Thursday, September 22, 2011

Manhunter in Detective Comics #438 (December, 1973/January, 1974)



HE STALKS THE WORLD'S MOST DANGEROUS GAME
MANHUNTER


In Zurich, Christine St. Clair reported to her superior at Interpol's Information Center, Damon Nostrand. Justification had to be found for keeping St. Clair on a single case, so she supplied it. Her Manhunter file offered news of a battle with a tiger on a boat out of Calcutta, ended by a bundi dagger. Before that, at the beginning of the file, was the reappearance of one Paul Kirk after thirty years presumed dead. Kirk had tried to withdraw money right there in Zurich out of a personal account left moribund since 1946. His identity confirmed, Kirk had to fight off thugs in the bank to collect his cash.

The Manhunter's first reappearance was in the Middle East, where he deflected a grenade fired at Sheik Rashid Ben Turhan with a simple throwing star. A second Japanese shuriken killed the assassin. Curiously, the body found later appeared to be that of Paul Kirk, although it was stolen before positive identification could be made with the medical examiner.

A week later in Brasilia, genetic scientist Dr. Raoul Salazano was abducted by masked men in a blue and white costume. Manhunter caught up with them, and displayed ninjutsu mastery unseen since the death of Asano Nitobe at Nagasaki in 1945. He then shot down their helicopter with a customized 1916 model Mauser employing plainly enhanced ammunition. Manhunter vanished thereafter, but once again, one of his opponents appeared to have been Paul Kirk before the body was snatched.

The mystery only grew thicker, and Christine St. Clair had a lead in Marrakech. Damon Nostrand ordered her to pursue it, but from then on, she would only report to him. After St. Clair left, Nostrand burned her files...

"The Manhunter File Chapter Two (2)" was by Archie Goodwin & Walter Simonson.

The Bronze Age

3 comments:

Omega Agent1 said...

I've always liked this guy as the manhunter and it's cool that your highlighting all of the other manhunters. The new chic is good and I really liked the Privateer as manhunter. Still the ultimate man hunter is the Bronze Tiger (no disrespect to Jonn).Matter of fact tell him I grabbed a couple of oreos and I'll gladly pay him tuesday.

Anonymous said...

This is awesome! so does anyone have a site for Plastic man, i would be interested to know

Diabolu Frank said...

There used to be a very thorough blog called "Plastic Man Platitudes," but the guy who ran it just up and deleted the whole thing one day for reasons I never learned.

Omega Agent1, Mark Shaw was my favorite of the terrestrial Manhunters. I hope to cover his series eventually, but for now Paul Kirk is way easier at a fraction of the number of appearances.