Jack Kirby’s Forgotten Manhunter
When comic fans talk about Jack Kirby’s DC work, the Fourth World usually dominates the conversation. But one of Kirby’s more interesting late-period creations arrived in 1975 with 1st Issue Special issue number five, where he introduced a new version of Manhunter. It’s fitting that Jack got to tell this tale, since he and Joe Simon co-created the character to begin with.
This wasn’t the Paul Kirk Manhunter from the 1940s. Kirby created a new bearer of the name, Mark Shaw, a public defender frustrated by a justice system that seems unable to deal with powerful criminals. Shaw is recruited into an ancient order known as the Manhunters and inherits their costume, weapons, and mission. It is a classic Kirby setup. An ordinary man discovers a hidden world and is transformed into something larger than himself.
I like to think that the original Manhunter is featured in the beginning of the book. The character is never named, but it ready to end his career as the Manhunter.
Kirby’s involvement was complete. He wrote, penciled, edited, and plotted the story, making it one of the purest examples of his vision during his later DC years. The issue feels like many of his best concepts. Secret societies, strange technology, larger-than-life villains, and big ideas about justice all collide in less than twenty pages.
What makes the story especially notable is how much of it would echo through later DC continuity. Kirby’s Manhunters were presented as a mysterious organization with their own traditions and leadership. Later writers expanded those ideas and tied the Manhunters into the larger mythology of the Green Lantern Corps. The Manhunters became the Guardians of the Universe’s first attempt at creating an interstellar police force, long before the Green Lanterns took on that role. Their famous motto, “No Man Escapes the Manhunters,” would become a recurring part of DC lore.
1st Issue Special #5 never launched an ongoing series, but it did something almost as important. It introduced a character and mythology that became woven into the fabric of the DC Universe. Not bad for a one-shot. It’s one of my favorite Kirby creation issues.
Admittedly, it wasn’t until Justice League on Cartoon Network that I saw the Manhunters. They were sent to arrest Green Lantern (John Steward).
I initially assumed they were the DC knockoffs of Sentinels from the X-Men (the Jack Kirby connection makes sense now). But I totally liked that they weren’t robotic in the same way as the Sentinels in how they talked.
“No man escapes the Manhunters”! That seemed so cool to me for some reason.
The twist that Manhunter's founding organization had ties to ancient robot policemen was something that could only have come out of superhero comics. It was like learning that the League of Assassins came from Kryptonians.