I admit it, I had a soft spot for this book going in, as I've liked the various Manhunters throughout DC history (particularly the Yale/Ostrander version) and I've been waiting a while for Andreyko to get a book more in the mainstream. Manhunter has a great concept, and a first issue with pretty good atmosphere, and those who have been complaining about the decompressed trend will be happy about how fast Andreyko gets the character's origin out of the way and gets to the action and the meat of the concept. It's honestly a bit too quick for me, but I can't deny the strength of the atmosphere, dark and mean like a Fincher film with art by Saiz and Palmiotti that reminds me of Gotham Central, Fallen Angel, Daredevil, all these books that are successfully blending the superhero with street crime. Manhunter isn't off to a perfect start for me, but it's off to a good one, and it's in good company in terms of tone and style.
Andrekyo's tale examines one of those big lies of the superhero genre, the notion that supervillains get punished by the system. In most superhero comics, the villains have to go to jail when they're captured or the heroes look like chumps for not taking harsher measures. Manhunter, instead, is examining the legal system, which is far more fallible than it is presented in the superhero (or even the legal drama) genre, and showing what happens when a member of the legal system gets fed up with the system's failures. It's a compelling idea, a prosecuting attorney who gets a sort of "street do-over" for her trials when she fails to get a conviction, one that is rife with potential for moral gray areas as we wonder if her actions, for all the lives she may save, aren't just as bad as the criminals she's killing.
The story here gets going pretty quickly, showing prosecuting attorney Spencer reaching the end of her rope and taking action she's clearly been considering for a long time. Unfortunately, while starting in the middle of the action can sometimes work in a story, starting in the middle of the origin story is dicier, and only leaves the book feeling a bit rushed. There's not a real momentous feeling to Spencer putting on the Manhunter gear, because we don't really have a sense of who she was before. In addition, her first trip out is kind of quick and too easy, and while I understand wanting to establish your protagonist's ability early on, it felt like everything came too easy to her. A little flashback in the next couple issues could certainly fix this, but as of the first issue, it all feels like we're being rushed through the foundation stuff to get to the story.
Andrekyo is telling a crime story here, rather than a story about superheroes. This isn't about justice triumphing, it's about when justice has to give way to simple vengeance or preventative murder. To be honest, it skirts the edge of some of the same things I hated about Identity Crisis, making the villains so vicious and nasty that the heroes look ineffective, but it works here, in no small part because Manhunter is a new character and because it takes place on the outskirts of the DC Universe, and is unlikely to cause a paradigm shift for the line as a whole. That's not to say I don't have some nervousness about the series, because if Andreyko is going to continue to feature mainstream DC villains, he's going to have a tough time putting that fatal ending to all of them, and if he loses that, his character is going to lose more than a little of her edge.
For now, though, this book has a definite darker edge that sets it apart from most superhero books right from the outset. A lot of that comes through in the artwork by Jesus Saiz and Jimmy Palmiotti. Saiz's work here is a different style than the work he did on 21 Down, which had an almost photo-realistic look to it. The work here is more stylized, reminding me quite a bit of the work of David Lopez over on Fallen Angel, with just a touch of the atmosphere that Michael Lark brings to Gotham Central. I have my quibbles, like the photographer who appears to be teleporting later in the issue or a fairly bland design for the Manhunter costume, but in general this book looks pretty good.
