The series will see Man-Thing’s body being hijacked by a new enemy, the Harrower (designed by Carmen Carnero), who wants to use his pyrokinetic powers to set the whole world ablaze. “Only the Avengers [stand] between the population of Earth and a planetwide inferno,” reads the synopsis. “Can they save Man-Thing in time to douse the fires? And does the man inside the thing, Ted Sallis, even want to be saved?”
Orlando commented in the interview with Bloody Disgusting, “It is honestly amazing to be welcomed to Marvel and tell this nailbiter of a story that’s going to remind people just how unique Man-Thing is. He’ll be better positioned than ever to shock and scare readers and villains alike, but first he’ll have to survive an attack that cuts him to his core and sets the Marvel Universe ablaze.” He stated the next two issues will co-star Spider-Man and the X-Men, because Harrower is a former member of the Hordeculture, the eco-terrorists introduced in ‘Dawn of X.’ “Harrower feels we’ve had our shot, and that another species deserves a shot at a billion years of evolution and being top of the food chain,” he explained. “She believes hard enough that she abandons the science Hordeculture raised her on for the supernatural, something that gets her disowned by her mentors… and unleashed on the world.” He also teased the Darwinian X-Men villains the Dark Riders will also get involved.
Man-Thing was created by Stan Lee, Roy Thomas, Gerry Conway, and Gray Morrow, and made his first appearance in “Savage Tales” #1 (cover dated May 1971). The character debuted between the first and second incarnations of Len Wein and Bernie Wrightson’s Swamp Thing at DC; Wein was Conway’s roommate at the time, and Thomas once commented, “We weren’t happy with the situation over the ‘Swamp Thing’ #1 origin, but we figured it was an accident. Gerry was rooming with Len at the time and tried to talk him into changing the Swamp Thing’s origin. Len didn’t see the similarities, so he went ahead with what he was going to do. The two characters verged off after that origin, so it didn’t make much difference, anyway.”
“Avengers: Curse of the Man-Thing” will be released in March. Marvel will also celebrate the anniversary with a series of variant covers that month, depicting various characters as “Things,” eg. Bernard Chang’s “Captain Marvel-Thing” on the cover of “Captain Marvel” #27.
