Ugh, this is continued in a
Spider-Man one-shot,
then an
X-Men one-shot that appears to introduce another sub-team that'll never be seen again, then...is that it? I can't even tell! From 2021,
Avengers: Curse of the Man-Thing #1, written by Steve Orlando, art by Francesco Mobili.
The villain this issue, calls herself "Harrower," which is about as try-hard as it sounds but I think it's supposed to be. She's the grand-niece of a member of
Hordeculture, a relatively recent Jonathan Hickman/Francis Yu invention: radical botanist mad scientists. Think A.I.M. if it was older, somewhat racist ladies working with plants. (They suck, but they're also supposed to; they're villains.) Harrower might be a little out there even for them, though; as she plans on using the Man-Thing to wipe out humanity. Her aunt doesn't really think that's gonna work, but also knows there's no telling her niece anything; it's going to probably have to run its course and blow up in her face. Harrower lures out Man-Thing with a man panicking at being turned into a plant; and seemingly skins the silent monster.
The next day, weird, huge vegetable growth appear worldwide, and the Avengers investigate various locations. Captain America is seemingly engulfed in vines, and finds himself in a dark swamp, facing off against some old grudges-slash-deep cuts:
Nuke was pretty well known, but I rarely remember the 50's anti-commie/lunatic Cap's real name of "
William Burnside. (I believe that was a much later addition, possibly from Ed Brubaker? 50's Cap had changed his name to "Steven Rogers" and went with it.)
Protocide I recall from Dan Jurgens' Cap run, but I also read the Priest stories with "
Anti-Cap" and have zero recollection of them. Cap receives help with a mysterious figure he doesn't recognize, but shares a link with all of them: it's Doctor Ted Sallis, or what's left of him, deep inside the Man-Thing.
While in the real world, people begin bursting into flames from a combination of spores and fear; Sallis explains the Man-Thing's dying act had been to try and get Captain America there, but he didn't know why. Sallis admits, he wasn't trying to remake the Super-Soldier formula (the link between him and the others that appeared) and that he didn't create it...Smells like a retcon coming, but whatever. It also feels like more agency than Man-Thing was usually given, but maybe he wasn't as mindless as back in the day.
3 comments:
I don't remember Anti-Cap, but after reading his entry, he seems like a slight Bane rip-off to a certain degree. I'm sure he'll be brought back at some point. Protocide I definitely remember from older issues of Wizard magazine. I get what Jurgens was trying to do, but the character seemed like someone only the creator would only ever love & use regularly. I'm surprised Brubaker didn't use Bucky to kill him off like he did Nomad & so many others.
Having Sallis claim he wasn't really trying to re-create the super soldier serum is most definitely a HUGE retcon by Orlando. I really don't get the reason & reasoning behind blatantly contradicting such a huge factor in Man-Thing's origin like that. Without having to look all this up & read it, what WAS he supposedly really doing then?
I'm not 100% sure what Sallis was on about there: I think he was in it for the long green--cash, that is; as opposed to the usual "USA! USA!" ideology. Or maybe his version of the serum wasn't a recreation as much as...a counterfeit? Like, it was supposed to do the same thing, but his didn't work the same way, or wouldn't have worked the same way if it had worked.
Well he certainly wasn’t doing it solely out of a sense of patriotism, but was most definitely getting directly funded by the US government. Where his morals come into play is when AIM wants said formula & he refuses, leading to him becoming Man-Thing. Is that no longer canon either, him doing the right thing?
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