Issue(s): Man-Thing #2, Man-Thing #3
Cover Date: Jan-Mar 80
Title: "Himalayan nightmare!" / "The gong of doom!"
Credits:
Michael Fleisher - Writer
Jim Mooney - Penciler
Bob Wiacek - Inker

Review/plot:
A pair of scientists ("Fredrick" and "Doctor Schectman", never to be seen again, as far as i know) are in the Everglades experimenting with a teleportation device.

When the Man-Thing, attracted to their excitement, emerges, they turn the ray on him and he winds up in the Himalayas.

This puts him in the vicinity of a team of explorers who are hunting for the legendary yeti. Yeti are about as common as water molecules in the Marvel universe, so it's certain their search would have been a success if it wasn't for the fact that one of the scientists is a horndog...

...and an asshole.

The non-jerk male scientist, Russel, gets separated from his wife Elaine and Roger, and gets to witness the Man-Thing battling a bear.

Russel speculates that the Man-Thing may be the yeti he was looking for...

..and Elaine and Roger come to the same conclusion when they eventually see him. I first read this story in my black & white Essentials, so i thought maybe Manny was covered in snow, but that's not the case as you can see from these color scans. This persists even after we do encounter some actual yetis.

Here's Roger saying "Get the yeti! Ignore those white-furred shaggy ape creatures!".

The leader of the yetis is a human...

...in a set-up reminiscent (but not a rip-off) of a previous yeti story, from Fantastic Four #145-146. He claims the yetis are actually Cro-Magnon men. Even the narration captions don't believe him and continue to call them yetis.

Man-Thing's nose reminds the yetis of the trunk of their totem wooly mammoth god...

...and they take his arrival as a signal that it's time to bang the "gong of doom", which triggers an avalanche. This story ends with Roger and Russell dead, along with all the yetis and their human leader. Man-Thing and Elaine have hitched a ride on Roger's goons' airplane.

These issues are written in the second person, addressing the Man-Thing. These are Michael Fleisher's last issues on the title. It hasn't been long enough to see where he would have went with the title, but these issues are sufficiently bizarre.

Quality Rating: C+

Historical Significance Rating: 1

Chronological Placement Considerations: The Man-Thing's airplane ride is continued directly in Man-Thing #4, but that's a crossover with Doctor Strange, so first we're going to check in with his book.

References: N/A

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: Essential Man-Thing vol. 2