Tag: man-thing

Tales of Suspense #81, Story B

The Red Skull Supreme!

Featuring: Captain America
Release: May 3, 1966
Cover: September 1966
12 cents
Script: Stan (The Man) Lee
Art: Jack (King) Kirby
Inking: Frank (Good Guy) Giacoia
Lettering: Artie (Smarty) Simek
Recruiting: Irv (Fall Guy) Forbush
10 pages

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There is nothing I cannot do! The universe itself must bend to my wishes, so long as I hold the Cosmic Cube! My every wish– my every command– must be instantly obeyed!

At this point, of the many many nicknames we’ve seen in credits, Stan the Man Lee, and Jack King Kirby are by far the most common.

I’m doing a thing I don’t like doing and skipping into the middle of this comic, skipping the Iron Man story at the start.

We had a choice as we have at least two cliffhangers to resolve. See what happens between Namor and Iron Man or between Cap and the Red Skull? I’ve chosen the latter. The fight between Iron Man and Namor continues in Namor’s title, so we have to read that before we get to this Iron Man story. And I was eager to see the resolution of this Captain America story.

Also, this issue’s Iron Man story begins a new saga, one I don’t want to entangle with the web of comics we’re in the middle of.

Red Skull has the Cosmic Cube, giving him godlike power.

He gets in a good villain monologue we use for the pull quote above.

While Cap’s thoughts form a good heroic response.

My life means nothing! The fate of all mankind is at stake! If he isn’t stopped– humanity itself is doomed!

Red Skull creates a creature called the Man-Thing to menace Cap. Won’t be the last Marvel character to use this name.

Continue reading “Tales of Suspense #81, Story B”

Second Day of Classic Comics Christmas 2019

Spider-Man and The Man-Thing

See my initial post for the context. Suffice to say that I will be sharing my entries to the Classic Comics Forum tradition, “Twelve Days of Classic Comics Christmas“. This is a cross-post of my second entry representing #12 on my list of favorite comic book Crossovers.

11. Spider-Man and The Man-Thing
from Giant-Size Spider-Man #5 (1975)

by Gerry Conway, Ross Andru, and Mike Esposito

Second Spidey entry. I really could have filled my list with Spider-Man. And a decent chunk of it with this stellar series. But I decided one from this series would have to do. Apologies to the excellent earlier issues where Spider-Man meets Shang-Chi, Doc Savage and Punisher. All contenders.

What do we have here. A lot of focus on character work. Conway uses his page count to shine a spotlight on everybody. It’s during the Clone Saga, so Gwen has mysteriously returned, and everybody is dealing with that. Gwen, Peter, Betty, MJ… we get the first hint of a characterization they will later go all in on for Mary Jane, for better or for worse. We see her on the edge of tears, but then quickly correcting when her Aunt comes in, and putting on a smile and talking about wanting to party. Defalco will later reveal that that’s all she was ever doing, and it will ring untrue.

Conway was more subtle in his treatment of MJ. Maturing her and bringing her and Peter together, while preserving her character.

We also get Curt Connors again turned into the Lizard and see this struggle through the eyes of his wife better than we have before.

We even get solid character work on one random character, a bankrupt chemist on the verge of suicide, whose fate is changed by an encounter with Man-Thing, and who emerges as the hero in the battle against the Lizard.

Not sure if we get good character work on the Man-Thing. You’d have to look closely into his eyes to see what he thinks of these events. All we know is he hears the Lizard’s call with other swamp creatures, and that he seems to respond to intense emotion.