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November 9, 2005
When Giant-Sized Man-Things Walked the Earth (Man-Thing Part II)
Man-Thing issue #3-4 featured a great satire featuring a rogue villain called “The Foolkiller.” Believing himself to be the vengeful arm of God, the Foolkiller set out to kill three targets he identified as blasphemous fools: Richard Rory (who played awful rock music as a DJ), F.A. Schist (for draining the swamp), and Ted Sallis (now Man-Thing, for creating the serum that transformed him). As I’ve said before, Marvel’s stable of writers in the 70s loved making fun of evangelicals.
The Foolkiller was a disciple of a traveling preacher that he believes has healed his crippled legs. He figures that God has ordained him for something great and creates the Foolkiller costume. When the Foolkiller finds the Preacher having a party with booze and a loose woman, he kills his mentor, takes his money, and outfits a truck with all kinds of weapons to take down fools across the country. The Foolkiller preserves the Preacher in a tank filled with formaldehyde and has regular talks about his great mission. In a great stroke of irony, it’s this same tank that kills the Foolkiller in the end when it explodes.
Mike Ploog thundered into the world of Man-Thing with issue #5. His art style was perfectly suited to drawing the muck-monster: on the first page we were treated to a vision of Man-Thing rising out of the swamp. You could almost feel the oozing brown water sliding off of Man-Thing’s form. Ploog was the perfect visionary for Gerber’s stories, creating cinematics and fleshing out the various creatures in the swamp. The first two-parter was about Daryl the Clown, who commits suicide in the swamp. His soul recruits Rory and others to reenact key scenes from his life before a tribunal.
The Clown story is universally regarded as one of the best, but my personal favorite is the two-parter in issue #7-8. A group of Spanish warriors dressed like conquistadors attempt to capture the Man-Thing. At the same moment, we see F.A. Schist about to pack up his operation—as Man-Thing has interrupted his construction projects too many times. Schist tells Wickham (a scientist who tried to kill Man-Thing) another reason he came to the Florida everglades: to find the fabled Fountain of Youth. The warriors that Man-Thing is fighting are from the lost city of La Hacienda.
It turns out the magical waters can slowly restore Man-Thing to humanity, but it does so at the worst moment—when Schist catches up to him. In the end, the fascist F.A. Schist inevitably meets his own doom and Man-Thing becomes mired in muck again.
My other favorite Ploog-Gerber collaboration is also my favorite Giant-Sized Man-Thing, issue #1. The first in a series of comics published quarterly, the Giant-Size books aimed to give Marvelites more bang for the buck—although in this case the bang was a bunch of 1950s reprints. I have to wonder if anyone in the Marvel Bullpen thought about the implications of the title. It provides fanboys loads of laughs to utter the words “Giant-Size Man-Thing” and use them to concoct crazy, impossible pick-up lines.
This particular story pitched Man-Thing against The Glob, a monster introduced in the pages of the Incredible Hulk. Ploog drew their conflict with glee, living up to the hype of “the gloopiest, glopiest battle ever!” The cultists who bring the Glob to life worship Entropy (“Entropy, Entropy, all winds down”). Their leader resembles Richard Nixon.
Ploog’s final issue was Man-Thing #11, featuring Richard Rory and a ballerina escaping from pursuers in the swamp. Once again, there is a link to the Vietnam War, just before the U.S. pulled out of Saigon. Ploog left the series to work on Marvel’s Planet of the Apes magazine, a series I’ll have to cover at some point.
Issue #12’s story, “Song Cry of the Living Dead Man”, proved that Steve Gerber was the most experimental writer of the 1970s and Man-Thing was his laboratory. A man named Brian Lazarus goes to the swamp in a suicidal-depressed rage, fed up with the routine nature of daily life. The swamp manifests his demons in physical form and Man-Thing fights them. The most unusual thing about the story is the page full of text (Brian’s writing) accompanied by John Buscema’s illustration. This might have been the first time I had seen this done in a monthly color comic. Click the picture above to expand and read the text.
Gerber frequently returned to misanthropic characters who suffered as children. The ultimate form of this was found in Giant-Size Man-Thing #4. The story begins at the funeral of a teenager named Edmond. While the Priest paints a rosy picture of Edmond’s life, a girl named Alice speaks up and gets severely beaten by Edmond’s uncle—until Man-Thing intervenes. In the middle of the story we read an essay by Edmond—in text page form—and discover that he was an overweight boy, picked on by everyone at school. The P.E. coach made him run laps until he had a heart attack. His vengeful spirit possesses Man-Thing in the climax, dolling out punishment to everyone involved. As a fat kid who hated physical education classes, I loved this particular tale.
Man-Thing’s first series lasted until issue 22, and unlike most series that got cancelled, it had a nice conclusion. Gerber broke the fourth wall and inserted himself into the story, narrating it from his own point of view. He told Editor Roy Thomas how Dakimh the Enchanter periodically appeared in his apartment and gave Gerber the inside scoop on all of Man-Thing’s adventures.
Other writers have attempted to bring Man-Thing back at various times, with less than satisfying results. It may be a series that only Gerber could handle—or it could simply be a product of the 1970s. The original run will never be duplicated for its extreme quirkiness. Nuff said.
See also:
Man-Thing Part I: My Man-Thing Was Very Versatile
Need a Team-Up? Got a Man-Thing!
Man-Thing Wikipedia Entry
