Almost exactly a year ago (the first week of December, to be precise) I went on a trip to LA. I’d been dumped almost exactly a year before that, and had subsequently decided to plan a trip over there twelve months later as both a birthday present to myself, and a reward for getting through the year that was to follow (as it happened, 2009 didn’t end up being half as bad as it looked at the start, but that’s another story). I had a friend living out there, working in TV, who I knew from an obscure power-pop band‘s forum – and who I’d met when he’d come over to the UK a couple of times, staying with me on one of those occasions. It was finally time to take him up on the offer to repay the favour, and so for the first time in my life I took a plunge into the unknown by getting on a plane and going on holiday by myself.

I had a terrific week, one of the best I can remember. My hosts were basically the nicest people on the planet, I indulged in a lot of brilliantly American fast food, walked around the set of a TV show, went to Disneyland, and was taken to just about every Back to the Future location that the region had to offer (of them all, Marty’s house is the one that looks exactly the same as it did in 1985). I wasn’t expecting there to be much to do with comics, though – my friend Dylan isn’t really a comics reader, although I did of course have to take in a US comic shop, adding Golden Apple Comics to a spotters book that had garnered New York’s Midtown and St Mark’s Comics back in 2003. Nevertheless, through a curious quirk of circumstance, I ended up ploughing my way through a hefty chunk of a comics series that I’d never properly read but had often meant to.

Browsing Dylan and his wife Nicole’s bookshelves on an evening that I was left alone at their house (due to a pet-related emergency), I discovered a number of volumes of Marc Andreyko and Jesus Saiz’s Manhunter. This seemed an odd series for a non-comics-fan to have multiple books of on their shelf – and I was intrigued further to discover the books were all signed to Dylan by Andreyko (it was upon my host’s return that I discovered he was an old friend of the writer’s from back when he was also working in TV, and had been given the books as a gift). Anyway, I’d always heard good things about this series, but the only time I’d had a crack at reading it was immediately in the aftermath of Infinite Crisis, when it was one of a number of One Year Later issues I tried out for a couple of months. I’d quite enjoyed some of the issues I’d read, largely for the characterisation – reviews I wrote at the time show I saw it basically as a bit like a DC version of Alias, although of course not as brilliant – but began to tire of the stories and eventually gave up on it.

Nevertheless, I had a bit of time to kill, and was looking for something to read – so I picked up volume one and started to work my way through. Over the next couple of days, I think I made it through about three books before the week came to an end, and was really liking it. As with the later issues I’d earlier read, it was the character work that particularly made it stand out – Andreyko had successfully built not only a strong lead, but a decent supporting cast that played off each other well. There’s also an interesting moral dilemma at the centre of the book – Kate is sort of a cross between Daredevil and the Punisher, in that she’s a lawyer who later goes after the criminals that manage to get off on her watch, but she’s willing to go as far as Frank Castle and actually take lives. The series is never afraid to present this position as a challenge to her status as a “hero”, and takes some interesting twists and turns in exploring it.

Since that week, I’ve never got round to picking up the books again – either for a re-read, or to carry on from where I left off – but remembering it now makes me wonder if I should. And although comics don’t often tend to remind me of places, as such, I’m sure that the next time I do read Manhunter, I’ll be transported back to the Altadena living room of two of the best people I’ve ever met.