Marvel Comics’ MAN-THING

By 6 commentsSketchbook

ManThing

 

This is new ground for me!

For all of my love of comic books and for all the time I read them and drew from them, I never ever drew Man-Thing before the above marker sketch. I never really read much about him but of course, I was aware he existed. I read enough Marvel books to have Manny here drift through from time to time. That was the extent of my exposure to him. He was an occasional guest star, but I never read anything where he was the main character.

In spite of my unfamiliarity with him, Man-Thing proved to be a surprisingly fun character to draw, ink, and color. It’s all those rich textures and his design… which I always admired. In the debate over who is the better swamp monster… DC’s Swamp Thing or Marvel’s Man-Thing, I have to say that I may like Swamp Thing more as a character, but Man-Thing was the creepier monster. I say this of course fully admitting my limited exposure to him. In fact, I haven’t read a whole lot of Swamp thing either beyond Alan Moore’s early issues. There was the 1982 movie too.

This sketch was done as a reward for one of our loyal Die Kitty Die Kickstarter supporters. I hope they dig it. I have a few more of these to post so keep coming back here. Leave a reply and share!

 

Thanks!

 

 

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6 comments on “Marvel Comics’ MAN-THING”

    • fernando

      Thanks for saying so, Andrew! It was good to see you again in Montreal. Thanks for always coming out and supporting us. Hopefully we’ll see you in Toronto!

  2. Dennis

    Definitely the most grotesque of all the comics’ swamp monsters. He got sort of a hunchbacked gorilla thing covered in swamp grass going on, with a cthulhu head, with those eyes like burning coals. Okay, so he sort of stole those facial tendrils (roots?) from The Heap, but still. He’s also creepier than Swamp Thing because he doesn’t speak, and the extent of his intelligence or any vestige of humanity can only be guessed at. Which makes him a hard character to write, because he’s more like a pivotal force for the plot (which is actually someone else’s story) than an actual character.

    Sorry, I got distracted and went off on a tangent there. I meant to say that is an excellent drawing of ol’ Manny. Looking at your action/adventure pieces it’s hard to think that you never worked for the Big Two (and, er… you’ve been around long enough). Also unbelievable that ArchieCo never gave you a chance to draw any of the Mighty Crusaders in their own series (except for those two keen issues of Archie’s Weird Mysteries).

    • fernando

      Thanks for the kind words, Dennis.

      Throughout my twenty-two years at Archie, I constantly lobbied for any opportunity to draw the Mighty Crusaders. Their two appearances in Archie’s Weird Mysteries remain two of my all-time favorite jobs during that whole time. I was never a big fan of the later Crusaders stuff. It looked fine but I always preferred the REAL characters themselves. I finally got the chance… my ONE LONE opportunity… to work on an original Crusaders story when New Crusaders editor Paul Kaminsky asked me to write a short story starring the WEB. Intended as a back-up in an issue of The New Crusaders, the story was supposed to tell the events that led up to the original Web’s retirement. I had a lot of fun writing that one and I got to play with other Crusader characters like Pow-Girl and super-villain, the Gasser. I wrote the story, handed it in, and it was given to the great Rich Buckler to draw. I would’ve loved the opportunity to draw it myself but Archie wanted Buckler. Buckler is an undeniable master particularly with the Crusaders so if I couldn’t draw it myself, he was a more than adequate consolation prize! I have no doubt he could do a better job than I, but I just wanted the FUN of drawing the story. Sadly, I don’t know whatever became of the story. The New Crusaders were cancelled and that whole Red Circle line was once again tossed into an Archie “hiatus.” I don’t know if the story ever saw print or if Buckler even finished it!

      It’s a real shame because I would’ve loved to have seen it published.

  3. Lavern Mella

    Man-Thing appears in the last issue and appears to be standing guard over all creation. It ultimately accepts Deadpool ‘s plan and kills the Taskmaster . Prior to the film’s premiere, Marvel released a three-issue comic book prequel to it also written by Hans Rodionoff, and with art by Kyle Hotz .

    • fernando

      “…Standing guard over all creation…?!”

      Admittedly I’m not a big expert on Man-Thing as I said above, but I didn’t know this sort of thing was Manny’s bag.

      Then again, I don’t often trust contemporary comic book writers to really get the characters correctly.

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