REVIEW: The Infernal Man-Thing #1

Writer: Steve Gerber
Artist: Kevin Nowlan
Review: Will Dubbeld

It all started with Swamp Thing.

A long time ago (circa 1987) in a galaxy far, far away (Gowrie, Iowa), young Will Dubbeld came into the possession of a Swamp Thing comic book. Saga of the Swamp Thing #14. I already owned a few Looney Tunes books, an odd issue of Spider Man and The Avengers, and that issue of Star Wars where Luke gets the snot kicked out of him by Lady Lumiya, but I'd never seen anything like this Swamp Thing book. It was dark and angst ridden, and probably above my pay grade, but I loved it. The main character couldn't talk in the issue (for some reason or another) so all of his speech was tormented inner monologue, every time he touched anyone they turned to glass (for some reason or another), and Phantom Stranger showed up to say some cryptic shit every few pages. Granted, my 8 year old brain certainly didn't catch all the nuances of the book, but I was a pretty sharp kid and followed right along.

Fast forward a few years to the early 90s, to the days when Spawn still had a necroplasm meter and Jim Lee's X-Men sold something like seventy quintillion copies. My parents, who are as big if not bigger nerds than I, would periodically take me to a local bookstore and turn me loose on the discount bin where I could take $5 and magically turn it into 15-20 comics. In these bins, I discovered that back issues of Marvel Comics Presents were cheap. Dirt cheap. And plentiful. For the uninformed, Marvel Comics Presents was an anthology series that was essentially another Wolverine book, but also shared it's pages with some outstanding stories featuring characters that didn't have a chance of being in a solo book at the time.
Admittedly I probably bought these issues of MCP because I thought Wolverine was so kewl, but the other stories grabbed me as well. Black Panther was introduced to me, as was Shanna the She-Devil, Shang-Chi, the Master of Kung-Fu, and Man-Thing.
And therein my love for giant vegetable monsters truly began.

Like Swamp Thing, Man-Thing was an altruistic minded scientist who was working on a wonder-serum only to be blown up/set aflame by Bad Guys and wander into a swamp. Apparently when this occurs, one turns into a mossy, shambling monster because it's happened twice.
Three times if you count The Heap.
Which I do.

Man-Thing was different in the fact he was unintelligent, driven by impulse and instinct, and if you were scared of him HE COULD SET YOU ON FIRE. I was hooked. Hooked on Man-Thing, ladies and gentlemen.

In the following years, I did my best to collect every issue of Man-Thing that I could find. I even purchased the seminal Giant Sized Man-Thing #1. Mostly so I could ask people, "hey, you wanna see my Giant Sized Man-Thing?"
Clearly not one of Marvel's blockbuster characters, Man-Thing books were few and far between, so imagine my elation when I heard that a new miniseries starring one of my favorite C-listers was on the horizon. Furthermore, this series would be the posthumous swan song of the legendary Steve Gerber, one of Man-Thing's most illustrious writers.

Clearly linked to Gerber's esoteric and oft times downright weird Man-Thing tales from yesteryear, The Infernal Man-Thing is a sequel to a story he penned years ago called "Song-cry of the Living Dead Man". It opens with our titular character tooling around his boggy abode only to be assailed by a falling anvil and a cavalcade of cartoon archetypes. Cavemen, clowns, cherubs, the whole nine yards, all rendered in Sunday paper fashion in contrast to the murky, ethereal background.
The book then introduces us to our protagonist, a writer named Brian Lazarus who is on a cross country trip in a microbus with a talking anthropomorphic tree riding shotgun. Lazarus stops at a roadside diner and is reunited with a waitress, where the reader learns that Brian and Sibyl (the waitress) are the surviving characters from the Song-cry story. Brian is shown to be fairly unhinged, mentally, due to the events of Song-cry and is heading back to the swamp to finish a screenplay accompanied by his talking tree.

Now, it's really hard to sell anyone on this book. It's abstract and seems fairly disjointed, especially if you are unfamiliar with Gerber's work on Man-Thing, Howard the Duck, or Destroyer Duck. Your confusion is compounded if you haven't read the original Song-cry story, but this is where Marvel comes through and had the foresight to include the original story as a back up feature. All said and done, however, unless you are a fan of Gerber's work or of shambling vegetable monsters in general you probably won't find much of interest here. Kevin Nowlan's art is well suited to the book, having a dim watercolor look as opposed to sharp lined, four color superhero fare. My only complaint is Man-Thing kinda looks like a hunchbacked version of one of the gawky bird creatures that Marvin the Martian used to chase Bugs Bunny around with.

The backup story, however, has impeccable art by industry legends John Buscema, Klaus Janson, and Glynis Wein, and the cover features an amazing rendition of The Man-Thing by Art Adams.

Marvel may have had a better seller with this book as a collected trade paperback or hardcover as opposed to a three issue miniseries, but I think they probably releasing this to honor Steve Gerber and his fans as opposed to making this the next X-Force.

I guess people don't have as much love for giant vegetable monsters as they used to, but I'll take as much Man-Thing as Marvel is willing to give me.




Here's that Swamp Thing issue, just for funsies.