Last month, we took a look at Giant-Size Man-Thing #4, whose lead story centered around the high school in Citrusville, Florida — the fictional small town built on the edge of the swamp that the muck-encrusted star of the title called his home. In this post, we’ll be covering a trilogy of issues of the monthly Man-Thing series that not only came out concurrently with “The Kid’s Night Out!”, but also shared its setting, at least in part — and whose storyline in some ways incorporated both the events and the themes of that other story.
Behind Man-Thing #16’s dynamic, action-oriented cover by Gil Kane and Klaus Janson, writer Steve Gerber’s narrative begins with a scene seemingly far-removed from the environs of Citrusville…
This first chapter of the trilogy was pencilled by John Buscema, who’d drawn several previous Man-Thing stories for both the monthly series and its quarterly, giant-sized companion. His work here was inked by Tom Palmer, whose shadow-heavy embellishment provided an added layer of eeriness, as well as realism, to Buscema’s reliably expert draftsmanship and storytelling.
Most readers who share an age range with your humble blogger won’t have to think too hard to come up with multiple likely real-world inspirations for Eugene “The Star” Spangler. First and foremost must surely be David Bowie (especially in his 1972-73 “Ziggy Stardust” phase), but there’s clearly also some Alice Cooper in the mix, as well as Iggy Pop… and perhaps a number of other, somewhat less well-known shock and/or glam rock acts of the Seventies whom at least some of this blog’s readers might remember with fondness. (For the record, my younger self’s musical tastes circa early 1975 were still being largely shaped by AM radio, with a bit of TV’s Midnight Special and Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert on the side; so while I was reasonably familiar with both Bowie and Cooper, that was about as far as my knowledge of the more flamboyantly theatrical and self-consciously “decadent” rock styles of the day went.) Of course, Spangler’s “1999” motif can hardly help but remind contemporary readers of a certain song of that name — but since Prince wouldn’t get around to recording his classic hit until seven years later, we’ll have to credit “The Star” (and Steve Gerber) for having gotten there ahead of the Purple One.
If you have any familiarity at all with the “Man-Thing” feature, you can guess what happens next. Our mute but mighty protagonist, motivated as usual by his empathic awareness of any strong emotions nearby — in this case, Astrid’s desperation — arrives just in the nick of time to prevent the young woman from becoming alligator chow. Though in fairness, we should note that our storytellers deviate at least a little from the normal pattern in this particular instance, as the Man-Thing senses that the ‘gator’s prey has fled before he has the chance to perform his usual shtick of either snapping the predator’s spine in half, or swinging it by its tail to smash into a tree trunk; and so, no longer having any good reason to harm the poor animal (who’s just been following his natural instincts in his native habitat, after all), the Man-Thing simply lets the matter — and the reptile — drop.
OK, that’s a pretty substantial list of references in that footnote; and not only are none of them to previous issues of either of the color Man-Thing titles (nor, for that matter, to the feature’s earlier home, Fear), but none of them have been the subjects of previous posts on this blog, either. So, for the curious: Ted Sallis’ mysterious “vanishing” (aka the origin of Man-Thing) occurred in the very first “Man-Thing” strip, published in the black-and-white Savage Tales #1 (May, 1971), while the deaths of Elaine Parrish, et al, came in a two-part “Man-Thing” text story written by Steve Gerber, which ran in the 8th (Oct., 1974) and 9th (Dec., 1974) issues of another black-and-white magazine, Monsters Unleashed (and not in issues #7-8, as our footnote erroneously has it). Lastly, the Death-Stalker’s sojourn in the ill-fated shack was chronicled in Daredevil #114 (Oct., 1974) — which, in addition to guest-starring Manny, was also written by Gerber.
And now that you know more about the House of Murders than you’d ever have needed (or wanted) to learn, we’ll return to our story, which we so rudely interrupted mid-sentence (sorry about that)…
As has now become clear, there’s not much (if any) daylight between Eugene Spangler’s onstage persona and who he is when there’s no one around save for his most devoted hangers-on. Did Steve Gerber believe that the same dynamic held true for such real-world Spangler prototypes as Bowie, Cooper, and/or Pop? Or did he just think that the notion that “Ziggy Stardust” was indeed the genuine personality of the artist formerly known as David Jones made for a better story? I’m inclined to go with the latter, though we’ll probably never know for sure.*
Unwilling to draw their guns on an unarmed man, the San Francisco cops allowed Josefsen to overpower them and walk away. (Well, he was a white guy, so…) Returning home, Astrid’s grandfather continued to rage over the lack of real men in the modern world — and when Astrid’s boyfriend Roger, an artist, showed up to take her out on a date, he became the next victim of the old man’s violent anger…
Spangler does believe Astrid’s story — or at least he says he does. But his only response is to tell her a story in return — an absurd tale of how his mother, a hunting dog, met a Nazi submarine commander, who may or may not have been his father — and by the time he’s done, Astrid’s grandfather — the Mad Viking –has caught up with her at last…
Spangler watches enrapt as the Mad Viking’s axe sinks into the Man-Thing’s miry body again and again, with no more effect than to leave the axe’s blade coated in slime…
Although it’s the first part of a trilogy, “Decay Meets the Mad Viking!” can stand pretty well on its own as a complete story. But, given that it is, ultimately, the first of three chapters, it’s hard not to feel that Steve Gerber was wise to clear his embodiment of “Decay” off the board before proceeding further, as the figure of Eugene “The Star” Spangler — and the symbolic weight Gerber has levered onto him and his hapless followers — hasn’t aged all that well, in my opinion. Mostly, that’s down to the simple fact that an approach to depicting the glam rock movement that never fully engages with its ambiguous sexuality (very provocative for its time) is obviously wildly incomplete, even if the reality of the Comics Code Authority provides reasonable cover for the evasion; after nearly fifty years of celebratory midnight screenings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Gerber’s portentous statements about rock and roll “decadence” signifying that the culture’s number was up, etc., seem awfully dated.**
Art by Gil Kane and Tom Palmer.
Or, to put it another way, Eugene Spangler, aka “Decay”, no longer feels very relevant. On the other hand, Grandpa Josefson, the “Mad Viking”, so perfectly represents a virulently toxic masculinity — something that weighs on our society even more heavily in 2025 than it did in 1975 — that he could have been created yesterday. And so, for better or worse, the cultural resonance which modern readers will likely find in this half-century-old story arc is mostly down to the Mad Viking, whose animus largely animates its remaining two installments — beginning with what may be seen as the storyline’s narrative and thematic centerpiece, Man-Thing #17’s “A Book Burns in Citrusville!”
Joining the Man-Thing creative team this issue was artist Jim Mooney, who’d remain in that role through the rest of the title’s too-short run. Mooney’s association with the character went all the way back to Fear #11 (Dec., 1972), where he’d inked Rich Buckler’s pencils for Steve Gerber’s very first Man-Thing story; since then, he’d worked with Gerber on the “Son of Satan” feature in Marvel Spotlight. In times to come, the two creators’ collaboration would extend to Defenders (for which Mooney would finish Sal Buscema’s pencils for a good portion of Gerber’s run) and Omega the Unknown (to which Mooney would contribute either pencils, inks, or full art for every single installment of the title’s brief ten-issue lifespan).
Mooney seems to have enjoyed working from Gerber’s scripts quite a bit. As he told Jon B. Cooke in 2003 for an interview ultimately published in Comic Book Creator #6 (Winter, 2014):
I liked Steve’s writing [on Man-Thing]… And it intrigued me. It was something that I put more time than I would have on any other strip, to lavish more care and attention on it, because I did enjoy it that much… I guess because it wasn’t run-of-the-mill, it wasn’t stereotyped, it wasn’t what you expected. It was unexpected. Some of the things he wrote I found that were… well, they were just off-beat enough to be interesting.
Certainly, Gerber’s stuff must have seemed “off-beat” when compared to the “Supergirl” strips Mooney had drawn for almost a decade over at DC Comics during the Silver Age; arguably, it was at least a step or two removed from Spider-Man and the other superhero genre material Mooney had been working on at Marvel for the last half-decade, as well. In any case, Gerber’s writing did seem to bring out the best in the veteran illustrator, leading him to produce some of the most imaginative and sensitive work of his career.
It was unusual for Gerber to refer to one of his Giant-Size Man-Thing stories in the context of the monthly title, let alone dedicate a full-page splash panel to it. But the author was obviously keen to let the feature’s regular readers know just how “The Kid’s Night Out!” fit into the larger continuity of the Man-Thing and his world (for the record, Man-Thing #17 was released exactly two weeks after GSMT #4, on February 18th); and, perhaps, to suggest how that story’s themes of conformity and cruelty would carry through into the current narrative, as well.
Readers of Man-Thing had first met Richard Rory in issue #2 (Feb., 1974), when unfortunate circumstances brought the radio DJ from Ohio to the Florida Everglades, and to the first of what would be many encounters with the series’ swampy protagonist. A self-described born loser, Rory had quickly become the series’ primary human supporting character — stepping into the role previously held by aspiring sorceress Jennifer Kale, and playing a part in many of the book’s subsequent storylines (though by no means all of them, which should help explain why you haven’t read about him on this blog before now).
Though his name was derived from the Simon and Garfunkel song “Richard Cory” (which was itself based on an Edwin Arlington Robinson poem of the same name), the character himself was based on none other than his creator, Steve Gerber, as the writer readily admitted; see, for example, Jon B. Cooke’s 2003 interview with Gerber published in Comic Book Creator #6, where Gerber went on to add that Richard Rory was “kind of the prototype for Howard the Duck”, noting that although the latter character shared Rory’s self-pitying tendencies, he was “a lot more sympathetic because he’s not human.”
We’ll share here one more factoid relating to the Gerber/Rory connection — namely, that WNRV, the call letters of the radio station where Richard Rory is currently spinning CSNY’s “Teach Your Children”, are derived from NERVE, the name of a humor magazine Gerber and a couple of friends published while still in high school. (See https://web.archive.org/web/20241210201703/http://www.thegerbercurse.yolasite.com/Chapter_One.php )
Notice how married couple Olivia and Newton sleep in separate twin beds? It’s a nice, relatively subtle way of underscoring the former’s wee-hours sex-negative tirade.
Astrid goes on to recall the events of Man-Thing #16, providing a brief recap for anyone who might have missed that issue; and then the scene shifts to the swamp, where our series’ star stands immobile, paralyzed by the heavy emotional toll the events of both that issue and Giant-Size Man-Thing #4 have taken on his empathic nature…
The parade of figures seen in Jim Mooney’s impressive double-page spread, above, is drawn from the full run of the “Man-Thing” feature, beginning with the character’s ten-issue stint in Fear and continuing on through the previous issues of his self-named title — though mostly ignoring the Giant-Size books, for whatever reason. (Your humble blogger seriously considered annotating the spread with a list of all the characters’ previous appearances, but given that the order in which Gerber has listed them in his caption doesn’t follow the same order in which Mooney has drawn them, he ultimately gave it up as too complicated, as well as too potentially confusing, to be worthwhile. Feel free to breathe a sigh of relief, if you like.)
The gunmen wait a full six minutes before cautiously venturing forth to verify that the Man-Thing is (to all appearances) stone dead; but, still not quite sure that that’s good enough, the group’s leader, Orville Latimer, prevails upon his fellows to haul Manny’s carcass to his workplace — the Citrusville Sewage Treatment Plant — so they can dump it into the facility’s primary vat, where it’ll be dissolved by the chemicals within. Of course, they have to call the town mayor for permission, first…
Richard’s moment of mourning is cut short when his boss, Carpenter, barges into the bathroom to tell him to get back to work — and to brief him about the big town meeting that’s been called for tomorrow…
We now move forward in time to 1:57 p.m. the following afternoon, as our location shifts to the Citrusville Civic Center…
One thing that struck me on re-reading this story for the first time in a very long while is the total absence of any people of color. Granted, a high degree of segregation in a small Southern town circa 1975 is probably not at all unrealistic, but no non-white folks at all? To be honest, this has pretty much been the case in how Citrusville has been portrayed in the series since the beginning (a very hurried, not at all guaranteed to be error-free scan through every Man-Thing story back to Fear #10 turned up exactly one panel where a town resident was depicted as Black***) — but a scene like this one, which supposedly should include a representative sampling of the town’s entire adult population, really makes it obvious. Perhaps this was a conscious artistic choice on Gerber’s (or Mooney’s) part, meant to show how people of color have been excluded from Citrusville’s civic life — but to me, at least, it feels like an oversight… one that unfortunately mars a storyline I consider to otherwise be a high point of the entire Man-Thing series.
We’ll pause here just long enough to give credit where it’s due for Man-Thing #18’s cover, another fine piece by Gil Kane and Klaus Janson — and now that we’ve done that, it’s on to the conclusion of our trilogy.
Turning to the opening splash page, we find that, despite issue #17’s “Next” blurb’s having indicated that the title of #18’s story would be a quote from a famous poem written in 1947 by the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, the actual title appears to be a reference to a rather more recent work…
…though given how the Mad Viking Trilogy started off in the first place, the derivation of this final installment’s name from Alice Cooper’s 1972 hit song is certainly appropriate.
The school principal, Walter Heller, goes out to brave the mob, and immediately gets an earful…
Given that he’s just been fired, Richard doesn’t figure he’s obligated to listen to his ex-boss’ harangue — but when he hears that the angry crowd has headed to the high school to go through with the book-burning, he decides he has no choice but to go after them and try to make them see reason, as hopeless as that seems…
The Man-Thing — or the creature that used to be the Man-Thing, at least — begins to make his way “home”, following a trajectory that will take him right through the center of town. Meanwhile, Olivia Selby’s mortified daughter, Carol, tries to intercede with her mom…
The biology teacher, Paul Edwards, falls two stories, his body striking the pavement directly in front of an arriving Richard Rory…
Not harmed in the slightest by the impact, the thing that was Man-Thing demonstrates that he still retains his empathic nature, pausing just long enough to pick up vague mental images from the insensate Latimer of a “manrabbbitmotorist” — but then the feeling passes, “and the beast moves on.”
Meanwhile, just a few feet away, Olivia Selby exhorts her daughter to get with the program…
The preceding sequence — beginning with the shock of Astrid’s sudden and unexpected death, followed by the one brief moment of hope that’s so quickly and thoroughly crushed by Olivia Selby, whose words basically damn the whole town of Citrusville forever — hit my younger self pretty hard in March, 1975. It’s lost very little of its impact in the half-century since.
Book burnings have been around for a long, long time, of course; perhaps as long as there’ve been books. In 1975, Steve Gerber almost certainly had the Nazi burning ceremonies of the 1930s in mind, although he may have also been aware of incidents both more contemporary and closer to home, such as the burning of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five and other works ordered by the Drake, North Dakota school board in late 1973. And half a century later, such burnings continue to be reported — or, in one recent case, even livestreamed on Facebook.
Still, the immolation of texts is merely the most visually dramatic method by which people seek to get rid of books and other media they don’t like. The modern-day, real-world successors to Olivia Selby’s “Mothers’ March for Decency” may not call for the physical burning of books of whose content they disapprove; but forcing school librarians to pull them from shelves ultimately accomplishes the same goal of keeping them out of the hands (and minds) of students. And it’s those sorts of bureaucratic initiatives, which have increased dramatically over the last several years, which are likely to make this story seem even more relevant to today’s readers than it was for those of us who first encountered it fifty years ago..
Despite his greatly altered appearance, the creature is recognized by two (but only two) of the human beings present: Richard Rory and the Mad Viking…
In our Giant-Size Man-Thing #4 post last month, we quoted from an interview with Steve Gerber that was printed in the 9th issue of Marvel’s in-house fanzine FOOM at around the same time these comics came out. As you may recall, Gerber said therein that he saw the conclusion of the Mad Viking Trilogy as a sort of alternative ending for GSMT #4’s tale of the vengeance taken from beyond the grave by a slain Citrusville High School student (a character who, like Richard Rory, was something of a stand-in for his author) — an ending that suggested what would have happened in that story had Edmond Winshed ‘s family and community had “a severe reaction against the high school for all the wrong reasons”, instead of simply choosing to cover up for the young man’s death. The writer also described Man-Thing #17 and #18 as being “in a sense an apology for that story [in GSMT #4]. An apology for myself.” The sentiment reflected his own concern that in making the finale of “The Kid’s Night Out!” an exercise in violent revenge fantasy, he’d gone too far in using his writing as a form of self-therapy.
Personally, I think that Gerber was probably being too hard on himself; to me, it seems that both of the stories’ conclusions work in context, and no apology was needed for either of them. But the author’s concern over the self-therapy issue, as well as his more general ruminations about how the GSMT #4 story could have ended differently, stand out to me as further evidence as just how seriously Steve Gerber took the job of comic-book writing. And help to explain, to myself if no one else, why no one could ever have convinced my seventeen-year-old self in 1975 that reading comics was “childish”; and also why, whatever their flaws, these stories continue to command my attention and respect as a sixty-seven-year-old, half a century later.
Along with all their thematic weight, the three issues of the Mad Viking Trilogy represented a major turning point for the Man-Thing series. After four years, and over forty appearances, the Most Startling Slime Creature of All was pulling up roots (sorry); as of the end of issue #18, he was leaving the swamps and small towns of the Florida Everglades behind, and would soon be heading north to the big city of Atlanta — accompanied, of course, by the indispensable Richard Rory, not to mention the never-seen-before-this-issue Carol Selby (who, in case you were wondering, is in fact underage — and, yes, that’s going to be a problem). Alas, we’d have little opportunity to see where this new direction might ultimately lead, as the Man-Thing title would reach a premature end, just four issues from now… but, naturally, that’s a topic for another post, at a later time.
*Lending credence to the latter hypothesis is the following quote from Steve Gerber, which I found on Richard Beland’s blog Jungle Frolics, and which, according to Mr. Freland, may have first appeared in a 1976 issue of the rock magazine Circus:
The whole thing with Bowie in that particular story [i.e., “Decay Meets the Mad Viking!”] was just this kind of “Gee, look at me, I’m decadent.” That’s why I did the story, essentially, to kind of do somebody who carried that act over into real life.
Art by Alan Weiss and Gray Morrow.
**Rock and roll decadence might be said to have had the last laugh on Gerber (or maybe simply converted him), given that two years after penning this story, the author would be tapped to write Marvel Comics Super Special #1 — a full-color comics magazine featuring the rock band Kiss, which was famously “printed in real KISS blood.” (The band also guest-starred in Gerber’s Howard the Duck around the same time.)
***For the record, this person was one of the members of the Cult of Zhered-Na headed by Grandpa Kale; he appeared in Fear #15 (Aug., 1973).
Great commentary, as always, Alan! Back in the day, I missed this trilogy, but finally got it a couple of decades later and …. For me, Man-Thing #’s 17 & 18 are the stuff of nightmares that touch very close to real life traumas. I was about three months shy of turning 13 fifty years ago, and I’m not sure what my younger self would have reacted to this trilogy back then, although I suspect it would have filled me with horror more than any other horror mag I’d ever previously read or would have had the pportunity to read. By then, I wasn’t nearly as well versed on the history of Nazi Germany or of the Jim Crow era South or of the many other episodes throughout human history of intolerance and hatred leading to book burning as well as human burning and other forms of murder in the name of the Lord, as they would have it. But I’d read just enough to know that Gerber’s tale of the “good folks” of Citrisville going on a book burning spree and becoming willing followers of a murdering mad man were not pure flights of bizarre whimsy on the part of the comics creators but took some influence from reality, albeit mixed with some whimsical elements and a bizarre muck monster! And I think the reality is much worse now than it was in 1975!
Back then, I also wasn’t at all up to speed on then current trends in the rock music scene. I was still mostly listening to Top 40 radio and mostly middle of the road pop music, although by the end of the year, I was beginning to pick up on and be very intrigued by some of the more “out there” music of the previous 10 years, and in one of my classes at Potrero Hill Junior High School in San Francisco, someone brought in a little radio and the one song that really got my attention was David Bowie’s Fame (with some backing vocals by John Lennon). At the time, I had no idea who David Bowie was and was probably barely aware of John Lennon — I was still about another year away from becoming a full-fledged latter day Beatlemaniac, recording a lot of their songs from the radio on my cassette tape player and finding Rolling Stone’s History of Rock & Roll in a Navy base library and reading whatever else I could about them even before I started collecting their albums. Eventually, I also started getting David Bowie albums, although I never got any by Alice Cooper (I did like several of his songs but for whatever reason just not enough to get the albums) and I never got into Kiss. Reading Man-Thing #16 (I think I may have been in my late 30s or early 40s when I finally got the mag), I felt that Gerber was going way over the top with Spangler’s character, more a wild parody of the personas Bowie, Cooper and other performers of the period put on. Regarding the “murder shack”, by the time I’d read M-T 16, Trent (Nine Inch Nails) Reznor had already made the news for purchasing the house wherein Sharon Tate and 4 others had been so horribly murdered, specifically because of the horrors committed on that terrible night in 1969. Thinking about that sent shivers up my spine! I’d first read Helter Skelter in 1976 (my mom had gotten the paperback when it came out back then).
Back to the story – for me, the most shocking moment was when the Mad Viking murdered his own granddaughter and the crowd, rather than reacting in horror, cheered him on and followed him on a “march for decency”. That was utterly bloodchilling. That the Man-Thing survived his apparent execution and came back “from the dead” as a Suds-Thing and magically transformed his sudsiness to the Mad Viking, whose body couldn’t take being so thoroughly “cleansed” was a bit of bizzarro farcical ending to the main tragic-horror, resulting in the manic townspeople disbursing in fear and Rory, Manny and tag-along Carol leaving that little town of horrors. I could utterly sympathize with Rory’s dilemma regarding Carol. Her mother was a pious lunatic and she had good reason to be terrified of her own family and community. But, of course, Rory got in serious trouble for his act of compassionate kindness, as eventually revealed in Omega the Unknown.
Both Big John Buscema and Jim Mooney delivered excellent art for this trilogy. John B seemed more inspired than usual for this period to provide some of his best art for his chapter, just brilliant, even if Gerber felt he’d made the Mad Viking look a little too powerful-looking, but, hey, it was still great! Mooney’s art was more subtle but also very apt for the small town school madness depicted. All around, great writing and art, making for one of the most impactful comics stories I’ve ever read.
I wonder if Carol Selby looking like Linda Lee Danvers was intentional on Gerber and Mooney’s part or if it was a “Kirby’s Kast of Kharacters” kind of thing? (That is, a general archetype in Mooney’s art intelligent and decent/heroic teenage girl.)
Sigh. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Not long ago, I would have expressed gratitude that the hate and rancor exhibited in these stories seemed to be becoming a thing of the past. Now, however, with the rise of the MAGA-movement and the anti-education, anti-compassion, anti-science, anti-progress that goes with it, I can only look on sadly as the world goes spiraling down the same sewage drain that has kept us from rising up again and again. Take out the Viking costume, the muck monster and the bargain-basement David Bowie, and this could be a story taken from today’s news in one of today’s cities.
I can’t. Let’s just talk about the story. For whatever Gerber intended, his characterization of the rock n’ roll lifestyle in the creation of Eugene “Star” Spangler had all of the depth and two-dimensionality of your average Marjoe Gortner appearance on Barnaby Jones. The idea that rock stars bought their own BS (as admittedly some have done) and were just as weird off-stage as on, was something we’d expect our parents to come up with, not someone like Gerber, and I remember being very disappointed when I first read this one.
As for the Mad Viking, I can certainly see where someone would become convinced that men today were weak intellectual crybabies who deserved to die, but he’d only dress up in a Viking costume in the Marvel universe, where even rock stars wear capes and spandex trousers. I understand the need for a typical bad guy as much as anyone, but Astrid’s grandfather, running around in a horned helmet and a loin cloth looked silly and the opposite of inspiring (still, comics, so I get it). The real villain of the piece was old lady Selby and I really wish Gerber had given us more of an intro to her and the fears that drove her to such an extreme point of view. Given the amount of fear book burners usually exhibit–fear of a different opinion, fear of being left behind, fear of anyone who isn’t just like you–it’s a wonder she didn’t burst into flames just being in the same zip code as Man-Thing.
Behind the comic book façade of it all, Gerber wrote a very human story about some very human problems. Mooney’s art was above average as well. I agree that, while perhaps not all comic book stories rise to the heights of great literature, the genre does have it’s moments, and this Man-Thing trilogy is the perfect story for us to revisit during these trying times. Thanks, Alan.
Don, I’ve been in agreement with you about Grandpa Josefson’s costume being the least believable thing about this storyline (other than the Man-Thing himself, obviously) — until earlier today, when someone commenting on Facebook compared the Mad Viking to the QANON Shaman, which made me go, “hmm, maybe I should rethink that a bit…”
You have a point there, Alan. I don’t like your point, but it’s right there, isn’t it?
The pedant in me is compelled to mention there is no evidence that historically the Vikings wore horned helmets. It’s something that either appeared in a book illustration or very early film that got taken as fact. Thor just about gets away with it being an Asgardian foremost.
You’re right, patr100. On the other hand, I think it’s fair to assume that when it came to pulling together his ensemble, Grandpa Josefson was more influenced by the imagery he’d picked up from popular culture than by the actual historical record. 🙂
Just to add, of course , Loki is more likely to sport horns, while Thor usually prefers his wings, though Kirby’s earlier 1957 version of Thor did have the obligatory horned helmet.
Did the Cult of Zhered-Na only draw members locally?
This is kind of NYS-centric but you could live a couple of miles from the Kales and be in another town or village or even another county (but, I’m not from FL). Heck, you might have grown up in Citrusville, moved to NYS or OH and were back for a visit when the meeting was called . . . .
Additionally, circa-1975, you could not tell if Gerber & Mooney had not intended that a large n umber of the people in the meeting to be Hispanic It is South Florida. We were less sensative to those demographic issues then.
In 1975, there still might have been some idea that a place like Citrusville, would still be de jure segregated, especially on the part of creators living in NYC and working in the arts/media..
Mr. Carpenter was within his rights to fire Rory, even if employed subject to a contract. Rory was beyond the scope of his employment by voluntarily becoming part of story instead of covering it.
That would not be the case if Rory had been assaulted while reporting the story. Gerber did well in having Rory realize he was beyond the scope of his employment and the probable consequences.
You’re right, John — there's no reason that the Black cultist shown in that panel couldn't have come in from out of town.
Along this same line — I didn't mention this in the post because I felt it might be getting a little too deep into the weeds, but Gerber's second Man-Thing story (in Fear #12) dealt with racial conflict between a white law officer and a Black fugitive. However, those characters were depicted as being from another town than Citrusville.
There was also a later storyline that dealt with the Native Americans living near Citrusville protesting F.A. Schist's planned draining of the swamp to build an airport.
So, for the record, non-white characters were not completely out of sight in all of Gerber's Man-Thing stories.
This story and the Defenders run you are discussing, were among my favorite comics of the period.
Many of my friends liked The Defenders story . . . none read the Man-Thing story . . . .
Olivia and Newton Selby have a daughter named Carol.
I suppose if they had a son, his name would have been John.
Since you mentioned the FOOM magazine, Alan, I should note that the teaser there for the opening installment promised a meeting between a mad Viking and a decadent rock star…which the FOOM writer joked, knowing Steve Gerber’s work, thought could have involved “a decadent rock.”
An excellent consideration of an arc, which proves that you have class and principles and probably can think of a word that rhymes.
(I imagine that you no longer have innocence, as you have replaced it with experience. William Blake would approve, even if you didn’t share his disdain for the work of Sir Joshua Reynolds.)
Ya think Gerber might’ve been quite a bit mellow when he named those characters Olivia & Newton???
Man-Thing 18 was a sad and depressing story and probably the peak of Steve Gerber’s work on this book. It is very dark and disturbing and sadly just as relevant today. I remember this story very well, and I remember being very shocked by the death of Astrid. One thing for sure, Gerber could be HARSH. I thought I remembered that the biology teacher was also killed but it appears that he was (barely) alive at the end of the story. Still, seeing him thrown out the window was horrifying. The sad point is, if you think that some of the terrible attitudes presented here seem extreme, there were plenty of questionable people that came out of the 70s (Phyllis Schaffly, Anita Bryant. etc.) and the 80s (Jerry Falwell and others) and even worse people today, with book banning and burnings going on even now. One thing that bothered me now is that Olivia Selby with white hair looks like Carol Selby’s grandmother not her mother. Also, none of the students reacted at all to this? I realize Gerber is trying to make a point here but still… And of course that all the townspeople just accept an insane lunatic killer (who has clearly already killed a lot of people). Also..where were the police? And by the way, I don’t think I thought about any of this 50 years ago. I’m sure I also did not think about what a bad idea it was for Richard Rory to take Carol away…or out of state!
I agree that Jim Mooney did a very good job on this issue and the next few issues. I also liked his work before but I think Gerber did bring out something special in him and he did some fine work here.
Regarding the Spangler rock character in M-T 16, it appears that Gerber was intending some fairly extreme satire. But a few historical observations may also help. Gerber probably wrote that issue towards the end of 1974. I agree that Spangler seems like a combination of Bowie and Alice Cooper (and possibly Iggy Pop) taken to an extreme. I remember I was barely aware of Bowie at the time (except for having heard “Space Oddity”) but was aware of Alice Cooper from songs like “School’s Out” and “Billion Dollar Babies”). Alice Cooper’s imagery was pretty extreme at this time. Bowie had just come out with an album, “Diamond Dogs” which had some pretty extreme imagery (check out the album cover, for 1974, it was unusual to say the least). If you think of Alice Cooper, he went pretty mainstream in later years and a lot of his later songs turned up on easy listening stations. Bowie would have some commercial success later in 1975 with “Fame”, but would then have some difficulties with drugs later in the 70s, before actually seeking out and finding tremendous commercial success in the 80s…which he found he did not really like, and scaled things back but continued to be an interesting artist. My point is, if you were only familiar with the later years of Alice Cooper and Bowie, you might not realize what Gerber was up to with the Spangler character. I admit that I was a little confused when I read M-T 16 also, as I was not familiar with Ziggy Stardust at the time (until seeing later documentaries about Bowie).
In any event, it does seem that between Gerber’s work on Man-Thing, Defenders and a really bizarre multi-part story with the Son of Satan in Marvel Spotlight (20-22) which concluded this month, he was really hitting his stride as an outstanding comics writer. It is disappointing that Gerber left Marvel Two-in-One after issue 8 and would also abruptly leave Son of Satan after Marvel Spotlight 23.
It is also interesting to note that during this time and for the rest of its run, Man-Thing was edited by Len Wein, the co-creator and first writer of Swamp Thing. In an interview from many years ago, Len stated that he and Gerber had talked about plans for the directions of their series, Gerber had assured Wein that Gerber had very different plans for the Man-Thing. And it does seem true that each series took very different paths.
Although the last series of stories in Man-Thing would certainly be interesting, they would not leave an impression quite like Man-Thing 16-18. Thanks for the excellent commentary, Alan.
Regarding Olivia looking more like Carol’s grandmother than her mother, that seemed an all too common trope of many comics up into the ’70s, whether the very rarely seen parents or aunts & uncles. Most famously, Peter Partker’s Aunt May, who actually seemed old enough to be his Great-Grandmother rather than the sister-in-law of his father. But then, there is the example of my maternal grandmother, who looked ancient even when she was in her 50s. She was 35 when she had my mother and I was born just 4 days before mom turned 19 and grandma Essary would have been only 54, but from pictures I’ve seen of her at the time, she could have passed for 74! Good ol’ country livin’ in those days seemed to age some people very quickly. My maternal grandfather was already 8 years in the grave when I came into the world.
A few more thoughts regarding ethnic diversity — in 1975, I was part of a very diverse student body in a Junior High School in San Francisco – many blacks, Asians and Latinos, but just a few months before, I was at a JHS in West Jordan, Utah, that was to my recall entirely white, as were the Elementary Schools I attended in Utah and in Mineola, Texas, where I completed the 2nd grade in the spring of 1970. Lemoore High School, which I started attending in the fall of 1976, in central California, was also very diverse. Certainly, Florida has had a large black population since long before it became a state in 1845, although strictly segregated into the 1960s. My dad, who grew up in Texas in the 1940s and ’50s, has told me of seeing signs that warned any black persons better be off the streets by sundown “or else” in many small Southern towns when he was young. Of course, segregation was made illegal in the U.S. a decade prior to publication of this trilogy, but I wonder if there were still small towns in the vicinity of the Everglades that were still predominantly white or where blacks still feared associating with angry whites.
Sundown laws were still in effect, informally at least, throughout large chunks of the rural South (and in some other parts of the country as well) until the early seventies, if I’m not mistaken. I don’t remember hearing about them in and around Jackson, even during the early sixties, but I was only 8 or 9 when the Civil Rights Amendment passed, so I could have just missed them.
I turned 3 years old in 1965, and while my dad was off to sea, my mother and younger brother Terry stayed with my aunt Connie in Mineola, a small town east of Dallas, so I likely spent at least a part of my youth in Texas while Sundown and other Jim Crow laws were still in effect, but, of course, I have no memory of that period. My earliest memories that I’m reasonably sure are genuine are from after my family moved to Japan, in 1967, about two months before I turned 5. I know some people swear they can clearly remember things from when they were 2 years old or younger, but I’m not one of them.
James Loewen’s “Sundown Towns” says some laws were on the books until the 1980s.
The only possible problem I have with the art in any part of this story is that by the time I saw these issues I was much involved with the evolving punk scene in the UK, and Big John B’s depiction of Spangler and his fans in skin-tight spandex faux-superhero costumes didn’t match any awareness I had of the ‘decadent’ music scene in general (or the way we dressed), and looked more like work from someone out of touch with the music scene at the time. They look more look attendees at an SF/Comic-Con, and pulled me out of the story somewhat.
More importantly I would like to say a huge thank you to Alan and the number of commentators who have expressed concern about how much this storyline resonates today, and how you all feel about the way things are going in America today. I think we’ve all lived long enough to know that nothing is permanent, and things will get better (we all hope). Given the outside perception of America in general, and here in the UK, it cheers me no end to feel that at this site I’m in the company of like-minded and open-minded, intelligent people.
Thank you all, and best wishes.
Interesting to read about this story the same week the US Dep’t of Education was functionally shut down.
On the other hand, the Biden Administration probably over-reacted to concerned parents at school board meetings (although this, in turn, was exaggerated).
As an over-arching truth, parents **SHOULD** be concerned with what their kids are being taught in school and **SHOULD** be involved. Olivia Selby is a character in a story but, for a lot of people, she is the image that comes to mind of parents who are upset their kids are not reading on grade level and can’t do simple arithmetic.
I guess people would read some of the issues in this story as being analogous to” DEI ” but I think the big issue is the “G” in “ESG”—- Governance.
Are School Boards should listen to parents concerns.. Parents should listen to Boards explanations of why things are done as they are done. Both sides should be willing to make needed changes (including moving or putting your kid in a better school if you have the means, it is that important)
Real life is not fiction in that reality has significant conflict but the badguys also make valid points and don’t wear loin clothes and horned helmets (usually).
(One interesting note in the story is that Joseffsen raised Astrid and she seemed to have come out well. Was he supposed to be insane or demented?)
I’ve known of some people who seemed reasonably sane for most of their lives but then something or another transformed them such that seemed to have gone seriously deranged. Sometimes due to too much alcohol or some other mind-altering substance. Other times, maybe some form of dementia or being set off psychologically by some event in their life. Seemed being laid off due to age was what triggered Joseffsen, but he seemed the sort to have been seething in anger for a long time. Astrid must have spent a lot more time with her pals in San Francisco than around ol’ grandpa. And maybe he mostly kept his feelings to himself until he was fired and went off the deep end. I think it was still about another decade or so before “going postal” became a common description of people going homicidally berserk on the job, mainly after several such incidents at post offices. Been a couple of decades now since I last recall hearing about any such incident.
In 1989, when I lived in San Jose, someone went on a murder spree in high tech company within a mile or so of where I worked at the time, after being fired for coming on too strongly too often to a female co-worker who wasn’t interested in him. He had murdered 8 people and had barricaded himself in at the site but finally surrendered after he got hungry and the police baited him out with some pizza. Yes, it was horribly tragic and utterly bizarre. The object of his unwanted affection did survive, fortunately.
Of course, I’ve never heard of anyone within the last few centuries going on a rampage wearing a Viking costume and going on a murder spree with a large axe! Well, maybe aside from Lizzie Borden.
Back in 1971. a man about one floor up from where my father worked at the NYS W. Averell Harriman State Office Building Campus began shooting.
My mother was concerned but it did not concern my father.
He was a Merchant Mariner before and during WWII and was used to people and weather trying to kill him and did not take it personally.
There is a lesson there to be learned about life there . . . .
Amazing stories I had not read before. A couple of notes:
1)Florida was a white rural segregationist state for a long time, with the highest per capita number of lynchings in the south. This feels very much like something that could have happened in the Panhandle where I lived most of my life. Though even there yeah, we had plenty of POC visible. Possibly faced with an angry mob they stayed off the street (but as you say, we don’t see much of them earlier).
2)Fear of not being manly enough has been a running theme in America for a long time. Even in the 1950s, pundit Arthur Schlesinger was writing about how women have too much power in corporate America and guys were being emasculated.
3)The climax makes an interesting counterpoint to the Defenders Sons of the Serpent climax. In Defenders, Jack Norris fight back and inspires others to do the same. Here, the old biddy sides with the Dark Side and inspires everyone the wrong way.
4)The old woman seems very much in the vein of Carrie’s creepy religious mother in Carrie — it wouldn’t surprise me if that was an influence (and on the revenge themes of the GSMT 4, maybe?).
Anybody remember Phillip Wylie (author of Gladiator and When Worlds Collide) and his book of essays, Generation of Vipers (particularly his idea of “Momism”)?
Seems on track with 2) above.
Are you familiar with Preston Sturges’s 1944 comedy “Hail the Conquering Hero”? That has a lot to say about the role of mothers in American life.
Philip Wylie offers one of my favorite throwaway descriptions in “The Paradise Canyon Mystery,” where he describes a man as looking like someone who if he wasn’t fond of books would certainly be fond of chairs.
, , , from around the same time, too,
Very surprised to see the John Buscema-Tom Palmer interior art on Man-Thing no. 18. I thought he was only drawing “top tier” Marvel super-hero fare and Conan at this point in his career. Apparently Man-Thing had the same pay grade, or JB wouldn’t have taken the job. It has been reported that he wanted to draw a western feature (like Kid Colt or Two Gun Kid), but Stan Lee made it clear that those were “second tier” comics with a lesser pay grade….so JB opted to stay where the money is.
Well, Man-Thing was still a monthly book at this point, so it was probably still selling . . . . (as of January of ’75 . . . .
“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.” – Isaac Asimov
I feel that Asimov was correct in his assessment of America. Stories like Steve Gerber’s Man-Thing #16-18 & Giant-Size #4 demonstrate that half a century ago the dark side of democracy, “anti-intellectualism,” was a powerful, dangerous force. Trump and the MAGA movement is unfortunately just the latest iteration of this, and even more unfortunately they have managed to seize the reigns of national power.
I feel that a large portion of this is the inevitable result of a nation being ostensibly founded upon the noble principles of “We the people” and “all men are created equal” and so forth coming into conflict with the very harsh reality that the United States was built on the very ugly realities of slavery & Native American genocide. I don’t believe America as a nation has ever truly had to face up to the dark side of it’s nature, and as a result all of that ugliness has been allowed to fester for long decades, until its erupted in the present in a very violent manner.
Agreed. People really hate dealing with the country they love having such an ugly past — to paraphrase a friend of mine, it’s like discovering your family’s wealth was built on blood money.
Plus the past, as William Faulkner said, is not even past. Efforts to repress teaching about racism and slavery in schools probably go over well with parents who dread their kid coming home with “Mom, you know how you said black people are poor because they’re stupid — you’re wrong! It’s racism!”
The early 1970s book Politics of Unreason shows how far back this kind of bigotry goes in our country and how consistently it’s clung to the body politic: https://frasersherman.com/2021/01/10/books-about-politics-that-made-me-think/
“The secret of a great success for which you are at a loss to account is a crime that has never been found out, because it was properly executed.”—Balzac . which Mario Puzo transliterated as an Epigraph in The Godfather as “Behind every great fortune there is a crime.”
Unfortunately, Ben, I’m afraid you may be exactly right.
Frightening to contemplate how much of Gerber’s 50 year old story seems written today. Truly a horror story.
I missed #16, but remember fondly ( and in horror!) #17 and #18, and it seems pretty unanimous from commentators that this saga was a big hit and well remembered. Alas the vagaries of comic book publishing…..in 1973/4 Man-thing is a hit, gets its own Giant-Size title, and has John B as an artist for several issues but gets cancelled in 1975, even though titles like Ghost Rider survive the horror cull and Son of Satan is given his own title. John B is too expensive an artist for Conan and westerns, but in 1976/7 is drawing Captain Britain ( and inked by Tom Palmer no less).
#16 is cover dated April, which means Gerber and Big John were probably creating it in September/ October ’74. @mikebreen1960 were you already a punk rocker at that stage? We were in Abba/ Bay City Rollers territory then!