Avengers: Curse of the Man-Thing #1 Review

“Am I finally not alone?”--Doctor Ted Sallis

Writer: Steve Orlando

Artist: Francesco Mobili

Color Artist: GURU-eFX

Letterer: VC’s Clayton Cowles

Cover Artist: Daniel Acuña

Logo Design: Adam del Re

Avengers: Curse of the Man-Thing shows us the return of Man-Thing, a beloved, but often overlooked, character in the 616. This year makes the 50th anniversary of the creation of Man-Thing who first appeared in Savage Tales #1. Oddly enough, Man-Thing premiered just a couple of months before Len Wein debuted a certain character with similar traits over at the Distinguished Competition (even though they were both made independently of each other as the story goes). 

The question is, did Man-Thing make a triumphant return in this issue? I hate to break it to you, but this is pretty much the opposite of whatever a triumphant return looks like in comics. The story itself is pretty “meh”. The villainess in this story “The Harrower” is really just a cheap knockoff of Poison Ivy over at DC. It’s not even a good knockoff of the character, sad to say. I feel like this story is what comes out when you have a lot of people putting the story in a committee and this is what the compromise is. It just is not that exciting and it is a jumbled mess. Which is sad because I really did have high hopes for this story. 

Then there is the artwork. I am a huge artwork nerd in comics and I typically find artwork that I like even if the story is bad. Unfortunately, not this time either. It just feels lacking and all over the place very similar to the story. Sometimes, art can really save a story. Just not this time. Everything about this book just feels so rushed. 

You know the trope of the man that forgets his wife’s birthday and gets her a gift at the local gas station on the way home? That is pretty much what this story feels like. It is almost as if Marvel said “oh, we have Man-Thing’s 50th anniversary coming up, we really need to put out a book.” The best part about this book is that a writer and a team of artists were paid to do it.