The Absorbing Man is a character appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. Created by writer Stan Lee and writer-artist Jack Kirby, the character first appeared in Journey into Mystery #114, in the Silver Age of Comic Books. Carl Creel has the power to absorb and become any material he touched. Originally a supervillain, in later years, he has reformed into more of an antihero.

Journey into Mystery is an American comic book series initially published by Atlas Comics, then by its successor, Marvel Comics. Initially a horror comics anthology, it changed to giant-monster and science fiction stories in the late 1950s. Beginning with issue #83, it ran the superhero feature "The Mighty Thor", created by writers Stan Lee and Larry Lieber and artist Jack Kirby, and inspired by the mythological Norse thunder god. The series, which was renamed for its superhero star with issue #126, has been revived three times: in the 1970s as a horror anthology, and in the 1990s and 2010s with characters from Marvel's Thor mythos. The title was also used in 2019 for a limited series as part of the "War of the Realms" storyline.