Manhunter (aside from being coincidentally named after a rather memorable early PC adventure game) is Kate Spencer, and her superheroic career began while she was a prosecutor in Los Angeles, on a case against the supervillain Copperhead. Despite being proved to have gorily murdered a number of victims, Copperhead's defence argued that his superhuman condition rendered him unable to control himself, and thus he escaped the death penalty his crimes called for, being sentenced instead to an asylum - which Kate knew, for supervillains, all too often meant a temporary stay, until an escape and subsequent rampage killed more innocent people. Kate had had enough, and decided that if the law was unable to hand down a death sentence for a guilty supervillain, she would do it herself. Gathering an array of devices impounded from various superhuman cases over the years, Kate assembled a makeshift costume to give her the abilities and firepower to go head to head with a supervillain. Then, as Copperhead was in the process of making his inevitable escape, she tracked him down, cornered him in the sewers, and executed him. It's not new ground - Batman now and then skirts with the issue of how far he's willing to go in beating down supervillains (with characters like Jason Todd going further), and over on the Marvel side of the tracks, Punisher's been making a living from doling out lethal justice for ages, and similar questions surround Tony Stark's Illuminati, especially in their off-the-books intervention in Hulk's affairs. And outside of comics, every TV cop show has done an episode or two (or dozens) where someone's got frustrated with 'the system' failing to bring the perps to justice, and taking matters into their own hands. But the reason it's such a familiar story is that it's such a good story - the question of taking personal action versus trusting the justice system, which can never be perfect, is one that raises all sorts of fascinating issues that don't have easy answers, and building it into your main character can provide years and years worth of compelling story possibilities. Since her debut, Kate has gone through some changes. She's come to the attention of various heroes and villains, and even made some allies in the superhero 'game' than she entered as an outside with no connections. She's formed a fractious but functional relationship with the DEO - yet another of those FBA-for-superhumans agencies that DC and Marvel are littered with - and at the behest of DEO Director Bones even switched from prosecuting criminals to defending them - primarily to more directly target supervillains, by gaining their trust and uncovering their secrets, but the switch also brought with it the opportunity to defend the innocent in superhuman-related cases, following up on when she earlier defended Wonder Woman during the trial that stemmed from her execution of Maxwell Lord prior to Infinite Crisis. Manhunter writer Marc Andreyko had a solid aim in mind when he pitched the title to DC, fully expecting to be politely shown the door. A female superhero who was a divorcee, who struggled to be a good parent, who smoked, who was abrasive and often unlikeable, and whose costume didn't consist of a bikini and thigh-boots? Not an easy pitch to make. To Andreyko's delight (and DC's credit), not only was his idea accepted, but he was given a list of villains DC was okay with seeing get their brains blown out by Manhunter's power staff, putting her firmly in business as a hero who was willing to kill the villains she chased down - and not just anonymous made-for-Manhunter villains, but characters with some sense of importance in the DC universe. Andreyko followed through on his promise of a flawed, everyday woman who made herself a hero - or a vigilante, depending on how you look at it - and Kate Spencer continues to be one of the most down-to-earth, realistic superheroines in comics today. Manhunter ran from issue #1 to #30, which have been collected in four trade paperback volumes, before being put on hiatus. Happily, the title recently returned, with issue #31 hitting the shelves in June, and picking up right where it left off. In the interim, she appeared briefly in the 'World War III' supplement to 52, showing her switch from prosecution to defence, and in several issues of Birds of Prey, as a sometime-associate of Oracle's team.