oHOTmu or NOT Ep.71: Manslaughter to Marrina

A master of subliminal manipulation. The guardian of the Nexus of All Realities. The Celestial Madonna. The one hero from Newfoundland. Which are hot, which are not? The Girls of the Hot Squad will tell you as they continue reading the eighth issue of Marvel Universe Deluxe.

Featuring permanent panelists Elyse, Isabel, Nathalie, Josée, Shotgun, and Amélie.

Listen to Episode 71 below (the usual mature language warnings apply), or subscribe to oHOTmu OR NOT? on iTunes!

Relevant images and further credits at: oHOTmu or NOT ep.71 Supplemental

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23 responses to “oHOTmu or NOT Ep.71: Manslaughter to Marrina

  1. Manslaughter looks like a drunk I’ve seen at Mardi Gras, Man- Thing um Swamp Thing is BETTER MUCH BETTER end of story, Mantis in the comics sucks in the movies is awesome, Marrina when I think of Alpha Flight I always forget about her.

  2. Manslaughter: Man, this guy is a (not) hot mess, isn’t he? I can now see the Hiddleston in him. Maybe he’ll show up as Loki variant?

    Man-Thing: That panel of Man-Thing burning that guy always creeped me out, because the guy looks like a skeleton, but is obviously still alive, which tells us he was fully aware he was being disintegrated by a phalic-nosed swamp monster. Besides the eternal Giant-Size Man-Thing (snicker) gag, the character is also notorious for having one of his darkest comics adapted into a Power Records book and audio set for kids. It involves a clown who commits suicide in the issue, and then returns as a ghost. The drug use at Marvel in the 70s was kind of out of control, which leads us to…

    Mantis: The pet of writer Steve Englehart who is great elsewhere, but perhaps a tad too indulgent with this character… and maybe his drug use when writing these Avengers stories. Yes, she looks great as drawn by John Buscema, but MCU aside, is pretty awful. Englehart loved her so much he kept recreating her under other names at other publishers!

    Marrina: I never really followed Alpha Flight, but I was kind of shocked to see she would occasionally change into this nastier version. Her origin is actually kind of cool and unique, and I’m glad you guys have a “local” hero. I have Cannonball!!!

    Chris

    1. What are the other Mantises?

      As for Marrina being local, only if we stretch it. Going to Newfoundland is quite the trip for us (plane or forever on a ferry) and it sits in a different time zone. But Atlantic Canadians can’t be too picky.

      1. Englehart created the Mantis-in-everything-but-name character Willow in Justice League of America #142, and then he and Marshall Rogers created the character Lorelei in the Scorpio Rose title over at Eclipse. Both continued Mantis’ story, even though Englehart was probably the only one interested in it by this point.

        Chris

        1. Before rebranding Mantis as Willow and Lorelei, Engelhart also had a penchant for bringing Mantis with him to whichever Marvel title he happened to be scripting at the time. She was, of course, a major component to his Avengers run, but he also included brought her into his Silver Surfer run from the late 80s, where, in true Mary Sue fashion, the Surfer fell in love with her. Blech.

  3. A note on the skull-faced guy seen burning at the Man-Thing’s touch: Oddly enough, it isn’t the burning that’s making him look like that…he was like that before the Man-Thing got hold of him! This guy was one of Man-Thing’s few recurring enemies, a corrupt businessman named F.A. Schist. (When I read these comics as a young reader, it went completely over my head that his name spelled “fascist,” though now it seems painfully obvious.) In Schist’s final storyline, he managed to uncover a hidden village deep in Man-Thing’s swamp that was the home of the legendary Fountain of Youth. You can see it on the map of the swamp, labeled “La Hacienda (City of Rainbow Fountain).” When Schist realized what he’d stumbled onto, he demanded some of the Fountain-of-Youth water, and the village elders let him drink some…because they were so disgusted by his greed, they didn’t warn him that the secret of immortality isn’t to DRINK from the Fountain, but to bathe in it. The water turned him into a monstrous skull-faced freak (altering his outward appearance to reflect his inner corruption), and that’s when Man-Thing finally got hold of Schist, Schist was terrified both by his own transformation and by the Man-Thing, and thus “whatever knows fear burns at the touch of the Man-Thing!”

    It must have been tricky for Steve Gerber and Marvel’s other writers to keep Man-Thing from harming innocents, given that he was both mostly-mindless and reacted badly to fear…let’s face it, fear would be the natural reaction of ANYONE who saw the Man-Thing, and yet he somehow managed to burn only the evil people.

  4. Fun episode as always ladies (and Siskoid of course).

    Perhaps Mantis should get shipped off with Sun Boy?

  5. Impressive pod cast. Most impressive. Manslaughter….er. Well the comic line he was in was good. Though yeah this is a realy bad costume idea. But, then again Logan runs around in a bright yellow and blue costume and is an expert in catalogue …. sooo. He doesn’t look like Tom to me. Sorry. Though that show is fun. Now that Loki is teamed up with themselves. I still think Krang controls the TVA threw his girl friend Ravonna Renslayer . And Mobius M. Mobius will team up with the 2 Lokis to to stop the TVA. No magic Lizard dudes. I think Lementus was just Loki testing his female future well time verdant form to she how much she’s like him. Since they have verryed some ware off each others time line. Yeah this may have nothing to do with Mindslaughter, but he was always random in the comic so. Also weird that Mophet stole his powers for Dr. Who villain’s the silence.

    Manthing. Em he doesn’t have a good relationship with his ex. Since she betrayed him in issue one to get money. Bye selling him out to another government so they would stale the Super hero formula. Though not sure what testes he did on it. To ware it goes from Chris Evens making tooo….. well the tash heap from Fraggle rock. I think Ted didn’t do any tests on this out side of guess work. Other than Dr. Dibble trying to create an immortality potion that made a quicker poising. I can’t think of any one going that far off. Pretty sure if you injected a lab rat with this and it went all mock monster you weren’t ready for human testing. Just a thought. Anyt way both him and Swamp Thing are based on the Heap. The ww2 swamp monster who was a WW1 pilot whom died in the first war and comes back in the second war as a muck monster and fights air boy, but becomes popular so he becomes a hero.

    Mantis…… oy. Yep that’s her hair. She used lots of hair gell I guess. Her outfit is yellow, green and red and she looks like a holla girl from some ones dash board. Her boobs are fine. All she needs is a push up bra, duck tape ( I couldn’t figure it out, but I’ve see other gals do it.) or the straps in her top are set in such a way to hold the girls like that. As for hour glass figure. She’s just lucky. And that was the body hotness of the 70s. All Super heros had it. And Mantis hadn’t come back to comics at that point since the 70s. She doesn’t come back till the 90s. In SilVer Surfer. Ware she’s then green skinned and had real Antins. And she and the duggles fur broke up. And she was dating the surfer. Anyway I think she marred a tree since she heard he had wood, but turns out he was talking about his bark.

    I wonder if in GG 3 if Mantis will go off with Groot at the end?

    Marrina yep she’s perry much Mantis as she is in the movies in the comics. Only yellow and fish like. She was pretty useful. Enough to ware she is a former Avenger. When she turned into the big snake monster’s lost control and Namor had to stop her stabling her with the Black Knights sword. But, she got better. Not sure why they turned a happy nice character in to a reject from the Misfits from Jem and the Hollograms cartoon, but ah well. As for useful, well She is going one on one with Namor and Puck so she is kind of strong. Seeing some of the folks on Alpha Fights she’s almost a star player. Flex for crying out loud. Radius I.E. A guy who is Sue Storm with out the cool powers. Yukon Jack. Groundhog. No realy there was a member on this team named Ground Hog. Smart Alec such a mort they brought him back in a what if to kill him again. Manikin…. A guy who is a Cave Man, just a dude. And a future dude with brain powers. His only reason for being there? To give Pupule Girl a Steve Trevor.

    Any Way home girl next to some of these is verry useful. Can’t wait to hear the next pod cast.

    1. I’m pretty sure both Swamp Thing and MAN THING were inspired by the Heap. Roy Thomas, who had a hand in the creation of Man Thing, has owned up to being a fan of the Heap, and when Alan Moore introduced the Parliment of Trees in Swamp Thing, one of the elder trees was clearly meant to be the Heap.

  6. This show is always a highlight of my work day and this episode was no different! The ladies and Siskoid can make me laugh, no matter what. “…. and the ladies will give you a custom compliment and may God have mercy on your souls” made me laugh out loud so hard. Good thing I’m working from home otherwise I would have got some weird looks from co-workers.

    Manslaughter – That mask is loin cloth with a regrettably placed hole, right? I’m not the only one thinking that, right?? Also, I feel like this creep likes his crotch ticklers.

    Thing comma Man – Swamp Thing I kind of liked yet Man-Thing just terrified me! At least with Swamp Thing, he can talk like a person. With Man-Thing, his silence made him seem like a shambling monster! Like Erich said above, who wouldn’t know fear when they saw that thing coming at them?! Siskoid, thank you for bringing up the Man-Thing movie! I thought I was the only one who knew about it. It is absolutely terrible and just a typical horror movie about a monster killing young, hot people. Dolph Lundgren’s Punisher is Oscar worthy compared to Man-Thing.

    Mantis – I’m with the ladies, she’s definitely hot in the MCU. In the comics, she came across as a terrible person. Who needs to die to teach you humility?!?

    Marrina – I really like Alpha Flight (I’m Canadian, so I have to) and I loved Marrina’s first couple of stories and would have loved to see her stick around with the Flight more than just popping in now and again. She was sweet and fun (kind of like MCU’s Mantis!) but I did not like what Byrne did to her, being controlled by the Master of the World.

    Well done again, everyone! Keep up the great work!

  7. How sad that ‘man thing’ isn’t a slang word that Canadians know. I was waiting to hear the response to Giant Size Man Thing from this show.

    Manslaughter – this guy is a bit too creepy for my taste. And the pink ‘half mask’ looking a bit too much like lady’s undergarments only added to the cringe. I wonder if he evolves like Pokemon or Dragon Ball characters to a final form called ‘Murder 1’.

  8. Man-Thing: When my wife, daughter and I lived in Miami, we often would visit the Everglades when we needed to get away from the big city. In all of the times we went, we never did make our way over to the nexus of all realities. I’m kicking myself now for not doing so, as I could have gotten Man-Thing to autograph one of my comic books, or at least gotten a cool scar from his melting touch. Fun fact: the Everglades is not a swamp. It’s actually a broad, shallow, slow-moving river that flows from Lake Okeechobee down to Florida Bay.

    Marrina: I know her mainly from the time when she was married to Namor. I thought she was underutilized as a character back then, and hope she’s better treated nowadays. I think there are some interesting things you could do with her concept, as a kind of cross between Martian Manhunter and the Hulk.

    Thanks for another incredible episode.

  9. Great show as always, always excited to see OHOTMU or Not in the feed, blah blah blah (still all true even if I’m super repetitive).

    Never saw Manslaughter before. Can’t say that fills me with regret.

    So (for the ladies), the Thunderbolts are a super-team based on employing bad guys in the fight against evil. Prior to one of the iterations of the team, Man-Thing had absorbed the Nexus of All Realities and picked up the ability to teleport as a result. The team’s government sponsors then drafted Man-Thing as the Thunderbolts’ wet, smelly means of transport. The Thunderbolts complained about it constantly, but grew fond of Man-Thing anyway. They even sought revenge against one opponent who, in their words, tried to murder their ficus.

    As Mike said, Marrina was sweet and cute, like an alien marine life version of Mary Ann from Gilligan’s Island. People should stop turning her into a monster.

    The only real life Newfie I ever met was a survival instructor. He briefed a bunch of us on local flora and fauna and such when we got to Kabul in 2012. I remember he did a great job and had an accent I’d never heard before.

  10. Some further thoughts and side-notes after a second listening:

    The description of Man-Thing as a “soggy Muppet” reminded me of a recent TV commercial, seemingly ubiquitous on US TV screens, though you may not have seen it in Canada. It’s a commercial for the Liberty Mutual insurance company, where a guy who appears to be a sidewalk hot-dog vendor explains how the insurance company customizes its policies for each customer, because everyone’s different…and then to show just how “different” he is, it’s revealed that he doesn’t sell hot dogs, he sells Wet Teddy Bears. Yes, the commercial is as stupid as it sounds.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44YYT0mmjSo

    Regarding the “Giant-Size Man-Thing” innuendo, Peter David worked that into a gag in an issue of his 1990s Captain Marvel series, where a super-hero battle inside a comic book store resulted in one hero’s costume being destroyed, and he covered himself up with an issue of Giant-Size Man-Thing.

    Peter David also worked a Man-Thing joke into one of his non-comics projects, when he wrote the screenplay to a science-fiction Western comedy called “Oblivion” (taking all the standard Western tropes and putting them on another planet), where a couple of characters engage in a test of courage using a frog-like creature called a “Monding” that can sense fear…and the hero warned the villain that “whatever knows fear burns at the Monding’s touch.”

    The discussion of Mantis pardoxically being both empathic and haughty/selfish reminded me of a science-fiction short story, “Flies” by Robert Silverberg (which originally appeared in the famed anthology “Dangerous Visions”). In Silverberg’s story, a critically-injured astronaut is rescued by aliens who repair his body and give him the added gift of enhanced empathy…but it doesn’t make him a better person. When he returns to Earth, he becomes even more cruel and sadistic than he had been before, because he enjoys sensing others’ suffering.

  11. Well, not the most attractive collection of characters this time – Manslaughter looks like the total tosspot he is, inspiring not so much fear as giggles… mind, if people can’t generally see you, it doesn’t matter what you wear.

    And then there’s this issue’s monster, Mantis, who gives ‘sex positive’ a bad name, throwing herself at all the male Avengers. Of course, her real crime is that speech pattern – This One hates it.

    Man Thing’s triple trunk marks him as a mort. I’ve only read a couple of stories with him/it in, but remained decidedly ungrabbed.

    I’ve never thought of Marrina as anything other than Marine-er before this episode, and I shall ignore your logic and continue to sing along with Stingray (the Supermarionation show, not the stylishly costumed super-chap).

    If I had to snog anyone from this issue, it would be Man-Thing. It’s be interesting, at least.

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