MadCap's Comic Reviews - "The Man-Thing #1"

A man of science turned into a monster.  Sound familiar? Well, this particular monstrosity was not born from gamma rays in the New Mexico desert, but in the swamps of the Florida Everglades. Doctor Theodore Sallis was a scientist who, like many, was trying to replicate the Super Soldier Serum that led to the creation of Captain America. Betrayed by his lover, the alluring Ellen Brandt, Sallis was forced to take the only sample of the serum he had concocted and escape with it.  Chased by Brandt and her thugs, Sallis injected himself with the serum on the gamble that it would grant him superhuman abilities...and crashed his car into the swamps...

The serum did indeed give him superhuman abilities as predicted...but even Sallis couldn't have predicted what he would become...

Injected with the serum, enveloped by the swamps, he ceased to be the brilliant Theodore Sallis, losing his intelligence and his mind and becoming the hulking monstrosity known as the Man-Thing, who's touch burns all who know fear. He is doomed forever to wander the Everglades as a creature of pure animalistic instinct. At least, that is, until several armed men kidnap a Dr. Oheimer, a man who is working on a formula for brain cell regeneration. They reveal themselves to be the original backers of the experiments that Sallis was performing...and have somehow worked out the connection between Sallis and the Man-Thing.

With Oheimer's help, they want to restore the mind of the Man-Thing so that he might be able to relay to them the Super Soldier Serum he had recreated. Oheimer agrees, more to help the man than to recover the formula, and a trap is set for the monster...and they catch him! Oheimer does indeed, it seems, begin to work on rehabilitating the Man-Thing.  Slowly at first, of course, much like a child in need of development so that Sallis's mind can be restored to its adult state.  But when the military catches wind of where Oheimer has been taken...those efforts might all have been for not.

This is a great comic. It's absolutely dripping with atmosphere in the beginning and the end, aided by the narration putting the reader into the mindset of the creature, both as an animal...and later, when it regains some semblance of its intelligence.  The Man-Thing cannot speak (or couldn't back then), has no dialogue whatsoever, and yet to feel more for the struggle of Ted Sallis than ever before by the end. Doomed to his fate as the Man-Thing while now remembering what he has lost.  Indeed, one could say that in aiding him to regain his humanity, Oheimer might have been unintentionally cruel to the poor man...lost now, perhaps forever, to the swamp...

But hey! If that's too deep and depressing for you to ponder, there's a helpful ad comic where Captain Marvel keeps the sun from being extinguished with the help of Twinkies...

...yeah...splitting up the last two pages of the otherwise emotionally touching finale to the story.  Seriously, Marvel...could you have placed that anywhere else? I mean, anywhere. It's a thirty page comic, you could have found somewhere to place that besides to break up the finale that really didn't need that kind of breaking up.

Apart from that, though, a very enjoyable comic.  The frightening tale of a man who is turned into a beast..and gains just the tiniest fraction of that back...but will never truly be anything but the monster he has become ever again...

...and now I really want some Twinkies. Damn it, Marvel!

"The Man-Thing #1" is brought to us by Marvel.

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