X-Lapsed, Episode 203 – X-Men: Curse of the Man-Thing #1 (2021)
Today we cover a One-Shot… that is actually a Part III… which includes Chapters 7-9 of a story that started two One-Shots ago… and ran through a second One-Shot, that all had different names. Also, it’s just not very good!
Today I’m going to complain all about it… and Steve Orlando’s wildly unnatural sounding dialogue!
Plus: Great Mailbag, including the return of a recently X-Lapsed friend
And – a plea to the comics social media bubble NOT to rush to spoil this week’s Planet-Sized X-Men (ehh, who am I kidding… it’s GOING to be spoiled for us…)
The ALL-NEW ALL-DIFFERENT X-Lapsed Voicemail!
623-396-5375 (or, 623-396-JERK)… as in “Professor Xavier is a…” and not anything off-color! Shame on you for thinking it was!
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Twitter: @acecomics / Instagram: @90sxmen
What a load of old nonsense. It is books like this one that trained me not to be an X-Men completist by showing that Marvel is willing to put the title X-Men on the cover of books which have nothing to do with the X-Men. This should have been an issue 3. The fact that this is in 3 separate chapters makes me wonder if this was initially designed to run as back-ups in a series of different comics as part of a publicity-drive for a new Man-Thing series. The over-explanation of previous chapters is a very Marvel Comics Presents kind of thing. I don't know, I haven't read a lot of Steve Orlando maybe he's just wordy.
Ultimately the error is to write a story about Man-Thing. All the best Man-Thing stories are about the characters who end up coalescing around him and the nexus of realities. He should not be the protagonist, he should be in the background empathetically responding to the protagonists. Someone should have made Orlando read the Gerber or Claremont runs on Man-Thing or his use in X-Men First Class.
Great art though.