Saturday, October 28, 2006
Comic Art
I should probably give up on this series about heros associated with The Defenders - but the un-team nature of that team just makes it a gold mine of lesser-known, but still interesting, characters to examine. this week is no exception as we look at Man-Thing.How MT could join even an unteam, I'll never know. He's not human, he has no intelligence, he's just sort of a pile of walking muck that responds to emotions - lately turned into swamp guardian. No emotions himself, no intelligence, just a pile of muck responding to emotions, usually in the form of some fem fatale. In the later "swamp guardian" incarnation, he appeared in a recent and god-awful SciFi Channel Original movie.
Have to be honest, in his "swamp guardian" gig, he borders on an eco-terrorist and I never really liked it too much.MT came out virtually simultaneously with the much better done DC analog - SWAMP THING. Both were based on a golden aged character known as The Heap. ST was far more interesting to me because while no longer human and in some istance unable to communicate, the underlying human consciousness remained intact, so the character could think, emote, react - creating and actual character instead of what amounted to a prop, and that really was all MT ever was - a prop in the story. From the pages of Swamp Thing also sprang on of the most interesting occult characters in the history of comics - John Constantine, Hellblazer. It is obvious that Swamp Thing was shaped by the creative near-genius of Alan Moore that has produced so much good in comics.
But, back to MT, who here is seen dealing with the Hulk, which may be the character he most resembles, because of the brainlessness, but absent the naked aggression of the Hulkster and the personal drama of the tranformations and the tragedy that is Bruce Banner, you got squat.Personally, I think it is a character with a lot of potential, though they would need to kill off the beast made from Ted Sallis and make a knew one that had some sort of primordial intellect and capability to interact, then make the monster the character instead of the plot. I also think a few powers better than "He who knows fear burns at the touch of the Man-Thing" would be in order.
He does look better than Swampy though.
Related Tags: comics, comic art, comic books, The Defenders, Man-Thing
