Plantman is the name of two supervillains appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics: Samuel Smithers (created by Stan Lee, Joe Carter, and Dick Ayers) and Paul (created by Nick Spencer and Ramon Rosanas), both with the ability to control plants, Samuel via technology and Paul via biology.

The Samuel Smithers incarnation of Plantman first appeared in Strange Tales #113 and was created by Stan Lee, Jerry Siegel (under the alias of Joe Carter), and Dick Ayers.

[6] Plantman has often used plant "simuloids" to create duplicates of himself for mercenary endeavors, raising quick cash to continue his research.

[10] Next with an army of 1,000 plant simulacra, the true Plantman captured the President of the United States by taking over an American military base.

[volume & issue needed] The search ended with Hammer's daughter, Justine, who turned out to be the Crimson Cowl, leader of the Masters of Evil.

Hawkeye convinced several members of the Masters of Evil to side with him and Songbird against Crimson Cowl and their former allies, pointing out the dangers of the super-weapon, which would either blackmail or kill them.

Hoping to throw off suspicion, Hawkeye made the villains reinvent their costumed identities, thus creating a new team of Thunderbolts, and Smithers joined the group as Blackheath.

[volume & issue needed] Beginning with his time in prison, Smithers had noticed that his body was in the process of mutating, drawing him closer to the energy field that he manipulated to control plants.

[volume & issue needed] When the Thunderbolts finally confronted the Crimson Cowl, Smithers was captured and experimented upon to reveal the secrets of the bio-toxin.

The Verdant Green pointed out that Smithers could release the toxin, removing humanity from the biosphere and allowing the plants to flourish as in its pre-industrial days.

by the arrival of the true Citizen V, who needed the team's immediate help with his agency's ship — the engines of which were made of alien technology that had begun distorting, threatening to suck the Earth into the null space of a white hole.

Smithers elected to join the Thunderbolts, hoping that their new mission, to rule the world in order to save it, would closely match his own goals of protecting the Verdant Green from humans.

[19] During the "AXIS" storyline, Plantman appears as a giant plant monster and attacks Los Angeles to retaliate at humans for polluting the world.

The Samuel Smithers incarnation of Plantman is served by humanoid plants called simuloids that are duplicates of himself, one of whom attained sentience and became Terraformer.