Man-Thing

Dr. Ted Sallis was a biochemist working on a super-soldier formula in the Florida Everglades when agents came for his research. He injected himself with the serum, crashed his car into the swamp, and the combination of the formula, the mud and the mystical energy of the Nexus of All Realities produced something that is no longer him. Man-Thing has almost no mind. What it has instead is an absolute, involuntary sensitivity to fear, and anything that feels fear in its presence burns.

It is also the guardian of the Nexus of All Realities, the single point where every dimension in the Marvel multiverse touches. That makes a nearly mindless swamp creature one of the most cosmically important entities in the setting, which is very much the joke and very much not. Steve Gerber's 1970s run used the character for some of the strangest, most literary work Marvel has ever published.

Man-Thing debuted in Savage Tales #1 in 1971, part of Marvel's horror expansion, credited to Roy Thomas, Gerry Conway and Gray Morrow from a Stan Lee concept. Steve Gerber's subsequent run in Adventure into Fear and the character's own title turned a swamp monster into a vehicle for satire, existential horror and genuinely experimental storytelling.

Adventure into Fear #19 in 1973, a Man-Thing story, introduced Howard the Duck, which remains the single most consequential thing to happen in one of his comics. He went on to become a founding member of the Legion of Monsters and a fixture of the Midnight Sons, and Marvel keeps reviving him whenever a story needs the Nexus of All Realities.