You’ve Never Read Strange Tales #2 Starring Man-Thing by DeMatteis and Sharp?!
Part X: The end?
Nothing lasts forever, and that unfortunately includes the Man-Thing story from J.M. DeMatteis and Liam Sharp I’ve been reminiscing on for the last ten weeks. It’s been a wild ride that has included visits by Doctor Strange, Howard the Duck, Namor the Sub-Mariner, and the Silver Surfer as Man-Thing and Ellen Brandt have journeyed to every corner of the Marvel Universe in search of Nexus fragments in order to repair the Nexus of All Realities and stave off the destruction of the multiverse. Pretty low stakes stuff. So how does this story wrap up? Let’s dive into Strange Tales #2 and find out!
The issue opens right where the previous one left off with that no-good-son-of-a-bitch Termineus and his disciple Job (who is the biological son of Man-Thing and Ellen) sitting in a boat before Job’s adopted parents and the town sheriff. As the two parents rush to their son, they are quickly joined by Man-Thing and Ellen who proclaims that Job is hers. Sharp is really swinging for the fences right off the bat in this issue with some very experimental art styles. The page with Man-Thing and Ellen is gorgeous. It has this blurred ethereal style that makes it seem like it’s taking place in another world altogether.
The sheriff unsurprisingly opens fire on Man-Thing, but it has no effect on the creature. Man-Thing reaches out and places his hand on the sheriff’s face. I sure hope he isn’t afraid for his sake. Apparently he wasn’t afraid because the sheriff is engulfed in feelings of bliss as opposed to flames. Before anything else can happen, Job’s adopted mother rushes to greet her son. Instead of joining her, Job calls her a dream and begins to cause her to dematerialize into vapor. I think someone needs a timeout. Before she vanishes altogether, Man-Thing (controlled by the staff) commands Job to stop. He immediately returns her to her normal state as Man-Thing goes to confront Termineus.
Termineus addresses Man-Thing as K’ad-Mon (this apparently being the name of the being inhabiting Man-Thing’s body through the staff). As Termineus begins to speak to K’ad-Mon in his typical obnoxious tone, the most satisfying thing in the entire story to date happens: Man-Thing/K’ad-Mon punches Termineus in the face. He had it coming!
Ellen interrupts the confrontation to demand answers for what the hell is happening. She’s been pretty patient all things considered, but now she wants to know what her son has to do with all of this. Job approaches Ellen appearing to want a hug, but instead he snatches the necklace that she’s wearing that is made up of all of the Nexus fragments she and Man-Thing have obtained thus far. Termineus is overjoyed thinking Job is retrieving them for him, but instead he puts on the necklace himself and tells Termineus where he can go (spoiler alert: it’s not somewhere pleasant). Job immediately transforms into a god-like being (once again beautifully illustrated by Liam Sharp) and demands to know what he is.
K’ad-Mon responds by bringing forth the Book of Life for all in attendance to gaze upon. The Book of Life then begins to speak. This monologue from the sentient book goes on for five pages which I feel has to be a record for a comic book. There is no way I could properly do justice to DeMatteis’s writing here by summarizing it, so I’m just going to quote it verbatim:
What we tell you now, the Book proclaimed, you may take as myth or allegory. But know that, even if every word we speak is a lie, the essence of what we communicate here is the unquestionable truth. So still your hearts now, still your minds—and hear our tale:
Once the universes lived and breathed, afire with passion and rage, holiness and despair. Once the races of humankind…and all kinds…drew themselves up out of the pit. Once, upon an Earth so like this current Earth and yet so utterly unlike it, there was a Golden Age unimaginable in its glory.
But all things die; and so, in the dream of time, died the universes. The Creator grew tired of Hir creation and called it back into Hirself. All things and beings collapsed in shards and shadows, and plunged into the Sea of Nothing from which everything sprang.
And, for a timeless time, the Ocean of Creation was dark and still. God slumbered in a deep and dreamless sleep; so deep that the Creator forgot even Hirself.
And then, from the depths of the divine unconscious, there came again the inevitable whim…the urge. The desire to know Hirself—and to express in form the essence of all the Creator was/is/shall ever be.
But the Creator was all. How, then, to express that all? How then to know Hirself? The answer was the answer was the answer.
The Creator would dream—of darkness and light, love and hate, male and female, life and death. God would dream Hirself into Hir dream and play every role. And, through the dream (which had been dreamed before, which would be dreamed again). God would complete and fulfill Hirself.
So the Sea of Creation began to revolve, the sacred energies whirling as God’s thoughts whirled. And, from the heart of creation a hand emerged. And, in that hand: a staff. And from the staff, the light. And from the light…
…the dream took form. The fallen stars were born; living beings—each one the embodiment of a divine thought, a divine feeling. Each one unique in the role it would play in the drama of creation.
The stars took shape and fell from the sky—down through the void: as the stardust from their widening wings sprayed across the heavens, whole universes arose. Planets pushed up, like squalling babies, from the depths of the Cosmic Ocean. Galaxies careened, dizzy and joyful, across forever.
And, as it was before, as it would always be, one planet played the crucial role. One planet was the heart and soul of God’s dream. Each time it was different, each time the same:
Born amidst the upheavals of the newborn dream. Seas of lava rushed across the face of the Earth. And the Creator looked down upon her—and hurled the staff into the boiling heart of the new world.
From the mind of the staff, the first land formed. And the land birthed the first woman. Her names are as numberless as the religions that still worship her; but we shall call her Cleito, Mother of All Things. Embodiment of the illusion: the urge to be—enfleshed.
From Cleito’s loins sprang the first man, her perfect mate—yet in all ways her opposite. For if Cleito was the illusion itself given substance, belief, and acceptance—the man was the only being in all the untold universes who knew that Creation was nothing more than dream into dream. For he was dream and dreamer both:
He was K’ad-Mon, first Man of the Lineage.
It was K’ad-Mon’s duty to maintain the dream. Without him everything would dissolve, dissipate, into mist and shadow, dreamstuff and fading memory. Let all others follow Cleito, embracing and exulting in God’s majestic illusion—for this was Hir will. Only the Man of the Lineage would bear the burden of the truth.
And the place where Cleito and K’ad-Mon were born, where the staff formed woman’s wisdom and man’s strength, was the focal point of the dream—where every universe, every parallel and intersecting fancy, came together:
The Nexus—of All Realities.
Down through the ages the lineage continued. Down through the ages…
…each descendant of K’ad-Mon was initiated into the mysteries, accepting his role as keeper of the dream.
But as time (the dream of time) passed, the Men of the Lineage fell deeper into the illusion. More and more they began to forget who they were, what they were, their part in the holy play.
And it became more difficult for the fallen stars whose role it was to guide these men out of sleep to awaken the sons of K’ad-Mon to their destiny.
So at last one Man of the Lineage turned his face away from the stars, unable to see their glory. Unable to see anything—but illusion.
And that man’s actions, the Book concluded, had dire consequences for all the infinite dreams contained…
…within the Creator’s dream.
Hoo boy. J.M. DeMatteis really just wrote an entire creation myth for all of reality in the pages of a Man-Thing story. It’s a fascinating one too. It clearly pulls inspiration from Gnosticism with the idea that the reality we perceive is a false reality (in this case a dream concocted by God), and only these Men of the Lineage are equipped to see the truth. It’s a very interesting idea, but I don’t think I’ve seen any other writers pick up on it in later stories.
Back to the story at hand, Termineus reveals to Man-Thing that he is the Man of the Lineage. Termineus had come to him as a child to awaken him to the nature of reality. Man-Thing rejected this, and his rejection was the true cause of the Nexus of All Realities shattering. Since he couldn’t get through to Man-Thing all those years ago, he was now trying to do so with his son Job. His ultimate goal being to convince Job to “undream the dream” and bring all of existence to an end.
It’s at this moment that Termineus is interrupted by Sorrow and Eric Payne. They had gathered the fallen stars from the Book’s creation myth and were prepared to engage Termineus in a final battle to save the multiverse.
And that’s how it ends! Strange Tales was canceled following this issue, and the story has never been completed. What an absolutely brutal way to go out. If you’re like me, you’re probably dying to see this story completed. Both DeMatteis and Sharp have mentioned on Twitter about how they would love to finish it one day.
While that is unlikely, it’s nice to know that such a great story from my youth has generated such fond memories for the creators as well. Hopefully Marvel will one day collect them in trade if enough people express interest. If nothing else, I hope this retrospective series inspires at least one person to track down these comics and read them.
Hey, you might want to check out Peter Parker: Spider-Man Annual '99, written by DeMatteis with art by Sharp and co-starring Man-Thing. It kinda goes over what would have happened in the cancelled last two issues of Strange Tales. It's very much a consolation prize, but better than nothing. And hey, it's more DeMatteis/Sharp Man-Thing material, which is always a treat!
Many thanks for this!