Manhunter (Paul Kirk)

Manhunter (Paul Kirk) is a superhero and later anti-hero appearing in comic books published by DC Comics. He was the first published hero referred to as Manhunter within the DC Universe. Originally a plainclothes amateur detective character, Kirk was called "manhunter" only in the title of his stories, a slang term for someone who tracks down fugitives and criminals. He then dons a red and blue costume and officially adopts "Manhunter" as an alias in 1942. The character's stories ended in 1944. Paul Kirk was then revived in 1973 in a globe-trotting conspiracy thriller storyline told through a series of back-up stories published in Detective Comics #437-443. Reintroducing Kirk as a more ruthless and now lethal hero working against a villainous group called the Council, the story gave him a new costume, new weapons, and a superhuman healing ability. Though the 1973 story became a critical success with readers, Kirk dies at the end of it and was not resurrected by DC Comics. Instead, the Manhunter name has passed on to other heroes (one being a clone of Paul Kirk calling himself Kirk DePaul).

In the 1970s, DC Comics introduced an army of corrupt robots called Manhunters whose design resembled Kirk's original 1940s costume. The 1987 comic Secret Origins (vol. 2) #22 revealed Kirk had been encouraged to become a vigilante by manipulative Manhunter robots masquerading as altruistic humans. The robots then gave Kirk a costume based on their own design.