Review: Manhunter: Face Off by Marc Andreyko, Jeremy Haun, John Lucas, et al.

Earlier this year I read all the collected editions of DC's Manhunter ongoing (2004-09). Though all of the ongoing was collected, one more Manhunter collection was solicited but never published: Face Off* which would have collected the thirteen nine-page Manhunter backup strips that ran in Batman: Streets of Gotham for a year. I liked Manhunter enough, and wanted more closure than I got from the last volume of the ongoing, so I tracked down the issues of Streets of Gotham and read them.

It begins with Kate Spencer starting her third job: she's the new district attorney for Gotham City, an unthankful job if there ever was one, only it seems perfectly suited for the way Kate/Manhunter works as a character. Justice fails so much in Gotham that there will be plenty for her to do. She doesn't want to endanger Ramsey, though, so he stays back in L.A. with his father. The main thrust of this storyline is Kate's attempt to prosecute Two-Face for the murder of her predecessor (and, I guess, his successor) as D.A., which was carried out by "Jane Doe," a woman who can wear other people's skins, at his instigation. I think. There were definitely some jumps. I wasn't even sure when and how Kate figured out Two-Face was responsible for the murder, and the trial starts for some reason even though she actually has almost no evidence.

Clearly the story cuts off before Andreyko imagined it would, as his Manhunter stories always seemed to; Face Off ends without a resolution to the Two-Face trial, though there has been a mini-resolution when Jane Doe assaults Kate's family and is defeated. Still, I enjoyed returning to these characters-- moving the story to Gotham even allows Andreyko to tie up what happened to Dylan Battles, who went to Gotham in the aborted penultimate storyline from the ongoing. We also get Ramsey's discovery of his superpowers, setting the stage for him becoming a superhero in the "Some Years Later" epilogue.

Like I said, Gotham is a good fit for this series's sensibilities, and Andreyko gets some of his better artistic collaborators. Though there is a lot of switching off over the story's 117 pages (see below), I thought Jeremy Haun, who pencils a majority of it, was suited to the gritty tone of Manhunter and Gotham. I even liked the work of Georges Jeanty, whose poor childlike faces always threw me in Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season Eight-- whatever he did in those stories that I didn't like, he tones down here.

This is a decent, if incomplete, story, and I enjoyed reading it more than the last few "actual" Manhunter storylines. It deserved to be collected, so I'm glad I tracked it down. Kate only appeared on the cover once (issue #7, pictured above; the cover is by Dustin Nguyen, who drew the lead Batman feature in Streets of Gotham), and I'd guess the cover was commissioned so it could be used for the never-published collected edition. I assume the moment for any kind of Face Off collected edition has long passed, but maybe someday there will be a Kate Spencer, Manhunter Omnibus, where this would make a perfect inclusion between issues #36 and 37.

Manhunter: Face Off originally appeared in issues #1-13 of Batman: Streets of Gotham (Aug. 2009–Aug. 2010). The story was written by Marc Andreyko; pencilled by Georges Jeanty (#1-3), Jeremy Haun (#4-6, 8-11), Cliff Richards (#7), and Szymon Kudranski (#12-13); inked by Karl Story (#1, 3), Dexter Vines (#2), Jack Purcell (#3), Jeremy Haun (#4-5, 9), John Lucas (#6, 8, 10-11), Art Thibert (#7), and Szymon Kudranski (#12-13); colored by Nick Filardi; lettered by Sal Cipriano (#1-6, 8-13) and John J. Hill (#7); and edited by Janelle Siegel.

* Or Faceoff or Face-off: I saw all three versions on-line. I went with "Face Off" because that's the actual title of the story in issue #7.