The Manhunters are here… but where the heck did they come from?
181. Secret Origins #22 by Roy Thomas, Dann Thomas, and Howard Simpson
Roy Thomas has been carefully crafting Golden Age heroes’ origins for years in this book, so it’s fitting that he gets to write this tale, which looks at the history of every person who used the Manhunter name, including two different heroes of the forties! But he doesn’t stop there as the issue gives the entire history of how the villains of Millennium arrived on Earth in the first place.
The issue opens with the Grandmaster at the Manhunters’ secret citadel. He sets out to recount their history for his gathered faithful. It starts with the Guardians and their need to protect the universe. The Manhunters are their first creation, but the Manhunters turned on their masters only to be beaten, exiled, and replaced by the Green Lantern Corps.
They found their way to Earth in the mid-eleventh century. They immediately started to insert agents everywhere in the world, essentially forming a way to watch everyone in the world and manipulate events to their favor. They’re with Columbus and the natives upon his arrival, on both sides of the Revolutionary War and the Napoleonic Wars. That brings events to the forties, where the arrival of the original Green Lantern Alan Scott…
