Growing Man

The Growing Man is a robotic construct — a "stimuloid" — engineered in the far future and capable of absorbing kinetic energy to increase his size and strength proportionally. Built as a menace rather than a hero, he was dispatched through time to wreak havoc in the present.

Few foes make an entrance quite like Growing Man — a Stan Lee and Jack Kirby creation who burst onto the Silver Age Marvel scene in Thor #140 in 1967, carrying all the wild conceptual ambition that duo was famous for. Over a publishing history stretching more than five decades, this stimulant-powered menace has tangled with some of the heaviest hitters in the Marvel Universe, sharing pages with Thor, Iron Man, Captain America, and Goliath — the kind of roster that tells you immediately this isn't a pushover. Most at home in the pages of The Avengers, Growing Man boasts two collector-recognized key appearances despite a relatively select catalog presence, making each showing count. For fans who love the era when Kirby's cosmic imagination ran gloriously unchecked, Growing Man is a delightfully strange artifact worth tracking down.