Manhunter
Created by By Tex Blaisdell and Alex Kotzky
NAME + ALIASES:
Donald "Dan" Richards (deceased)
KNOWN RELATIVES:
Marcie Cooper (Harlequin II, granddaughter, deceased)
GROUP AFFILIATIONS:
All-Star Squadron, Freedom Fighters
FIRST APPEARANCE:
Police Comics #8 (March 1942)
Manhunter is a Quality character that is now deeply interwoven into the DC Universe mythology. As such, this profile begins with a DCU context, but after the character’s origin, his Quality adventures stand on their own.
In the DC Universe, the Manhunters were a race of androids created 3.5 billion years ago by the Guardians of the Universe. These Manhunters were conceived as a galactic police force, but over many millennia they came to resent their mission and their creators. For their impertinence, the androids were banished to all parts of the universe, where they gradually reorganized over the ages. The Guardians replaced the Manhunters with living agents, the Green Lantern Corps. In 1066, the Manhunters came to Earth, whose sector had no Green Lantern. When a Green Lantern finally debuted in the 1940s (Alan Scott, not a member of the Corps), the Manhunters recruited several new agents to monitor him. The first was Dan Richards. (Secret Origins v.3 #22)
Donald “Dan” Richards began his career in Empire City as a costumed hero after graduating from the police academy. Sadly, his name was called last, indicating that he’d finished last in his class. Richards’ excuse was that he’d spent much of his time profiling criminals and now could track anyone (this premise was quickly abandoned). His lady friend, Kit Kelly, was unimpressed by this and her brother, Jim, was also a policeman. When Jim was framed for ties to the mob, Richards resolved to use his special knowledge base to track the crook. (Police #8)
At the moment of his resolve, Richards was summoned by the Grandmaster of the android Manhunters. Dan followed a glowing energy trail through a portal and found himself in a secret headquarters. The Grandmaster claimed that the Manhunter organization served the cause of justice in secret, and Richards was to be their newest agent. He was given a uniform to hide his identity, and a helper: a large dog named Thor. What Dan never knew was that Thor, like the Manhunters, was also an android. (Secret Origins vol. 3 #22)
Richards donned his costume and became the first human to take the code name Manhunter, fighting crime as a so-called “mystery man.” Together with Thor, he cracked Jim Kelly’s case and left a calling card in the shape of a shoe print (the same as his chest emblem). (Police #8)
Manhunter’s costume changed very often, perhaps more often than any Quality character. In Police #19, he was described as “black clothed,” but it was rendered black-and-blue in print for most of his adventures. In Police #9, the shoe print disappeared from the circle; in #10 it changed to a small shield. The shield moved off his chest and onto his belt with #11. He was bare-legged with #15 and the shorts stayed through #22 (except for issue #17), then reappeared in #28. The best explanation for this is that colorists working on this feature used inconsistent reference materials.
By day, Richards sometimes played the “dumb” rookie but when a murder occurred on Dan’s beat, it was up to Manhunter to make amends. As Manhunter, he mopped up the killer and changed back to police attire in time to take credit as Dan. (This type of story was very similar to those in “The Jester,” who was also a lowly beat cop.) Nearby, a trio of freaks—the beguiling Voodoo Queen, the giant Xaxol and the Priest—watched and secretly aided our hero. (#9) But when the Voodoo Queen cast her spell on a tycoon, Richards was first on the scene. He tracked them to their cemetery lair and after a brief battle, left it ablaze. (#10)
Prof. Hooker created a laughing gas that was stolen by his colleague, Uriah Heap (also the name of a character in Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield). Soon Manhunter was on the trail and discovered the antidote to the gas (onions). (#11)
His early cases were peppered with costumed foes like Samson the strongman/murderer (#13), and the evil masked Cobra and his pet King, which managed to tag Manhunter. As the Cobra turned to leave, Thor charged in and was shot by the Cobra’s men. The snake had used most of its venom on its first victim and the dog, bleeding, managed to crawl over to Manhunter and revive him. Cobra went too far when he ambushed police. In the dark, Dan unmasked Cobra and took the credit for his arrest. (#14) Richards enjoyed one-upping Sergeant Clancy in order to catch the murderous maestro, Sivan Orsky. (#15)
Thor was little more than window dressing for the first handful of adventures. The dog was consistently portrayed as a rather large breed, but the precise breed was never named. Thor took center stage when some crooks began using an identical dog to do their killing. When the same crooks caught Manhunter, Thor saved him from certain doom and put down the rival canine. (#16)
Manhunter ran up against Red Haired Kate, a vamp with a killer whip, (#17) and a masked blackmailer called the Sexton (Max Suttle), whom he actually took down while wearing his police uniform. (#19) Still, as a rookie cop, Dan Richards was never as successful as his alter ego. When a jeweler on Richards’ beat was murdered, Dan was suspended. Naturally, Manhunter solved the crime and Richards’ suspension was commuted. (#20) Eventually, Manhunter came to work very closely with law enforcement and was given access to their files. (#24)
A former Vaudevillian, Mr. Fearless took to crime as the Ghostmaster. With his expert skill in make-up arts, he impersonated people dead or alive. When he attempted to impersonate Dan Richards, the Manhunter was there to stop him. (#26)
When officer Richards brought in a local gangster, the court remanded the man’s little brother, Tommy Tolan, to Dan’s custody. Tommy had no designs on the straight and narrow and instead betrayed Dan to his brother’s gang when he discovered that Dan was Manhunter. But just as they had the hero in their grip, Tommy learned that they had also betrayed his brother. Tommy kept Dan’s secret and turned on the gang to help Manhunter escape his bonds. (#28)
Most of Manhunter’s threats were rather pedestrian (for a costumed crime fighter, that is), but the stories were often solidly written murder mysteries, like the one about a painting that came to life and then was murdered. (#39) In between the straight stories came plenty more unconventional villains. The brilliant violinist, Sonjak, was hit by a truck and lost his arm, which was replaced with a hook. He took to murder and kidnapping but Manhunter’s “mighty blow” jolted him back to reality and he realized the error of his ways, becoming a conductor instead. (#40) The bug-eyed Gnome was a hideous but run-of-the-mill gang leader. (#41) On a film set, actor John Reeves took his character, the Masked Pirate, to heart in a jilted lover’s revenge plot. Reeves killed his co-star for real, on set. (#55)
Most villains were just differently-dressed thugs like the Vengeance, who was hell-bent on securing an old tycoon’s riches. (#57) Others included the shadow killer called the Hatchet (#58), the gangster Jawbone (#60), and a trained ape named Spine-Snapper. (#64)
One of the more creative tales adeptly laid the Mother Goose rhyme of “Humpty Dumpty” over a Manhunter case. It began with the death of the villain, H. Dumpty, who was pushed off a wall. The rhyme was abandoned once the premise was established. But the culprit was after jewels, and like the Queen of Hearts, she baked into tarts (and used a trained raven called Edgar Allen Poe to steal for her). (#68)
In time Richards earned credibility and Manhunter’s feature could well have been written about a talented policeman after a point. There was no reason for him to be costumed. For the last few years of the feature’s run, most were purely detective stories. The last of his strange foes were Goldilocks, a dwarf who disguised himself as a girl, (#82) and Maddin the Mastiff Man, who trained his dogs to kill. Thor’s skill bested the mastiffs’ savagery. (#85)
When the page count in Police was lowered to 36, Manhunter was alternated for a few months with the Spirit, skipping issues #89, 91, and 93. Manhunter’s final appearance in Police #101 (Aug. 1950) finished with the line “Manhunter ought to take a rest and let a poor run-of-the-mill cop get a chance at some glory!” Indeed, in the next issue, the feature was replaced by an ongoing series of miscellaneous police stories. The first of these featured a radio patrolman, Dan Ryan.
DC
National’s (DC) Manhunter, Paul Kirk, first appeared one month after
Quality’s, in Adventure Comics #73 (April 1942). When DC wrote the history
of the android Manhunters in the 1980s, both Richards and Kirk were
cast as secret agents of the androids. Dan Richards retired his mask in 1950 but continued to serve as a police
officer. There are no details regarding his personal life (only a couple of
his Quality adventures included a love interest), but presumably fathered at
least one daughter. Decades later, the android Manhunters reentered Dan’s life,
asking to recruit his granddaughter, Marcie Cooper. Dan still wasn’t
aware of their nefarious aims and he actually encouraged Marcie. Around that
time, Cooper had become the girlfriend of the hero Obsidian and
donned a costume herself, becoming the Harlequin III. But Marcie was
truly evil and commanded Dan’s dog, Thor, to attack. Only then did Richards
realize that Thor had been an android all those years. Cooper hunted her own
grandfather, driving him off the road. (Infinity, Inc. #14,
46) He returned
to confront Marcie, who shot him before she was taken down. (#47) Marcie managed to escape the defeat of her android masters and joined the villain team called Injustice, Unlimited. By controlling the monstrous Solomon Grundy, the Harlequin killed the Infinitor Skyman. (#51) She was, in turn, killed by Grundy. (#53) After surviving so many perils, Dan met a tragic end when he was killed by Mark Shaw (the third man to take the name “Manhunter”). Shaw was under mind control and murdered Richards in his cabin home in Lake Placid, New York. At the time, Richards had adopted another dog named Thor. Police soon found bodies. (Manhunter vol. 4 #7-8) The art on “Manhunter” was ever-changing, but it’s known that prominent artists
such as Reed Crandall and Alex Kotzky drew a number of issues. Police #21 was
a rarity, signed by John Cassone. Manhunter had no superhuman powers. He relied on his physical ability, and
police detective skills to find and capture his prey. Thor was an android with
considerable super-strength, though this was not revealed until just before
the dog’s destruction. 
Notes
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