By the time Steve Gerber sat down to write the story that we’ll be looking at today, he was pretty well established at Marvel Comics. While it’s true that an early stint working on staff as a proofreader didn’t turn out all that great, due to the twenty-five-year-old former advertising copywriter’s propensity for falling asleep at his desk (many years later, Gerber would be diagnosed with sleep apnea), his freelance writing gig was going very well, thank you. As of late spring, 1973, Gerber was the regular writer for Daredevil, Sub-Mariner, the Zombie (in Tales of the Zombie), and — last but not least — the gig with which he’d started out, almost a year before: the Man-Thing series in Fear. Not only that, but in just two months, that latter assignment would provide the launchpad for the character for which he’d ultimately be best remembered, Howard the Duck.
But it all almost came crashing down in the middle of ’73, thanks to Gerber’s introduction of another, less well-remembered character in the pages of that same series — a character whose unmistakable similarity to the flagship superhero of Marvel’s number one competitor, though intended as parody, wasn’t at all well received by that competitor — resulting in the young writer coming very, very close to being fired.
And that’s probably all you really need to know, going in; so, without further ado…
Regular readers of this blog may recall last month’s post about Frankenstein #5, on the first page of which writer Gary Friedrich used a quote from a Creedence Clearwater Revival song written by John Fogerty as an epigraph. Here we have another opening-page CCR reference, with Steve Gerber deriving the title of his tale from an identically named song from the band’s 1969 album Willy and the Poor Boys.
Gerber’s artistic collaborators on “It Came from the Sky!” were Val Mayerik, who’d been drawing the strip since Fear #13, and Sal Trapani, who’d come aboard as inker with the previous issue, #16. While the veteran Trapani may not have been the single most sympathetic embellisher Mayerik ever had on “Man-Thing”, he was better than several of his peers at capturing the delicacy of the young penciller’s linework… or so at least believes your humble blogger. (The book’s cover, on the other hand, was both pencilled and inked by Frank Brunner.)
Intrigued by the plinking sounds,the Man-Thing shambles right up to the strange ship and leans his forehead against it… which might seem weird, but as a caption helpfully informs us, “that is where his auditory organs are.”
The blue and red on the costume sported here by our “auburn-haired youth”, aka Wundarr, are basically reversed from the version shown on Brunner’s cover. Which may or may not be significant, considering the similarity between the color scheme of Wundarr’s costume (story version) and that worn by a certain other well-known comics character (that “flagship superhero” I mentioned earlier) who famously arrived on Earth in a rocketship. Perhaps the cover’s colorist (Glynis Oliver, according to the Grand Comics Database) received specific instructions to make Wundarr’s costume colors a little less on the money, after the interior pages had already been colored (by George Roussos, per the GCD) and couldn’t be changed… though this is just speculation on my part.
Some commentators on this story have noted that the name of Wundarr’s home planet, Dakkam, sounds very similar to Daxam, the name of the home planet of the hero Mon-El in DC Comics’ Legion of Super-Heroes. Seeing as how Mon-El has a power set nearly identical to his fellow Legionnaire Superboy, this may have been intentional on Gerber’s part. On the other hand, Dakkam also sounds (and looks) a lot like Dakimh — the name of the enchanter character that Gerber had introduced into the Man-Thing series just a few issues before. To this reader, it seems as likely that the writer “borrowed” from his own recent name coinage as that he was consciously riffing on this particular aspect of DC’s Super-mythos; your mileage may vary, of course.
Giving up on being able to save all of his fellow Dakkamites, the scientist Hektu turns his attention and energy towards saving the only ones he can — his own family. For the next six months, he labors unceasingly to build a spaceship capable of carrying his wife, son, and self to another planet — but on the very day his efforts are successfully completed, unexpected (and unwelcome) company comes to call…
The differences between the old story all of us know so well and this one are already striking, especially as it concerns the fate of Wundarr’s parents. As grim as dying along with everyone else on your homeworld might be, getting gunned down in cold blood by your government’s security forces is an even darker fate. But it’s one that Gerber’s “update” of the tragedy of Krypton requires; because, although this fact won’t be revealed until Wundarr’s next appearance in Marvel Two-in-One #2 (Mar., 1974), Dakkam wasn’t doomed. The planet’s sun never went nova, which meant that Hektu and Soja died in vain — and little Wundarr got rocketed off to an unknown fate for no good reason at all.
Alas, little Wundarr is destined for a different fate than that other baby-in-a-rocket, who had the good fortune to have his arrival witnessed by a couple who weren’t paranoid about “Martians — or communists –!”
There have been any number of “what if” stories — most of them (though not all) published by DC itself — regarding how things might have gone differently had baby Kal-El (or an analogue) been rescued from his spacecraft by someone other than the salt-of-the-earth Ma and Pa Kent. But to the best of my knowledge, this is the only variation on the familiar theme where he was never rescued at all.
“F.A. Schist” is the name of a businessman who, as of Fear #16, is attempting to drain the area of the Florida Everglades where dwells the Man-Thing so that he can build an airport, hang the damage to the environment or to indigenous communities. And no, Gerber wasn’t being exactly what you’d call subtle with his social commentary here; on the other hand, the word “fascist” wasn’t nearly as ubiquitous in our daily public discourse fifty years ago as it unfortunately is today.
Taking Wundarr for just “another blasted long-haired Injun” attempting to sabotage Schist’s construction project, the crew members draw their handguns and open fire on the innocent alien. But guess what? Bullets just bounce right off the guy; and when he turns and runs away from his assailants, his speed is clocked by our story’s narrator “at almost a hundred miles an hour“.
Back in the swamp, Wundarr comes across an alligator. Curious, he grabs it by the tail; and when the reptile predictably tries to bite him in response, he slings its body against a tree trunk, killing it instantly…
Man-Thing initially attempts to defend himself, ripping up a lamppost and hitting Wundarr with it, then smacking him into a car — neither of which has any effect, naturally. But after several minutes of trading blows, Manny simply tires of the whole thing; he turns away from his opponent, to begin his slow, shambling walk home. This freaks the childlike alien out, as his temper tantrum turns instantly into panic at the thought of being abandoned by his “mother”:
And so ends another chapter in the saga of the Man-Thing — and (as we’ve already alluded to) almost one of the last such episodes Steve Gerber would ever write, though it thankfully didn’t work out that way.
As reported in Reed Tucker’s 2017 book Slugfest: Inside the Epic 50-Year Battle between Marvel and DC, editor-in-chief Roy Thomas realized prior to the publication of Fear #17 that DC might not welcome Gerber’s parody with open arms, and asked him to change it up some in his final script:
“I had seen this character before it went out and told Steve, ‘It’s gotta be changed.’ And Steve didn’t change it, or he changed it very little,” Thomas says. “Stan [Lee] was displeased with me, and he was ready to root Steve out of there as a sacrificial lamb, partly to mollify DC but partly because he knew that Steve knew better.”
Thomas offered a few more details on the incident for an article on Man-Thing that was published in Comic Book Creator #6 (Winter, 2014):
We got in some trouble over one of his [i.e., Gerber’s] “Man-Thing” stories, with the Wundarr character, where he made the origin too close to Superman. And that was my responsibility. I didn’t watch him closely enough. Basically, I felt that writers and artists understood how far they could go, and sometimes Steve would try to push the envelope a little bit. Sometimes his judgment was to push as far as he could and not worry so much about whether he was going to get the company into hot water. And by the time we would see a story — Stan and I — it had already been drawn and we’d try to make some changes it [sic], but they weren’t quite enough. And DC ended up complaining about it, perhaps justly so, and Stan was really angry about it, at me and especially at Steve…
From the perspective of our present era, when another obvious variation on the Superman archetype seems to pop up in popular culture every few years without DC Comics raising so much as an eyebrow, the company’s alleged apoplexy over Marvel’s introduction of Wundarr is a little puzzling. Clearly, there could have been no credible case for marketplace confusion between the two characters, Wundarr’s red-and-blue color scheme not withstanding. I suppose that a good IP lawyer could have made the argument that the Dakkam-to-Earth “origin” sequence infringed on the copyright of one or more of DC’s tellings of the Superman origin narrative — it does go on for five whole pages — but it’s still a little difficult to understand just what had DC’s brass so worked up about the whole thing.
For his part, Steve Gerber claimed to have been surprised by DC’s strongly negative reaction as well. Asked in a 2006 interview (it eventually ran both in Michael Eury’s The Krypton Companion (TwoMorrows, 2006) and in Back Issue #31 [Dec., 2008]) what had been the impetus behind the creation of Wundarr, the writer (who passed away in 2008) responded:
Nothing except my love of the Superman character and my desire to do a little parody/homage… What I had intended as parody, DC saw as plagiarism. From what I was told, there were angry words exchanged, but it never got anywhere near a courtroom. Marvel agreed to do another Wundarr story that would set him drastically apart from Superman — which is what I had always intended — and that was that. (Wundarr’s home planet never exploded. His father was the alarmist the Krypton elders supposed Jor-El to be.) I’m sure Roy must have conveyed to me Stan’s displeasure with the incident. Under the circumstances, of course, Stan had every right to be displeased. I’m still amazed, though, that DC took it so seriously.
As noted by Gerber, and corroborated by other accounts, the complaints made by DC never rose to the level of legal action, and Marvel was ultimately able to smooth things over by promising to move Wundarr farther away from the Superman archetype in future stories.
Four months following the publication of Fear #17, the letters page of Man-Thing #2 carried readers’ reactions to the story. After presenting a handful of missives representing a wide range of opinion, the following anonymous editorial response (credited by the Grand Comics Database to Steve Gerber himself) both offered Marvel’s more-or-less official public statement as to what “It Came from the Sky!” had all been about, and laid out the plan for the character’s immediate future:
Your humble blogger is hopeful of being able to squeeze in a post regarding Marvel Two-in-One #2 when its golden anniversary arrives this December, so I’ll refrain from going into details about “just how different… from that other character” Wundarr was shown to be within its pages. But before I wrap this one up, I can’t resist noting that Marvel’s extended rehabilitation project for the character would eventually culminate in his transformation into the Aquarian — a hero who did indeed bear little visual resemblance to the Last Son of Krypton… though you might be forgiven for thinking that his new look brought to mind that of another, even famous Son:
From The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe #1 (Jan., 1983). Art by Mark Gruenwald and Joe Rubinstein.
I guess that Marvel must have felt that even if this new approach to the character stirred up controversy (which, to the best of my knowledge, it never actually did), at least in this case, the owner of the original trademark was unlikely to sue.
I loved this comic when I read it 50 years ago, but I must admit that at the time although I was very much familiar with Superman, and I’d even read the reprint of Not Brand Ecch! Origin of Stupor-Man in Crazy #3 just a few months earlier, I somehow didn’t immediately catch on that this was another Superman parody. Clearly, DC didn’t mind obvious parodies as in the NBE yarn, and as DC had also parodied Marvel characters in the Inferior Five, among other titles, a not-so-obvious parody appearing in a more serious comic was more than they were willing to let stand without protest.
Amusingly, as discussed previously, likely the only reason Marvel didn’t sue DC over the similarities of Swamp Thing to Man-Thing (or DC thinking they had any basis to sue Marvel) was that both had been long preceded by the Heap that neither company had ownership of but was yet another mucky man-like swamp creature.
Anyhow, I rather liked that Gerber tended to push things to the edge. He was emerging as one of the more interesting comics writers at Marvel in the early ’70s.
A year and a half before this issue, Gary Friedrich titled Sgt. Fury #94 – in which the Howling Commandos picked the worst time possible to be in Dresden – “Who’ll Stop the Rain?”. Marvel’s St. Louis contingent sure loved themselves some CCR.
The Howlers aren’t in Dresden in that issue. They go there in *Sgt. Fury* #106 and #108 (the latter issue is called “Bury My Heart in Dresden”).
CCR is my Desert Island band. Even when you’re feelin’ blue, try not to burn effigies.
In 1969, with the release of 3 top-selling albums, including Willy & the Poor Boys, CCR had become a serious contender for the title of most popular band in the world, particularly as the previous holder of that title, the Beatles were in the midst of breaking up, although that wouldn’t be announced until the next year. By 1973, however, CCR themselves had imploded, but unlike the ex-Beatles, the former members of CCR wouldn’t all go on to very successful solo careers, although John Fogerty would make a big comeback in 1984.
As CCR specialized in “swamp rock”, despite coming from the “bottom” of the San Francisco Bay area (Fogerty attended San Jose State University, which I also did, albeit about 20 years afterwards), it was rather appropriate that Gerber used one of his songs for the title of a Man-Thing story, and one that really fits.
You’d think if Gerber was going to risk his job for a story, he’d at least do it for a better one than this! I didn’t read Fear back in the day, so my only take on it is the fifty-year hindsight of my 66-year-old self, but Steve certainly set up some obstacles for himself here. Manny’s inability to communicate, combined with Wundarr’s lack of any language skills (come on, we all know Kal-El’s ship taught him all the languages of the galaxy!) made telling a story of any real depth or consequence extremely difficult, and I can’t really say he pulled it off. While Wundarr’s attempts to play “Are You My Mother” with Man-Thing were sad, it didn’t really illicit any kind of sympathy from me for the character. I felt much worse for the guy for having spent 23 years in a space ship (the effects of which Gerber completely ignores) than I did his attempts to bond with Manny, and Man-Thing’s rejection of him, despite the fact that Gerber tells us the muck-monster understands what Wundarr is going through, doesn’t make sense the way it’s presented here, at least not to me.
As to the whole “Superman” of it all, it’s a pretty lame parody. Sure, the origin tracks, but once Wundarr gets to Earth, his origin veers significantly from Kal-El’s and not really in an interesting way. Also, the overly redneck representation of my fellow Floridians from Citrusville is a bit over-the-top and two-dimensional.
Finally, I was never much of a Val Mayerik fan and don’t see any reason to become one based on his work here. All in all, this seems like an effort that would have disappointed me in 1973, pretty much the way it disappoints now. I’m all for Gerber pushing the envelope and if this experience contributed in any way to the creation of Howard the Duck, then it justifies it’s own existence by that fact alone, but if I’d bought this book in ’73, I’d have called it a waste of my hard-earned twelve cents and moved on. Thanks, Alan.
I’m with you on this one. As parody it’s not very good and as a stand on it’s own story it’s full of some pretty deep holes. To me, just copying the Superman origin saga, despite a few tweaks just strikes me as lazy storytelling. This part about living in the space ship for 22 years seems patently ridiculous. I get he’s some super being and doesn’t have to eat. Though how you grow in size and strength without eating is bizarre. My real problem is wouldn’t you get claustrophobic? Wouldn’t you start wondering “what are these legs for If I’m just supposed to lay here?” 99.9% of people would break out after about an hour, let alone 22 years. Again it’s just ridiculous. The characterization of all southerners, in my reading anyway, by Gerber is as a vast conglomerate of inbred hicks. Cliché. The obligatory fight sequence seems forced and arising out of a contrived issue. Gerber just didn’t reach me with this one. Though in his defense I will add, his next Man Thing story in #18 was one I’ve always loved.
“…wouldn’t you get claustrophobic? ” I don’t think so — not if you didn’t have any idea that there was anything out there beyond the confines of the ship. Gerber is quite clear in stating that Wundarr grows up believing that the ship is “the world” — he has no concept that anything else even exists.
“…The characterization of all southerners… by Gerber is as a vast conglomerate of inbred hicks.” I would counter that Gerber’s Floridans come in varied types. What about the Cult of Zhered-Na, for example? And it’s not like the South (and especially the rural and small-town South) *doesn’t* have more than its share of ignorant, bigoted yahoos. (I speak as a lifelong Southerner. for what that’s worth.)
All that said, not every story is for everybody. “To each their own” is and shall remain the guiding principle around these parts. 🙂
Very true, Alan. And if anyone’s going to quibble about 23 years in a rocket, well, realistically speaking, it would take about 73,000 years to travel to the nearest star outside of our solar system. Obviously, Siegel & Schuster, as well as Gerber and pretty every other author of stories that involve travel between distant worlds either ignores that aspect or hand-waves it away with pseudo-scientific gobbledy-gook of one sort or another involving warp drives, wormholes, etc. Not to mention aliens mostly looking like Earth humans, whether with green or blue skin or looking remarkably similar to those of European ancestry, and often speaking perfect English (if written for an English-speaking audience, at least), with or without some sort of explanation (Douglas Adams’ Babel Fish is my favorite, mainly because it is so purposely absurd).
I’ve “only” lived in Florida for about 30 years now — mainly in or near Jacksonville, since 1990, excluding two years in Greece and another two in Connecticut from ’95 – ’99), and I’ve encountered a few red-neck types here. I got the sense, however, that Gerber wasn’t poking fun at “rednecks” as such as at “hippy-hating hardhats”, whom Englehart also took a poke at in Avengers #114 just a few months earlier in a story set in New York City. A friend of mine, Michael Fitzgerald, who moved from central California to northeast Florida in 1968 (his dad, like mine, was in the Navy), while he was still in high school, wrote a book about the roots of Southern Rock in Jacksonville, and discusses the then hatefulness of old-style rednecks against long-haired “freaks” or hippies, such as the members of what would become the Allman Brothers Band, which formed here in Jax before moving to Macon, Georgia. Even long-haired rednecks, such as those that became part of Lynyrd Skynyrd got a lot of heat for having longhair in all but the “Bohemian” part of the city. Mike knew a few members of Lynyrd Skynyrd from before they became part of the band and briefly became a member of the Alan Collins Band in 1985, before he realized Collins (a survivor of the 1977 plane crash that killed Ronnie Van Zant, among others) was a raging alcoholic and dangerously unpredictable. Mike was excited at the prospect of becoming part of a band with a big-name rock star, but then became fearful that hanging out too much with Collins wouldn’t bode well for his prospects of living a long life! in 1987, Collins, driving drunk, got into an accident that killed his girlfriend and left him paralyzed from the neck down. He died in 1990.
Of course, a lot has changed in 50 years, so that now no one pays much attention to a guy with hair grown well past his shoulders and no one at the courthouse where I work chides me if my hair doesn’t look like I maintain a military-style haircut (which I haven’t done since I got out of the Navy in 1999; I tend to get a haircut once very 5 or 6 months, when my hair starts to get unruly as it sticks out at various odd angles rather than naturally hanging straight down).
My dad, btw, grew up in rural northeast Texas, joining the Navy in 1957 to get away from that and even he made fun of the “hick” southern outlook on many things to my recall back in the 1970s. Sometimes he’d jokingly mimic the deep southern drawl which he had grown up with but mostly lost after leaving the region. With my mother, I could always tell when she was talking on the telephone with her sister, who never left NE Texas, because without even thinking about it, she’d start talking with a distinct southern drawl that I rarely heard her use otherwise.
Jacksonville, eh? My wife’s parents used to own a place in Fernandina Beach where our family regularly vacationed back in the ’90s. Haven’t been back in many years, but that area is arguably still the part of Florida I know best. 😉
I think a lot of DC’s objection might be the”Trade Dress” which “might create or tend to create confusion about the source of the product.” (Which might be more resonable since both companies had swamp creature books.)
I have read that a lot of Sal Trappani’s output was assisted by his brother-in-law, Dick Giordano. That might account for the treatment of Val Mayerik’s linework,
Gerber was a great talent, but might not have been a well man. It is sort of tragic.
DC must have had some seriously thin skin if this story got the company riled up all that much. Seems pretty innocuous to me.
All these years later, I’m still uncertain if there was any complaining from DC at all—I think it was mostly Stan’s fears of potential complaining that made this an issue. I have never heard anything, not one word, from the DC side about them having a problem with this story.
Stan may have been concerned that DC would start making characters like Webslinger Lad for real, and their own standing to sue would be diminished.
I never read Man-Thing back in the day. I read the Essentials set a few years ago and while the best issues are amazing, this was not one of the best issues. Like some of the other commenters I thought this amounted to “Look, I’ve done a riff on Superman’s origin!” Big whoop. Hyperion of the Squadron Sinister was way more interesting.
The Inferior Five did the “Krypton didn’t explode” twist several years earlier. Awkwardman reveals in I5#1 that his grandfather Dumb-El sent his child Barb-El to Earth to save him (he would become Awkwardman’s father Mr. Might) but just like everyone on “Neon” said, Dumb-El was a crackpot. Not that this disqualifies Gerber from doing the same but it’s worth mentioning.
I’m a little confused. By this time Marvel had the Squadrons Sinister and Supreme but someone thought Wundarr would be a problem?
Apparently so!
Geez, someone had a thin skin. I read this when it was came out and of course I recognized the riff on Superman’s origin but didn’t imagine it would be a big deal. But then again, I was barely a teenager, so what did I know about legalities and corporate policies. I just liked the stories!
I just noticed – the band name is Creedence, not Credence. This was also misspelled in your post for Frankenstein #5 https://50yearoldcomics.com/2023/06/07/frankenstein-5-september-1973/
I’ll fix ’em.