What's it like to be the son and the daughter of the Father of Lies? Find out as Daimon Hellstrom and his sister, Satana, face the worst of two worlds! Can they save their souls along with the world? Featuring Exorcists, Cyclists, Nihilists and Ice Demons! Secrets of Ancient Atlantis revealed! Guest-starring Spider-Man, the Thing and the Human Torch! Collects Savage Tales #1; Astonishing Tales #12-13; Adv Into Fear #10-19; Man-Thing #1-14; GS Man-Thing #1-2; Monsters Unleashed #5, 8-9.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
excellent,
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Essential Man-Thing, Vol. 1 (Marvel Essentials) (v. 1) (Paperback)
The comic starts off slowly, repetitively, but soon flowers into an existential, anarchic,nihilist-naive, neo primitivist landscape, which prefigures and pre empts and "pre imagines" Charles Burns "Black Hole" and aspects of Alan Moore by decades.
The action takes place in a swamp -- a secluded place, a dank,, threatening, yet pure place, untouched by the corruption of man -- yet it's a place constantly under threat from corrupt, violent men,pushing at its ( mental and physical/psychical ) edges and boundaries. However, the swamp is protected by the pure of heart, Man Thing -- the beast is a being who instinctively despises corruption, the concept of "might makes right" thuggery and the bully. In other words, a very modern comic figure !! The art is great too, with lots of good character profiles of 70's hippies, anarchist bikers, draft dodgers, homophobic hard hats, 1950's rockabilly gangs,hippy chicks and eccentric professors. Get ready to take the man thing trip, from the swamps to the edge of the stratosphere out to the edges of your dreams, blurring waking and sleeping consciousness! Great stuff, from a somewhat dull start on to a great set of tales : If you are into existential,lonely central figures and very "post modern", apocalyptic themes,expressing a deep mistrust of modern society, then you'll love Man Thing. I can't believe he was left behind and taken over by Swamp Thing and "Black Hole" ! Man Thing deserves a far higher profile and respect in the comics world.
10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"Whatever knows fear burns at the Man-Thing's touch.",
By Lawrance M. Bernabo (The Zenith City, Duluth, Minnesota) - See all my reviews (VINE VOICE) (COMMUNITY FORUM 04) (TOP 500 REVIEWER) (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Essential Man-Thing, Vol. 1 (Marvel Essentials) (v. 1) (Paperback)
When my local comic book store got its copies of "Essential Man-Thing, Volume 1," one of the clerks made a point of urging me to buy the book because it included a couple of issues of what he maintained was the comic book with the greatest name in the history of the Marvel or any other universe. He was referring, of course, to the first two issues of "Giant-Size Man-Thing." I did not comment on either the appropriateness of this declaration being made in a loud voice in the presence of young children or the attendant irony of this information being gleefully communicated by someone who has six inches and about a hundred pounds on me. But I did let him know that I already had my own copy that I could read about the Man-Thing regardless of size in the privacy of my own home.
Man-Thing made his (its?) first appearance in May 1971 in "Savage Tales" #1, and while there is a tendency to think of the Marvel character as a second rate version of DC's much more successful Swamp Thing, that character first appeared a month later in "House of Secrets" #92, the June-July 1971 issue. The first appearance of Man-Thing was written by Gerry Conway and Roy Thomas, with Gary Morrow as the artist, where as the first Swamp Thing story was written by Len Wein and drawn by Berni Wrightson. To make things even more interesting, Conway and Wein were roommates at the time, and Wein wrote the second Man-Thing story drawn by Neal Adams (originally intended for "Savage Tales" #2, it was incorporated to a Ka-Zar story by Roy Thomas drawn by John Buscema in "Astonishing Tales" #12. Obviously Conway and Wein knew what the other one was doing, and there is evidence that Wein took pains to make their origins dissimilar. Collected in Volume 1 and arranged in chronological order, are "Savage Tales" #1, "Astonishing Tales" #12-13, "Adventure into Fear" #10-19, "Man-Thing" #1-14, "Giant-Size Man-Thing," #1-2, and "Monsters Unleashed" #5 & #8-9. Originally the biochemist Theodore "Ted" Sallis, the Man-Thing was created when Sallis was betrayed by his lover who was in league with agents from Advanced Idea Mechanics (AIM) for wanted his miracle drug formula. When the origin was revised this became a super-soldier serum (in the manner of how Captain America was created), and it was the mixture of the serum and the swamp were Sallis drown that caused the transformation. When Steve Gerber took over the script and revealed the Everglades includes the Nexus of All Realities, magical forces became retroactively involved in the creation of the Man-Thing as the guardian of the Nexus. Sallis' intelligence was basically destroyed and the defining elements of the shambling muck-monster were that the Man-Thing sensed strong emotions and reacted to fear with rage, secreting a chemical (or magical?) corrosive so that "Whatever knows fear burns at the Man-Thing's touch," starting with the woman who betrayed him and continuing to those the creature comes upon as he stumbles through the swamp and keeps coming across humans doing bad things and deserving such punishment. Much is made of the first appearance of Howard The Duck in "Fear" #19 (originally a duck whose name is revealed to be Howard), but the story I remember best is "It Came Out of the Sky!" in "Fear" #17, where Gerber takes the well-known origin of Superman and plays out what would have happened if the kindly old couple had seen a space ship crashing to Earth in 1951 and gone the other way rather than face Martians or Communists. It would be 20 years before Man-Thing would release the babe inside, now the fully-grown Wundarr, who thinks Man-Thing is his mother. That issue was the best bit of satire by Gerber and an indication of what was to come when Howard the Duck got his own strip, but when we had Korrek, Warrior Prince of Katharta comes out of a half-eaten jar of peanut butter (also in "Fear" #19), it is hard to take things seriously, which I would think it a prerequisite for a comic book where the end game is supposed to involve things burning because they fear the touch of the Man-Thing. In reading these early stories again my preference is clear for the later issues collected here when Mike Ploog took over as the artist on "Man-Thing" #5. Frank Brunner was my favorite Man-Thing artist, but all he did were covers (including the one for this collection, which was from the cover of "Man-Thing" #1), and Ploog was the artist who got most of Marvel's horror comic titles off the ground, starting with "Werewolf By Night," but also including "Ghost Rider" and "The Monster of Frankenstein." So it was usual, but quite welcomed, for him to show up in the middle of a book's run. Gerber was focusing more on human stories where the peculiar justice of the Man-Thing's burning touch was most appropriate, as opposed to all the mystical stuff with Dakimh the Enchanter and the results are a lot better. No doubt because Gerber was enjoying unfettered freedom in writing "Howard the Duck." "Man-Thing" was a mixture of horror and crime along with fantasy and science fiction, and the appearance of other Marvel superheroes such as Mr. Fantastic and Tony Stark in "Giant-Size Man-Thing" #2, usually did not work. However, there was a little more success with villains, most notably the Fool-Killer ("Man-Thing" #3-4). This was one of those comic books where I tended to like the art more than the stories, such as when Tom Sutton finished John Buscema's layouts in "Man-Thing" #13 and Alfredo Alcala did the art for #14. So when we started getting text stories by Gerber with accompanying artwork by Pat Broderick, I would tend to just look at the pictures and not bother with the stories. Ultimately I find Man-Thins is one of those characters were less is more, because there are only so many injustices a muck-monster can address while shambling around the Everglades.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Top Dog of The Bog,
By J. Matera (Brazil) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Essential Man-Thing, Vol. 1 (Marvel Essentials) (v. 1) (Paperback)
The book is a good combination of drama, mysticism, ecology and action, because, unlike other swamp things, "Manny" doesn't spend entire stories feeling sorry for himself; if danger arises, he is there to face it and, if need be, enforce his own brand of mute justice.
Great were the guest appearence of "Ka-Zar", the agents of "AIM" and "The Glob", but the introduction of "Howard, The Duck" was both hilarious and welcome, for that loquacious fowl really "went" with all the bizarre stuff around him!!! Is there a "Volume 2" coming?
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