Man-Thing #6. And When I Died.....

Thanks to Charlie Horse 47 and Killdumpster for their sponsorship of this post, via the magic of Patreon. 

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When I think of Marvel's Man-Thing, two words instantly leap to mind.

"Swamp," and, "Thing."

But two other words leap to mind.

"Dead," and, "Clowns."

And this is the issue responsible for that.

I first encountered the tale thanks to the pages of Marvel UK's Planet of the Apes weekly which reprinted Manny's adventures for the British public to consume, and here I am, encountering it again - but, this time, in that there fancy colour they've invented.

Will it prove as haunting as ever?

Will I even be able to understand it?

As we join the tale, Darrel the clown's just killed himself in the swamp.

For most clowns, that would be terminal but he's made of stronger stuff. As our assembled cast of series regulars and one-off visitors watch in horror, his ghost appears and, for the entertainment of three mysterious hooded critics, uses those people to reenact his life.

He was, it seems, the son of a rich man who thought of nothing but making money. After the death of that individual, the now-rich Darrel decided to become a clown and give others' lives the joy and laughter his own childhood had lacked.

But, with him increasingly embittered by the state of the world, his act became ever more sinister, until the night he discovered his beloved Ayla the circus aerialist had been told by Garvey the circus owner to feign romantic feelings for him to keep his money flowing into the business.

Devastated, the clown killed himself and, now, representatives of Heaven, Hell and some place between are here to sit in judgement on his soul.

There's only one problem.

Having seen his life story, none of those representatives feel his soul's worthy of their realm and, so, decide to destroy it, leading to a fight between them and the Man-Thing, earlier drafted in by Darrel to represent his rebellious streak.

Still, it all ends when Ayla reveals she did love him after all. Thus, the representative of Heaven accepts Darrel's soul, takes it away with him and our tale ends.

How could anyone not love this story? It's Steve Gerber doing the sort of investigation of a character's life that he clearly loved to do. I remember him pulling the same kind of stunt with Nighthawk in The Defenders.

The one failing is the tale feels like it fizzles out at the end, lacking a suitably dramatic denouement and creating a resolution a little too pat but the rest of the story's strong enough to compensate for that.

But the real reason for reading the tale is Mike Ploog's artwork. Here, he's clearly going for it, happy to exploit the surrealism and theatricality of the night's events and giving us a string of compelling images.

The central character - Man-Thing - is, of course, almost irrelevant to proceedings but that's because he's a brainless walking pile of sludge with no real motivation, meaning he's nearly always going to be a supporting character in his own series.

Are there any other 1970s Man-Thing tales as memorable as this one?

Off the top of my head, I can't really think of one. You, however, may know otherwise...