A Beginner's Guide to Man-Man!

Slow load time due to images, but worth it!


THIS, my fine feathered friends, is a brief summary of what we know so far of the career of Man-Man, Fun City's Greatest Hero!
Our story begins with Paul, a mild-mannered white-collar type, shopping at a local convenience store. He samples a grape and is promptly collared for theft by Man-Man!

Paul is bemused and astounded by the weirdo who has accosted him. Said weirdo reveals himself as a super-hero, having been bitten by a radioactive man and having the proportionate strength, speed and agility of the average man.

Paul reckons that Man-Man would be better suited for tackling the man fondling melons right next to them, but Man-Man attempts to make Paul pay for the grape he ate. He then promptly succumbs to an addiction to Meat In A Straw.

Paul and the store clerk try to make some, but accidentally create sentient life.

Paul goes next door to buy some real Meat In A Straw, and Slim (The Thing From The Deep Fryer) eats the clerk.
Paul ditches Man-Man and goes home, where a team of rogue moving men is stealing all his stuff.

They threaten him with an eight-foot woman named Dolly. Man-Man arrives and defeats the whole shootin' match by using his only real power, the Average Man ability to be completely invisible to women.

Paul's house burns down, and he loses his job.

Man-Man lets him crash at the Man-Mansion, as Man-Man is also a multi-multi billionnaire named Wayne Wealthy.

Paul meets Man-Man's butler, Frenchy.

Man-Man promptly goes on patrol, and Paul falls in love with the next-door neighbour and gets saddled with her baby for the night. He feeds the baby after midnight and discovers that this baby is the Googooplex, a replicating baby that is fueled by food-after-midnight (Eastern Standard Time, smartass).

Mayhem ensues.
Later, Paul meets Garth, Man-Man's twin brother, a globetrotting neurosurgeon and all around nice guy (Buckaroo Who?).

Man-Man and Paul head out to solve a mystery involving stolen pizza cheese, and we meet Pizzaface, an old-school Man-Man villain.

Getting back to the mansion, Man-Man and Paul are captured by the true culprit, Doctor Vivisectus, a mad scientist with a cheese fetish who lives in the basement.

All are imperiled by the Lactosaurus, but saved by Zitgeist, Pizzaface in his new role as a hero.

Man-Man and Paul go out for breakfast, burn down a restaurant, and meet Satan.

Frenchy gets pursued by les flyeeng jellyfish flambeux avec des guns du ray. No foolin'.
Then they have weird dreams for a bit.

These include my "I thought it was funny at the time" Dream of the Endless parody, Doze of the Interminable. We got a lot of mail over that one, believe me.


Meanwhile, the turbot stocks off the shores of Newfoundland have still not replenished themselves. Canadian Fisheries officials blame off-shore fishing by foreign nations. None of this affects our story a whit.

A new menace rears its head in the form of Scary Story Man, a camp counsellor gone bad. He is defeated with a little help from a VERY SPECIAL guest philosopher. Read the archives, dammit.

Man-Man buys Paul from his mother via mail, and makes Paul his ward.

Paul rebels and makes himself Dr. Vivisectus' ward.

Dr. Vivisectus makes Paul his hunchback, and invents a time machine. The time machine gets horribly abused...

...and Paul has to travel through time to solve the problem, which he absolutely fails to do, but then the problem sort of gets solved anyway. Hooray!
Man-Man and Dr. V go on a monster hunt as Matt soapboxes ad nauseum about how perhaps killing tens of thousands of innocent and uninvolved Afghans really isn't an appropriate response to the World Trade Center terrorist attack on September 11.

This little morality play is, thankfully, rather brief.
The massive "Election" storyline gets underway, as Man-Man leaps into a municipal council election with Kyle Lanz, apparent lunatic, Slim, the Thing From The Deep Fryer from way back when, and Louis Pasteur.

Several twist endings make this one a real humdinger, folks! It also introduces my second-favourite villain. Who might that be? Quick answer: The Quizzler!

Shortly after, Man-Man gets busted for income-tax evasion.

Newly-elected Mayor Lanz is no help, and Man-Man and Paul wind up moving in with the Melon Fondler, first seen in, like, one of the very first strips.

Paul leaves to get a real job...

...Man-Man doesn't get a job as Zitgeist's sidekick...

...and working from opposite ends they unravel a massive and badly-defined conspiracy to take over Fun City, masterminded by Kenn Scott, The Man Who Never Forgets Anybody's Embarrasing Middle Name!


Needless to say, the conspiracy gets foiled. Otherwise, the title of this comic would now be The Amazing Kenn Scott Presents, which isn't a bad idea, actually. But the boys foil the plot and escape, only to fall into another trap. Oopsie.
And then Man-Man gets the one thing that money just can't buy.

After that knotty bit of business gets resolved, there are a few throwaway gags, and then the debacle that we call "the SQUIRREL STORY."

Paul is, needless to say, relieved of the mantle of Grumpy Squirrel. The way home, though, brings the menace of Rex Nihilo and his Reality Bomb...

The Reality Bomb makes itself known not only in the present, but also in the alternate future reality run by the seventeen-year-old Googooplex, Team Angst. The use of the Googooplex in the present to stop Rex Nihilo may or may not have had an affect on this split timeline...

After a bit of respite, Man-Man is again called to action when a COSMIC MENACE threatens fun city. And he calls in his globe-trotting affiliates, the League of Man-Men.

Meanwhile, Garth runs afoul of Daylight Savings Tim, but makes short work of him under the influence of his Evil Disembodied Voice.

Knowing none of this, Man-Man plunges into a battle of wits and wills against his local newspaper carrier.

Man-Man's celebratory song-and-dance is cut short by the arrival of the Evilbot 9000...

...which turns out to be after Paul, based on a perceived wrong of long ago.

All of this leads to the revelation that Man-Man has now replaced Paul with the now-unemployed Oxy Moron.

Paul leaves, gets drunk with a supervillain named Pyrex, and nearly gets lobotomized by Man-Man. Whoops.

This dispute gets resolved, and then the gang is plunged into the mystery of...THE WALLOON!

Meanwhile, in the real world, James and Fran have a baby. This leads to Fill-In Month, featuring Bill's brother James and the Saga of the Slim Thing...

...and JR Conlin's new villain, The Slug.

That takes you up to November 2002...a more full update is coming soon(ish). Since then, there have been many more rollicking adventures: the return of Daylight Savings Tim, a bout with Letterman turned evil compounded by the menace of Billy Ray Mullet, the introduction of Doctor Villain and the Surgeon Major-General, and an encounter with an evil video tape that kills EVERYONE WHO WATCHES IT. Spooky!
All of this is easy to navigate through the dropdown menu, which is hopefully fixed by now. Enjoy!
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