Comic Books: Man-Thing Volume 2

I have to say that I read none of these as they came out; I only started buying them years later. They seem to have culminated with the writer, Chris Claremont, either producing a bold metafictional experiment or suffering some sort of weird emotional breakdown. Maybe a midlife crisis brought on by the passing of the Seventies and the beginning of the Eighties, or publishing troubles with Marvel. Anyway, he spends the last few pages of the last issue explaining that HE was Dakimh, using the guise of a comic book writer to tell a tale, and that now he must be moving on. "There's nothing more pathetic than an aging hipster." - Dr. Evil.

Comic Books: Man-Thing Volume 1

That which I have of  The Man-Thing Volume 1. Includes the fabled Man-Thing #1 which introduced us to Korrek, Dakimh, Howard the Duck, and Jennifer Kale, and the Giant-Size Man-Thing #3 that continued their tale (well, not Howard's, he had plunged into the void between worlds). That #14, while containing the superior artwork of Alfredo Alcala, also had Khordes, the wizened faun/wizard as well as pirates galore.

Comic Books: Journey into Fear with The Man-Thing

Back when my cataloging was in full swing, I posted a fair number of my comic books. Not all of them, however, as it seemed too tedious at the time. But now I've become a little restless, so I thought I'd give it a shot again.

Man-Thing started out as a character in Journey into Fear, then graduated to his own title. I only got copies of Journey into Fear years later; our involvement with Man-Thing started with The Man-Thing #1 (January, 1974). We never got many after that, but I managed to collect a few more over the years.

 

The whole bunch is, in a way, rendered moot by the two huge Marvel Essential Man-Thing omnibuses now in the Archive. But there is something charming in the artifacts 'of the time', and of course they are in color, that beautiful, soft ink color of aged print, whereas the Essential are in rather stark black-and-white. 

Here are the Journey into Fears; The Man-Things should follow soon.

"T-Tai Not Fear You, Monster! Tai Kill!"

Or, alternately: "People who wish for stupid things may be given them, good and hard." From Giant-Size Man-Thing #3 (1973).

Shadowplay: Another DVD in The Shadow Library

 

Man-Thing (2005)

Possibly the turd in the punch bowl for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which is a shame. I quite liked the Man-Thing comic books I read as a child. But I had a rather unique experience there: I was introduced to Man-Thing first through some pretty fantastic episodes in the comic books, where the muck monster goes on a quest with Dakimh the Enchanter, Korreck the barbarian, Jennifer Kale the witch-girl, and even Howard the Duck as they go on a dimension hopping mission to save the Nexus of Realities. 

I didn't know that the Man-Thing used to be the scientist Ted Sallis, who was working with the same super-soldier serum that produced Captain America and the Red Skull. I didn't know that the combination of sabotage and an accident with the serum, interacting with the energies of the swamp where he was working, turned Sallis into the mindless but empathic half-plant creature that he is. I had very little idea then of the cultural and ecological themes that drove most of the series.

There is more of that sort of thing in the movie, but used oh-so-poorly, and the production values suck. Riddled with B-movie tropes, Man-Thing here is mostly a haunting presence, with no convincing or gripping backstory, filmed like some sort of evasive Bigfoot-like creature, mainly, I suspect, to avoid showing the poor quality of the creature effects. He is only a guest appearance in his own movie, which is mainly concerned with the heroes trying to foil a big corporation from devastating the swamp.

 

Well, the used DVD copy of Man-Thing that I bought and watched has sunk back into the bog whence it came. I have since got the two big volumes of the Marvel Essential Man-Thing, and have a better grasp of the original 'saga' as a whole than I conceived from the few errant issues I read as a boy. The movie, while unfortunate, did not taint the waters of memory there. I also have a very good action figure from 2004 in the Marvel Legends Series VIII.

Stuff&Junk: Man-Thing Comics