Comic Statues & Busts: Marvel Man-Thing from Marvel Comics

What's it like to be the son and the daughter of the Father of Lies? Find out as Daimon Hellstrom and his sister, Satana, face the worst of two worlds! Can they save their souls along with the world? Featuring Exorcists, Cyclists, Nihilists and Ice Demons! Secrets of Ancient Atlantis revealed! Guest-starring Spider-Man, the Thing and the Human Torch! Collects Savage Tales #1; Astonishing Tales #12-13; Adv Into Fear #10-19; Man-Thing #1-14; GS Man-Thing #1-2; Monsters Unleashed #5, 8-9.

By the early 70s, Marvel Comics seemed to be losing a little of its creative spark. Ditko and Kirby were gone, and Stan had his eye on movies and television. But then a new breed of writers and artists started to filter in. Guys like Starlin, Steranko, Adams, Simonson and many others started to re-invigorate the company. One of these writers was the late Steve Gerber who some might know for his work on titles as varied as Omega The Unknown, The Defenders, Sludge, Hard Time, Nevada and even the Thundarr the Barbarian cartoon. However, some of Gerbers best work was writing a character called Man-Thing.

Man-Thing was created by Roy Thomas and Gerry Conway and debuted in Savage Tales #1. This was one of Marvels line of more adult friendly, magazine sized, black and white comics. It featured stunning art by the late great Gray Morrow. Man-Things story continued on into Astonishing Tales for a two issue story arc in issues 12 and 13. Man-Thing then took over one of Marvels horror titles...Adventures Into Fear starting with issue 10. Starting in issue 11, Steve Gerber took over the writing and started to write some of the most thought provoking, offbeat, and original stories in comic book history. During his time on Man-Thing, Gerber introduced characters like Howard the Duck, Foolkiller, and created the famous tag line..."Whatever knows fear..burns at the Man-Things touch!" The stories touched on issues of persecution, hypocrisy and environmental issues all while battling demons, other-dimensional villains, evil land developers and sometimes...just jerks that needed to be slapped. The setting in the swamps of Florida gave the stories a claustrophobic and anxious feeling. The Man-Thing was a force of nature, indestructible and symbol of a sort of fatalistic justice that would squelch feelings of despair and oppression with a sense of relief and freedom.

The Essential Man-Thing is a very entertaining book that will keep you occupied with stories that you'll want to read and re-read. The number of talented writers and artists that worked on this character is staggering. With Gerber doing the writing for 27 out of 32 stories in this volume of Essential Man-Thing, and Val Mayerik and Mike Ploog doing the majority of the art, we also get the talent of Neal Adams, Al Milgrom, Alfredo Alcala, John Buscema, Klaus Janson and Jim Starlin. They also feature the absolutely stunning cover art of legendary Frank Brunner. As someone that has collected comics for going on 35 years now, I have to highly recommend this great collection of stories.

The Essentials series is printed in black and white and on cheaper paper, but they give you a lot of reprinted stories here (running at close to 600 pages!) Included; the characters first appearances in Savage Tales #1, Astonishing Tales 12 & 13, his entire run in Adventures Into Fear 10-19, Man-Thing 1-14, Giant Sized Man-Thing 1&2, and his appearances in Monsters Unleashed issues 5, 8 and 9. We do get Howard the Ducks first appearance in Adventures Into Fear #19. However, future "Howard" back up stories are not included in Essential Man-Thing vol. 1. Buyers take note! Amazons "product description" under "Editorial Reviews" is inaccurate. It gives the proper information of Man-Things appearances but is describing "Son of Satan", not "Man-Thing". Hopefully they will correct this.

The Essential Man-Thing, Volume 1 is an excellent publication that focuses upon storylines and elements not found in a typical comic book. As opposed to having as the protagonist a crime fighter superhero such as Captain America or a save the world team like The Avengers, Marvel Comics centered this series around an anti-hero guided by primitive emotions, a swamp creature who comes to be known as Man-Thing.

Initially, Man-Thing was a leading government scientist by the name of Ted Sallis, who was assigned to reproduce the serum created during a World War II experiment that made scrawny Steve Rogers into the indomitable Captain America. Whether the serum was truly recreated is unknown. What is known is that Sallis would be hunted down by enemies seeking the newly created formula, and in effort to protect his work, he injected himself with this chemical concoction. After being chased, Sallis loses control of his vehicle and ends up submerged deep in the swampy waters of the Florida Everglades. It is then that the injection reacts with the elements of the swamp, causing Sallis' physiology thus humanity to be severely altered. It is then that the origin of the Man-Thing has arrived!

No longer is Ted Sallis a flesh and blood human being; instead he is a 7-feet tall swamp monster composed entirely of plant and vegetable matter. He cannot speak, nor is he able to go back to civilization due to his deformed state. Thus, he thrives in the Everglades, dwelling among other creatures; any vestige of the cognitive capacity possessed by Ted Sallis has apparently ceased to exist within The Man-Thing, but is anyone really sure?

Under typical circumstances, the Man-Thing would likely remain in isolation and not come into any direct contact with humans. He has become a solitary figure with an uncanny ability to sense and elude those from outside his dwellings. So any record of seeing him might just as well join the ranks of The Loch Ness Monster and Sasquatch. However, this would not be so.

Where Man-Thing dwells is key to his survival. The algae and various types of protoplasm and vegetation serve as nutrition thus sustenance for this wild creature. It is because of both this basic necessity and the disregard for the environment that a selfish, corporate executive by the name of F.A. Schist has that Man-Thing must come out of hiding. Within this conflict is a reflection of the myriad financial dilemmas that parts of America were actually going through and a continual growth versus preservation duality that was not so highly entailed in other comics.

Sure, there were times that the alter egos of superheroes had to move from place to place, but it was only within the confines of financial difficulties or government reassignments. With the Man-Thing, however, none of those particular concerns are in his domain. His home is his way of life; there are essentially no ifs, ands, or buts. And with Schist entering the scene and wanting to demolish much of the swampland so that he can build and expand his enterprises via construction, we have in quite a few pages numerous clashes between the blue collar workers under contract with Schist and environmentalists who want to protect the local plants, trees, and wildlife.

For many readers, it is perhaps this stage that has them wondering for the first time if characters who, in many ways, might be regarded as heroes for doing what it takes to provide for and feed the family within the confines of U.S. law might be vilified as enemies in the broader context for carrying out the plans of a greedy individual whose business dealings have, unfortunately, been protected by law or the loopholes thereof. In one sequence, a construction worker exclaims, "I don't work...my kids don't eat...! That's the simplest ecology there is, right? Heck, we ain't villains--just hard-workin' guys tryin' to earn a dollar!" And it is from the Man-Thing storylines that we witness exploitation of the lowest common denominator: acknowledging the scarcity of resources for the common man and using that predicament to create and perpetuate dire situations setting everyday people against one another!

All in all, this bound volume creates a seeming paradox about comic book publications. Several themes in the Marvel World originated and championed by the Stan Lee/Steve Ditko team were inspired by Ayn Rand, and during the publication of Man-Thing, Rand and her intellectual contemporaries were vehemently against the environmentalist movement, for it was portrayed as a threat to subordinating the human race to other species and also destroying property rights, thus individual rights. Interestingly, Man-Thing simultaneously personifies what could be extrapolated as the best intentions of the environmentalist movement and the darkest, destructive elements of unregulated capitalism. How close to reality these opposing themes are is still up for debate after almost four decades!

In effect, one might suppose that Marvel, because it constantly upheld a pursuit of happiness philosophy in its themes, went off track with issuing Man-Thing. In response, I say that this volume reinforces the phrase "moderation in all things" which was pro-Aristotelian, which even Rand, herself, claimed to be!

The book is a good combination of drama, mysticism, ecology and action, because, unlike other swamp things, "Manny" doesn't spend entire stories feeling sorry for himself; if danger arises, he is there to face it and, if need be, enforce his own brand of mute justice.
Great were the guest appearence of "Ka-Zar", the agents of "AIM" and "The Glob", but the introduction of "Howard, The Duck" was both hilarious and welcome, for that loquacious fowl really "went" with all the bizarre stuff around him!!!
Is there a "Volume 2" coming?

The comic starts off slowly, repetitively, but soon flowers into an existential, anarchic,nihilist-naive, neo primitivist landscape, which prefigures and pre empts and "pre imagines" Charles Burns "Black Hole" and aspects of Alan Moore by decades.

The action takes place in a swamp -- a secluded place, a dank,, threatening, yet pure place, untouched by the corruption of man -- yet it's a place constantly under threat from corrupt, violent men,pushing at its ( mental and physical/psychical ) edges and boundaries.


However, the swamp is protected by the pure of heart, Man Thing -- the beast is a being who instinctively despises corruption, the concept of "might makes right" thuggery and the bully. In other words, a very modern comic figure !!

The art is great too, with lots of good character profiles of 70's hippies, anarchist bikers, draft dodgers, homophobic hard hats, 1950's rockabilly gangs,hippy chicks and eccentric professors.

Get ready to take the man thing trip, from the swamps to the edge of the stratosphere out to the edges of your dreams, blurring waking and sleeping consciousness!

Great stuff, from a somewhat dull start on to a great set of tales : If you are into existential,lonely central figures and very "post modern", apocalyptic themes,expressing a deep mistrust of modern society, then you'll love Man Thing. I can't believe he was left behind and taken over by Swamp Thing and "Black Hole" ! Man Thing deserves a far higher profile and respect in the comics world.

When my local comic book store got its copies of "Essential Man-Thing, Volume 1," one of the clerks made a point of urging me to buy the book because it included a couple of issues of what he maintained was the comic book with the greatest name in the history of the Marvel or any other universe. He was referring, of course, to the first two issues of "Giant-Size Man-Thing." I did not comment on either the appropriateness of this declaration being made in a loud voice in the presence of young children or the attendant irony of this information being gleefully communicated by someone who has six inches and about a hundred pounds on me. But I did let him know that I already had my own copy that I could read about the Man-Thing regardless of size in the privacy of my own home.

Man-Thing made his (its?) first appearance in May 1971 in "Savage Tales" #1, and while there is a tendency to think of the Marvel character as a second rate version of DC's much more successful Swamp Thing, that character first appeared a month later in "House of Secrets" #92, the June-July 1971 issue. The first appearance of Man-Thing was written by Gerry Conway and Roy Thomas, with Gary Morrow as the artist, where as the first Swamp Thing story was written by Len Wein and drawn by Berni Wrightson. To make things even more interesting, Conway and Wein were roommates at the time, and Wein wrote the second Man-Thing story drawn by Neal Adams (originally intended for "Savage Tales" #2, it was incorporated to a Ka-Zar story by Roy Thomas drawn by John Buscema in "Astonishing Tales" #12. Obviously Conway and Wein knew what the other one was doing, and there is evidence that Wein took pains to make their origins dissimilar. Collected in Volume 1 and arranged in chronological order, are "Savage Tales" #1, "Astonishing Tales" #12-13, "Adventure into Fear" #10-19, "Man-Thing" #1-14, "Giant-Size Man-Thing," #1-2, and "Monsters Unleashed" #5 & #8-9.

Originally the biochemist Theodore "Ted" Sallis, the Man-Thing was created when Sallis was betrayed by his lover who was in league with agents from Advanced Idea Mechanics (AIM) for wanted his miracle drug formula. When the origin was revised this became a super-soldier serum (in the manner of how Captain America was created), and it was the mixture of the serum and the swamp were Sallis drown that caused the transformation. When Steve Gerber took over the script and revealed the Everglades includes the Nexus of All Realities, magical forces became retroactively involved in the creation of the Man-Thing as the guardian of the Nexus. Sallis' intelligence was basically destroyed and the defining elements of the shambling muck-monster were that the Man-Thing sensed strong emotions and reacted to fear with rage, secreting a chemical (or magical?) corrosive so that "Whatever knows fear burns at the Man-Thing's touch," starting with the woman who betrayed him and continuing to those the creature comes upon as he stumbles through the swamp and keeps coming across humans doing bad things and deserving such punishment.

Much is made of the first appearance of Howard The Duck in "Fear" #19 (originally a duck whose name is revealed to be Howard), but the story I remember best is "It Came Out of the Sky!" in "Fear" #17, where Gerber takes the well-known origin of Superman and plays out what would have happened if the kindly old couple had seen a space ship crashing to Earth in 1951 and gone the other way rather than face Martians or Communists. It would be 20 years before Man-Thing would release the babe inside, now the fully-grown Wundarr, who thinks Man-Thing is his mother. That issue was the best bit of satire by Gerber and an indication of what was to come when Howard the Duck got his own strip, but when we had Korrek, Warrior Prince of Katharta comes out of a half-eaten jar of peanut butter (also in "Fear" #19), it is hard to take things seriously, which I would think it a prerequisite for a comic book where the end game is supposed to involve things burning because they fear the touch of the Man-Thing.

In reading these early stories again my preference is clear for the later issues collected here when Mike Ploog took over as the artist on "Man-Thing" #5. Frank Brunner was my favorite Man-Thing artist, but all he did were covers (including the one for this collection, which was from the cover of "Man-Thing" #1), and Ploog was the artist who got most of Marvel's horror comic titles off the ground, starting with "Werewolf By Night," but also including "Ghost Rider" and "The Monster of Frankenstein." So it was usual, but quite welcomed, for him to show up in the middle of a book's run. Gerber was focusing more on human stories where the peculiar justice of the Man-Thing's burning touch was most appropriate, as opposed to all the mystical stuff with Dakimh the Enchanter and the results are a lot better. No doubt because Gerber was enjoying unfettered freedom in writing "Howard the Duck."

"Man-Thing" was a mixture of horror and crime along with fantasy and science fiction, and the appearance of other Marvel superheroes such as Mr. Fantastic and Tony Stark in "Giant-Size Man-Thing" #2, usually did not work. However, there was a little more success with villains, most notably the Fool-Killer ("Man-Thing" #3-4). This was one of those comic books where I tended to like the art more than the stories, such as when Tom Sutton finished John Buscema's layouts in "Man-Thing" #13 and Alfredo Alcala did the art for #14. So when we started getting text stories by Gerber with accompanying artwork by Pat Broderick, I would tend to just look at the pictures and not bother with the stories. Ultimately I find Man-Thins is one of those characters were less is more, because there are only so many injustices a muck-monster can address while shambling around the Everglades.

Chemist Ted Sallis was assigned to "Project Gladiator", an experiment aimed at recreating the lost "super-soldier" serum that had spawned Captain America during World War Ii. Sallis attempted to modify the "super-soldier" serum with another serum, one that had historically transformed poeple into monsters and got close to success. But he was betrayed by his wife, Ellen. To Guarantee that the secreet would not fall into the wrong hands, Sallis injected himself with the ony existing sample of his modified Super Soldier Serum, and fled into the nearby swamp. Sallis should have died, but over the course of serveral hours, mystical forces combined with chemical science to transform him into the monstrous, misshapen creature who would be dubbed the Man-Thing. WARNING: contains small parts not for children under 3 years.

This Man-Thing figure is top notch!! It is worth every penny you pay to get it. It's an unusual character from the 70s to make the Marvel Legends line-up, but is very much a welcomed one. As with all the figures in Series 8, the detail is incredible. Sticks, weeds, twigs, bumps, warts, growths, and other swamp/sewer matter. It's ALL there! Very cool. His articulation is just right, in my opinion, for the figure. Any more articulation would detract from the figure's appearance. His wrists and stomach joint tend to become very loose after play, but not so bad that it would warrant a bad rating. The figure comes with an Ultimate Marvel Team-Up comic book where he joins Spiderman to bring down the Lizard. The display base for this figure is nice and is one that you place on a flat surface. You can hang it on the wall, but it will not look nearly as good. The only bad thing about this figure is that it isn't stocked very well, so get yours before they sell out. It really is an excellent buy!! Enough said.

And they (Toy Biz's sculptors) did with this toy. He looks perfect, perfect rendition of everyone's second favorite swamp monster.

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