Thoughts on Man-Thing

[Cei-U!]

The late, great Jim Mooney. (Though IIRC Cei-U! hates him with a white-hot passion that makes my attitude toward Frank Robbins look like unalloyed love. OK, so I exaggerate a tad ...)

Wrong, hushpuppy breath! Mooney will never be my favorite and I don't care at all for his work at DC in the Silver Age but he did some great work at Marvel, particularly in conjunction with Gerber on Man-Thing and Son of Satan. My problems with the Omega book (and I gots plenty) have nothing to do with the art.

Cei-U!
I summon breakfast!

[adam_warlock_2099]

The late, great Jim Mooney. (Though IIRC Cei-U! hates him with a white-hot passion that makes my attitude toward Frank Robbins look like unalloyed love. OK, so I exaggerate a tad ...)

Ah yes as I look at the issues ... the man had a knack for drawing. What's there not to like? As far as Frank Robbins, the only thing I may own of his is Batman #217 and I rather enjoyed the art and story in that issue. I especially like the cover.

I bought a few issues of Man-Thing back in the day, but it was weak compared to the excellent early Swamp Thing run by Len Wein and Bernie Wrightson.

This in my opinion is just plain one of the best literary and art works of modern times.

[dan bailey]

Wrong, hushpuppy breath!

Now y'all have done gone & made me hungry for dinner. Tarnation!

[adam_warlock_2099]

Isn't that just cornbread? This guy's too yankee to like cornbread. Though my mother tried, as she liked it, I never cared for the stuff, and still don't despite being placed in the south. (Then there are a lot of things the south or the bible belt still has swayed me on.)

[dan bailey]

Isn't that just cornbread?

Heresy! You might as well say that Fantastic Four #1 is just a bunch of 4-color pages of cheap paper!

Hushpuppies are sort of a kissin' cousin of my beloved hot water cornbread, but they're by no means the same thing.

[GavinR]

This might be worth a new topic, but Marvel had this annoying habit in the '70s of canceling comics in the middle of an ongoing story. Then they would wrap up the story clumsily in some other comic. This happened to Skull the Slayer (Marvel Two-in-One), Omega the Unknown (Defenders), and Ka-Zar (X-Men). There must be some other examples that I'm forgetting about right now.

Nova, which was finished up in Fantastic Four. Yeah, there was a lot of that going on back then.

[Polar Bear]

Nova, which was finished up in Fantastic Four. Yeah, there was a lot of that going on back then.

Yup. So did Shogun Warriors. Champions ended in Super-Villain Team-Up, I think, and Ms. Marvel didn't wrap up until more than a decade later, in some anthology title--Marvel Super Heroes, maybe?

And the canceled Freedom Fighters was to be continued in Secret Society of Super Villains, which itself got canceled before that continuation and whose own storyline was eventually wrapped up in JLA...

Yup, lotta that then.

[Jolly Mon]

Wrong, hushpuppy breath!
Cei-U!
I summon breakfast!

Isn't that just cornbread? This guy's too yankee to like cornbread. Though my mother tried, as she liked it, I never cared for the stuff, and still don't despite being placed in the south. (Then there are a lot of things the south or the bible belt still has swayed me on.)

Heresy! You might as well say that Fantastic Four #1 is just a bunch of 4-color pages of cheap paper!

Hushpuppies are sort of a kissin' cousin of my beloved hot water cornbread, but they're by no means the same thing.

There's a lot of things I'll let slide on the boards, but the denigration of hushpuppies will not stand! I may be a northerner, and born up here besides, but the decade or so spent down south taught me the wonder and majesty of the hushpuppy. One of my few regrets of leaving the south is the inability to get really good hushpuppies. Although the Golden Corral buffet does have half-decent ones. The other thing that doesn't exist here is Brunswick stew. <sigh>

[Cei-U!]

Except for a weeklong vacation in Texarkana back in '96*, I've never been to the South but I love cornbread, hush puppies and especially grits. The waitresses at my motel's restaurant on that trip loved that I ordered grits smothered in butter with my breakfast every morning. But nobody will ever get me to eat okra again (not without paying me mucho dinero beforehand, anyhow).

Cei-U!
Ah summon that ol' lightnin'!

*To visit my unofficial step-daughters. You don't think I'd voluntarily go to Texas for any other reason, do you?

[GavinR]

Also, skip the movie. Don't even watch it for free on tv.

I caught the tail end of it late one night...shudder...

I've never read Omega and the only knowledge I have of the character comes from the entry in The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe. Why he gets a two page entry is beyond me, other than the fact that they seemed to pad out the ones for dead characters for some reason. Anyway, the entry makes him sound like an interesting but pretty convoluted character and just reeks of Marvel in the 70's.

[dan bailey]

Except for a weeklong vacation in Texarkana back in '96*, I've never been to the South but I love cornbread, hush puppies and especially grits. The waitresses at my motel's restaurant on that trip loved that I ordered grits smothered in butter with my breakfast every morning.

Do you happen to recall where you stayed? As indicated elsewhere, I know Texarkana fairly well, having grown up about 40 miles from there & bought virtually all of my first several hundred sf volumes as well as my first few dozen back-issue comics in a certain used bookstore there.

[edhopper]

I LOVED Man-Thing, I LOVED Ploog's art, but also Val Mayerick. Issue 12 "Song-Cry of the Liviing Dead Man, illustrated by Big John Buscema blew my young mind. One of the most experimental main stream comics put out.
I am really happy that they are abut to publish Gerber's last Man-Thing story...wait for it..."Screenpaly for the Living Dead Man" drawn by Kevin Knowland!

Can't wait.

[FanboyStranger]

I've never read Omega and the only knowledge I have of the character comes from the entry in The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe. Why he gets a two page entry is beyond me, other than the fact that they seemed to pad out the ones for dead characters for some reason. Anyway, the entry makes him sound like an interesting but pretty convoluted character and just reeks of Marvel in the 70's.

The entries for dead characters in the old OHotMU summed up their entire histories. Living characters only got brief summaries of key moments.

[Jezebel Bond]

Never really fancied the character and I only have crossovers with Spidey. Don't like DC's Swamp Thing either...

[GavinR]

The entries for dead characters in the old OHotMU summed up their entire histories. Living characters only got brief summaries of key moments.

That argument doesn't hold any water. Omega got two whole pages even though he was only around for a year where Stilt-man gets two and a half(!!!!), while Beast only gets one. It didn't have anything to do with living or dead...it had to do with how much they could cram into an issue. This was just pure random editorial decisions and by the time they got to the dead characters, I think they were just trying to stretch out the content. Kiber the Cruel gets two pages!!! His first appearance is Black Panther #11 and his final appearance is Black Panter #13. Two pages for that is just silly.