Essential Man-Thing - Volume Two!

The Man-Thing proved to be most durable during the horror craze which erupted at Marvel Comics in the early 70's. The character unlike Dracula, Werewolf, and Frankenstein was not part of an immediately recognizable cache of creatures apart from Marvel and for whatever reason seemed to fuse more easily into the MU. That helped when Steve Gerber left his baby and it fell into other hands.

Man-Thing had always been centered in the swamps of the Everglades but in his finale Gerber and new artist Jim Mooney tried to fish him out of the swamps and put him on the move with longtime loser Richard Rory who also happens to commit kidnapping in one of the most stupid crimes ever recorded in the Marvel Universe.

They send him to Atlanta where the swamp critter fights evil, psychic vampires, and such like things with gusto.

Eventually though the plug gets pulled and the when Gerber retires from the series, the show ends its run with a tale infamous for including the writer in a significant way. This fourth-wall breaking stuff has a certain charm I admit, but I've always found this instance somewhat self-indulgent and overwrought. Appreciated it better on this reading than I remember it, but still it seems a bit much.

Man-Thing then enters a phase of guest-starring around the Marvel Universe, but not before getting one solo tale in the back pages of The Rampaging Hulk, spelling Bloodstone for an issue.

Manny's not the best guest-star, but he fits in well enough in stories in Marvel Team-Up and Marvel Two-In-One.

In the 80's, Jim Shooter and his new cadre bring the murk monster back in his own comic and a new The Man-Thing number one.

Chris Claremont takes over as writer on the series as Don Perlin settles in as artist and the Man-Thing becomes part of Claremont's mystical mini-verse alongside Doctor Strange, even crossing over into Doc's own comic.

When it comes time to bid farewell to Man-Thing once again, Claremont pulls the same stunt that Gerber had done and writes himself into the story in a major way. It's not as annoying this second time as I realize he's just riffing on Gerber's earlier take, but still it allows the series to end with a whimper and not even a small bang. It just sort of shuffles off quietly, which is weirdly appropriate I suppose.

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Machine Man - Mister Kirby!

Not unlike his stint at DC, Kirby found himself with something of a second wave in his Bronze Age stay at Marvel. He'd landed with the comics Captain America, Black Panther and Eternals, but later found that sales were against his efforts.

That meant new comics and we got two new ones from Kirby, a brand new romp called Devil Dinosaur and a spin-off from 2001: A Space Odyssey called Machine Man. Machine Man had been called "Mister Machine" in that three-issue run but the name was made more straightforward for this own magazine.

In the first two issues of the run we meet X-51, the last of the robots created in a secret government project. These robots had proven to be unstable and ultimately dangerous to their creators and so there was a relentless effort to destroy them. X-51 was saved when his "father" Dr. Abel Stack pulled his auto-destruct mechanism and sacrificed himself. Now an orphan of sorts the highly capable but somewhat naive X-51, dubbed "Machine Man" by those who chase him dodges the military who seek to end him. He is helped by a psychiatrist named Peter Spaulding in his efforts to understand his role in the world. He is pursued by Colonel Kragg, a man who has lost men and and eye to the other robots in the program.

That musing is interrupted when Spalding and Machine Man help to save an alien robot named "Ten-For". He is an "Autocron", a space-spanning race of robot beings who seek conquest and Ten-For is an advanced scout who has claimed Earth for his destructive fellow Autocrons.

The next several issues of the comics detail Machine Man's efforts to stop Ten-For's plots and despite some momentary doubts he ultimately is able to stop the threat to Earth and end the menace of Ten-For. That doesn't make his life any sweeter though.

He still must battle for his own salvation and that means facing up to the government which seeks his destruction. He confronts a Congressman named Brinkman who will become a longtime nemesis and for his own reasons Brinkman seeks to use Machine Man.

A secret organization called "The Corporation" seeks to gain control of Machine Man and fending off their plots occupies the next several issues of the comic.

Despite seeming atomic destruction Machine Man is able to survive intact and finally gains a measure of security as he is released into the custody of his friend Peter Spalding and as Jack Kirby steps away from the series it goes on hiatus with a new status quo established.

My thoughts on Machine Man are somewhat changed over the decades. When it was first appearing on the stands I was rather cool to Kirby's latest effort, finding it relatively small potatoes to the epic schemes of many of his other efforts. This one alongside Devil Dinosaur were not top of the line for me. But I've matured and I see the more subtle aspects of this story (as well as DD). I was particularly enthralled by the Ten-For saga, a truly awful villain who seems to almost be winning before he's not. It was a really interesting outing and I plugged into Machine Man's plight a bit more this time around. When he comes back, he will be very different, but I find this one works for me after all these years.

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