Please let there be one of these about John Constantine’s pet tarantula.
So I finally picked up one of those DC Super Pets kids books for myself, and it should probably be obvious why:
Yup, it’s because I loves me some opossums. Also, Swamp Thing is in this book.
It’s a prose book, done in the classic kid book style with many colorful illustrations, giving me flashbacks to my long-ago tenure as a children’s librarian. There’s a section at the front of the book presenting an illustrated dramatis personae of the folks within, informing us that those four animals with Swampy on the cover are in fact his pets, the Down Home Critter gang (Mossy the Skunk, Merle the Possum, Loafers the Basset Hound, and Starlene the Raccoon).
The story involves Solomon Grundy and his own legion of evil pets attempting to raise up the dead pets from all the pet cemeteries around the world as his personal army…pretty gruesome for a kid’s book, I think as an adult in my forties, while realizing from personal library experience that kids would be perfectly okay with this. Anyway, Batman and Ace the Bathound are involved, because why not, and when Swamp Thing takes off with Batman in the Batplane to handle trouble elsewhere in the marshlands:
…that leaves the Down Home Critter Gang to deal with the menace for the majority of the story.
It’s all cute and funny, with Solomon’s pets being suitably gross, and it’s charmingly illustrated by Art Baltazar, which should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with his work from Tiny Titans or Superman Family. Plus, there are some nice shots of Swamp Thing throughout, including a full page image of him shaking hands with Batman, which is probably the last thing I ever expected to see in a children’s picture book. And at one point, Solomon Grundy stands in a graveyard and commands “rise, zombie pets, rise!” which reminds me of Blackest Night so I’m going to think of this as tie-in, just because.
So are you willing to be a charter member of Swamp Thing’s Down Home Crew?
Godzilla help me, but I must have this!
Those light blue splashes on Swamp Thing make it look as though his pets are using him as a litter box.
Don’t know why that occurred to me, but I thought I’d share.
There is NOTHING that is not AWESOME about this!
Dang it… as loathe as I am to say it, this comic might be proof that Swamp Thing is cooler than Man-Thing. *sigh*
~P~
I bought an extra copy for my five-year-old nephew,but after reading it I’m not sure my bro is going to let me give it to him yet.I know the kid would love it.He loved it when I snuck off with him to see John Carter.Violence doesn’t interest him,but the monsters had him glued to the screen.I,ve noticed over the years that parents don’t give their kids enough credit.They’re generally more sophisticated than we think they are.
That Swampy. Always such a back-seat driver.
Swamp Thing looks extra adorable all buckled in the Batplane.
This book will be mine. Oh, yes- it will be mine.