In the summer of 1973, I drove up to Denton, Texas, to look for an apartment because I was attending what was then North Texas State University and didn’t want to live in the dorm again when the fall semester started. While I was there, I stopped by Fultz News Agency on the square downtown to check out the comic books and paperbacks. One of the comics I picked up was an issue of DETECTIVE COMICS with a new back-up feature: MANHUNTER, a revival of an old Golden Age character brought to the current day and enmeshed in a thriller/espionage plotline. It was written by Archie Goodwin, a writer whose work I enjoyed, with art by Walter Simonson, a relative newcomer.
I became a fan immediately, and since I was already buying DETECTIVE on a
regular basis to read the Batman stories in it, I followed the Manhunter story
as well and thoroughly enjoyed it. But it was designed to be a limited
storyline, and after half a dozen backup stories and a full-length crossover with
Batman, that was it. The whole thing came to an end, and while I remembered it
fondly, I never reread it in the more than five decades since then.
However, recently I noticed that the digital version of the collected edition
was on sale, so I picked it up and read the whole thing again. Sometimes that
proves to be a mistake. A while back on Kindle Unlimited I noticed another
series I’d read 50+ years ago that was written and drawn by one of my favorite
comics creators (who shall remain nameless), so I revisited it. I read part of
the first issue, said to myself, “This makes no sense at all”, and returned it.
Sometimes you just had to be there when it was new.
Thankfully, that’s not the case with MANHUNTER. I still thought it was great. I
love the way Goodwin and Simonson tied it in with the original Golden Age character.
The plot is maybe a tad bit thin, but the scripts move right along and Simonson’s
art is excellent. The crossover with Batman is handled well. There’s an
epilogue by Simonson published after Goodwin passed away, a silent story with
no dialogue but using the plot Goodwin and Simonson worked out, and it’s quite
good, too. I was glad I gave this one another try. If you read it back then,
maybe you should revisit it, too. If you’ve never read it but enjoy Silver Age
DC, it’s well worth checking out.
By the way, I did find an apartment on that trip to Denton. It was a crappy little place on Normal Street, for those of you familiar with Denton. I lived there for a year, which was the only time of my life I could say with any justification that I lived on Normal Street. I didn't care for apartment living and commuted for the rest of my college career, even though it was a pretty long drive. I do have a few good memories from that year to go with the noisy neighbors and lousy plumbing.
