"New Values"
Cover Date: April 1995
Writer: Steven Grant
Artist: Vincent Giarrano
Previously....
Okay, this is the mid-90s version of Manhunter, who is generally forgotten because it's about a million mile away from every other incarnation of the character.
Chase Lawler was a musician, who was afraid that his girlfriend was about to be crushed by the music industry, so he did the only reasonable thing: summoning an ancient Welsh demi-god, the Wild Huntsman, to hunt down some music executives. Anyway, it turns out that was an extremely stupid thing to do and the demi-god starts rampaging through Star City. Long story short, Chase manages to stop the Huntsman, and gains a measure of his powers, and so becomes the Manhunter. And then his girlfriend, Brenna, breaks up with him because, well, he just unleashed an ancient spirit rather than just talk to her.
Plot
At a company named Necrodyne, which apparently lacks a single PR employee, a guy named 'The Barbarian' shows up and makes trouble.
Elsewhere, Chase teams up with a guy named Goodish to try and make some money off of his powers. They take a missing persons case that leads them to an elderly invalid who has been secretly working against Manhunter for several issues. However, Manhunter doesn't know this, so he agrees to take the job. It turns out that the old man is the head of Necrodyne, and Goodish and Manhunter head off.
As they approach Necrodyne headquarters, they almost get killed by an out-of-control truck. The Barbarian pops up to explain that he's really some sort of super computer-hacker, as so managed to hack into the truck to slow Manhunter down. Remember, this was back in the '90s when everyone thought that's how hacking worked.
The two engage in a running battle across the city, aided by the fact that Manhunter has super-tracking powers as long as he's actually come face-to-face with his quarry, but the battle abruptly ends when the Barbarian jumps off of a bridge onto a speedboat piloted by a goth woman. Goodish wants to pursue Barbarian, but Manhunter's tired, and he's got a date, and he really doesn't want to work for Necrodyne anyway, so he decides to ditch Goodish.
Chase heads off to a fancy restaurant with his new girlfriend Beth, but sees his ex-girlfriend Brenna, and then immediately collapses. To Be Continued!
Commentary
A very odd book, to say the least. Chase Lawler is kind of a douche. I mean, he just decides to quit in the middle of the story because he doesn't feel like doing anymore man-hunting today.
This was one of the books launched right after Zero Hour which was thought of as a chance to essentially smooth out some of the continuity wrinkles that the first Crisis caused. Looking back, though, the only real substantive change made was the rebooting of the Legion of Super-Heroes, and even that didn't really take.
Anyway, the books launched in the wake of Zero Hour were:
Extreme Justice
Fate
Manhunter
Primal Force
R.E.B.E.L.S. '94
Starman
Hey, at least people liked Starman! The other ranged from the terrible (Extreme Justice, Fate) to the forgettable (R.E.B.E.L.S., Primal Force, Manhunter), but none besides Starman lasted more than a couple of years.
I guess the idea was to restart some of mid-tier properties that had recently fallen on hard times. For example, Dr. Fate has a decent run in the late-80s, but had foundered since then, same with Manhunter and Starman. For whatever reason, this led to all of them being imagined as your typical anti-heroes of the time. Fate and Extreme Justice tended to play that relatively straight, but Manhunter kind of played around with the concept a bit more, seeing as Steven Grant mixed the idea of street-level super-hero with fantasy elements. I'm not sure it quite works, but you can't really Grant for trying.
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