Well folks it took a few issues but Marc Andreyko and company have gotten the ball rolling and there is no telling where they;re going. We have had Kate Spencer, the new Manhunter, make a killer(bad pun, I know) debut against Copperhead. Shake up the Secret Society, go toe to toe with several big time assassins and put down one of DCs b-list villains whose stock had recently risen thanks to an appearance in Identity Crisis. If that wasn't enough Andreyko has planted several developing subplots that have kept people like me(you know, people with taste) coming back for more and more.
In the second part of "Manhunted" the corpse of a former Manhunter is found in a waterway and the local authorities call in the DEO. This brings Cameron Chase to L.A. to investigate why someone is murdering these vigilantes who all shared the same name at one point. Also coming to L.A. is Mark Shaw whose looking to warn Kate, the current holder of the name. The only other living Manhunter, Kirk DePaul, stays calm as the murderer makes plans to eliminate him next. All the while Kate Spencer tries getting parts of her life in order such as spending time with her son and putting more time into her job after the recent trial of Shadow Thief. Going on around her is the return of her father who has been stalking her son, Ramsey, and a tabloid reporter looking to gather dirt on Kate.
Andreyko is presenting a fun, action packed title that is building more and more suspense as each issue pasts. For every resolution there is two new problems ahead for Kate Spencer and it makes me want the next issue so bad to see how it will all come together. While I'm not familiar with Manhunters of the past or Chase, writer Marc Andreykos taking his time to introduce them to fans new to these characters. A lot of writers now a days seem to toss out an entire cast of characters in the first couple issues but Andreyko has been steadily building the supporting cast and giving us some time to get to know them. It also seems after reading the last couple issues Kate has soften a lot from the cold-hearted with we met in the first few issues.
Javier Pina continues his strong work on this title but here he is given some help on a couple of pages by Diego Olmos. For the most part it's unnoticeable but on the last few pages you might get the feeling something seems different here. That is what's different.
With the addition of Cameron Chase Andreyko will bring in a number of fans of DCs cult hit Chase. I never read the title but I rarely go a month without seeing a message board post about the book. So the will hopefully push sales up. Manhunter has been a great read every month and it is a tragedy that more people are not being turned onto this book. But thanks to support from writers like Gail Simone(Birds of Prey, Action Comics) and Geoff Johns(Teen Titans, Green Lantern) as well as DCs Vice-President Dan Didio whose been plugging the book and has enough faith in the title to let it surpass what many predicted its run length would come to. Seriously, isn't it time to try Manhunter?
