OK, let’s get this out of the way first: Back in the mid-1970s, Marvel Comics actually published five issues of a series called Giant-Size Man-Thing.
Hahahahahahahahah!
Everyone good now?
As I mentioned in my post about Man-Thing #8 a few months back, there’s really no reason why “Giant-Size Man-Thing” should be exponentially funnier than “Man-Thing” is by itself. I mean, any double meaning you want to read into the phrase is right there in the regular-sized version, right? Yet, put those two hyphenates together, in that order, and hilarity — or at least an extended period of snickering — inevitably ensues.
After fifty years, your humble blogger has heard it all before, plenty of times — as have, I suspect, many, if not most, of you out there reading this. But, I figured that if I didn’t lead off with acknowledging the, ah, extra-large male-gendered object in the room, at least a few readers would never be able to concentrate on the actual contents of the comic book under discussion here today. And that would be a shame, ’cause it’s a good one. But now that we’ve ticked that box, let’s move on, shall we?
We’ll start by admiring the issue’s cover, pencilled by Gil Kane and inked by Klaus Janson (albeit with some seemingly inevitable alterations by Marvel art director John Romita, according to the Grand Comics Database) — the subject matter of which seems to indicate that the feature will be moving back into the high-fantasy genre territory it last visited way back in Man-Thing #1 (Jan., 1974), published over a year before.
Upon turning to the first page, we find that initial impression immediately confirmed:
This was the first “Man-Thing” story to be illustrated by Alfredo Alcala. Alcala was still a relatively new presence at Marvel in November, 1974, though he’d been around long enough by this time to have begun what would prove to be a long and distinguished tenure as the semi-regular embellisher of John Buscema’s pencils in Savage Sword of Conan. Obviously, that work — as little of it as there was at this point — already demonstrated Alcala’s facility with the fantasy genre; so, too, for those readers who were aware of it, did his own creation, the historical fantasy-adventure strip “Voltar”, which had debuted in 1963 in the artist’s native Philippines. At age seventeen, my younger self hadn’t yet heard of the latter; on the other hand, I’d seen and enjoyed plenty of the work Alcala had been turning out for DC Comics’ “mystery” anthology titles for the past couple of years, so I was at least well acquainted with his aptitude for the genre with which the Man-Thing series was most frequently aligned, i.e., horror.
“…he converses with water fowl…!” Gee, that sure sounds like a reference to Howard the Duck — which suggests that our current story may not simply have a genre affinity with the two-part story from Fear #19 and Man-Thing #1 that introduced said character, but may actually be a sequel to it…
Back in that Man-Thing #8 post I referenced earlier, I quoted one of Manny’s previous artists, Mike Ploog, on how he figured he got the gig because Marvel was looking for an especially “drippy” artist, and he was the drippiest one around. I’d say that Alfredo Alcala gives Ploog a run for his money here on that score, with a rendition of our series’ protagonist that drips every bit as much as his predecessor’s, while still remaining very much its own thing.
“Korrek!!” Yep, that is indeed the name of the doughty barbarian swordsman whom we readers of Fear #19 first met when he materialized out of an open jar of peanut butter…
Naturally, the Man-Thing can’t understand Korrek’s words — but he’s able to intuit what his old friend requires in his present situation, and so proceeds to wrench up the stakes keeping the warrior prisoner…
One of the serpent-hawks manages to catch Korrek, sinking its fangs into his shoulder and sending him sprawling. But the Man-Thing wrests the creature away and kills it, giving Korrek enough time to crawl to the still-lit brazier and offer up a prayer to Zokk…
Yes, we’ve been here at the Castle of the Sky before, as have Korrek and Manny. And Jennifer Kale’s status as a supporting character goes all the way back to Fear #11 (Dec., 1972) — though, also like Korrek and Manny, we haven’t seen her since the conclusion of Man-Thing #1.
The scene now shifts to several hours later, by which time Korrek has bathed and rested as well as having had his wound attended to — and over dinner, he begins to tell the others his story, though, as he says, “it’s painful in the telling.” “If you would rather not…?” inquires Dakimh…
As readers of Fear #19 and Man-Thing #1 (or at least our posts on same) will recall, while the stakes of the conflict chronicled in those issues were quite high — the fate of the multiverse, no less — the storyline itself incorporated enough absurdities (e.g., a talking cartoon duck, a scoop of peanut butter that morphed into a sword-and-sorcery barbarian hero, and so on) to lend the whole thing a rather whimsical air. But the preceding scenes of carnage — rendered in exquisitely horrific detail by Alcala — make it clear that we should expect a more straightforwardly serious tone in this follow-up.
Continuing his grim narrative, Korrek recounts how he managed to fight his way to the gates of the castle, only to find the place overrun by Mortak’s men…
Some time later, Korrek awoke to find himself chained in the castle dungeon, the prisoner of Mortak and that warlord’s ally, the sorcerer Klonus…
Retreating to his study, Dakimh invites Jennifer and Korrek to join him; the latter, however, declines…
“And he would revel again in its taste… had he a mouth with which to drink.” Dropping the goblet, the Man-Thing shambles on further into the castle’s interior. He passes a sculpture of two lovers embracing that fills him with an inexplicable sense of loss, before arriving at Dakimh’s alchemy laboratory… a place whose trappings would feel familiar to scientist Ted Sallis — the human being our muck-monster used to be, before he was transformed into the Man-Thing…
The preceding sequence is almost entirely superfluous to our story’s main plotline — but, as a way of centering the series’ protagonist, however briefly, in a narrative that’s primarily focused on its “supporting” characters, it’s welcome.
Jennifer surmises the rest — that Klonus hopes to obtain the “unique resource” embodied in Katharta’s prince through his own control of Mortak. Then she asks Dakimh about an earlier incident not observed by us readers, when he “seemed upset” by some crystal-gazing; he puts her off, saying she’ll be told all she needs to know “at the proper time”. The two enchanters then go to find Korrek…
Mortak replies that of course he understands killing; he’s spent his life at it, after all. “But doing in Korrek is one thing. Slaying a sorcerer —” Klonus seeks to reassure his ally, bidding him to observe as he empties the contents of a small vial into the sacred flame of Zokk. First, there’s just a bad smell…
Meanwhile, the two sorcerers seem to have stymied each other; Dakimh has imprisoned Klonus in a cage of crimson energy, while Klonus has snared Dakimh’s throat in an ever-tightening noose made of white vapor…
But Dakimh has spoken his last. (Well, in this story, at least.) Meanwhile, Korrek and Mortak continue to have at it…
In desperation, Mortak hurls himself at Korrek, who contemptuously kicks him to the ground, then prepares to run him through with his sword… slowly. It’s the very moment that Korrek had longed for — but then, “an image flashes across his consciousness”, as he recalls the fable of Ipsis and his chariot from earlier in the story (see, those two pages did have a point) — “and he tosses his sword aside!”
One might wonder what the point was of setting this story’s climactic action in Citrusville, Florida, seeing as how there appear to have been no witnesses — and, save for the Man-Thing’s use of a stop-sign as a club, little attention given to the incongruities between the fanciful swords-and-sorcery shenanigans and their mundane 20th century backdrop. On the other hand, ending the story here puts our series’ protagonist back where he belongs, more or less, and also brings both Jennifer Kale and Korrek of Katharta into position to be more easily used as supporting characters in future issues — though, somewhat ironically, both the summarily dispatched duo of Klonus and Mortak, and the seemingly-deceased Dakimh, would play greater roles in the Man-Thing’s ongoing saga over the remaining run of his title than would Jennifer and Korrek. (But we’ll have much more to say on that score in a future post, naturally.)
Opening splash page of Man-Thing #14 (Feb., 1975)
Based on letters-column remarks made by Marvel’s editorial staff (or, as such folk tended to be called in the lettercols of books written by Steve Gerber, “trained armadillos”), this should have been Alfredo Alcala’s debut as the new regular artist of the Man-Thing feature; as it turned out, however, Alcala would illustrate only one additional story of the character: “Tower of the Satyr!” in Man-Thing #14, which came out just a couple of weeks after Giant-Size Man-Thing #3. As best as I can determine, there was never an explanation offered for why the assignment didn’t last (though Alcala hardly lacked for work in the months that followed, as he continued his semi-regular duties on Savage Sword of Conan in addition to taking on a new gig drawing movie adaptations for Planet of the Apes, plus having his work continue to appear in such DC titles as Weird War Tales and Unexpected — making him one of the relatively few artists of this era whose work regularly appeared in comics from both major American publishers). But while we might regret the Alcala Man-Thing stories we didn’t get to see, we can still be grateful for the two we did — most especially for GSMT #3’s “The Blood of Kings!” which, while it might not represent Steve Gerber’s most profound work on this feature, remains a highly entertaining read, and a worthy sequel to the “Palace of the Gods” two-parter from Fear #19 and Man-Thing #1.
Of course, it would have been even more fun if the conclusion of “The Blood of Kings!” had led right into the other sequel to Fear #19/Man-Thing #1 that had been originally announced for this issue — the return of the believed-dead-but-actually-still-quite-alive former comrade-in-arms of Manny, Jen, Korrek, and Dakimh — Howard the Duck, that is — in a new nine-page story, written by Gerber and illustrated by Frank Brunner, entitled “Frog Death!”. But, as a note from Gerber on the letters page of this issue explained, at the time he was writing, with GSMT #3 in its last stages of production, Howard was “still in California, on the sun-splashed drawing board of Frank Brunner.”
What that meant — besides that we readers would have to wait another three months to read “Frog Death!” — was that Marvel unexpectedly had another nine pages in this issue to fill with reprinted material. Which explains why Giant-Size Man Thing #3 included a whopping four reprints from Marvel’s archive of horror, science fiction, and fantasy anthology comics of the 1950s and early ’60s; four standalone stories, each of which we’ll look at briefly in turn, beginning with this one:
This one originally appeared in Amazing Adventures #6 (Nov., 1961) — a comic book released just one week before Fantastic Four #1, meaning that it literally came out just prior to the dawn of “The Marvel Age of Comics”. That’s particularly significant in its case, since the story features the sixth (and last) Silver Age appearance of a character who is generally considered to have been a precursor of the superheroic characters who would quickly come to define that “Age”: the mysterious “mentalist” named Doctor Droom.
That’s right, I wrote “Droom” — because, despite what it says in the title banner shown above, and throughout most of the accompanying re-presentation of the story in Giant-Size Man-Thing #3, that’s what the character was called when this piece first ran. Whoever was in charge of handling the reprints for this issue evidently made the determination that the original moniker looked and sounded too close to “Doctor Doom”: and so, to avoid confusion, the hero of this vintage yarn was herein given the new, and appropriately spooky-sounding, surname of “Druid”… well, except for the following panel (incidentally, the first one in the story which gives us a decent look at the protagonist’s face), where one lone “Droom” managed to slip through the revision/production process:
The first four “Dr. Droom” stories, which appeared in Amazing Adventures #1 – 4, were all drawn by Jack Kirby; this last one, however, was handled by Paul Reinman. (Maybe because Kirby was too busy pencilling FF #1? We’ll almost certainly never know, but it’s fun to speculate.) None of the stories carried a writing credit, though the Grand Comics Database suggests that all five may have been plotted by Stan Lee and scripted by Stan’s brother, Larry Lieber.
In this one, Dr. Droom Druid gets called in to investigate the inexplicable overnight disappearances of entire houses in a small American town. Referred to by a local cop simply as “the one man who specializes in cases too baffling for others to solve”, Druid wears no costume, nor does he demonstrate any paranormal abilities until late in the story, after he’s tracked down the perpetrator of the house heists: “a little old scientist” who has sent the missing homes (thankfully all new and unsold, and thus unoccupied) into another dimension using a “matter-transmitting machine”, hoping to hold them for a million-dollar ransom. Having been found out, the scientist tries to silence Dr. Druid the old-fashioned way, i.e., with a bullet…
His alien adversary having fled, Doc D. sets the matter-transmitting machine to reverse, and all the houses are restored to their proper place. The story ends with our hero pondering whether he’ll be as successful in thwarting Krogg when he returns, “as return he will”. But, if Krogg did ever come back for a rematch, the comics readers of 1961 never found out about it, since, following its sixth issue, Amazing Adventures morphed into Amazing Adult Fantasy, and Doctor Droom slipped quietly into obscurity — his possible niche in the nascent Marvel Universe ultimately being filled a couple of years later by the much better-realized Doctor Strange.
Cover to Weird Wonder Tales #19 (Dec., 1976). Art by Jack Kirby and John Verpoorten.
This brief return via revised reprint might have been the last gasp for the rechristened Doctor Druid, but, funnily enough, it wasn’t. Almost two years later, the 19th issue of the all-reprint Weird Wonder Tales “introduced” the character with another, and rather more extensively revised, strip: his premiere appearance and origin story from Amazing Adventures #1. From there, Druid went on to headline the remaining three issues of WWT‘s run; after that, he was, perhaps inevitably, at last fully integrated into Marvel Comics’ modern continuity via a guest-starring role in Hulk #209-211 (Mar. through May, 1977). He’d eventually go on to score memberships in both the Avengers and Defenders, and even managed to star in an all-new miniseries of his own, entitled simply Druid, in 1995… at the end of which, he supposedly died. That didn’t stick, as you might imagine, and Dr. Druid continues to knock around the Marvel Universe to this day… though in all that time, he’s never come close to becoming an “A”-lister. At this point, it seems pretty doubtful that he ever will fully “break out”; on the other hand, plenty of stranger things have happened in our wonderful world of comics.
Getting back to Giant-Size Man-Thing #3, we come now to the second of the issue’s four reprints…
…which, despite what it might look like, is not a pre-Comics Code Marvel take on Reefer Madness. Rather, it’s a six-page story, originally published in Strange Tales #94 (Mar., 1962), about an ordinary garden flower which, after being accidentally exposed to radioactive dust particles, is fearsomely mutated into “a… weed!!”
The Weed discovers that it has the power to control minds — which, once it reaches its full strength, it plans to use “to enslave all of mankind!!” For the moment, however, it limits itself to exercising its will over the one person who knows its secret — Lucius Farnsworth, the retired millionaire in whose garden it’s grown. But in the end, the Weed’s fiendish scheme is quite literally nipped in the bud when Farnsworth’s gardener George — a talented but unambitious man whom Farnsworth had previously derided for his lack of initiative — comes along behind the Weed and, in the normal performance of his ordinary duties, cuts it down.
I don’t know if the writer(s) of this story — again, the GCD suggests Lee as plotter and Lieber as scripter — had read John Wyndham’s 1951 science-fiction novel The Day of the Triffids when they came up with this one; and, in any event, the concept of a sentient, monstrous mutant plant probably didn’t originate with Wyndham, anyway. But, having recently perused Marvel’s comics adaptation of that novel in Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction (the two halves of which came out on either side of Giant-Size Man-Thing #3, incidentally), I have to give all props to this story’s penciller, Jack Kirby, who (with inker Dick Ayers) has it all over the artists of that one when it comes to memorably visualizing vegetative villainy. Say what else you want to about the Weed, that plant’s got charisma.
The last two reprinted stories “Humans, Keep Out!” and “Blackmail!” are both less interesting than their predecessors; that, and the fact that, together, they take up precisely nine pages, leads me to speculate that they got pulled in to fill out the issue only after it became clear that Frank Brunner wasn’t going to finish drawing “Frog Death!” in time. The first one originally ran in Journey into Mystery #86 (Nov., 1962) — and for once, neither we nor the GCD have to guess as to who wrote it, as its opening page contains the signatures of its writer, Stan Lee, as well as its artist, Don Heck:
That is some powerful technology the Earth scientists have there in “the scientifically advanced year of 1975”, isn’t it? They can not only get close up views of the Venusians, but can also clearly hear what they’re saying, and even translate it into English in real time! Unfortunately — though absolutely necessarily for this story’s plot mechanics — they have no way of communicating with their alien neighbors, and so their hopes of interplanetary friendship are dashed when they discover that the authorities on Venus, convinced that Earth is planning to invade their world, have constructed an army of super-powerful, invulnerable robots that will instantly attack and destroy any spacecraft from our planet that might dare attempt to drop by. But, in a development that’s been telegraphed from the story’s opening panels (and that echoes the role of George the gardener in “Save Me from the Weed!”), it’s the humble janitor, Ezra Grumley, who comes up with the solution — as the first successful visitors to Venus from Earth helpfully explain to their welcoming hosts at the tale’s end:
If you ask me, those scientists put a lot of trust (and spent a lot of taxpayers’ money) on the strength of a hunch that was iffy, at best. But that’s how things go in stories like this one.
The last reprint of the issue is an outlier in several ways. It’s of considerably older vintage than the others, coming as it does from the early 1950s, prior to the establishment of the Comics Code. It’s also darker in tone than its predecessors, and unlike any of them, contains not the slightest trace of fantasy. Finally, the origins of this four-pager from Mystery Tales #11 (May, 1953) are so obscure that no one seems too sure who wrote or who drew it; in its entry for Giant-Size Man-Thing #3, the Grand Comics Database identifies the artist as Manny Stallman (as does Mike’s Amazing World of Comics, also); however, in its entry for Mystery Tales #11, the GCD follows the lead of a different web site, Atlas Tales, in suggesting it was pencilled by Bill Benulis and inked by Jack Abel. As for its writer, none of these sources so much as hazard a guess.
The man who’s come knocking on the door of respected banker Henry Travis late at night is a fellow ex-con named Sanders. Henry’s wife Ella knows about her husband’s having done time for stealing company funds over two decades ago, but the other folks in the town they live in now don’t, and the venal Sanders threatens to spill the beans and thereby ruin Henry’s banking career and comfortable life if he’s not paid off. Henry ultimately turns the tables on his would-be blackmailer, however, giving him a glass of brandy which, when Sanders complains of its bitter taste, Henry reveals has been poisoned with “enough cyanide to kill ten men!” Sanders screams in pain, then drops dead at Henrys feet; when the police come in answer to the Travises’ phone call, the coroner announces his confident opinion that Henry’s “old friend” has died of heart failure — though they’ll have to conduct a formal autopsy, of course. After they’ve left with the body, Henry calmly explains to a distraught Ella that there’s no need for her to worry about the autopsy turning up cyanide in Sanders’ body, as the drink he’d consumed contained no poison whatsoever; Henry was bluffing the whole time, acting on his belief that the simple fear of having been poisoned would be enough to give the older man a heart attack…
Pretty clever, I guess — although thinking purely in criminal-justice terms, death seems a pretty severe punishment for attempted blackmail. But that’s just how they rolled in the pre-Code days, I reckon.
In any event, we’ve come at last to the end of Giant-Size Man-Thing #3 — still a more than acceptable package of comic-book entertainment fifty years on, reprints and all. Of course, it would have been a considerably stronger package had Howard the Duck’s solo debut been a part of it as planned, but you can’t have everything. And “Frog Death!” would be forthcoming in just three months — and, thankfully, without Steve Gerber having to make good on a threat he’d made on GSMT #3’s letters page to draw the thing himself, if he had to. I look forward to sharing it, and the other contents of Giant-Size Man-Thing #4, with you come February.
Am I in the minority in disliking Alcala’s artwork? There’s just something about how his style differed from any other Big Two artist at the time that I couldn’t cotton to it at all. That persists to this day apparently.
and this is my preferred look and persona for Dakimh and Jennifer. I don’t think any of the changes in later decades were additive at all to the latter character. The pointless death of her brother especially bothered me and that mini with two other female characters that also got badly oversexualized was her death knell. Has she been seen much since?
That would be Witches limited series with Jennifer, Satana and a very different looking Topaz. I remember thinking to myself that they were using the names of characters that I knew but they weren’t the same people.
Ah, Giant-Size Man-Thing (chortle! guffaw guffaw-OK, I’m over it now). Love the Gil Kane cover, as always and personally, I’ve always loved Alcala’s artwork. It doesn’t always work for straight up “flights and tights” heroes, but in a fantasy setting, he can’t be beat (though he does have a way of drawing characters in a full-run that looks unintentionally comical). Petra Goldberg’s coloring, however, leaves much to be desired. From the blue veins (or highlights) on Manny’s body to the purple shadows on Dahkim’s face, many of the color choices just seem “odd.” This is especially true during Korrek’s flashback when he discusses the sacking of his kingdom. I can only assume in those two panels in which Alcala masterfully depicts the fear and slaughter of the innocent citizens, someone in Marvel editorial decided the color yellow by itself wasn’t the proper color for fire and–from the looks of it–took a red magic marker and clumsily drew in the needed red. It looks awful and takes away from Alcala’s fine work on the rest of the page. Terrible.
As for the story, Gerber’s off to a good start, though in is narration here, he renders Manny just about as useless to his own story as he’s ever been. I knew Manny couldn’t speak, but you mean he can’t even understand what’s being said to him? If that’s the case, how did he ever remember Korrek’s name? I guess it doesn’t matter, but it makes me feel even worse for Man-Thing (giant-sized or not) than I already did. I guess it kind of explains why Jen and Korrek just let him wander off at the end and make no effort to accompany him.
No offense to anyone involved, but the back-up stories were useless and if I’d actually bought this book in 1975, I’d have been angry that I’d wasted my money on them. Thanks, Alan!
The rock formation on the left side of the splash page looks like a giant-size man thing too.
Hadn’t noticed that before but upon looking at that page again, it certainly does! To be honest, although I was certainly aware of the Giant-Size Man-Thing mags when I was 12 & 13, I didn’t become aware of the unintentionally humorous aspect of the title until relatively recently, as in within the last 10 years, while perusing various comics discussion sites such as this!
Glad to know I’m not the only one who didn’t get the joke, though to be fair, I was living in Puerto Rico, speaking mostly Spanish ’till mid ’74. I finally got it same way you did, though I don’t remember when exactly.
I didn’t get this mag until many years later. Only very irregularly collected Fear/Man-Thing when they were new on the racks, although I eventually got most of what I missed earlier. One of the issues I did get brand new was Man-Thing #14, which Alcala also drew. At the time, I didn’t much care for Alcala’s art — it was just too different from what I was used to, and not in a way I liked. But I did come to appreciate it as I got older and enjoyed this issue, which was a more straightforward sort of sword & sorcery story than Fear #19/Man-Thing #1, but still had its amusing touches in the art & writing, such as Korrek’s fable of the gems in the firmament. Overall, while Korrek is portrayed as bold and utterly sincere, he’s hardly a barbarian warrior in the gritty, somber but lusty tradition of Conan. I just can’t picture Korrek striding off from his latest adventure holding a gorgeous women with each arm, all looking forward to a wild night of carousing as in a story in Savage Sword of Conan #3, reviewed by Comicsdad in the ComicsEditions forum. Gerber’s heroes tend to have to deal with a lot more frustration and personal angst.
In regards to Don’s remark above about Manny not being able to remember another character’s name or understand what’s being said, that made me think of what non-human animal intelligence, as they can certainly tell humans and other animals apart without knowing their names and it’s highly doubtful they can fully understand what they hear us say, but in many instances, with training, they can still get the gist or at least understand our intent in speaking certain commands. Covids such as ravens and crows, have been proved to be able to mostly distinguish individual people by their faces, harassing those they believe to have been inhospitable to their own kind as well as exchanging gifts with people they come to like. On that basis, I wouldn’t find it odd at all that even if Man-Thing’s mind is in too much of a fog to fully understand human speech anymore or to remember names well, he can still remember individuals and at least get the general meaning of whatever someone is trying to tell him. Of course, this being fantasy, Manny only understands as much as the particular writer wants him to for a given situation, even if trying to keep things reasonably consistent. It would be a big cheat to have Manny able to drive a car or pilot an airplane or start writing words in the sand or some such thing. Although I do recall reading somewhere that Man-Thing’s intelligence has been restored to normal in recent years, but not in any comic I’ve actually read.
On those fill in the extra pages reprints, none struck me as particular standouts. The Dr. Droom story seemed somewhat like a very early Dr. Strange tale, when he still had his blue cape, and he was the “go to” guy for bizarre cases, like a talking house. The Weed yarn seemed as much inspired by the more recent Little Shop of Horrors as the Day of the Triffids. Some of those old horror/suspense tales from the ’50s and very early ’60s have some amusing charm, but many of them are groaners, just too ridiculous or cliched to be all that appealing. Knowing about the actual nature of Venus’ surface and atmosphere – so hot and of such intense pressure that no bit of technology humans have yet devised to try to better understand Venus beneath its toxic cloud cover has last much more than a few minutes, makes me grin at the prospect of any sort of advanced lifeforms living there or Earthlings making trips to Venus. But then, in the early 1960s, very little was yet known about what lurked under Venus’ clouds and that they were predominantly composed of thick sulfuric acid rather than water.
My younger self may have felt more charitable towards those stories than my older self, but only barely.
Didn’t think about pets, Fred. That’s a good point. Of course, thinking of Manny as a dumb animal isn’t really much better, but you’re right, he probably would’ve gotten the gist of what was going on.
I also liked Gerber’s story about the stars in the sky. Quite lofty for a comic book tale.
I was also thinking about the “dumb version” of the Hulk, who has trouble remembering complex names and multi-syllable words but eventually, in a Len Wein story, learns the rudiments of writing. Hulk’s brain, in that version, wasn’t nearly as fogged up as Man-Thing’s, but it was left open as to how much he could learn and possibly change while in that version. Then finally the reveal that there were several Hulk personas, strongly hinted at based on different styles of portraying him, even during the first few years when Stan Lee was writing, if not actually fully plotting, all the stories featuring the Hulk. I quit collecting the Hulk shortly before the various personas was made explicit. I’d guess Lee himself didn’t give much deep thought to the variances in how he wrote the Hulk, particularly given the multiple shifts just within the original six issue series in ’62-’63, with elements of Cold War escapades, horror, mind-control and super-heroism.
Man-Thing, as with Werewolf By Night, sort of veered from horror to inadvertent superheroism, as in some aspects did the cinematic version of Godzilla, initially pure horror but by the 1970s increasingly depicted as a source of good against more purposely evil monstrous force. Still, during his run, Gerber kept things varied, although generally Man-Thing was a force for good, inadvertently or not, against both supernatural forces and against entirely mundane human greed, intolerance and insanity, with the varying extreme emotions involved often stimulating his involvement in the events. Logically, given that Man-Thing had no natural need to seek out food, shelter or sex, basic motives for most other mobile creatures, Man-Thing could have just found a good place in the swamp to suck up necessary nutrients necessary to sustain him and remained mostly immobile like a tree. But that wouldn’t have made an interesting comic and, as written, Man-Thing was a sort of science-fantasy hybrid of a man and plant and muck, who had no functioning normal organs in any real sense – well aside from those eyes and muscles and and a semblance of skin to hold his humanoid form together. Hence his immunity to most assaults on his body by bullets or blades of any sort, but magically maintaining sufficient muscle mass such that he could toss around reptilian and human adversaries. The villain could put an axe in the region where Man-Thing’s heart should be and cause him no pain at all, but Manny could then punch the baddy and knock him out or simply put his hand on the baddy’s face and horribly scar him if the baddy experienced fear. Rationally, as based on real world biology, none of it makes sense, but in the context of pure fantasy, it’s all fine – at least as long as the writer can keep the stories and interesting and maintain consistency in the basic concept, even if throwing in a few surprise twists every so often, such as having Manny survive being tossed in a waste treatment machine and coming out as a massive sud-monster!
I wonder, given Godzilla has veered back to seriously scary in recent films, what someone who started with them would make of the cute-and-kiddy-friendly version of the 1970s.
That’s another trope of such characters — when they considerably stray from their roots and then somebody starts the franchise all over again, with modernist trappings but telling a new variation of the original story to make the monster more truly monstrous again.
Also makes me think of Marvel’s history of “heroic” monsters & horror, in some sense starting with the 1st Timely comic, Marvel Comics # 1. The cover star, the original Human Torch had some clear horror trappings. After all, if we were to see that cover for the first time with absolutely no knowledge of any flame based super-hero, just seeing a humanoid form engulfed in flames would appear horrific as we can imagine how horrible that would be for us! But then, seeing that he’s coming through a wall and seemingly threatening someone else and without knowing the particulars of the situation, we’d also have a strong sense of unease as to what to expect of the actual story. Even the first Sub-Mariner story had some horror trappings — a being who looks human, even if bit freaky with tiny wings on his ankles and pointy ears, but whom we learn is actually only half human and whose mother is of a water-breathing humanoid race who don’t take too kindly to the surface people and are proud of the Sub-Mariner when he inadvertently kills two humans whom he mistook for robots. Namor seems somewhat innocent but still a monster in the making and Lee focused on that aspect when Namor was revived for early in the Marvel era.
Then there was the Thing – a once ordinary man transformed into a massive, eerily orange and lumpy skinned but inhumanly strong creature, still maintaining his human persona but barely containing his rage at the man he held responsible for his condition as well as jealous of that man’s relationship with a woman he wanted for himself. The Thing was a hero, but seemed very capable of turning against his teammates and acting as monstrous as he appeared.
Then came the Hulk, a man transformed after an act of heroism to save another an adolescent who had foolishly gone into the testing zone for a highly dangerous bomb of our hero’s own devising. Banner may be deemed to have behaved monstrously even simply to have devised the devastating gamma bomb, but became physically so after receiving being bombarded with their rays and this time the physically monstrous self had a different persona, hating his mere human self and not comprehending that he and Banner were variations of the same person.
And finally, there was Man-Thing, another scientist transformed by unforeseen circumstances to expose himself to his own untested concoction and in this instance becoming a creature who looked humanoid but who had no means to speak or even think lucidly and hence not even a conception of who or what he was or had been. Perhaps the most horrific in conception for readers to contemplate, a sort of living death even if the Ted Sallis persona returned on very rare occasions. Ben Grimm still fully existed within his physical transformation as the Thing; Bruce Banner’s persona was most often dormant when he became the Hulk but he still regularly transformed back into his former self; but Ted Sallis was predominantly lost within the Man-Thing and very rarely made even brief comebacks to his human self. A situation that made even Ben Grimm feel relatively fortunate in comparison to.
That lack of awareness is why I prefer Swamp Thing as a character, though Gerber’s wild imaginings work much better for me than they did as a teen.
“OK, let’s get this out of the way first: Back in the nid-1970s, Marvel Comics actually published five issues of a series called Giant-Size Man-Thing.
Hahahahahahahahah!
Everyone good now?”
Not quite. Just a moment. BWHAWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA…. ahem. All right, let’s continue. 😀
Giant Size Man-Thing! And weed! My wife would be in hysterics. Not me, of course.
This is a good example of my friend Ross’s description of Man-Thing as a guest-star in his own book. The supporting cast drives the story. In this case it works, not so much in some of them.
I can buy his empathic nature recognizing Korrek as a person he’d met before (he seems to have no trouble “remembering” RIchard Rory later), not so much remembering the name even briefly. However I can write that off as convenient for new readers. The comparison to pets makes sense.
Well I was just in my usual mode of always being reminded how scarce Giant Size editions were back then in te UK that until you mentioned it I hadn’t realised the double entendre – and an usually quick to spot them. But again seeing that maybe I didn’t miss that much due to the high reprint filler content, as much as I was a fan at the time of the other reprint titles such as Where monsters Dwell etc. The Weed sounds like a remix of “The Green Thing” reprinted in Where Monsters Dwell # 14.
A reminder that, at time of writing, “Laughing Larry” Lieber is still with us aged 93!
I apologize for posting something off topic here, but after last night’s events I am very seriously thinking of moving, and this means selling off my comic book collection. Is there a particular Facebook group or website that you recommend to contact people? I do not intend to sell the collection as a single lot (well, maybe for some titles). Thank you for any assistance you can provide.
Stuart, I hear you.. I’m feeling pretty down today, myself. Unfortunately, I haven’t sold (or bought) an old comic in so long that I have no helpful knowledge to share on that score. (If anyone else out there wants to offer Stuart a suggestion or two, though, please feel free.)
I’m curious who came up with this whole concept of the Giant Size titles which of course Marvel and DC both tried back then. I mean, I’m no marketing genius or not even a Don Draper but even I could see that as a business strategy this would go nowhere. Did they think the average comics fan in the mid-1970’s (I’m guessing a 14-23 year old male?) would want to pay extra to read these obscure stories often published before they were even born? I know back then I bought one thinking “oh boy! Extra pages of (insert hero) comics!” Only to find that no, the vast majority of the pages were some early 50’s stuff I had no interest in. Now feeling cheated I never bought another one. I doubt I was alone in that sentiment either. I’m trying to remember just how long the whole Giant Size craze lasted, was it a year? two years? Not surprised it petered out though.
Contrary to what you see here, the reprints in the ones I bought — e.g., Giant-Size Avengers — were mostly Silver Age reprints; when Rama-Tut appears in GS Avengers #2, we get his first story from FF 19. That struck me as a sweet deal. I’ll defer to others on whether that was the norm across the Giant-Size line.
Plus the bigger comics meant more profit for retailers and Marvel which I’m sure was part of the appeal.
I wonder if this issue was not written Marvel method. That car Sibarthu crushes, with the exposed headlights and that grill, certainly isn’t a 1964 Corvette. Maybe Alacala, not being an American, didn’t know what a Corvette looked like. Sorry to be such a nitpick but the C2 and C3 Corvettes would be my choice for most beautiful cars ever.
That’s a really good observation, Joseph — I’m pretty sure that the book was lettered as well as drawn in the Philippines, which makes a full script seem very likely, just in terms of logistics.
Alfredo Alcala had such great mood and lighting/shadows in his art. I often wondered why he didn’t do more cover art for DC and Marvel. If he were still working from the Philippines in the 1970s that may explain why.