Man-Thing

Man-Thing is a large, vaguely humanoid, slow-moving green monster that lives in the Florida Everglades near the Seminole reservation. Unlike the intelligent and plant-based Swamp Thing, the Man-Thing is a nearly mindless mass of slime with no particular affinity to any living thing, but nevertheless it often becomes an accidental hero as it stumbles upon various crime and horror scenarios. It is able to sense human emotions, and is enraged by fear and automatically secretes a strong chemical corrosive; anyone clutched by the Man-Thing is prone to be chemically acid burned, hence the series' tag-line, "Whatever knows fear burns at the Man-Thing's touch." Though fear is understandably most people's response to the creature, typically only villains end up meeting an acidic death at its hands.

Origin

Man-Thing in comics

Beginning in January 1974, Gerber wrote his own Man-Thing series, illustrated most often by Val Mayerik and Mike Ploog. The series became Marvel's chief non-superhero fantasy title, and—again like DC's Swamp Thing—was flexible enough to accommodate horror, fantasy, science fiction, crime, and occasional crossovers with superhero characters. Gerber also wrote five longer issues of a parallel series, Giant-Size Man-Thing, whose apparently unintentional double-entendre title became a common joke among comics readers.

Man-Thing #22 was the last of the series, and justified its end with an unusual device: Gerber appeared as a character in the story, and admitted that he had not been inventing the Man-Thing's adventures but simply reporting on them. After witnessing the near-end of the universe—in which the minds of literally everyone except Gerber, Dakimh, and Thog were destroyed but then restored—Gerber decided he had to move on to other things. He continued to write brief cameos for the Man-Thing in other Marvel titles, chiefly Marvel Comics Presents, through 1989.

A second Man-Thing series began in November 1979, written by Michael Fleisher and Chris Claremont and illustrated by Jim Mooney and Don Perlin; the series lasted through issue #11, in which Claremont not only introduced himself as a character as Gerber had, but temporarily became the Man-Thing. The character was revived in a third series in 1997, written by J. M. DeMatteis and illustrated by Lian Roger Sharp, for eight issues.

Spin-offs

The Foolkiller, a vigilante who used a ray-gun to disintegrate not only criminals but anyone he considered foolish, was succeeded by another Foolkiller who became an occasional villain in other Marvel comics. A third version of the character starred in Gerber's 1990 Foolkiller miniseries.

Film

Similar characters

The Man-Thing has often been erroneously described as Marvel's attempt to imitate the similar and more famous DC Comics character Swamp Thing, but this is unlikely given that both debuted within a few months of one another. It is more likely that both were inspired by the earlier character The Heap, who was in turn probably inspired by Theodore Sturgeon's short story "It").

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