Marvel's Man-Thing Omnibus [New Printing] - Collectible Hardcover Edition for Comic Book Fans & Marvel Enthusiasts | Perfect for Gifts, Display & Reading

Let's be clear about something right from the start: my 5 stars are solely for the Steve Gerber portion of this collection. While the stories by other writers range from solid to competent to just plain awful, it's Steve Gerber's take on Marvel's muck monster that makes this volume worth owning & reading. Really, it should simply have contained Gerber's work, perhaps with one or two of the earliest origin stories by previous writers to set the groundwork, and nothing more. Nor should any other writer have ever been allowed to write Man-Thing after Gerber left the book.Why?Because, even more so than Alan Moore on his justly acclaimed run on DC's Swamp Thing, writer Steve Gerber was the heart & soul of what would otherwise have been just one more variation on a rather generic horror comic book. The horrors he wrote about were human, psychological, social, existential; his stories were more like episodes of "The Twilight Zone" or "Route 66" (for example) in that they encompassed so much, with such richness & insight into the human condition. He didn't care a bit about the geek minutia that consumes so many these days -- what mattered to him was the encounter with life itself, both good & bad.True, some of his work here is raw & a little heavy-handed, especially at the beginning. But he was a young man shaped by the 1960s, burning with talent & ideals & honesty, striving to say something worthwhile & meaningful. First steps for such a creator are almost always clumsy ones. In any case, he found his stride very quickly & gave his readers stories that were always moving, startling, sometimes disturbing, often surreal, always passionate & memorable. Whether it was the wonderfully absurd introduction of Howard the Duck or the anguish of soul-devoured writer Brian Lazarus, the poignancy of Dawg or the utterly bleak book-burning in Citrusville, he offered a panoply of stories that hit home every time.I've no doubt that some will dismiss his work as dated, crude, certainly nowhere near as slick & glib as many contemporary comics. He even anticipated that change in the culture, and lived through it himself -- see his final Man-Thing story, written in the 1980s but not published until this year & in a separate volume, "Screenplay of the Living Dead Man" for proof. It's left the youthful exuberance of these earlier stories behind, but is even more heartbreakingly honest.Meanwhile, if you appreciate truly good, thoughtful writing, then you won't go wrong with Gerber's work here. This is the reason I kept on reading comics after my teens, eagerly anticipating & immersing myself in each new issue. Gerber spoke to my own feelings about life in America as it entered the 1970s & raced toward the shattered present ... and I think he spoke to the feelings of many others as well. In a way, he was writing autobiographical independent comics before they actually existed, using the stable of corporate superheroes to tell his own very personal stories. Of course he was bound to be disappointed & discarded when he asserted himself -- the Powers That Be will only allow honesty as long as it doesn't cut into profit & control. It was a story he himself told many times in his work, writing what he lived & living what he wrote.And now he's gone, and we'll see no further work from him. This is indeed a pity, because his scathing, outraged, idealistic vision is needed all the more now in a mass-produced, mass-marketed culture that glories in the superficial & denies the painful truths of human suffering & existence. Still, we have these stories, more than 35 years old & just as relevant as ever, demanding that we tear ourselves away from our empty distractions & genuinely see ourselves & our fellow human beings, as well as the unsatisfactory world in which we live. If one function of art is to confront us with & awaken us to the things we fear to acknowledge, then Steve Gerber's work is surely art.Most highly recommended!