manhunter-street-justiceI read the first few pages of this comic book at the store and had to buy it when I couldn’t put it down. Man­hunter: Street Jus­tice vol.1 writ­ten by Marc Andreyko and illus­trated by Jesus Saiz and Jimmy Palmiotti fea­tures a strong female char­ac­ter in the role of a crime-fighting vigilante.

Kate Spencer is a star pros­e­cu­tor resid­ing in Los Ange­les. She loses a case when a meta-human, who are described as humans with a genetic flaw, goes free. “Cop­per­head” is one of many meta-humans who are at large. Kate doesn’t take defeat well, no, when the jury return a ver­dict of “not guilty” for his killing spree. It’s not his fault that he is a mon­ster. When “Cop­per­head” strikes again, Kate opts not to use the judi­cial sys­tem this time and instead, dons a red suit with an elec­tri­fied staff as her weapon and goes after jus­tice, vig­i­lante style.

On the home front, Kate is a divorcee and a sin­gle mother who shares joint cus­tody with her ex. Kate is not the best mother in the world. She seems to pri­or­i­tize her job over every­thing else. An unfor­tu­nate acci­dent with her son doesn’t even make her slow down none either. In fact, it seems to strengthen her resolve in her cho­sen path and that is to add her skill set to the other super­heroes who fight for the good of jus­tice. Thus, she labels her­self “Man­hunter.” As expected, she finds her own techno geek to aide her in intel, train­ing and keep­ing her wardrobe in good repair with some added functionality.

My reac­tion to this story is that this is a decent intro­duc­tion to a new char­ac­ter that I’d never heard of before now. I like Kate only mar­gin­ally so. Sar­casm just drips out of her mouth and no, she is not seen in the best light as a mother with a career. Along­side her pen­chant for smok­ing and her inner rage at being a fail­ure, she decides to invoke her own brand of jus­tice and that doesn’t make her all that heroic. But then maybe that is the point? Her char­ac­ter isn’t all that lik­able. She is full of atti­tude with plenty to spare.

The dia­logue zips along, the art­work didn’t pro­voke any oohhs or ahh­hhs — decent but then I am new to this genre so what do I know. Other DC char­ac­ters put in brief appear­ances like The Joker, Bat­man, the Jus­tice League. The vil­lain — yes, there is one of course, is a bit odd. He goes by the name, Shadow Thief and seems to speak to him­self in third per­son. A good match maybe for the Manhunter?

Over­all, a B-/C+ because while I can respect a hero­ine cre­ated to kick ass, I really don’t like her. But then the cre­ator gave all of these neg­a­tive attrib­utes and by story’s end, I hadn’t warmed up to her at all. Does she have any redeem­ing qual­i­ties? Other than to rid the world of meta-humans? You would be hard pressed to find them and I am not stick­ing around to find them either. The first install­ment didn’t really impress me much but then I am just one reader. While “Man­hunter” is very read­able and is a quick read at that, it is sim­ply not for me. C+.

Man­hunter: Street Jus­tice col­lects the first five issues in the series and cur­rently there are 38 issues in col­lected vol­umes avail­able right now.