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Man-Thing

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Vigilante
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« on: November 08, 2008, 06:06:49 pm »

Onslaught/Heroes Reborn

After Onslaught, Man-Thing was somehow summoned to the biosphere at Charles Xavier's Massachusetts Academy, where he helped Franklin Richards, Leech, Artie Maddicks, Tana Nile, and Howard the Duck escape from a rampaging Black Tom Cassidy.[71] Apparently, he helped the group escape from a dark swordsman through various dimensions, and during this time, gained the ability to talk, though he did not speak much like Ted Sallis of old.[72] He expressed that he had no idea how he was doing this, and in fact, he was not. Everything they were seeing, including a world based on Dr. Seuss and a version of Duckworld in which Howard is seen as a hero and celebrity, as well as Man-Thing's speaking, are all products of Franklin's mutant mental abilities. When Franklin is willing to accept that even the dark swordsman, a figure representing the apparent death of his family, was his own creation, the group is returned to Man-Thing's swamp.[73] Man-Thing becomes Franklin's self-appointed protector, but when Franklin loses the pocket universe he carries to an alligator, his fear draws Man-Thing to turn on him. Although Franklin is able to destroy the alligator, with much sadness, in order to retrieve it, before Man-Thing can touch him, this close call presents him as a superfluous threat to Franklin in the perception of a Celestial. This Celestial causes Man-Thing to feel fear, self-immolate, and collapse into the swamp.[74]

This was not the end of Man-Thing. He somehow merged with a Norn Stone Bearer named Carl Shuffler, a postal worker in New York City. He initially manifested himself non-physically and with extremely high power, causing all those in Shuffler's very presence to burn at the slightest knowing of fear, with no contact. Eventually developing into a hybrid of Shuffler and Man-Thing's features, they are separated by Spider-Man, who gets a dose of the enormous empathic power of Man-Thing and learns that the latter's body, now sloughed off by a surviving Shuffler, is being reformulated in the Everglades.[75]

The immense psychic energy created by Man-Thing's return draws his wife, Ellen Brandt Sallis, to return to the Citrusville area. She is still half-scarred from the Man-Thing's touch. The existence of the scars contradicts the story in Monsters Unleashed #5 in which her second husband, Leonard, a plastic surgeon, fixes her. Recognizing him as her husband, she tries to save Man-Thing from a hail of bullets; Doctor Strange saves them both. Man-Thing is also set-upon a enormous mission--the Nexus of All Realities has shattered due to the return of the non-mutant heroes lost in Franklin's pocket universe after conquering Onslaught, and he must reassemble the pieces, and Ellen is to be his guide, though she knows not how.[76] A being calling himself Mr. Termineus is interested in both of them, as well as a little boy named Job Burke, who is actually the Sallis' son, who had been put up for adoption. He presents them with a singing staff that apparently has much power, including the ability to lead and transport them to the pieces, and sometimes it is able to sing through Man-Thing, temporarily turning him white when it does so.[77]

The first piece of the Nexus found is trapped within the mind of Eric Simon Payne (also known as Devil-Slayer), who is now in a mental institution in Charles, Massachusetts where Ellen had once been a patient.[78] The next was in Howard the Duck, who had been kidnapped by the Cult of Entropy, who wanted to help along the multi-world destruction.[79] The third was held by Cleito, wife of Poseidon, and Namor intervened, as her tomb was sacred to all Atlanteans and he would not allow its desecration. A sea deity called Evenor transforms Man-Thing back into Ted Sallis, and takes him, Ellen, whom he has turned into an undine, and Namor back to ancient Atlantis, where a living Cleito gives up the piece willingly.[80] The fourth went into outer space and began turning a dead world into a live one. K'Ad-mon, an entity that had taken possession of Man-Thing through the staff, spoke in a brutal and hypermasculine (in Ellen's words) fashion and fought the Silver Surfer in order to reclaim the fragment.[81]

Soon after, the Burkes learned of the existence of Mr. Termineus and the identity of Job's biological parents. The story breaks off when Payne and Sorrow (another of the asylum inmates; both made mystics in issue #5) intervene in his gambit.[82] The story continued in issues 3 and 4, but they were never published. Summaries based on DeMatteis's unillustrated scripts appear on the K'Ad-mon and Ellen Brandt pages on Appendix to the Handbook of the Marvel Universe, provided to the site by the author.[16][15]

When next Man-Thing appears, in Peter Parker: Spider-Man Annual '99, his body, now white, is now fully the vessel of K'Ad-mon, while Ted and Ellen saved the multiverse by merging fully with the Nexus. This was possible because Ted Sallis was "of the lineage." The couple is both fully merged and fully individual, and Ted has to leave Ellen in charge of the Nexus of the course of the story. A footnote refers us to the "as-yet unpublished" stories in Strange Tales 3 & 4. K'Ad-mon is described as being the first soul on the planet. The Appendix to the Handbook of the Marvel Universe goes so far as to say , based on communications with DeMatteis, that this is Adam, who had previously appeared as the entity Spyros, whom Daimon Hellstrom encountered during Gerber's Marvel Spotlight run.[16] In this issue, K'Ad-mon departs from Man-Thing's body, and Ted must reposess it, sending Spider-Man through multiple realities to rescue Ellen, drained to a thread. Spider-Man is shocked that Man-Thing could be married, can sing, and wonders when he got bleached, but he complies. In spite of the weakness of Ellen, Man-Thing speaks (not sings) with the voices of Ted and Ellen of how he foiled a plot that K'Ad-mon had been forced to allow, because the two of them are "only human."

When we next see Man-Thing in Hulk #4, he still has his long, shamanistic "hair," but he is once again green and silent. In Hulk #6, this Man-Thing is said to have a dim memory of the K'Ad-mon experience, but in Hulk #7, the story's villain, Owen Candler, is revealed to be a plant monster who only thinks it is Owen Candler, just like Swamp Thing. All of his vegetable matter people and animals, including Betty Ross Banner and this Man-Thing, collapse into nonexistence after he is burned to death by Man-Thing, who still has this ability in spite of apparently not being the real thing.

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