3 out of 5

I was initially going to rate this just based on the Gerber material, but the rating would stand for the whole run as well.

Gerbs was in an odd spot in the late 80s and early 90s.  He had some spotty Marvel work that was fueled by some good ideas but nothing that really felt like it congealed into much.  It was as though he was trying to figure out how to transition from his narrative heavy style to the more talk-at-ya 90s, and finding it… well, difficult.  Short stints on titles, or efforts that just didn’t take off for one reason or another.  He still would strike gold when he gave into his inner demons – like Foolkiller, which I commonly mention as being upper-tier Gerber – and ‘Elements of Terror,’ the serialized Man-Thing story in these MCP’s almost seems like it’s going to get there as well, starting in very dark and murky waters and really effectively blending Gerb’s satirical poking at nationalism (the Iran-Contra affair was happening at the time, and several of the strips in the book make use of it for inspiration in some way) with the poetic macabre voice he’d developed for Manny…  The art by Tom Sutton sends the effect into overboard, really creepy Scary Stories style stuff that just seems so unlike anything you’re used to seeing from The Big Two, especially during this era.  Unfortunately, as often happens with books and shows that have a need to fill up a trade or fluff out a season, the story starts to bloat and it just seems like we get so far away from where we started.  While the plotting in ‘Elements’ is linear, Man-Thing – whose stories were always a masterful balance, as he’s empathic, unspeaking, and so can only really get involved peripherally most of the time and yet Gerber always made him primary to the stories – starts to feel more and more like a side-character to an over-character-stuffed political conspiracy involving drugs and weapons and a Satanic cult and super-soldiers.  All of these things were timely, and, again, it made for a very Stevey strange brew at first, it just grows out of control and the latter half of the 12-part tale feels too much like trying to wrangle everything into a packaged conclusion versus a thrilling one.  The involvement of Manny is meant to be justified by a secret government project to ‘recreate’ the Sallis experiment, leading to some awesomely weird Carpenter-esque The Thing monstrosities, but this would’ve been better served as an exclusive focus, perhaps.  Anyhow, a couple issues toward the end Sutton shares art duties with Don Hudson (layouts), and just as Sutton elevated the earlier proceedings into horror territory, the art change-up underlines how the story is straying… but thankfully Sutton comes back in full for the ending.  In terms of a Steve story, it’s very indicative of his 90s writing (topical subject matter driving things over character); in terms of a Manny story it starts in the strong voice of the 70s series but loses the threat and relegates the character to mostly a set-piece; in terms of a Marvel tale – it’s enjoyable, definitely worth salivating over the art, and I would say a more deftly handled attempt at bringing in politics, but overall resulting in an uneven mash-up.

Elsewere we get a 10-part Wolverine tale by Chris Claremont and John Buscema – whose art looks great when dirtied up by Klaus Janson’s janky inky.  Glynis Oliver also does the coloring, who did a bang-up job on Steve’s She-Hulk run and impresses here as well.  I’ve never been a fan of Claremont, though admittedly my main exposure is his modern stuff of which the heavy-handedness just reads so dated nowadays, but back in ’89 it seemed alright, especially when applied to Chris’ lover, Wolverine.  The narration is, for sure, hammy, but it’s a good comic story, and though maybe taking a similar Iran-Contra influence as Gerber (Wolvie helps one crime kingpin to replace another), Chris goes full comic book with it and doesn’t care too much about the politics, so it’s honestly more fun than the Man-Thing tale.  And Razorfist in blue tights, so there ya’ go.  Wolvie was the headliner on the book, replaced by an Ann Nocenti / Rick Leonardi Colossus bit that looks good but pretty much pummels you on the head with ‘commentary’ (i.e. let me stuff obvious rhetoric into characters’ mouths) regarding Communist fears.

To bore you, Doug Moench and Tom Grindberg deliver an 8-part way over-complicated Shang-Chi story about something something drugs and weapons and namechecks Iran-Contra so this was very much of interest to writers at the time.  I mean, that’s how it goes, but funny how I didn’t give a shit when reading some of these issues as a kid and I had to look up the event nowadays to get a reference point on it.  i.e. DOES ANY OF IT EVER MATTER MAYBE MAYBE NOT.  Moench tries to drop some ‘fishes swim, fishes eat’ wisdom atop the story – you know, Kung Fu wisdom – but keeps forgetting to bring it back up and so just randomly mentions fish here and there.  No one knows what’s going on in this story, including most of the characters, and eventually people fight.  Grindberg, inked by Dave Cockrum and colored by Petra Scotese, gives us some unappealingly bland art and boring framing, but Cockrum cleans up his inks halfway through and that helps the pages look more dynamic.

The issues are padded out by mostly one-shots that are mostly dumb, especially some tossed of Ditko cheesiness (reprints?) and, in the first few issues, some Al Milgrom bits about “The Fear Eater” realizing that Marvel super-heroes fear nothing.

Still, I dig anthologies, and if you get a 50% success rate consistently in anthologies, it’s generally sustainable reading, which was the case here.