehow includes Dr. Fate’s helm, which seems impossible).  Mark shows her his mask, and offers it to her if she calls off Dumas.  She explains that this isn’t possible, because of Dumas’s code.  Mark puts on his mask and realizes something surprising.  Vancroft returns his baton to him; she says that Dumas gave it to her.  After Mark leaves, we learn that she is actually Dumas.  Mark writes a letter and mails it to his father, and then puts on his Manhunter gear and returns to Cliff House.  He sneaks into the house, and confronts her about being Dumas.  She denies it, but he explains how his mask’s sensors confirmed this.  She explains that Dumas created Vancroft as a cover identity, which he’s maintained for decades.  Shaw tells her that if she continues to bother him or his family, he will expose her.  He goes to walk away, but finds that she’s turned into Dumas (whose outfit, really, is a lot).  He points out that he can also expose Shaw, and demonstrates how easily he can pose as Mark.  Mark says he’ll kill him if that’s the only way to stop him, and they begin to fight.  Dumas uses the house to his advantage, leading Mark through some traps.  Dumas offers to let Mark kill himself, and they fight some more, before Dumas pulls a disappearing act.  Mark finds himself in the room full of masks, and starts smashing them, which enrages Dumas.  Mark tries to use his baton’s magnetic pulse on Dumas, but it has no effect because of this insulation in his costume (can you insulate against magnets?).  Mark then throws a Peacemaker mask at him, augmenting it with his magnetics, and this somehow hits Dumas so hard he becomes embedded in the floor.  Dumas dies, and Mark decides to hang his mask (which is full of technology) on the wall with all the others.
  • A police sergeant in the records division, Sylvia Kandrey, is doing her job when the Manhunter comes to see her.  Mark, who takes his mask off, flirts with her and makes a date to meet when she gets off work.  Lieutenant Best finds him and pulls him out of the station, but their date is already made.  At 3:30, as Sylvia leaves the station, Mark meets her and they go for Chinese food.  As they talk, Mark admits that he needs information from her – he’s tracking down a woman named Ashley Mavis Powell, a day care worker who was accused of molesting children, but she skipped bond and has been missing ever since.  Sylvia’s not sure she should help him.  As they leave the restaurant, they see a guy grab a briefcase from a woman on the street, and they both go after him.  Somehow, Mark manages to change into his Manhunter outfit between panels, and uses his baton to send a garbage can lid flying into the thief, knocking him out.  He tells Sylvia she can have the collar and leaves.  Sylvia spends the night in her uncomfortably decorated apartment (her couch looks like a park bench), thinking about Mark and dreaming of a life together.  At work the next day, Sylvia is congratulated by her colleagues, but Best pulls her into his office, because he knows she was with Shaw, who he hates.  Later, Sylvia pulls up the files on Powell, and is surprised to find that they are all restricted.  She’s joined by a woman named Paula, who I guess works for the police?  She gives her a floppy disk to update her computer files for a traveller’s cheque theft (there are a lot of people on Earth today who wouldn’t understand this sentence).  After Paula leaves, Sylvia finds that all of the Powell files have been deleted.  That night, at home, she speaks to Mark on the phone, telling him what happened.  She also explains that she couldn’t get into Paula’s files, so she used the police identity programs to prove that Powell and Paula are the same person (so, in other words, an accused sex offending daycare worker, in order to avoid prison, created a new identity and ended up working IT for the NYPD?).  We see that Paula/Powell is watching Sylvia’s apartment.  Mark suits up and goes to Paula’s place, where he finds evidence that she’s switching identities again and moving.  Paula goes to Sylvia’s apartment, and tells her that she’s given her two week’s notice.  We see Mark rushing through the city, and he busts into Sylvia’s place just as Paula is about to shoot her.  Paula zaps him with energy from her hand (seriously, where the hell did that come from?), which makes him continue the fight without his mask on (I’m getting lost here).  Paula beats on Mark when he makes a crack about her and children, but it’s Sylvia that knocks off her wig.  Mark zaps her in the back, and they call the cops.  The next day, when Sylvia comes to work, Best calls her into his office, where he tells her she’s suspended, although I’m not sure why.  Best is upset that she didn’t tell him what was going on, but he also wants her to work to gain his respect back.  She leaves, and finds Mark waiting for her again.  She blows him off, knowing that he was just using her.
  • Mark is at the corner deli he frequents when it gets held up.  He doesn’t do anything about it, and then the Korean couple that runs the place yell at him for not helping (apparently everyone knows he’s Manhunter).  He mentions that they don’t give him anything for free, so why should he, and then he goes and tracks the thieves down.  He returns them to the store while the Kims talk to the cops, and turns them over, taking a salami as his payment.  He returns home and checks his answering machine.  Amanda Waller has reminded him that he’s supposed to be tracking down Argent for her, and his stepfather lets him know that the warrants against him in Japan are quashed.  A man calling himself Falcone wants to hire Manhunter, and gives him an address.  The next day, Shaw goes to the place to meet Falcone.  He wants Mark to track down a young woman named Anna-Marie Vere´ (for some reason, the accent aigu is placed after the last letter of her name throughout this issue).  Falcone explains that Anna-Marie’s grandfather is looking for her after she ran away.  Mark makes it clear that Anna-Marie is an adult, and that he only goes after criminals.  Even when Falcone offers him twice his usual pay, Mark turns the job down, sensing that things are not above board.  That’s when Zeke Pikara, another bounty hunter enters.  Shaw hates Pikara, because he’s ruthless and beastly, and Falcone says it has to be one of them that does the job.  Shaw still walks away, but ends up deciding to find Vere´ himself.  He goes to see Sister Sassie, a spiritualist who is married to his old bunky from prison.  She might be a fortune teller, but she’s also got a lot of good connections, so she sends Mark to CUNY, where Anna-Marie was a student. Mark charms someone in the registrar’s office to give him a list of Anna-Marie’s old teachers.  Her dance teacher ends up getting in touch with Anna-Marie for Mark, and they arrange to meet.  Anna-Marie explains to Mark that her grandfather runs Argent, the very organization that Mark is supposed to be tracking down.  We learn that Argent was part of the original Task Force X, and that the entire organization has disappeared.  Its leader, Control, is Anna-Marie’s grandfather, and he wanted her to marry someone he picked (this is how Argent stays hidden – it’s a family-only affair), but she didn’t want that so she ran.  Shaw wants to take her to Amanda Waller, but she doesn’t want to betray her family.  Just then, a power relay explodes a few blocks away, and they are plunged into darkness.  Shaw figures that Pikara has found them, and starts to lead Anna-Marie out of the building.  Pikara is disguised as the doorman, and he gives Shaw a good whack with a bat and tries to grab Anna-Marie.  Shaw hits him hard so she can escape, but Pikara hits him again and catches up to her.  She tries to shoot him but misses.  Mark finally uses his baton to blast Pikara.  He gets back up and walks towards Mark, shrugging off subsequent shots.  Just then, a man in all black hits Pikara in the back of the neck with a tranquilizer dart, which goes unseen by Mark.  He turns to Anna-Marie and they take off for Belle Reve.  The guy who shot Pikara is Falcone, who has apparently played Mark so he can follow him to the new Suicide Squad, which Control wants to take down.  This issue continues into the Suicide Squad Annual (you’ll have to check my first Suicide Squad column to see what happens there).
  • Doug Rice returns as Mark speaks directly to the reader, talking about tracking down Dr. Alchemy, who has been going on a bit of a tear lately.  Mark tracks him to an apartment, where he meets with a woman.  Once they are in bed, and Alchemy is away from his stone, Manhunter drops into the room through the skylight and puts Alchemy under arrest.  The woman tries to stab Mark, but her knife doesn’t get through his padded costume.  As it turns out, Mark paid the woman to hook up with Alchemy, but didn’t explain what he intended to do.  Later, at the police station, Mark looks through the book of available bounties, and thinks about going after Count Vertigo, the rightful ruler of Vlatava.  He thinks he sees Sylvia, but it’s another officer.  Lt. Best reminds him of the trouble that he put Sylvia through, and kicks him out.  Mark heads to the Little Vlatava neighbourhood, where a restaurant is operated by a man he helped when he was a lawyer.  He wants information on Vertigo, which the man is a little reluctant to give out of loyalty.  He explains that some Vlatavans helped Vertigo escape from prison because they want his help in freeing their country from Soviet rule.  Vertigo, however, has been brainwashed by the Soviets.  Josef, Mark’s friend, is worried that these people don’t really have Vlatava’s best interest at heart.  Mark calls Amanda Waller, and figures out that the Vlatavans are using the decommissioned McClellan Air Force Base.  Waller offers help from the Squad, but Mark doesn’t want that; he does, however, want a ride.  A US jet, which has Mark holding onto the landing gear, touches down briefly before taking off again – an act the Vlatavans have no choice but to indulge for fear of blowing their cover.  Once on the base, Mark uses his mask’s microphone to learn that a Colonel Kapek is in charge, and that they’ve been having little luck shaking Vertigo out of his depression.  Mark has arranged for Waller to send troops to the base at 6AM, but he learns that the Vlatavans will be leaving before that.  He sets soe explosives off to create confusion, and then tries to extract Count Vertigo.  Vertigo doesn’t want to go with him, and Mark has to hit him to get him out of his funk, at which point he starts to go wild, using his abilities on Mark and the guards that come to secure him.  Waller’s troops show up and stat spreading out throughout the base, chasing off the Vlatavans that came to pick up the leadership.  Vertigo continues to use his abilities on Mark, who uses his baton to mimic Black Canary’s cry, which has been effective on Vertigo in the past.  He punches him out, and then has to identify himself to some soldiers.  Later, we see that Kapek and his number two have escaped unscathed, and move on to their other location, following orders from their ‘patron’.  
  • When the Invasion event hit, Manhunter tied in with Flash for a bit.  Mark was summoned to the house of Mary West; she wanted to hire him to go get her son Wally, the Flash, and stop him from travelling to Cuba.  Mark objects, saying he’s an adult, but Mary pushes the fact that Wally is not twenty-one, and that because of Mark’s ties to the Manhunter cult, and the fact that her ex-husband was also involved.  Mark ends up agreeing, against his better judgement.  He tries to catch Wally at the airport, but learns that the cargo transport he’s flying in is just taking off.  Mark runs through the airport taking off his clothes, because apparently his super-baggy Manhunter outfit, with its giant shoulder pads, was under his regular clothes all along.  He’s not able to catch the plane, but he is able to use his baton’s magnetic properties to stick to the outside of it as it flies to Cuba.  Just as the plane reaches the island, a barrage opens up, hitting the plane at the same time that the baton runs out of energy.  Mark falls into the jungle, and somehow survives, although he does pass out for a few hours.  He retrieves his baton, and then hikes to where the plane crashed.  He finds it abandoned, with a large crater nearby (this happened in Flash #21 apparently).  He starts to track Wally, and discovers that he and his companion Chunk have been taken prisoner by the Cuban army and Fidel Castro.  The Cubans are about to shoot the two Americans, so Mark uses his baton to disarm them.  Just then he’s attacked by a psychedelic snake.  He’s knocked out again, and when he comes to, he learns he’s been captured by a group of Durlans who are on Earth with the Invasion fleet.  He tries to pass off that he’s a Mark II Manhunter, and an ally, but that doesn’t work.  He is able to escape.  Later, he finds a Cuban army camp, and sees a woman with a gun going into the tent he assumes is Wally’s.  He moves to stop her but is attacked by another Durlan.  He manages to stop the woman from shooting Wally before the Durlan grabs him and flies him off.  Their fight happens high in the air, and when he zaps it with his baton, he’s left in freefall again.  This time he’s able to use the baton to control his fall.  The Durlans gather to prepare their attack on Castro (I’m guessing that the Flash issues explain this weirdness).  Mark comes across the Durlans in the forest again, and attacks them.  Their leader, a woman, explains that she wanted to kill Wally because he knows that they plan on replacing Castro.  The two stare each other down, and the Durlan walks away.  After she leaves, Mark passes out again, exhausted.  When he comes to, he sees that Castro is toasting his victory.  Mark, still in his full Manhunter gear, mixes in with the crowd of soldiers, unquestioned, and looks for Wally.  He runs into Wally’s father, who explains that Wally left already and is on his way back to the States.  Rudolph offers Mark a change of clothes, and asks if his wife is behind him being there.
  • In Flash #22, Manhunter ends up at a party that Fidel Castro is throwing for Flash, after his father sacrificed himself to blow up some aliens at the Harbour.  Castro’s even flown Wally’s mother down for the party.  Some anti-Castro Cubans hire Mark to abduct Castro, but it turns out they’re the Durlans again, and they make off with Castro and Mary after knocking out Mark and Flash.
  • In Manhunter #9, Mark recaps things for us, and then decides to knock out the Flash as he comes to.  The Durlans herd Fidel and carry Mary towards the mountains, and Castro, after learning that they want a plane, lets them know that the alien invasion has failed.  The Durlans argue amongst themselves, and Mary, hearing of their plan to just pose as humans, threatens to expose them.  Now the female Durlan says she’ll kill them and take their place.  Mark is following and watching all of this.  Wally starts to recover, and passes out again.  The Durlans, now all resembling Cuban soldiers, prepare to shoot their hostages (only one of them had guns before, but now they all do).  Mark springs into action, knocks them down, grabs Mary, and starts running, grabbing Castro behind him.  The Durlans give chase, and Wally finally wakes up and stays awake.  The Durlans turn into birds and surround Mark and the others, preparing to shoot them again.  Wally arrives, taking all of their guns.  He’s confused by seeing two of his mother, and even more confused when his father turns up.  Mary tries to make him see that his father is a Durlan, and Mark prepares to zap him with his baton to keep him from attacking.  Wally grabs the baton and hits him with it repeatedly, but Mark is able to disorient him with strobe lights in his gloves or something.  Mark sends Wally flying, and then uses his baton to zap the Durlans, except for the Castro and Mary duplicates.  Wally returns, and Mark realizes he can’t fight him, so he sits down in a meditative position, hoping to calm Wally down.  Somehow, Wally lifts him so that he stays in a lotus position, and gets more angry as Mark tries to explain what is happening.  Finally, Wally sees his mother fighting her duplicate, and goes to pull them all apart.  Wally can’t tell the two sets of dupes apart, but Mark can tell, and blasts the two Durlans.  Castro wants to arrest Shaw, but Mary won’t let him.  Castro walks off.  Later, the Americans are at Guantanamo, arranging transport back to the States.  Wally wants Mark to go look for his friend Chunk, but Shaw is done with the Wests.  Just then, there’s a flash of light (this is the metagene bomb going off, as shown in Invasion).
  • In Australia, a man named Jeremy Heep with a helicopter discovers a big piece of alien tech left over from the invasion.  He flies into Alice Springs and sends a telegram to his bosses to tell them he quits.  Later, Mark goes to Southern Cross Salvage Company to meet with Gary DeVries and David Chaloner.  (There is a famous Australian superhero comic called Southern Cross made by David DeVries and Gary Chaloner – clearly Ostrander and Yale are having fun with some friends in this issue).  They want to hire Mark to recover the tech that Heep found, while in their employ.  They worry that it’s a big weapon he’s found, and that he’ll sell it to someone who shouldn’t have it.  Mark agrees to take the job, but wants to be paid in technology.  His plan is to place a bid on the tech, and then just not pay for it.  Mark heads to New Orleans, where he tracks down Ashley Mavis Powell (who now has another identity, working at a Catholic daycare).  Manhunter is in her place when she gets home, and he calls her Interface.  She blasts him with her powers but since he’s wearing a papier-maché mask, it doesn’t short it out.  He tells her that if she helps him with some computer hacking, he’ll let her escape again.  It takes a while, but she’s able to use her computer powers to make it seem like SCSC has won the auction (being held on a rudimentary BBS).  She’s promised he’ll pay $1.8 billion in gold.  As Ashley leaves, she is arrested by some FBI agents who Mark called.  Four days later, Mark is in Alice Springs, where he meets up with DeVries.  They are passed by Colonel Zastrow, the Russian who has been seen in Suicide Squad and Firestorm before this.  They are also seen by two operatives from LexCorp, one of whom is named Maxon, and has a suit of green and purple armor.  He’s also seen by a Checkmate operative, who recognizes Shaw as Manhunter.  When Mark enters his hotel room, he’s surprised to find Kazuo, the Yakuza guy he met in Japan, waiting for him.  Kazuo lets him know that his clan has no further debt to his father, and that he’s there for the same alien tech Mark is.  Later, DeVries meets with Heep to give him his money – not gold but bills, and Heep drives him off into the Outback.  We see that they are followed by Zastrow, the Checkmate Knight, Kazuo, and in a plane, Maxon and his associate.  Mark is with Chaloner, being outfitted in an alien battle suit that’s been painted to look like his usual outfit.  He flies off to support DeVries while Chaloner talks to him over the radio.  Heep takes DeVries to Uluru (they still call it Ayers Rock here) where he uses a remote to pull up the alien weapon – it’s a massive purple and yellow mech.
  • Mark continues to fly his new suit towards Uluru.  The Lexcorp operatives – Maxon and Margo Wister, spot him from their plane.  Zastrow calls in a Rocket Red (#8) to surveil Mark.  The Checkmate Knight calls in, and we learn that his name is Garrett, and that he’s being told to not engage Mark, as he’s an ally.  David calls to tell Mark that he’s on his way with more weapons.  Gary, meanwhile, is shocked by the size of the mech that Heep has found.  Mark almost flies into the mech, and then maneuvers to grab Gary and get him out of there.  Maxon, wearing his Lexcorp armor, jumps out of his plane and tackles Mark in mid-air, smashing him into the ground.  Manhunter emerges from the now-broken armor (really, what was the point of designing it if it was never going to even be used in battle?).  Zastrow orders the Rocket Red to take out Maxon.  Heep accuses Gary of betraying him, but they are interrupted by the arrival of Kazuo and his Yakuza.  The Knight attacks them, and Mark is surprised by the chaos unfolding around him.  He decides to go for Gary.  Heep activates a remote on the mech, which fixes him in a tractor beam of sorts and draws him inside it, which is not what he was going for.  Everyone stands and watches as the mech starts firing on them, and they scramble to get away.
  • Issue eleven has a backup story by Yale and Mitchell (I’m guessing because Rice was slow), starring Sylvia Kandrey.  Lt. Best comes to see her in the office where she’s been sent for her probation, claiming he had to deliver a postcard from Mark.  A homicide detective tries to hit on Sylvia, and is rude to Best, which, after he leaves, prompts Best into offering to get Sylvia back to her regular job early (she has only ten days to go).  Sylvia gets mad at him, claiming that he’s only interested in his own feelings and guilt, and he backs down.  She reads Mark’s postcard and then looks him up on the computer.  The woman she shares that desk with comes on for her shift, and as Sylvia gets ready to leave, she tosses Mark’s postcard in the trash (it didn’t really say much anyway).
  • Having taken Heep into itself, the robot, called X-Agon apparently, starts to fulfil its programming, which is to eradicate all advanced technology on Earth, starting by destroying all of Australia.  Chaloner arrives on the scene with his cart full of tech, and Mark asks Gary to get the Yakuza to work with them.  He jumps up to the Rocket Red (which looks totally different this issue than last, despite being drawn by the same artists).  Working together, everyone attacks the robot, but it doesn’t do much good.  X-Agon blasts the Rocket Red and one of the Yakuza guys.  The robot has used up all of Heep’s lifeforce, and spits out his desiccated body.  It starts to draw in Kazuo, but Mark jumps into the tractor beam and takes his place.  Once inside, Mark, talking to Chaloner through his mask, starts smashing things.  Chaloner helps him figure out where the robot’s power core is, and he starts smashing it too.  Once it’s cracked, Mark gets outside of the robot and jumps to the Lexcorp plane.  The robot explodes, Mark drops to the ground, and Colonel Zastrow figures that he’s okay with this outcome.  DeVries and Chaloner are pleased with the outcome, since they can salvage what’s left of X-Agon.  Kazuo feels he now owes Mark a debt of giri-ninjo, but Mark doesn’t agree.
  • Issue twelve’s backup has art by Sam Kieth, and again features Lt. Best. This time, he’s trying to put his daughter to bed, but she wants a story about Manhunter, who she thinks is a hero (how is he so well known?).  He tells her a version of the Sleeping Beauty story that has nice art, but couldn’t hold my interest so I didn’t really read it.
  • Ostrander and Rice both step away for issue thirteen, leaving things with Yale and artist John Koch.  Mark is sparring with his sensei (who looks to be at least ten years younger than him, but is distracted by a reporter who is trying to interview him, despite the fact that he already turned down the man’s request.  After he showers, he tells the reporter off again, and heads to the local precinct house, to look at warrants.  He considers hunting Cat-Man, Sportsmaster, Cannon, Saber, and Mirage.  He’s interrupted by the new warrant officer, Mark Phelps, who is pretty friendly with him.  Mark asks if he knows Sylvia Kandrey, but he doesn’t.  Later, Mark speaks to Flo Crowley from the Suicide Squad over the phone, and learns that none of his potential prey are working with the Squad.  Flo sets him up to contact Oracle, the mysterious computer hacker who has been helping her out lately.  Mark speaks to Oracle next, and she agrees to work with him.  After that, Mark calls Sassy, his psychic hookup, and she gives him a tip as to where Mirage might be.  Mark receives a letter from Gary and David, promising him new equipment soon.  Later, he heads to a newspaper where he talks to a reporter he knew back when he was a lawyer, and they check the records for a while.  After that, Mark goes to traffic court, doing more legwork to find his prey.  He also tries to figure out where Sylvia is, but the guy there won’t help with that.  Later, Mark gets all dressed up in a tux, but decides to take his mask and baton with him.  He’s headed to a gala at a museum with his sister Eleanor.  While he’s there, as Mark admires a statue of a cat, Cat-Man drops from the ceiling to steal it.  Mark puts on his mask and they start fighting.  He’s able to retrieve the statue within three panels, and then goes after Cat-Man.  Cat-Man claws him a little, but Mark is able to capture him in the parking garage, because he’d already arranged for Cat-Man’s car to get towed (which doesn’t make a lot of sense, if you’ve ever waited for the cops to tow a car).  Later, after getting his wounds fixed up, Mark returns to fight his sensei, who looks about fifteen.  Sylvia comes to see him (because of course she’d know where his dojo is), and they talk about how he’s been looking for her.  He feels badly that he interfered with her career, but she takes the blame for that.  They look like they’re on the way to being friends, or maybe something more…
  • Issue fourteen is also Chapter 6 of the Janus Directive, the Suicide Squad/Checkmate crossover event that spilled into some other books.  Mark is at home in the office he converted his bedroom into by raising his bed (isn’t he supposed to have a rich family?).  He receives a package from Southern Cross, containing a new collapsable mask.  Amanda Waller comes to see him, and to tell him that she was the target of an assassination attempt.  She wants him to go check out a place called Anaconda Industries in Chicago, which she thinks is involved.  Mark is not all that interested, as he is a bounty hunter, but Waller promises him backup and insists that he is the only person who can do the job.  She points out that he owes her, but it’s when she admits that she’s scared that he agrees to do the job.  As he arrives in Chicago and scouts the place out, we learn that once he got into town, he connected with Oracle, who was not able to tell him anything about the Janus Directive, or Anaconda.  He enters the building through its roof, and we see a Kobra Blackadder ninja watching him.  Manhunter discovers an elevator shaft significantly deeper than the height of the building and descends to the bottom, where he finds a huge cavernous base.  Two scientists are working on a model of a microwave gun that’s able to kill the inhabitants of a tiny city (the inhabitants are rats) without damaging the buildings.  We learn they are working on a much larger version.  They decide to use their weapon on Mark, who they know is watching them.  He jumps out of the way and tries to disable the gun.  The scientists call in some guards, who are a little more high-tech than the other Blackadders we’ve seen (they have a total Stargate vibe going on with their helmets, and are wearing wings).  Mark uses his baton to escape up the elevator shaft and reach the street.  He takes off on his motorcycle, while the Blackadders fly after him.  He’s not able to shake them by going through a double-layered street, so he drives up to an elevated train station.  He jumps on a train, but is followed.  He gets knocked off the train, and before the Blackadders can fire on him, he jumps into a river.  They shoot him many times as he falls.  Later, a pair of Blackadder divers retrieve his tunic, full of holes, and his broken mask.  They assume he’s dead.
  • Mark seems delusional, imagining he’s fighting Kobra, who turns into Mirage, and then Cat-Man.  We feel set up to believe this is a dream sequence, but then we see that Mark is injured in an alleyway dumpster. He crawls out, and kills a rat that attacks him.  He remembers going to Belle Reve to confront Amanda Waller, but instead only being able to talk to Warden Economos.  He tries to get to his baton, but is too injured.  Meanwhile, Mark’s family waits for him at a fancy restaurant.  They are there with Sylvia Kandrey, which seems a little too soon to me.  They are worried that he’s so late, so Sylvia goes to call the Warrant Officer at her precinct house.  She returns and tells the others that Mark was hunting both Cat-Man and Mirage when he last checked in; she wants to get a look at his computer.  Mark continues to try to get out of the alley, but collapses again.  He remembers going to the nightclub where Mirage has a gig as a DJ.  He confronted him (while wearing his weird half-mask), but Mirage dosed him with his hallucinatory powers, making him see things that weren’t there.  He shot Mark three times, and then dumped him in the dumpster.  At Mark’s apartment, Sylvia is able to get into the files in his computer, and figures out where Mark was going.  She calls Lt. Best at home and gets him to send some uniformed officers to the club.  The Shaws decide they can get there first, and head out with Sylvia.  As Mark continues to crawl towards his baton, he thinks about his father, a burglar who went by the name Outlaw, and was gunned down by the police in an alley.  Sylvia and most of the Shaws start looking around the club, and Jamie, who I never noticed before walks with a cane, finds some blood on the floor.  Best arrives with the cops, which causes Mirage to put on his uniform and start using his powers.  Jamie finds Mark in the alley, just as Mirage blasts his way out of the club and stands in front of them.  He’s about to kill them, but Sylvia gets his attention from the other end of the alley.  With Jamie’s help, Mark blasts Mirage with his baton, knocking him out.  Sylvia starts to arrest him as Best and the other cops come into the alley.  Later, we see that Mark is in the hospital, in stable condition.  Sylvia sits with him, and tells him that when he’s better, they’ll talk.
  • A man named John Henry Martin, also known as Outlaw, rides his motorcycle, and narrates his life story.  He was in and out of jail, but was framed as a cop killer by some dirty cops.  He ended up on death row, but when the meta-gene bomb exploded, he gained strength and near-invulnerability and escaped.  He was shot enough times that it knocked him out, but when he was being transferred, he escaped again, and fled through a swamp.  He went to see an old friend on the Florida/Georgia border, where his friend helped him reinforce a motorcycle to handle his weight and strength.  His plan was to return to his hometown to look for the cops who framed him.  His friend told him that Manhunter had joined the hunt for him; Martin and Shaw knew each other from some time spent as cellmates.  Martin returns to his childhood home to retrieve two items he had as a child – a clay marble his grandfather gave him, and a pig sculpture whittled by his father.  Manhunter is waiting for him, having remembered Martin talking about the place.  Shaw talks to him, trying to convince him to return to prison while Shaw investigates the man behind his incarceration, Haskell Weckler.  Weckler is a local drug lord who controls the police chief, the DA, and the local judge.  Martin refuses to go back, so they start to fight.  The fight is interrupted when Weckler arrives with the police chief, a man named Dunhill, who he openly bosses around.  Dunhill makes it clear that he’s going to kill both men, and blame Shaw’s murder on Martin too.  State police arrive, having been called in by Shaw, and things get chaotic.  Weckler shoots Martin, but it does nothing; Martin punches Weckler, killing him.  Manhunter fights the other local cops, but Dunhill tries to escape.  Martin grabs his bike and goes after him.  Shaw jumps on one of the state trooper’s cars, and they give chase too.  The state cops have set up a roadblock on a bridge.  Martin grabs him out of the car, and Shaw tries to talk him out of killing the man.  Martin decides to accept the bad ending he always saw himself as having, and kills Dunhill.  He moves to jump off the bridge, and the state troops open fire, hitting him multiple times.  Later, the head state cop tells Shaw that he’s arrested everyone involved in Martin’s framing, based on evidence Weckler was carrying around.  We learn that Martin’s body didn’t turn up, and no one is sure if he’s alive or dead.  Mark refuses to use his mask’s sensors to help in the search, and he leaves.
  • Mark and his brother Jamie are heading to Gotham City together for a trip together.  They discuss the fact that Mark’s family doesn’t understand his desire to be Manhunter.  When they check in to their hotel, they get ready to go to a fancy party in honour of some homeless shelters that have been built by the Wayne Foundation, which Jamie’s law firm had something to do with.  They watch as Tom Melcher, who owns the Gotham football team, talks to Bruce Wayne about the fact that Victor Gover, a player who did spokesman work for the shelters, is now out of the sport because he was found to be using steroids.  Melcher thinks that steroids should be legal, and even suggests that all superheroes are on them.  Mark decides to interrupt the conversation, introducing himself as Manhunter, and insisting that no heroes would use performance enhancers.  As Mark and Wayne talk, Gover shows up and starts yelling at Melcher.  Wayne calls for security while Shaw stops him from doing anything serious, and he is escorted out.  We also learn that Wayne doesn’t trust Shaw because of his past.  Gover goes home and lies to his parents, saying that Mecher told him to go talk to his coach, a man named Brockett.  We see that Gover has a suit of armor.  Shaw reads the newspaper and we learn he’s hunting an amateur in Gotham; Jamie is upset, because Mark thought Mirage was an amateur too.  Alfred Pennyworth talks to Bruce Wayne about an inquiry panel into steroid use in football over his breakfast.  Shaw has Oracle dig into Melcher for him, while Wayne uses his computer to look in on a recent destructive theft by a new Sportsmaster.  Shaw and Wayne both come to the conclusion that Gover is the Sportsmaster at the same time.  Manhunter stakes out Melcher’s house, because he was told that Coach Brockett was coming there.  He turns up his mic, so he can hear the conversation inside.  The two men argue, but then Gover, in his Sportsmaster gear, busts through the window and drags them outside, saying he’s going to ransom them back to the team’s board of directors.  Mark blasts him with his baton, and they start to fight.  Gover gets Mark on the ground, and is about to impale him with a baton when Batman swings in and hits Gover.  Mark protests that it’s his collar, and Manhunter and Batman fight briefly, allowing Gover to move back towards the house.  He throws an explosive at the front door and goes after them.  Batman was stunned in the blast, so Mark uses his baton to fly up to the second floor and come through the window.  Melcher fires a gun, but Sportsmaster ducks it and kicks him.  Batman comes through the skylight, and Manhunter protects the two men from an explosive discus.  Batman knocks out Gover, and hands him to Manhunter so he can collect the bounty, saying he doesn’t do this for money.  Later, Jamie and Mark leave Gotham.
  • Issue eighteen holds the first chapter of the six-part Saints and Sinners arc.  It opens after Mark left Cliffhouse months before, after he killed Dumas.  A man found the body, and called a guy named Mr. Maison.  Maison arrived and killed the man who alerted him.  He had a team with him that took the body to a helicopter, and wired the large house to explode.  Maison and his team flew off just as the house exploded.  They went somewhere in the Rockies, where Maison had some scientist named Rankin experiment on Dumas’s body to isolate whatever it was that gave him his shape-changing abilities.  When the resulting serum was tested on a mouse, it worked.  Maison, who was ex-CIA, prepared to become the new Dumas, but a group of men that looked a little like ninja-themed Kiss cosplayers attacked.  The one in charge referred to Dumas as their ‘beloved leader’.  Maison grabbed him and injected him with the serum, and the guy killed him.  Two months later, in Tokyo, this guy confronted his followers again, and ordered them to try to kill him.  After that, Kazuo Hasegawa was summoned to see all the bodies, and Kazuo recognized that as proof that there is a new Dumas, and that Mark Shaw was at risk.  In the present, Manhunter follows a new metahuman called the Grasshopper (because of his jumping abilities).  Mark catches him easily, and takes him to the police station.  Sylvia Kandrey tells Mark that his family called and need to see him at his step-father’s office.  Mark rushes there in full costume, and finds that Kazuo has come to tell them about Dumas.  He shows one of his daggers as proof, and Mark decides to hunt this new Dumas down.  He worries about his family, and Jamie freaks out a little.  Kazuo offers to take them all to Japan, and Mark’s mother gets really angry.  Later, the Shaws arrive in Tokyo, and go to see the oyabun.  Kazuo discovers that his father is dead, and Dumas steps from the shadows, claiming that he is the new oyabun of Dai-ichi Doku (it’s not clear why Mark didn’t go with them).
  • Dumas confronts the Shaws and Kazuo, who grabs a weapon and tries to kill the assassin.  Dumas is about to kill him, but a man named Ryu stops him.  For some reason Ryu does not look Japanese, but is prominent in the yakuza clan, which is the reason why Kazuo points out that Dumas has to listen to him or risk losing the respect of the whole clan which he now runs.  Ryu explains that many in the clan are still loyal to the Hasegawa family, and if he kills Kazuo, the clan might split apart.  Dumas tells Kazuo that he will be the clan’s liaison to Mark Shaw, but first he insists on cutting his little finger, following the ritual of yubitsume.  Four days later, Mark continues to patrol New York looking for Dumas (it makes no sense that he’d think he’d be there, really), and is approached by Kazuo, who explains what’s happened.  Mark checks in with Oracle, leaving instructions with them in case of his death, and the two men head to Japan together.  Kazuo goes to Dumas, relaying a message from Shaw that he’s coming for him.  Dumas puts Ryu in charge of ironing out the details of the challenge with Kazuo.  Ryu goes to the Shaws, who are being kept prisoner, to give them a message that Mark is coming.  Ryu kills the man guarding the family.  We see Manhunter sneak into the building, and slip the Shaws a note telling them to trust Ryu, who then comes to free them.  Manhunter is found by Dumas and they start to fight.  After a couple of exciting pages, Dumas gets Manhunter on the ground and is about to kill him when Manhunter knocks him away.  Dumas slashes Manhunter across the stomach.  Manhunter staggers away, but Dumas comes up and removes his mask, revealing that he’s been fighting Kazuo.  As he dies, Kazuo reveals that he’s planted bombs around the house.  It blows up, Ryu (who came from nowhere) holds his dead friend, and Dumas crushes the Manhunter mask, vowing to kill Mark.
  • Mark visits his mother, who is in the hospital for exhaustion after the events of the last couple of issues.  She brings up Mark’s father a lot, and makes it clear that she wants Mark to give up being Manhunter.  For his part, Mark feels guilty that Dumas went after his family; they agree he needs to deal with Dumas.  Mark returns home to find that his apartment has been blown up.  Lt. Best talks to him about what happened, but Mark doesn’t bring him in to things.  Mark now has only one Manhunter mask and baton left, but is lucky that he was carrying his passport and plane ticket with him.  Mark flies back to Japan, and as the plane approaches its landing, he thinks back to events that happened around what we saw in the last issue.  He gave Kazuo his outfit, mask, and baton to fight Dumas in, then put on his mini-mask and snuck into the Dai-Ichi Doku headquarters.  He planted his bombs, wrecked their cars, and then helped sneak his family out with help from Ryu.  When Kazuo and Dumas started their fight, some of the men loyal to Dumas noticed their prisoners escaping, so Ryu and Mark fought them.  Mark left them alive, but, with only minutes left before the place was set to explode, Ryu sent Mark ahead so he could make sure all the traitors were dead.  Mark drove off on his motorcycle while the building exploded.  It’s not clear why he wouldn’t have taken the fight to Dumas right after he was tired from fighting Kazuo, but whatever.  Now, in a cemetery, Mark recites the Manhunter oath.  A little later, he observes an apartment that explodes.  It’s Dumas’s, and he confronts Mark on the rooftop where he is observing.  Since we don’t know who Dumas is, it’s pretty impressive that Mark found his home.  They start to fight, and while at the beginning Mark does very well, things turn once Dumas throws one of his daggers into Mark’s hand.  Dumas snatches his baton and uses it to smash part of his mask.  Dumas lands some good hits and a kick to Mark’s face, leaving him lying on the rooftop.  Dumas overloads his baton, and tosses it to the other side of the roof, and leaves.  Mark struggles to reach his baton, and we see it and the entire rooftop explode.
  • We back up a bit and see that just before the roof exploded, Mark grabbed a rope and jumped off the building, swinging back towards it and kicking through a window.  A woman is hurt when he bursts through, but Mark has no choice but to run, especially when some men come into the room.  Mark goes to a yakuza-owned public bath where Ryu helped him to stash some clothes and cash.  We see an evil-looking Mark check out of his hotel, and then minutes later, Mark arrives.  It’s clear to him from the concierge’s confusion that Dumas has taken his shape, so he quickly places a collect call to Australia.  He calls David Challoner and asks him to build him a new baton, and help him get to Nepal.  He learns that Gary DeVries is already in Japan, and has his pilot’s license.  Next, Mark goes to the Tokyo Historical Museum, where the sword that Emperor Hirohito handed to the Americans when he surrendered is on display.  Mark uses one of his Manhunter-mask explosives to blow the case and steal it, trying to be as public as possible.  He escapes from the museum guards and runs.  Dumas, still looking like Mark, is in line at the airport to board a flight back to New York when he is stopped by the police.  He runs into the plane, and out its emergency exit, having figured out that Mark has ruined his plans.  Back in New York, Officer Phelps (it’s spelled ‘Felps’ in this issue) hands Sylvia a newswire print out about Mark; she calls his sister.  DeVries and Challoner fly Mark into Nepal.  He has a nightmare about his mask being fused to his face.  He’s in Nepal to find the old Manhunter temple, and admits to his friends that he stole Hirohito’s sword, which he leaves with them.  He jumps out of the airplane, and thinks about when he was deprogrammed from the Manhunter cult, and how he used to have that same dream about the mask.  He enters the ruins of the temple, hoping to find enough technology left to rebuild his baton, which he figures he’ll need to defeat Dumas (not that it was much help last issue).  He finds a ruined baton, but can’t use it, and gives in to despair.  A large lion-like figure puts his hand on his shoulder and calls him a ‘child of Oa.’
  • Mark wants the being to kill him, but the being instead wants to teach him about his ‘nature’.  In Japan, the curator of the Tokyo Historical Museum thanks Gary and David at a press conference for returning Emperor Hirohito’s sword to them, but they refuse to say where they got it from.  Gary and David watch themselves on TV in their office (it’s not clear if they are in Australia again, or still in Japan, but it appears as if the news broadcast was in English).  Davis heads downstairs to check on how his employees are coming with making a new baton, and off panel, we hear him express surprise that Mark is there.  Gary goes to check, and finds that Dumas has used Mark’s face again, and has stabbed David.  At the temple, the being, who is named N’Lasa, starts Mark’s “lessons.”  He finds himself surrounded by Manhunters who then disappear.  David gets up and, smelling smoke, finds Gary under some debris, but in a force field.  (For some reason, David keeps calling him Gaza, which I don’t think happened before this issue).  Some others come to help them, and Gary, still alive, admits that he told Dumas where Mark is.  N’Lasa and Mark talk, but Mark is still in a state of despair (it kind of came from nowhere).  N’Lasa tells him about the origin of the Manhunters, and how they turned on the Guardians of Oa, with N’Lasa’s help.  As punishment, the Guardians made N’Lasa immortal and exiled him to Earth.  There, he tracked down the Manhunters to change them, but was unsuccessful.  Instead, he formed an order of Japanese warriors called the Jujin, but when he led them in a fight against the Manhunters, they failed.  N’Lasa was captured by the Manhunters and attached to some sort of psychic machine.  As the Manhunters began recruiting humans, he was able to influence the first Dumas into reforming the Jujin, but he wasn’t able to put them on a path of good.  N’Lasa thought that Mark would be the “true Manhunter”.  Mark is obsessing over the woman whose death he caused in Japan last issue (was it clear that she was dead before?), but, while N’Lasa keeps talking, Hal Jordan appears.  Mark wants to talk with him, but Hal attacks him and captures him.  Mark sees the faces of everyone he’s ever betrayed, as Manhunter, Star-Tsar, the Privateer, and as Mark.  He also sees the first Dumas, who has his father’s face.  Mark somehow controls Hal’s ring into making a gallows and noose, and he asks Hal to kill him.  Hal asks if this adherence to the Manhunter code is all Mark is, which spurs him to believe there’s more to himself; all the shades disappear.  As Mark returns to his senses, and all his ghosts disappear, he sees that Dumas is in the temple, standing over N’Lasa, who he has killed.
  • Mark is furious, and he and Dumas start to fight.  Mark gives him a good beating, and then leaves him lying on the ground while he goes to get the broken Manhunter baton he found before.  As he gets it, Dumas runs off into the temple ruins.  Mark pauses to pay his respects to N’Lasa, then gives chase, feeling confident that he’s on familiar ground.  He puts on his half-mask, and then starts scavenging off some discarded and broken Manhunter robots.  Dumas sneaks up on Mark, but finds him ready for him, wearing bits of Manhunter armor.  He tosses a mini-bomb to take down the temple wall, so they can fight outside.  As they fight, Mark hears a plane coming, so he climbs an arch to be more visible.  Gary and David fly over with Mark’s new baton.  They toss it to him, but Dumas catches it.  David yells that it will explode if anyone other than Mark tries to use it (good thing they have his fingerprints on file), but Dumas doesn’t believe that.  The two men struggle, but Dumas keeps the baton.  He’s about to fire it at Mark when it explodes, taking off his left arm.  He falls off the arch and into a deep pit.  It takes Mark a long time to climb down, where he finds Dumas’s dead body.  As he stands over it, N’Lasa comes to him.  It turns out the alien is much stronger than Mark expected.  N’Lasa hands Mark a new baton, and tells him that he is worthy to continue the true mission of the Manhunters; to be like a judge and spread justice in the world.  Mark doesn’t feel like he can do this anymore, but N’Lasa promises to trust his judgement.  They hear David and Gary coming, so N’Lasa wants to hide, but first he tells Mark that they are now psychically connected, and that he need only speak to the baton to talk to him.  Mark picks up Dumas and walks to meet his friends, purposely leaving his half-mask behind in the snow.
  • As Gary and David fly Mark back from Nepal, they offer him a job with Southern Cross Salvage as a partner in their New York office.  When they land in Japan, Mark is arrested, along with his friends.  Gary and David get released, but it looks like they want to lay charges against Mark, until a note is brought into the meeting room, and then all charges are dropped.  Mark is really happy to be free, and doesn’t pay much attention to what’s happening around him until Ryu enters the room to speak to him (I assume it’s Ryu, but he’s never named).  He says that all debts to Mark are now paid by the Dai-Ichi Doku, but he also has a pair of swords to give him, that Kazuo left to him in his will.  Mark pays his respects at Kazuo’s grave, and then sends flowers to the woman he thought he’d killed, having learned she survived.  When Mark returns to New York, his sister Eleanor picks him up, and they have a heart-to-heart about how Mark feels like he’s not a part of the family since Elliot is not his father.  Eleanor makes it clear she’s never felt that way.  Next Mark goes to see Elliot at his office and admits that he only became Manhunter to get his stepfather’s approval.  Elliot makes it clear he views him as his son, and they embrace.  As Mark leaves, Jamie comes running in and tells him that Captain Cold is rampaging close by.  It seems he’s upset that his Cubs didn’t win a baseball game, and Mark appears, taking him down quickly.  He and Lt. Best talk briefly, and he tells him where to find Sylvia Kandrey.  Mark heads to the precinct where Sylvia gives him the damaged Manhunter mask she pulled from the wreckage of his apartment.  Mark pulls out his baton and communicates telepathically with N’Lasa, telling him he’s decided to give the baton back; N’Lasa teleports it to Nepal, and says goodbye.  Mark kisses Sylvia, and asks her out to dinner.

Manhunter never really found its footing.  It started out strong with the first Dumas story, but after that, it floundered and couldn’t exactly decide what it was.  Ostrander and Yale claimed that they wanted to use this series to investigate the masks that people wear, but I think they forgot to make Mark into something more than a generic hero type, who did things out of frequently non-heroic motives.  

Mark had an interesting history, having been part of the Manhunter cult, part of the Justice League as the Privateer, and a villain as the Star-Tsar.  That would have been interesting to explore a little more, but instead he was running around collecting bounties, but also somehow being a little bit famous for it.  At the same time, he seemed highly technically skilled, but also kind of poor (his office and bedroom were the same room in his apartment).

Mark’s family came in and out of the book, and discussion about his biological father came out of the blue.  Mark was interested in a relationship with Sylvia Kandrey, but she’d be in and out of the book for months at a time, and I never saw any reason why they would want to be together.  Mark had a bad relationship with Lt. Best, but why?  And what led to him thawing towards him at the end of the book?

At the end of things, the effort to connect the second Dumas to the Manhunter cult was really forced.  I never understood why the new Dumas was doing any of the things he did, and thought it very strange that he was supposedly trained by N’Lasa at some point.

Each individual issue was fine, for the most part, but the pieces never really added up to much, and that’s kind of disappointing.  At the same time that this book was coming out, Ostrander was writing legendary runs on Firestorm and Suicide Squad.  I know that increasingly, Kim Yale was in charge of this book, but I presume that Ostrander was heavily involved (they did live together), and I would have expected things to be tighter than this.

This book had a lot of potential.  Manhunter could have continued some relationship with the Suicide Squad, doing recruitment work for Amanda Waller (I like how both Captain Cold and Count Vertigo ended up in the Squad after run-ins with Mark), and that concept, mixed with Mark undergoing a more intentional exploration of his past, could have made this a very memorable comic.

Doug Rice’s issues were really interesting.  He has a unique approach to comics art, and was really the only artist that made Manhunter’s winter ninja pajamas look good (I kind of assume Grant Miehm gave up on them for the last few issues because they just were too hard to draw).  After Rice left, things stayed kind of mediocre, but were never terrible.

I remember being really into the first arc of this title, but now I understand why I couldn’t remember anything after that.  I also understand why when the Manhunter mantle was dusted off again, Shaw was not the character that was used (okay, I never read the weird 90s extreme Manhunter book, but I loved Marc Andreyko’s Kate Shaw Manhunter title).  I see that the character has recently been revived in Brian Michael Bendis’s Leviathan storylines, but I don’t know a lot about that.

I am curious to maybe revisit Denny O’Neal’s Sword of Azrael to see how he worked with the visuals around Dumas into the Order of St. Dumas. I don’t remember that very well, but with all the fleurs-de-lys (which make no sense, given that Dumas is a Japanese character), there is definitely a connection. I just want to know if it was ever made explicit.

I’m glad I dusted these books off, especially as a counterpoint to my ongoing rereading of the Suicide Squad, but I don’t see myself ever revisiting this book again.

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