EvenStan Leewas surprised that he didn’t lift the ideaof Marvel’s Man-Thingfromrival DC Comics' Swamp Thing. The parallels between the two characters, both introduced in the 1970s within just a few months of one another, are more than a little over, to the point where even Lee thought one must have influenced the other.
The magazineComic Book Artist#2 published “A Conversation Between Stan Lee and Roy Thomas,” in which the pair of Marvel legends talked about their years working together for the publisher.
When Thomas said that Lee gave him the concept for Man-Thing, Stan the Man had to confirm that the idea wasn’t lifted from their competitor.
Stan Lee Thought Marvel’s “Man-Thing” Was A Rip-Off Of DC’s “Swamp Thing,” But Marvel Was Actually First
Elsewhere in his dialogue with Roy Thomas, Stan Lee admits to having a particularly bad memory, so he certainly can’t be faulted for not remembering precisely how he came up with Man-Thing decades prior. That said, Stan’s uncertainty highlights the uncertainty surrounding the contemporaneous debuts of the Marvel character and his DC counterpart, Swamp Thing.
Here is Thomas and Lee’s exchange about the origins of Man-Thing:
Roy Thomas: Man-Thing was a sentence or two concept that you gave me for the first issue of Savage Tales.
Stan Lee: That came after Swamp Thing, didn’t it?
Roy: No, it came at the same time as the first one-shot “Swamp Thing” story, but before the regular series.
Stan: So we didn’t copy it from Swamp Thing?
Roy: No, or vice versa. In fact, I had done a character a little earlier in The Hulk that was also a takeoff on the Heap character from the ’40s comics. I had called it “The Shape,” but you insisted that name sounded feminine, so you changed it to “The Glob.”
In fact, Thomas' timeline is not 100% accurate. Man-Thing’s first appearance inSavage Tales#1 predated Swamp Thing’sHouse of Secrets#92 origin by several months in 1971, and so,if anything, Swamp Thing would have been inspired by Marvel’s character, not the other way around.
Yet Swamp Thing achieved a greater level of popularity, leading many to treat Man-Thing like the derivative character. Including, apparently, Stan Lee himself. Despite their similar designs, similar origin stories, and of course, similar names, Man-Thing and Swamp Thing have turned out to have significantly different character trajectories over the years.
Swamp Thing Ascended To Greater Popularity Than Man-Thing, But The Characters' Precise Origins Remain Murky
Over the years,Swamp Thinglore has repeatedly emphasized the character’s humanity, even if he is technically an inhuman creature made of swamp vegetation. Ironically, despite his Marvel opposite’s moniker, Man-Thing tends to be treated as more of a monster, and less of a man. Following their early ‘70s introductions, Swamp Thing quickly became overtly heroic, whereas Man-Thing’s morality is more ambiguous.
Swamp Thing’slegacy was cemented by a pair of ‘80s film adaptations, alongAlan Moore’s groundbreaking run on the DC seriesin the same decade.Man-Thing has his fans among Marvel diehards, and a recent MCU appearance somewhat raised his profile, but he remains much more of a niche character than his opposite.
To the point where years after the fact, Stan Lee couldn’t even be sure the character wasn’t a “copy” of the DC hero. While there are discrepancies in the origin story of both characters, in terms of the crossover of ideas between DC and Marvel,Stan Lee’stake on their connection says everything fans need to know about the two.
