Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hi, my Name is Robert Lammin. This is the Monster Fact,
Speaker 2: a short form series from Stuff to Blow Your Mind,
Speaker 2: focusing in non mythical creatures, ideas and monsters in time.
Speaker 2: Let us return to the pages of Marvel Comics to
Speaker 2: consider a true monster. Man Thing. It's not to be
Speaker 2: confused with DC's swamp Thing, but he stands as something
Speaker 2: of his spiritual twin sibling, So both man Thing and
Speaker 2: swamp Thing are hybrid swamp based humanoids created through an
Speaker 2: explosive collision of humanity, mad science and swamp water. Both
Speaker 2: characters hit the comics for the first time in nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy one. However, most commentators seem to see it merely
Speaker 2: as coincidence and point to very differences in the characters.
Speaker 2: Plus Marvel's walking swamp creature the Heap, predates both of them,
Speaker 2: dating back to the early nineteen forties, as does the
Speaker 2: muck Monster It from Street and Smith Comics. Still, these
Speaker 2: various swamp beings become linked. They have a kinship, and
Speaker 2: you'll even find a panel in Alan Moore's swamp Thing
Speaker 2: run visually suggesting kinship between swamp Thing, man Thing, the Heap,
Speaker 2: and others. But I've already talked about swamp Thing on
Speaker 2: the Monster fact, so let's get serious about man Thing.
Speaker 2: As pointed out by Kelly Knox in the book Monsters
Speaker 2: Creatures of the Marvel Universe, man Thing started off with
Speaker 2: a human scientist named Ted Sallus. Now, like a lot
Speaker 2: of Marvel comic books, scientists, Ted worked on super soldier serums,
Speaker 2: at least until enemies tried to take it from him.
Speaker 2: Ted then injected himself with the serum and accidentally wrecked
Speaker 2: his car in the Everglades and was also exposed to
Speaker 2: extra dimensional forces in the process. So what emerged from
Speaker 2: the swamp was neither man nor Thing, but man Thing,
Speaker 2: a humanoid swamp creature that would become the guardian of
Speaker 2: the Nexus of Reality, where science and magic converge. Man
Speaker 2: Thing boasts incredible strength and can throw down with the
Speaker 2: toughest of physical opponents, but some of his most impressive
Speaker 2: powers are due to his empathy. Man Thing is so
Speaker 2: empathic that negative emotions in others can cause him physical
Speaker 2: pain and distress, especially when he senses fear. This will
Speaker 2: also cause him to lash out violently at individuals in
Speaker 2: the throes of fear and lay his burning hands upon them.
Speaker 2: Man Thing's burning hands are fascinating superpower, brought to life
Speaker 2: most wonderfully in the twenty twenty two MCU Werewolf by
Speaker 2: Night special, which captures it as a kind of holy
Speaker 2: fire that incinerates Ted's victims. On one level, this seems
Speaker 2: to be just another version of various magical tales in
Speaker 2: which creatures feed off of fear or sense fear in others,
Speaker 2: as if it is an actual energy or a quantifiable substance.
Speaker 2: Man Thing's abilities, however, are frequently explained in terms of chemistry.
Speaker 2: NOx attributes his burning touch to chemicals in man Thing's
Speaker 2: body and sumeric and wallace in marvel anatomy. The authors
Speaker 2: here presume that this chemical secretion is something akin to
Speaker 2: sulphuric acid, that it's excreted through man Thing's pores. I
Speaker 2: suppose we might compare this ability to the self defensive
Speaker 2: secretions of various natural world organisms, and given man things
Speaker 2: plant based physiology, we have to acknowledge that certain plants
Speaker 2: do secrete acidic substances through their roots, in some cases
Speaker 2: to dissolve rocky soil, and in other cases to eradicate competition.
Speaker 2: But what about this notion that a monster like man, thing,
Speaker 2: or even a natural world organism can quote sense fear.
Speaker 2: It's a common trope, but is there anything to it.
Speaker 2: Certainly there is no true sixth sense for fear in
Speaker 2: which humans or other animals can tap into an otherwise
Speaker 2: invisible video game fear meter. Fear, like other human defined
Speaker 2: emotional states, is hard to quantify in animals and subject
Speaker 2: to human testing bias, as Ralph Adolf's discussed in the
Speaker 2: twenty thirteen Current Biology article The Biology of Fear. Some
Speaker 2: argue that fear is a mere psychological construct and something
Speaker 2: we can't apply to animals as we cannot truly know
Speaker 2: their minds. On the other hand, neuroimaging in rodents would
Speaker 2: seem to reveal a clear fear network in their brains.
Speaker 2: Ad also stressed a distinction to be made between the
Speaker 2: conscious human feeling of being afraid and fear as a
Speaker 2: functional state of an organism. This state exists in relation
Speaker 2: to fear inducing stimuli, which for humans at least can
Speaker 2: be in the present past or in imagined future, and
Speaker 2: induces fearful behavior. Fear in both cognition and behavior is
Speaker 2: largely adaptive, and it is because fear can help us survive,
Speaker 2: though of course, all of this can become maladaptive as well. Now,
Speaker 2: man things relation to fear is interesting in light of
Speaker 2: all of this. He acutely fears the effects of another
Speaker 2: organism's fear, but the source of his own emotional distress
Speaker 2: in this scenario is not the fear inducing stimuli that
Speaker 2: caused the original distress, but the distressed organism itself, which
Speaker 2: he may then incinerate with his burning hands due to
Speaker 2: a fear response chemical secretion in his own body. So
Speaker 2: there's a lot to unpact there. But hey, still a
Speaker 2: pretty great swamp monster and I'm always down for a
Speaker 2: cool swamp monster. Tune in for additional episodes of The
Speaker 2: Monster Fact each week. As always, you can email us
Speaker 2: at contact at stuff Toble your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.