You are currently browsing the swamp thing category
Okay, you Swampheads…keep an eye out for Justice League Unlimited #1, the new series debuting today at a good comic shop near you, or even mine. Specifically, I’m talking about variant cover “D” with art by Howard Porter:
…where our favorite muck-encrusted mockery of a man is hanging out:
You can also find our floral friend on variant cover “E” by Ed Benes, off to the side there apparently making room for less-important characters:
A closer look:
So, can we expect a Swamp Thing-focused Justice League adventure in this book in the near future? One can hope!
• • •
And let’s take a look at one more of your
questions:
Wayne sez
“Mike. What are the odds tthat this was the original concept for THE THREE JOKERS?”
Wayne is referring to the pic I used as the header for the initial questions post, which I’ll reproduce here at slightly smaller size:
…and Three Jokers, for those who haven’t heard, was an intended out-of-contintuity story resolving an in-continuity mystery that was later Chip Zdarsky tried to make part of regular continuity in a one-off panel but I’m pretty sure everyone’s just trying to move past the whole thing. Anyway, it proposed that there literally three different people as The Joker, which is dumb and by extension makes Batman seem dumb as well.
Wayne was just being silly, which is fine, but it reminded me of some entries from the Bobby London’s 1986-1992 run on the Popeye comic strip. Specifically, instances where there were multiple versions of the same character.
Well, this one doesn’t really count, I guess, as we see Popeye being reverted into versions of himself from previous years, which I thought was a nice image:
But the storyline I specifically wanted to note was the one where Bluto returns to bedevil Popeye, this time with an army of multiple versions of Brutus:
Okay, I’m gonna let Mark Evanier explain why Brutus replaced Bluto for a time in the comics an’ such. But here you go, Wayne, Bobby London’s dozen-ish Brutuses laugh mockingly at the stinginess of only Three Jokers.
So comics artist Ron Randall spoke a bit about working with Alan Moore on Saga of Swamp Thing #33 from the mid-1980s. So if you click on the pic above, or on this link right here, you’ll be whisked away to a thread of posts on Bluesky where Mr. Randall has nothing but good things to say about the experience.
Issue #33 is, of course, this one:
…in which they reprint the very first Swamp Thing story from House of Secrets #92, the cover for which inspired the Saga cover above. Said reprint was incorporated into that new story by Moore and Randall.
Now, as I recall, this was a bit of a last second fill-in, as the story originally intended for issue #33 was the so-called “wedding of Swamp Thing and Abby,” as seen in this coming comics listing from Amazing Heroes #58:
However, the story was pushed back to #34, and the new story for #33 was announced here in Amazing Heroes #59:
And just so it’s clear, the “wedding” story is the one that is probably better known as the “Swampy and Abby Have Sex” issue, the one with this cover:
But anyway, for being a “fill-in” story, what ended up being in #33 had a huge impact on the Swamp Thing milieu, as it introduced the idea that was an ongoing chain of Swamp Things through Earth’s history. The Alex Olsen Swamp Thing in the House of Secrets story was just one of the many that had preceded. This establishes the groundwork for Swamp Thing’s status as an Earth Elemental (though he was called an elemental in the earlier Swamp Thing Annual #2, hinting at what was to come) and the eventual creation of the Parliament of Trees.
So, for a reprint issue, quite a lot got accomplished. Was Moore heading in this direction anyway, or was having to churn out a fill-in story worked around the original introductory tale of the character the inspiration for this major addition to the mythos? Honestly, I don’t know…I bet he said in an interview somewhere. I’ll have to keep an eye out.
As anyone who’s been reading this site for a while knows, due to the various eyeball issues I’ve had over the last few years, I fell behind on my comics reading, and I’m still behind even ’til today. While things have improved healthwise in regards to my eyes, I do read a little slower than I used to, and comics ain’t comin’ out any less quickly, so the backlog continues apace.
As such, sometimes — well, usually — I don’t read comics the very week they come out, which is even more sad considering that with the new distributors in play, I often get the new books a week ahead of their official release and I still don’t read ’em until a week or three later.
Which is a long way of me telling you “I just read the last couple of issues of John Constantine Hellblazer: Dead in America series.” Specifically, I wanted to talk here about issue #8 by Simon Spurrier and Lisandro Estherren, in which these panels appeared, with John complaining about the Demon saying his name wrong:
…and a little later, here’s the Demon mocking John by deliberately mispronouncing the name:
YESSSSSS. The battle, once conceded by me when the musician Sting, the inspiration for Constantine, pronounced the name with “-teen,” rages once again thanks to this beautiful, beautiful creative team.
The first salvo was fired back in 1988 in Swamp Thing #73 by Rick Veitch and Alfredo Alcala:
So the war is back on! Take that, too many media adaptations getting his name wrong! Yes, this is the hill I’m dying on.
• • •
Speaking of being behind on reading, I finally got around to a couple of graphic novels. First up was
Palooka-ville #24, the latest in Seth’s volumes of comics and photography an’ such.
The series started as a standard black and white comic book in 1991, transitioning to a small hardcover with issue #20 in 2010. If you’re looking at the years and issue numbers there, yes, the publication is very sporadic, with the previous issue coming out in 2017.
This issue came out July of last year, and I just got around to reading it now, in case you’re wondering just how far behind I am on things. So, you know, it’s probably good it took several years for this come out. Now I’m ready for the next issue in, say, 2031.
With all this time passing just with the most recent volume, I’d forgotten details about it from when I originally ordered it in February 2023. I was reading the first part of the book, with Seth relating stories of his teenage employment at a small inn, in which he mentions someone recognizing him because of his “funny voice.” That had me thinking “huh, I wonder what Seth’s voice sounds like, I wonder if I can find a video with him talking and hear it for myself.”
Then I get to the next feature of the book, which is a series of photographs showing some behind the scenes stuff for the short film of Seth’s puppetry, included as a DVD in this book.
I’d completely forgotten there was a DVD. It’s been well over a year and a half since I ordered it, and over a year since I obtained it, so yeah, no duh I forgot. But I just thought it was amusing that I started the book with the thought “what does Seth sound like?” and then discovering that right here in the book is a way for me to hear what he sounds like.
This short film is good, by the way. It’s essentially one of Seth’s melancholy strips brought to life. And Seth’s voice sounds perfectly fine, not funny at all.
The next book I finally got to was Grendel: Devil by the Deed Master Edition, which is a new 200 page expanded retelling of the original Grendel by his creator Matt Wagner (and colored in a black, white and red palette by his son, Brennan).
Now this book came out last November, so it hasn’t been quite a year yet. And, being a very longtime Grendel fan, I went for the signed and numbered slipcased edition, with a tipped in autographed plate featuring a new Grendel illustration.
At 200 pages, it is something like five times the length of the original “completed” version of this story, the one that ran as back-ups in the first Mage mini-series. The extra pages, I believe, incorporate events from the various comics about the original Grendel, Hunter Rose, that were published after the Devil by the Deed story, though I’ve not read those in a while so beyond some vague memories I can’t say for certain.
This new version continues the conceit of the previous one, taking the format of a book examining the double life of Hunter Rose after his death and the revelation of all his secrets, via blocks of text accompanying illustrations. It’s not a traditional panel-by-panel, dialogue-and-captions, comic book, putting the reader a step removed from the story’s events. Which, I think, is an effective tactic, adding to the mystery and mythic weight of the proceedings.
Speaking of mystery, there is a point in the book where the “author” notes that some pages were removed from Grendel’s journals regarding a particular event. Enough detail of the event is given that I seem to recall it from one of the other, later stories, but I need to check (and actually have pulled out the comics themselves to look when I have a chance). If I recall correctly, this involved some supernatural elements which do exist in the Grendel milieu, but I’m guessing Wagner wanted to keep those to a minium in this mostly-grounded initial story. Argent, the wolf-like monstrous “hero” of the story, the counterpoint to Grendel’s elegant and attractive villainy, remains as the one outright fanciful aspect of this crime story…outside the guy in the costume leaping around the city, natch.
I still wonder what would have happened if Wagner had been able to finish the very first version of the story, intended as a six-issue mini-series but cancelled after three. It was…crude, but energetic, with what I still think are striking covers. It was told in the traditional comic book style, and it would have been interesting to see what story elements from the later retellings would have had their origins in the unseen chapters of this original comic. It’s hard to imagine the depth of the later twists and turns being conveyed quite as well with the standard comic storytelling, Wagner’s youthful abilities aside.
I’ll tell you one thing, though…the book ends with an “author’s credit” for the fictional writer of this tell-all of Grendel, who is the star of the first story of the 1986 series. Which of course made me want to pull those out and reread them. Sigh. And that’s how your pal Mike got even more behind on current comics, because he keeps wanting to look at his old ones again.
So in The Comic Reader #87 from 1972, it was announced that some mailed Bernie Wrightson pages from Swamp Thing #2 had gone missing, with FOUL PLAY suspected. But here the next month’s issue, #88, we find…
…that the true culprit was the U.S. Postal Service all along! DARN YOU AND YOUR PERFIDY, 15-YEAR-OLD LOUIS DEJOY!
Anyhoo, let’s go back to some of the open questions we had on Monday’s post about 1986 comics ordering, now that I’d had a chance to bend the ear of my former boss Ralph about just what going on back then in Ye Olden Pre-Mike Tymes.
First off, that issue of GrimJack, #26, that had the first color Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles story: yes, Ralph ordered high on this. And yes, as I said, there appeared to be plenty left over, and Ralph confirmed that it did not sell all that well off the new shelf upon release.
Here, let’s look at that cover:
The TMNT story is blurbed right there at the top, above the logo. The cover image itself is a little busy, and the blurb itself doesn’t stand out quite as sharply as it could. Plus, the font doesn’t grab the Turtles fan’s eye quite as much as an actual Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle logo would have done, I’d think. And maybe if the main cover image itself had featured the Turtles, or even an inset pic of them in one of the top corners, that might have attracted more attention.
But this is all 20-20 hindsight editing, and what’s done is done. As I said, it did move some copies out of the back issue bins in following years, but it was never a huge draw. But that’s just one store’s experience, maybe it moved tons of copies elsewhere. Every clientele is different.
Now, T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents…this wasn’t a question I’d posed in the previous post or anything, but I was just curious. How, I asked Ralph, did the Deluxe Comics edition of the comic whose name is a pain to type sell?
Ralph, himself a big fan of said property, noted that the initial issues of the Deluxe series (actually titled Wally Wood’s…) did quite well. And it’s no surprise, with some solid creators as George Pérez, Jerry Ordway, Keith Giffen, Steve Ditko, Dave Cockrum, and more on those early installments. But by the end of the run some of those folks had departed, and while the teams remaining on the book were perfectly fine, maybe the steam had run out a little. And the legal problems the book faced didn’t help, cutting it down after its fifth issue. Whatever the reason, interest in the series had waned by that point anyway.
And finally, that whole “Marvel’s New Universe” thing. That’s probably the subject of a whole post (or whole series of posts) just on its own, but I’ll try to keep it short and sweet here. My question to Ralph was “were people excited about the New Universe ahead of its release?” and his answer was “yes, very much so.” This was an exciting event in a time when Big Events weren’t an everyday thing in comics, and the last events that had happened, Crisis on Infinite Earths and Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars, hadn’t killed interest. As Ralph put it, the fans weren’t quite as jaded yet.
Did that extend to ancillary products like, say, comic news magazines with articles on the New Universe project? Sure, to the extent that there were fans who bought stuff like this. Obviously, not everyone who reads comics is interested in how the sausage is made, the comics themselves being enough, but the news/views mag sales did wax and wane with featured topics and New Universe was a point of interest. Here is Something Big that Marvel was about to launch, and interest is high.
And when it did launch, yes, it sold quite well. But for various reasons, the interest dropped off and the whole initiative crawled to a halt within about three or four years. Again, there’s a lot of ground to cover in regards to the Life and Death of the New Universe and I’m not doing that today. Suffice to say, it started big, then became less so, with the occasional bump upwards (like when John Byrne took over Star Brand). Eventually the New Universe (specifically the aforementioned Star Brand) became a plot point in Mark Gruenwald’s Quasar and the whole NU concept has popped up at Marvel in various forms ever since.
• • •
Okay, next week, I’ll try to be talk about topics from
this decade. No guarantees, thoough!
…From Et Cetera & The Comics Reader #87 (1972):
I’m not sure I’d heard about this, or if I had I’ve forgotten in my dotage. I presume the art was found, since there are photos of some of those pages in the IDW Bernie Wrightson Artist Edition.
I’m still looking at the Comic Readers I acquired recently, so I’ll keep an eye out if there’s a follow-up blurb in a future issue.
• • •
Speaking of ‘zines, I’ve been perusing yet another one,
Inside Comics #2 from Summer 1974. There’s a few pages of classified ads, mostly want lists and selling offers, but there’s a big ol’ section just for announcements like THESE:
Well, I don’t know how you did it, Bruce, but it’s fifty years later and comics are still here! Well done!
I wonder if he got one. I mean, $20 for this dumb comic printed on the worst paper and the Hulk isn’t even colored correctly? Take that guy’s money and run.
I…um, look, this is depressing, look away, look away.
This is clearly a transcription of some of what was said in those erased bits from Nixon’s White House tapes. Very timely on this person’s part.
MAAAAAAN, deep burn on Rascally Roy here. Someone wasn’t happy with the state of Marvel, with a bonus reference to the apparent paper shortages of the time.
Well, that’s one way to advertise your shop, I suppose. You can’t make it up!
So this week DC is releasing a new facsimile edition (including all the original ads an’ such) of House of Secrets #92 from 1971, featuring the first appearance of Swamp Thing by Len Wein and Bernie Wrightson. Here are the different flavors you can pick up:
You can get the plain ol’ version with a standard comic cover:
You can get the “blank sketch cover” in a lovely shade of green, upon which you can get your favorite artist to draw, I don’t know, the Heap or Man-Thing or whatever:
You can get the shiny foil-covered edition, and the scan I made ain’t the greatest, but if you’ve been in a comic shop lately, you know what this particular enhancement should look like:
And most surprisingly, in a bit of collaboration between Warner’s comic book division and those other divisions that make theoretically money, we get a version of this comic with a cardstock cover plugging the forthcoming Beetlejuice Beetlejuice sequel (art by Kelley Jones):
Yes, that means four more versions of this comic to add to my collection of House of Secrets #92 reprints and, of course, my original copy of the actual thing.
A long, long time ago (about 18 years now!) I did post here listing all the versions of this comic that I own. I keep meaning to update it, and have occasionally listed new reprints of the story here and there in subsequent posts. Thus, the plan is this: creating a new page on this site devoted solely to House of Secrets #92, with notes on the various reprints in either single comic book form or in trade paperback/hardcover.
This is kind of a last second decision, so I have nothing ready to go just yet, since I kind of have to track down where all my copies of these reprints have gotten off to. My collection at home remains in some disarray, though I’ve been making progress in getting it under control of late. But I do want to gather together all my reprints, do fresh new scans, and put ’em all in one standalone place that I can point to and say “look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair.”
So there we go…nearly 21 years of doing this site, and I can still find ways to make my life more difficult. But at least it’s additional incentive to get my comic act together at home.
Yes, at long last, despite public demand, I have returned to the internet airwaves by making another appearance on the Vintage Video podcast, this time discussing (what else?) the 1982 cinematic debut of Swamp Thing.
As I told Patrick, one of show’s hosts, prior to recording: “get ready for your first five-hour episode!” However, we did make it just barely under two hours. So, carve out some time during the day (or maybe even less, if you play it at Alvin-and-the-Chipmunks speed) and listen to me just go on and on and on everyone’s favorite swamp creature. Also, does Man-Thing get mentioned? Of course he does, and surprisingly, I didn’t bring him up!
Anyway, Patrick, Jesse, and Richard were all very kind to invite me once again onto their show, and hopefully I’ll be making a return visit sooner rather than later! Please give the episode a listen and let me (and them!) know what you think!
You can read a detailed account of my experience visiting the podcast the first time here, and you can listen to the recording that resulted (that time for 1981’s Heavy Metal) here.
I’ll probably write more about this latest visit, along with whatever behind-the-scenes explanations/secrets/apologies I can come up with, when I’m a little less pressed for time vis-à-vis my blogging schedule.
Again, thanks to the Vintage Video podcast crew for having me. It’s always a lot of fun.
So a while back, I was a Kickstarter backer for the Rifftrax-ed version of the 1989 cinematic classic The Return of Swamp Thing, now currently available here. As part of my Kickstartering package, I received the following enamel pin:
A couple of weeks ago, my friend Brook (the same one who turned me on to this piece of Nancy art I bought, as well as this “Nobody Loves the Hulk” record) came back from a trip to Georgia, where he visited the Graveface Museum. While there, he picked up for me…a Return of Swamp Thing enamel pin:
Both clearly inspired by the film’s classy and sedate movie posters:
…of which that’s one, and you can see others here (where you can see which posters provided inspiration for which pin). Do I have a Return of Swamp Thing poster? You bet! Do I have the one that has the words “Sheer Nightgowns!” in a balloon burst? I’m afraid so.
And is that all the new Swamp Thing stuff your pal Mike has in his hands? Why no, of course not, thanks to my little envelope-stuffing bull pal, Bully, who mailed me this sticker designed by comics superstar Kyle Starks:
The real mystery here, of course, is how did Bully hold the pen with his little hooves when addressing the letter? Anyway, a big thanks to Bully for this surprise gift!
AND WAIT, THERE’S MORE! Longtime pals Matt and Chris have reached episode #666 of their longrunning podcast War Rocket Ajax! To celebrate this most diabolically evil of achievements, the Bits Boys called for contributions to their regular “Thursday Night Raw” segment revolving around Hell, demons, and all sorts of other deviltry. For those unfamiliar, this segment seeks to find and rank the “rawest” moments in comics.
I had an entry ready to submit for a while now, but never got around to it…but this seemed like the opportune time given the theme. My entry, of course, being from Swamp Thing Annual #2 (1985) by Alan Moore, Steve Bissette and John Totleben, in which Swamp Thing, having journeyed to Hell to rescue Abby, encounters his old nemesis Arcane:
Perhaps…too raw? What do Matt & Chris think of my submission? Other than probably being glad I didn’t make another Frank Miller’s The Spirit joke? You’ll have to listen to find out!
(Also, for the benefit of the boys who appear to have forgotten…I have been a sponsor of the show! Granted, it’s been five years…probably about time to do so again!)
Thanks to reader John for sending along another addition to my “homages to House of Secrets #92″ collection:
(Art by Don Cardenas and Steve Bryant.)
This comes this Kickstarter campaign, which makes me wish I had more money and more time to peruse Kickstarter for swell projects like this. I am unsure how to purchases copies of this outside of Kickstarter, so maybe keep an eye out for a campaign for issue #3? Or I’ll ask John and see if he can point me in the right direction.
Speaking of purchasing, John also sent me this 1977 Supersnipe comics ‘n’ art catalog:
Imagine getting an Amazing Spider-Man #1 (either version here) for this cheap:
I recently had both of these and they sold for a little bit more than these listed prices.
And check this out — three Peanuts originals for under $600 for the lot:
Yes, I know this is all in 1970s dollars, back when you could buy a car for a nickel and houses were basically free, but it’s still — amusing? Is “amusing” the right word here? How ’bout “depresing” — to see these dollar amounts attached to these items. And I just barely scratched the surface here…there are just pages and pages of price listings that I’m pretty sure will keep me shaking my head in mild disbelief for hours on end.
At long last…Official Pal of the Site Rich Handley (of “In The Special Features on Planet of the Apes DVDs” fame) has finished his comprehensive overview of pre-Flashpoint Swamp Thing and will be coming to us in book form.
Born on the Bayou: A Pre-Flashpoint Chronology of Swamp Thing and Hellblazer (or BOTBAPFCOSTAH for short) will be shambling its way out of the marsh this September. Rich sent me an advance copy of the manuscript, and I can guarantee, if it’s not in this book, it’s not Swamp Thing or John Constantine-related. It has a foreword by famed Swamp Thing artist (and my Close Personal Friend) Steve Bissette! And I hear tell that I personally may be referenced more than a few times in the book itself! Just look in the index for “Swamp Thing, Best Friend of…” and there I’ll be.
But seriously, it’s a great book, a teeming repository of Swamp Thing knowledge you’ll lose yourself in. Check it out this fall, and tell them…well, don’t tell them Mike sent you, that’d be weird. Just tell ’em “gimme that swamp book, I gots to start readin’!”
« Older Entries
