man thing

[daz71]

i was watching an episode on night gallery last night and there was a creature in it that looked like man-thing .did marvel steal this or vice versa.

night gallery.jpg

[thunderbolt]

Depends which season its from, but Man-Thing debuted in 71, so it was probably in the works in 70.

[daz71]

season 2.so probably around the same time.

[Brazoo]

Oh cool! I don't know this episode.

(It kinda also looks like a modified Ghillie suit.)



I don't know the chronology, but I believe there's been swamp-men type characters since the 40s starting with It, then Heap. According to Wiki Man-Thing came out in 71 and the Night Gallery "Brenda" came out in the same year. Very interesting. Something in the water?

[daz71]

i wonder if there was a lot of reports of grass man type sightings around the time.

[Brazoo]

Is that lumpy nose part always in the same place, or does it just seem like his nose in that shot?

[daz71]

yes that's what reminded me of man-thing it's always in the same place.

[Brazoo]

yes that's what reminded me of man-thing it's always in the same place.

Totally! Good call!

I wonder if that double nose carrot part is sort of a side effect of trying to style the swamp hair/fuzz so the eyes would show up better?

[daz71]

it could be unless they saw a man thing comic and just stole it.would be interesting to know who had the idea first it one had to have seen the other being so similar and from the same year.

[hedrap]

The events order looks like Man-Thing originated in the B/W mag in May '71, Night Gallery happens in November, then Man-Thing doesn't re-publish until '72.

My bet would be Night Gallery artists read Savage Tales 1, then when Tales was cancelled M-T disappeared for months as "Brenda" was sent into pre-production, so they did a homage to Morrow's design.

[daz71]

i bet you are right. i thought it was too much of a coincidence, they just looked too alike.

[MRP]

The Heap from the Golden Age had a similar nose design...




and Skywald had revived the Heap in 1971 as well. House of Secrets featuring the debut of the proto-Swamp Thing character by Wein and Wrightson also debuted in early 1971.

There's a lot of cross-pollination or parallel development going on. It is hard to trace who did what when and publication/release dates don't really help as a lot of the stuff was in the works for a while before it got released.

Considering the lead time filming of TV episodes require, and the lead time design/sfx teams need ahead of filming even on shoestring tv budgets, it's like the pre-production on that episode occurred before Savage Tale s(which has very poor distribution btw) was released.

It's more likely they were all familiar with the Heap and were riffing off of that design as that is the only clear design that predates all the 70-71 work and would have been out there when those artists/creators were in their formative years being influenced by stuff they read.

-M

[daz71]

yes he looks similar too .i wonder what it was with the dangly noses.

[C.H.O.A.M.]

that's a great episode, very creepy weird.
from a story written by margaret st clair, I went and bought a book of her short stories after watching that one.
it's a shame serling couldn't do the show the way he wanted.

[daz71]

that's a great episode, very creepy weird.
from a story written by margaret st clair, I went and bought a book of her short stories after watching that one.
it's a shame serling couldn't do the show the way he wanted.

very weird the girl is pretty crazy.