Man-Thing #1

Marvel's muck-encrusted swamp creature finally gets his own solo title with this January 1974 launch, and Frank Brunner's cover makes an immediate impression — the Man-Thing looms massive and dripping from the murky Florida everglades, red eyes glowing beneath a tangle of hanging vines while grasping claws reach toward the viewer from the shadows around him. The tagline "The Most Startling Swamp-Creature of All!" sets the tone perfectly for a series built on atmospheric dread rather than straightforward superheroics. With Steve Gerber writing and Val Mayerik on interior art, this "fear-fraught first issue" signals that Marvel's horror-tinged corner of 1974 has something genuinely distinctive to offer.