<span class="SFPTagline"> From SCIFIPEDIA </span>

The Manhunters are fictional robot law enforcers, part of the back story of the Green Lantern comic book character, owned by DC Comics.

When the Guardians of the Universe first sought to bring order to the galaxy, they felt that emotion (particularly the capacity to feel fear) would be a hindrance to law enforcers. So, they created an army of powerful intelligent androids called the Manhunters.

The Manhunters were giant flying robots of incredible power. Their colors were blue and red, and looked as powerful as they were. They were programmed for law-enforcement, and would often repeat the mantra "No man escapes the Manhunters".

For thousands of years, the Manhunters brought justice to parts of the galaxy that had never seen any. But, over time, without emotion, their judgement became flawed. They could not exhibit mercy, compassion, understanding, or appreciate the different subtle shades of justice. This "glitch" led to many cases of wrongful arrests and the use of excessive force. Matters came to a head when Space Sector 666 became the scene of a massacre in a disaster so terrible that the actual story has yet to be told.

After this disaster, the Guardians tried to deactivate the Manhunters. The androids refused, and this led to a war between the Manhunters and the Guardians. In the midst of that war, the Guardians turned to sentient beings across the universe for their new interstellar police force. This led to the formation of the Green Lantern Corps.

Though destroyed by the Guardians and the Green Lantern Corps again and again, the Manhunters always seem to survive and rebuild themselves to threaten others again. As such, Manhunters have returned from time to time as villains in Green Lantern stories, and have, so far, always been eventually defeated. They are famous for infiltrating planets pretending to be natives. The story of their attempted invasion of Earth was told in the Limited Crossover Series, Millenium (1988). They have also been known to influence societies by starting cults on inhabited worlds. Native cult members, not knowing their true origin, often act as heroes and bring criminals to justice, like the originals once did all over the galaxy. There have been several Manhunter heroes in the DC Universe whose origin has been explained this way. There are also indications that the Guardians based the programming of the Manhunters on the Manhunters of Mars, providing an oblique connection between them and the hero Martian Manhunter.