Marvel’s Halloween particular, Werewolf by Night, brings new flavors to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. There’s the Hammer Horror of all of it, and the stark black and white colours, and naturally, the titular werewolf.

But there’s one other monster making his debut in Werewolf by Night, with one of the vital notorious names in Marvel Comics historical past: Man-Thing. And the hour-long particular doesn’t even do him the courtesy of calling him by his identify!

[Ed. note: This piece contains spoilers for Werewolf by Night on Disney Plus.]

Photo: Marvel Studios

Werewolf by Night calls collectively a cadre of elite monster hunters in a aggressive hunt to determine who will take up the coveted Bloodstone, which has some type of energy that forces monsters to disclose themselves. The story will get twistier than there, however suffice to say, the mysterious monster on the coronary heart of the problem is an enormous, craggy swamp creature named Ted, with the ability to incinerate together with his contact.

But in Marvel Comics, Ted goes by one other identify.

That’s Man-Thing, not Swamp Thing

Image: Marvel Studios

Created in 1971 by writers Stan Lee, Roy Thomas, and Gerry Conway, and artist Gray Morrow, Man-Thing was once Dr. Ted Sallis, a scientist who — like each different scientist within the Marvel Comics universe — was attempting to reengineer Steve Rogers’ super-soldier serum. Fleeing much less scrupulous mad scientists with the one proof of his serum, Sallis injected himself with the chemical simply earlier than crashing his automobile right into a magical swamp. There, he mixed forces with the natural materials and was reworked into the large, inexperienced, mush-faced swamp monster he’s at the moment.

Wait a minute, you’re asking, isn’t that precisely the identical as Swamp Thing, the DC Comics character? The reply is, sure. At the time the that author Len Wein was developing with Swamp Thing, his roommate Gerry Conway had put Man-Thing on the web page over a yr earlier. No accusations of plagiarism had been ever made — although they’ve a shared origin and look, the 2 characters diverged fairly precipitously from there. Swamp Thing was ultimately retconned to be an elemental pressure of nature who solely thought it had as soon as been a human scientist, and Man-Thing was at all times extra of a cult fave than a greatest vendor at Marvel. Legal motion by no means materialized.

Another fairly massive distinction between Man-Thing and Swamp Thing is the previous’s signature superpower: Lighting individuals on freakin’ hearth. As the tagline of later Man-Thing tales would put it, “Whatever knows fear burns at the Man-Thing’s touch!” Man-Thing may not be capable to discuss, however he’s nonetheless a really empathetic monster who can sense sturdy feelings. He turns into agitated by destructive ones, and burns his opponents with chemical-mystical hearth.

And sure, all people simply is aware of him as Man-Thing! Not Ted!

Heheh, Man-Thing is type of… uh… type of a humorous identify, isn’t it?

Image: Mike Ploog/Marvel Comics

Yes. And that’s what makes it nice.