Issue(s): Man-Thing #1
Cover Date: Nov 79
Title: "Regeneration -- and rebirth"
Credits:
Michael Fleisher - Writer
Jim Mooney - Penciler
Bob Wiacek - Inker

Review/plot:
A Gerber-less Man-Thing series must have been a difficult pitch but this first issue by Michael Fleisher is a decent re-introduction. It helps to have Jim Mooney, who drew a number of the issues of the original series, on art, and to start things off with a classic alligator fight.

A Dr. Ohiemer, who has been working on an experimental brain tissue regeneration process, is kidnapped. His kidnappers tell him that they are CIA and they've grabbed him as a national security matter. They want him to use his brain regeneration process to restore Ted Sallis' intelligence so that he can tell them the formula for his super-serum before the Russians develop their own. Ohiemer agrees, more because it'll help Sallis than for the serum.

The agents are able to capture the Man-Thing, and Ohiemer's serum works, coalescing the Man-Thing's brain cells which are normally "uniformly spread throughout his mass".

Ohiemer is a little lacking in suspicion about the agents' eagerness, but there are some nice scenes with Ohiemer working to re-educate the Man-Thing.

However, it turns out that the agents that have grabbed Ohiemer are actually not working for the US government, and when word of Ohiemer's capture gets back to Henry Gyrich, he orders the army in to stop them (he expressly uses the army instead of SHIELD; the possibility of sending in the Avengers is not even considered).

The troops were told that the Man-Thing was expendable if he got in the way, but one soldier is overzealous and fires at the Man-Thing immediately, killing Ohiemer when he jumps in the way. While the battle rages on, the Man-Thing carries Ohiemer's body out into the swamp.

It's unclear to me if the Man-Thing retains any increased intelligence as a result of Dr. Ohiemer's process in this issue. While he's fighting the soldiers, a narration caption first says that he's Ted Sallis....

...and then on the same page says he's not Ted Sallis, he's the Man-Thing.

Probably not meant specifically to represent a regression of Ohiemer's work, but you can read it as such. Or assume that Ohiemer's process never really accomplished as much as he'd thought.

Quality Rating: C+

Historical Significance Rating: 1

Chronological Placement Considerations: N/A

References:

• Man-Thing's origin from Savage Tales #1 is recapped. A few things worth noting: the serum that Ted Sallis was said to be working on was a Captain America super-soldier serum. That was the original story but Steve Gerber modified it so that Sallis was actually working on a way for people to be able to survive in polluted environments by making them muck monsters. Additionally, the people that Ellen Brandt was working with are said to just be "thugs" instead of AIM agents. Since the origin is recounted by the people trying to hoodwink Dr. Ohiemer, these omissions may have been deliberate on their part.

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: Essential Man-Thing vol. 2

I disagree with your analysis at the end. It seems very explicit to me that it is meant as a regression of Chiemer's work. Once the Man-Thing sensed fear, that instinct must have overwhelmed anything positive created by the earlier chemical process Chiemer used. So it seems that while Chiemer's process works, it can also be reversed (at least in the Man-Thing) in response to certain stimuli.