Man-Thing-Splaining? A quick review of Essential Man-Thing Vol.1 featuring Steve Gerber

-

Essential Man-Thing, Vol. 1Essential Man-Thing, Vol. 1 by Steve Gerber
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Steve Gerber did not always have a very optimistic viewpoint on humanity, but he wrote honestly
and believed in our best values. If you want to read a thoughtful- not to mention occasionally horrific- graphic novel, this collection of serialized stories does the job.
IF there's one glaring weakness, it is the strength that makes the stories unique: the protagonist is essentially mindless. This means the other random characters are necessary to give dimension to the conflicts, and they change over time. Richard Rory, hippie Everyman, is as close to a constant as the title has, and he's an interesting ordinary guy, never transformed by the usual power fantasy plot twists, but often swept up by them.
This volume features his origin by Gerry Conway and Gray Morrow, and with a stop off by Jim Starlin along the way, by FEAR #10 we get to Steve Gerber, with stories about pollution, free spirits, shady developers, Native American protesters, and other-dimensional demons. In the middle, it's a pure fantasy saga, and from there it evolves into bizarre slice-of-life, offbeat tales from the fringes of society.
I enjoyed this volume, but Gerber really turns up the heat in the remainder of the series. The weirdness, of course, is not to everyone's taste, and these stories were not often of the straight-ahead adventure variety. They were more involved in soul-baring character sketches.
How dare I forget Val Mayerick and Mike Ploog? They turn in some terrific art. Ploog in particular has become an in-demand fantasy artist with a cartoony style here that was not simply a Kirby/Romita Marvel House Style. What can I say? If you enjoyed Neil Gaiman, particularly on Sandman, this is probably right up your alley! The black and white palette does little to mar the appeal and keeps the price nice.

View all my reviews

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe Deluxe Edition- this day, 1985!

-
Image
Thirty three years ago, today! (That is, August 27th, 1985) Oh, the stories these opened up for me. Alphabetically, fans could find every character still living who'd made at least three appearances, as well as many brand new lights. Origins, major life events, stories from twenty-five years of great Marvel continuity. You could even find out how tall, how heavy, or what color eyes the character should have, which sort of personalizes them and makes them all the more easy to imagine. You could find some description of every single power a character has, and often, see an Eliot R. Brown- illustrated blueprint for their best known weapons, vehicles, and acoutrement. But what could ever be more fuel for debate than : STrength Level! I was eleven when the series started, so of course I still found this part cool and interesting. Fans have been debating the strength levels of their favorite heroes and villains since comics began, so here was the sometimes controversial but ...
Read more

Eminem's Rap God sample: that's Captain America and the Falcon, from Power Records!

-
Image
What do Eminem and most Integr8d Fix readers have in common? Comic books, man. As a boy, I had two Power Records, a brand that released dramatized versions of comic books on 45 rpm, complete with a book sampling most of the comic's artwork. The first was a stand-alone Superman adventure I think was written by Elliot S! Maggin, where aliens fell to earth in the form of silver-hued bullets. The second one, I only had the record, but it was intense: Captain America and the Falcon confront the mystery of The Phoenix, a man whose thirst for revenge is born from Cap's battles in the world war before his frozen suspension. I didn't get hooked on Eminem's 2013 release "Rap God" until I was putting together a hip hop playlist this September. Not unlike when Anj and I discovered Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre back in college, I was wrestling with an angry mood over someone who cheated me of recording time after I gave up eleven Sundays of my life to give...his initials ...
Read more

Lost World of Apes: the Bili and Mangani

-
Image
Mangani is the name of a fictional species of great apes in the Tarzan novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs, and of the invented language used by these apes. In the invented language, Mangani (meaning "great-ape") is the apes' word for their own kind, although the term is also applied (with modifications) to humans. The Mangani are represented as the apes who foster and raise Tarzan. Dr. Peter Coogan wrote a page on the synthetic language created for the Mangani and Tarzan, provided here in pdf: http://www.pjfarmer.com/woldnewton/Mangani.pdf The language of the great apes of Africa that Edgar Rice Burroughs depicts in the Tarzan novels is not some simple, made-up collection of sounds substituting for English. It is a representation of a deeply structured, complex linguistic sign system with a grammar and syntax of its own. This grammar has never been worked out because its last living native speakers (with the exception of Tarzan himself) went extinct in the last century. Unfor...
Read more