Issue(s): Man-Thing #15
Cover Date: Mar 75
Title: "A candle for Sainte-Cloud"
Credits:
Steve Gerber - Writer
Rico Rival - Penciler
Rico Rival - Inker

Review/plot:
This is a weird story, and i say that knowing that i'm talking about the Man-Thing series. It's not zany weird or confusing weird like some issues in the series. It's just that the Man-Thing doesn't actually appear in this issue, at least in the present. Instead we have a hippie who calls herself Sainte-Cloud.

She's a poet, and her process is to search out unusual candles and light them while she writes. She's got a sort-of boyfriend (that happens to be blind), and another guy that likes her but she only thinks of as a friend. And the friend's uncle is a candlemaker, so he convinces the uncle to sneak some hallucinogenic drugs into the candle that she buys, with the idea that he'll be able to manipulate her into giving up her current boyfriend and getting with him.

Things don't really work out as expected and the not-so-friendly friend winds up getting hot candle wax on his face as he hallucinates about the Man-Thing's touch.

The other thing about Sainte-Cloud is that she knew Ted Sallis (but has no idea that he became the Man-Thing). She met him a few years back while he was having a crisis of faith about the project he was working on...

...and she had pretty much convinced him to give up his weapons work for the government. But when he proposes marriage to her and she refuses, that all goes by the wayside.

There seems to be a bug in my system where if i don't list any Characters Appearing the entry doesn't show up in searches, so i'm listing Sainte-Cloud even though i don't believe she ever appears again. The MCP actually lists the Man-Thing as appearing in this story but unless the idea is that the drugs in the candle are actually creating a psychic connection with the real Man-Thing, that doesn't seem to be the case.

Quality Rating: C+

Historical Significance Rating: 1

Chronological Placement Considerations: N/A

References:

• The candlemaker was familiar with the Man-Thing from its rampage through New York in Giant-Size Man-Thing #2.
  
• Ted Sallis says that his research "could change the shape of humanity", which he means quite literally. There's a reference to the retcon in Daredevil #113 that Sallis serum was meant to allow people to become pollution breathing monsters instead of just a vanilla super-serum.

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: Essential Man-Thing vol. 2