{"id":6706,"date":"2021-05-18T22:28:13","date_gmt":"2021-05-18T21:28:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=6706"},"modified":"2021-05-18T22:28:13","modified_gmt":"2021-05-18T21:28:13","slug":"x-men-curse-of-the-man-thing-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=6706","title":{"rendered":"X-Men: Curse of the Man-Thing #1"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>X-MEN: CURSE OF THE MAN-THING #1
\n“Curse of the Man-Thing, Chapters 7-9”
\nby Steve Orlando, Andrea Broccardo & Guru-eFX<\/strong><\/p>\n

So here’s one for the “technically an X-book” file.<\/p>\n

X-Men: Curse of the Man-Thing<\/em> #1 might sound like a one-shot, but it’s actually the final part of a three-issue miniseries. The other two chapters are\u00a0Avengers: Curse of the Man-Thing<\/em> #1 and\u00a0Spider-Man: Curse of the Man-Thing<\/em> #1. It’s what you might call an imaginative use of “#1”.<\/p>\n

We’ve had this format once before, with a Typhoid miniseries. At root, it’s a tacit admission that Marvel would\u00a0really<\/em> like to do a story about Man-Thing, but that book obviously won’t sell at all, so maybe if we prop it up with guest stars it’ll work. Which is a bit of a shame for Man-Thing, as this is his supposed to be celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of his debut in\u00a0Savage Tales<\/em> #1. The poor bastard doesn’t even get top billing at his own birthday party.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Hanging over any celebration of fifty years of Man-Thing is the other guy. Swamp Thing debuted at the same time, he’s almost exactly the same concept, and he’s not just a mainstay of his universe – he’s the star of the book that blazed the trail for Vertigo. His stories are ambitious. Man-Thing is… probably best known for having a quarterly with a funny name and introducing Howard the Duck? And both of those were in the 70s. Sure, he’s a familiar feature of the Marvel Universe. He’s not\u00a0nobody<\/em>. But he’s not much either. He’s the poster child for how differently the same concept can turn out.<\/p>\n

But let’s be fair. This isn’t a throwaway story – not if you’re interested in Man-Thing, at any rate. Steve Orlando hasn’t done much for Marvel before now, but he’s an established writer and he’s clearly been given some leeway to retool the character and make him a bit more viable. Maybe that was the remit. In amongst the barrage of guest stars, Orlando’s agenda here is to hammer the kinks out of Man-Thing’s origin story, make him functional as a protagonist, and generally try to create a status quo that, at least in theory, somebody might be able to work with.<\/p>\n

This isn’t a ground-up reinvention by any stretch of the imagination. Swamp Thing was long since repositioned as an eco-warrior; Man-Thing remains firmly a horror monster. But Orlando is trying to find a role for Ted Sallis to be more than just a name in the back story.<\/p>\n

The basic retcon is quite elegant. An oddity of Man-Thing’s origin story is that it involves Sallis as a scientist working on a replica of the super-soldier serum, who then stumbles into a magic swamp and Stuff Happens. He’s a very passive character even in his own origin, and the connection between the formula and the swamp is a bit random. Orlando’s solution is to remove the swamp as the source of magic. In the new version, Sallis made a deal with the devil to get his formula to work. He and the formula are the source of the magical elements; they created the Nexus of Realities; and now the whole thing becomes a more conventional Faustian bargain story. Sallis is established to exist as a sort of guiding persona in a world within the Man-Thing, where he can be visited (or drag people in, from the look of it).<\/p>\n

All this makes Man-Thing less distinctive, of course. His USP was being an anti-protagonist, a shambling creature who didn’t drive the plot so much as wander through it while it revolved around him. But maybe there’s limited mileage in that – certainly if you want to actually sell any comics.<\/p>\n

So sure, as a Man-Thing story, this works well enough. There are different artists on each issue of the series, but they’re not wildly at odds in tone. The X-Men issue gets Andrea Broccardo, who is fine – the art’s clear enough, but it’s more conventional superhero than suited to a story which is doing horror tropes. It’s lacking a bit in atmosphere. But he does a good Sallis, who by this point in the arc has embraced his role as the spirit within the Man-Thing and is starting to appear as a slightly sinister yet seemingly unremarkable presence. Maybe he’s meant to be a sort of horror comic host figure. I could see that working.<\/p>\n

What does any of this have to do with the X-Men? Well, not much! The villain, Harrower, is the daughter of one of Hordeculture, a surprising use of the mad old botanists. They show up throughout this series, with the comedy aspects downplayed. Basically, Harrower wants to wipe out humanity and turn the world over to the plants; Hordeculture ultimately step in to keep her in line. It’s a little unusual to see them in a book like this, but hey, the concept is perfectly capable of being played straight, and here it is.<\/p>\n

The X-Men – or rather, the cast of\u00a0X-Men<\/em> – are barely in it. Storm gets to chuck a bit of lightning around, but the main focus is on Magik. Perhaps\u00a0New Mutants: Curse of the Man-Thing<\/em> #1 didn’t test well. But there’s a pretty decent justification for using Illyana: Sallis made his deal with Belasco, and Magik inherited it when she became ruler of Limbo. That allows Magik to show up, lecture Sallis about his mistakes, but also advance the plot by offering to release him from the bargain. Of course, that would be disastrous for all manner of reasons and so he decides against it. It’s his story, not Magik’s – but her role makes sense.<\/p>\n

At this point Orlando seems to decide that he’d like to annoy anyone who really did tune in to see the X-Men, and wheels out a makeshift team of bozo squad of Marrow, Shark Girl, Forearm (!), Mammomax (!!!) and Wolf-Cub. You know, Wolf-Cub. Chuck Austen used him. He was in\u00a0Young X-Men<\/em>. Got killed. Back now. Wolf-Cub.\u00a0This borders on trolling, and at best it’s just random. There’s no apparent reason to use these guys (let alone for Magik to call them in) and really, they might as well have gone with the New Mutants. But hey, they’re only there to add a bit of action.<\/p>\n

This is Magik and some minor X-characters guest starring in\u00a0the final issue of a Man-Thing miniseries. Still, at least it’s a decent enough series on its own terms, and at least it finds a way for her to fit organically into the plot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

X-MEN: CURSE OF THE MAN-THING #1 “Curse of the Man-Thing, Chapters 7-9” by Steve Orlando, Andrea Broccardo & Guru-eFX So here’s one for the “technically an X-book” file. X-Men: Curse of the Man-Thing #1 might sound like a one-shot, but it’s actually the final part of a three-issue miniseries. The other two chapters are\u00a0Avengers: Curse […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-x-axis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6706"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6706\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6708,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6706\/revisions\/6708"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}