swamp thing

“Swamp Thing! / You are amazing!”

filed under Categories swamp thing 15 Comments

So Tom Spurgeon had a Five-for-Friday call for entries recently, asking folks to “Name A Character Or Characters Or Title And Then Name Four Iconic Visually-Driven Single Moments For Your Choice.” I saw that in my feed-reader and was well on my way to gathering some choice Swamp Thing panels, when I realized I’d missed the deadline. Ah, well…you can read other folks’ entries over at Tom’s site (which as I write this is experiencing some technical difficulties, but should be up again soon), but I thought I’d share a few of the panels I was thinking about.

First one that came to mind was this one from Swamp Thing #1 (1972), which I’ve featured on the site before:


…And then there’s this, though there are lots of versions of that panel to choose from!

And there was this panel from issue #7 from that first series, which maybe isn’t an “iconic” pic that immediately comes to mind when one thinks about “Swamp Thing,” but it’s Swampy in an overcoat slapping Batman around, and that’s always great:


The next panels I thought of were a pair of splashes that are in fact connected plot-wise. In Alan Moore’s first story arc, Swamp Thing finds out he was never actually a human being, but a plant “infected” by Alec Holland’s memories. Traumatized by the revelation, he collapses in some Louisiana marshland and lets himself take root, resulting in this startling image from Swamp Thing #22 (1984):


I remember showing this page to…hmm, someone, can’t recall who, but that person couldn’t tell that was Swamp Thing beneath all that overgrowth. I had to sort of trace my hand along the image…”there’s his head…see his arm, there?” …

The follow-up to this in the next issue, when Swamp Thing finally snaps out of it and uproots himself in time to come to Abby’s rescue:


Such a great, detailed image by Steve Bissette and John Totleben. When Bissette and Totleben first came onto the book a few months prior, Swamp Thing began his visual transition from a generally smooth-ish skinned monster with his plant-like nature represented by twisted roots covering his body, into a creature that actually sort of looked like it was comprised of plantlife. It was this particular storyline, though, that finally brought us a Swamp Thing that really looked like a big ol’ walking swamp.

Another panel I considered was this one, from the very first Swamp Thing story in House of Secrets #92 (1971), where the Swamp Thing stares sorrowfully down at his wrist, wondering if his golden bracelet is still buried there:


…but I decided I would more likely go with the wordless panel immediately following, which feels much more despairing:


Here are the two panels, together as printed:


…And I could keep going even farther beyond Tom’s four-panel limit, but I’m sure he’s not quite ready to start curating “Fifty for Friday” posts. A few years back, I made a list of my favorite Scary Swamp Thing Moments, and I’m sure there’s more than one iconic Swampy image located therein.

However, I’m pretty sure this remains the definitive image of Swamp Thing for most people in the world.

This is obviously not comprehensive, and I suppose if I’d been able to meet the deadline, I would have pondered it a little longer and thinned down the selection to an actual four-image submission, but I wanted to pass along the first few candidates that popped into my head. I’m sure some of you out there have a specific single Swamp Thing panel that sums up the character for you, and please feel free to share in the comments.

images from Millennium Edition: House of Secrets #92 (May 2000), reprinted from, House of Secrets #92 (June/July 1971) by Len Wein and Bernie Wrightson; Swamp Thing #1 (October/November 1972) by Wein and Wrightson; Swamp Thing #7 (November/December 1973) by Wein and Wrightson; Saga of the Swamp Thing #22 (March 1984) by Alan Moore, Steve Bissette and John Totleben; Saga of the Swamp Thing #23 (April 1984) by Moore, Bissette and Totleben

When in doubt…SWAMP THING POST.

filed under Categories retailing, swamp thing 14 Comments

 

  • So, Yahoo Answers, what do you have for me today?


    And the sole, and entirely gracious, response:


    By “Knightfall #11” they’re of course referring to Batman #497 from 1993, where, as the first person says, more or less, Batman is taken out by Bane and we get months and months and months of repercussions and crossovers and eventually The Dark Knight Rises. It was quite the hot item at the time, and I do still get the occasional request for it, and the three trade paperbacks reprinting that whole hoohar have been consistent sellers. Or, rather, they were before the third volume suddenly became unavailable for reorders recently, just in time for the aforementioned Bane-enriched Dark Knight Rises to be released in theatres, so you can imagine how thrilled I am about that.

    As a result of its popularity during its initial release, we’ve got plenty of copies of Batman #497. It’s relatively common, and I still see them in collections brought into the shop for sale all the time. But the New 52 Swamp Thing #1…in that New 52 first issue-buying frenzy, nearly all the first issues sold out for us, and most (if not all) of the those first issues went to second printings (and in the case of Justice League, an eighth printing). And we still have demand for first printings of those initial issues from the majority of those series.

    In other words, if someone came in, and the only two comics they had for sale were Batman #497 and Swamp Thing (New 52 version) #1, and I could only buy one, for whatever reason, I would pay handsomely for the latter, and decline the former, and that someone doing the selling would walk away with one shiny American nickel in his pocket following the transaction.

    So right now, I have more demand for Swamp Thing. Yeah, yeah, I know, “of course you do.” But I mean that in the “people want those New 52 #1s” sense, not in the “people love Swamp Thing because he’s the best” sense, which is true nonetheless, but not my argument here, exactly.

    Now, the specific question is which will be worth more in “a few years,” to which my answer to that kind of question usually is “come back in a few years and I’ll tell you.” In terms of strict scarcity, there’s probably only a fraction of the Swamp Thing #1s in print (maybe tens of thousands) compared to that issue of Batman (maybe hundreds of thousands), so all other things being equal that first Swampy should be worth a million dollars at least. But, people do like the Batman, so I suppose I’ll give that the edge in eventual value, if I have to. And if you wait long enough, after all the trees finally die off, all paper products will be extremely valuable, because I assure you no one’s gonna want to go back to using corncobs for…well, you know.

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  • “‘The Swamp Thing’ Goofy But Strong” – a very brief review of Wes Craven’s 1982 cinematic masterpiece Swamp Thing…the reviewer accidentally writes “something less than a classic” when I’m sure he meant “totally the textbook definition of a classic,” but I’ll overlook the error.

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  • You are completely not ready to gaze upon this Swamp Thing costume. You really aren’t.

    Okay, tough guy, you think you’re ready? Then click here if you dare.

    …

    Yeah, I thought you weren’t ready. Anyway, here’s a pic of the costume from a slightly less disturbing distance, and then there’s this photo recreating that famous Emma Frost/Swamp Thing team-up of years ago. Remember that comic? That was awesome.

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  • Here’s that crazy-ass Animal Man/Swamp Thing diptych that’ll grace the twelfth issue of both series, courtesy Steve Pugh and Yanick Paquette.

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  • So someone keeps going on in my comments about the supposed fate of this current Swamp Thing series, though Googling hasn’t turned up any news on the subject. It has been selling very well for us, and I’m pretty sure it’s not just because I, Swamp Thing’s Best Friend, work here…I think it’s selling reasonably well overall. If someone thinks he’s got information otherwise, then let’s see it, rather than just bemoaning the comic’s alleged demise at me. (The subscription shenanigans don’t count, I think, since that seems to be just DC penny-pinching processing costs rather than a precursor to impending cancellations.)

Or maybe it could be released bi-weekly…my expectations aren’t totally unrealistic.

filed under Categories grendel, retailing, swamp thing, this week's comics 10 Comments

So we had that little Avengers Vs. X-Men release party thingie last night…that’s where we get special dispensation from Marvel ‘n’ Diamond to release the comic ahead of the normal Wednesday street date. Well, a whole four hours ahead, I guess, since technically I could have started selling all the week’s new comics the second Felix’s paws were pointed at the witching hour*, but frankly I’ve put in enough time at the shop lately. I needs my beauty sleep…I mean, really, have you seen me?

But away, we put out the AvX #1s, and moved quite a few, which kind of surprised me since our town tends to roll up the sidewalks once nighttime rolls around, but we had a bunch of folks stroll on in and a good time was had by all. And we had bit of a mini-sale, too, so it was definitely worth staying open a little later than we normally do on Tuesdays.

I was mostly still working on processing the new comics order and pulling for the comic savers, so I tended to let other folks at the shop handle the AvX crowd. But there were a couple of things about this week’s new comics I wanted to point out:

1. Looks like Marvel is moving toward that slightly less-slick/”self-cover” format on some of their books. It’s not quite the same as the paperstock of the interior pages, but the covers ain’t as slick as they used to be. It’s not like that for every Marvel this week, but it is for quite a few of them.

2. The third issue of that Avengers movie tie-in Fury’s Big Week is out this week…and for second there I thought all our copies were damaged and missing pages. But no, it’s 20 pages of comics, the covers…and no ads. A while back Johanna was wondering what happened to comic book ads, in which it seemed like all the ads in recent Marvel and DC comics were just house ads for other Marvel and DC comics. But Fury’s Big Week doesn’t even have those…it just does away with the extra non-story pages altogether and gives you a 20-page booklet. Were previous issues of this series like this, and I just didn’t notice it?

Anyway, I guess this is the next cost-cutting device in maintaining the monthly floppy format…just plain using less paper, since they’re not making any money selling ad space on the extra pages anyway.

3. Also, Dave Sim has a new issue of Glamourpuss out. I love this comic, but God help you if you try to explain to someone what it’s about, because they’ll just look at you funny.

4. Swamp Thing is also out this week, with New Swampy finally making his debut. …I think it was worth the wait, though I wish every issue were 64 pages long, no ads, and released weekly, which I think is an entirely reasonable and economically-sound demand.

Enough about new comics…let me talk very briefly about some old comics. Reader Tom asks

I’d be happy to see an update, however brief, on the Great Grendel reread you were doing a while back… they were favourite comics of mind but I’m not sure they’ve aged well.

Yeah, I have a bad habit of not following up on things like “I’M TOTALLY GOING TO REREAD ALL OF, SAY, JUSTICE LEAGUE TASK FORCE AND REPORT BACK TO YOU” because Mike of Bloggings Future occasionally doesn’t like being constrained by plans made by Mike of Bloggings Past and I just never get around to, you know, stuff.

But I did reread all the Matt Wagner-written Grendels, and the Four Devils, One Hell mini by James Robinson, and a few of the other minis…and pretty much got burnt out/lost interest at about the same point in the various 1990s Grendel minis as I did when they were originally coming out. The minis that came out after that (including 1999’s Devil Child, which I first read during this “great Grendel reread”) tied back in to the early Hunter Rose-era of Grendel, which I have far more interest in than the future-history storylines that occupied most of the ’90s issues. I did reread all those late ’90s/2000s Grendel, but I think I’ll probably never get around to reading those few minis that I skipped originally. Ah, well…it’s not like I haven’t read enough comics.

* Yes, I know on most Felix-style clocks the hands aren’t in the shape of Felix’s paws. But I wrote it and don’t feel like changing it. So there.

Green, green, it’s green they say, on the far side of the hill.

filed under Categories pal casie, sir-links-a-lot, swamp thing 10 Comments

Here’s an awesome image of some green friends of ours, drawn on green paper by pal Casie:


In a fair and just world, this would be the cast of…I don’t know, a third Expendables movie, maybe? The Exgreenables? The Verdant Dozen (Give or Take A Couple)?

In other green news:

No joke…

filed under Categories blogging about blogging is a sin, here comes the april fool, pal plugging, sluggo, swamp thing 4 Comments

…this is one fabulous image:


So Daniel Butler, artist of Copernicus Jones, has been drawing personalized Twitter icons for folks, and, well, you can see what I asked for…and baby, I sure got it. If you want Mr. Butler to create an icon just for you, then hie yourself hither to this site for details and samples!

In other news…I don’t really have an April Fool’s Day post this year, which is only the second AFD I’ve missed, so hey, you know, my record’s still pretty good. Besides, will I ever top this? No sir, I will not.

However, I did add a new category for my previous April Fool’s posts, so you can go enjoy my past glories, back when this website was good. And the 2005 posts may not make sense out of context without seeing this, a screenshot of when pal Dorian and I switched our website templates for the day. …Of course, neither of our sites now look like they did then, so consider the word “context” at its lowest value, if you would.

Also, the joke here is that I included two fake items. …I wonder if anyone out there is still going store to store looking for them?

I wish I could have heard Aaron explain to Scott Snyder the significance of that particular phrase.

filed under Categories employee aaron, swamp thing 7 Comments

So former employee Aaron brought me tribute from last week’s Wondercon to appease my mighty wrath, in the form of a copy of the newest Swamp Thing #1 signed by writer Scott Snyder:


And…oh ho, what’s this?


For those of you just joining this website already in progress (-ive ruin), that would be a reference to the greatest piece of Swamp Thing merchandise ever created…the infamous “Swamp Thing chalk,” as seen here:

Anyway, between this and the War Rocket Ajax incident…well, Mr. Snyder probably isn’t thinking “oh, man, not another person bugging me about this Mike Sterling guy again,” but we’re getting there, surely.

This post contains a slight spoiler as to the identity of that classic Swamp Thing villain that’ll be popping up in the book soon.

filed under Categories swamp thing 9 Comments

So, do you remember this cover for Swamp Thing #8 (as featured in a recent End of Civilization post) where the Shocking! New! Appearance! of Swamp Thing was blacked out to prevent heart stoppages and catchings of the vapors amongst an unsuspecting public?


Well, Swamp Thing’s true appearance on the cover was revealed, apparently exclusively, on this site right here.

Of course, a few days ago we got a bit of a peek at Swamp Thing’s new look in DC’s most recent solicitation info release, where the cover of #10 features Yanick Paquette’s tribute to the Bernie Wrightson cover for the original #10:


It’s missing a couple details (like the big ol’ honkin’ antlers on Swampy’s head), but there you go.

…And yeah, looks like it’s the return of Arcane comin’ up. Still holding out for an appearance by Cranius, however.

YOGI NOOOOOOO

filed under Categories cranius, sir-links-a-lot, swamp thing, what is it good for 9 Comments

Ah, how could I have forgotten CRANIUS:


When wondering about how many “classic villains” Swamp Thing actually had, I totally forgot about Cranius, the most Un of all the Un-Men, until my blogging brother Tim O’Neil was good enough to remind me of our brain-handed friend.

Don’t worry…I’m not going to get all Cranius-crazy on you again, but yeah…the return of Cranius. Wouldn’t that be something if that were the case?

Anyway, in some site news…I almost decided to fix the commenting settings to require names and email addresses from folks who want to leave a comment, but decided I didn’t want to inconvenience everyone. Besides, it’s not as if someone couldn’t stick a fake email address in there or anything. However, I can ban IP addresses…I don’t want to, and hopefully I won’t have to.

Enough about that…let’s get to some more entertaining stuff:

  • Happy Birthday, Superman!

  • Here are some Frank Frazetta-inspired Cerebus drawings by Dave Sim…including a interesting color commission that sort of expresses Dave’s feelings about superheroes.

  • Finally, one of these “Keep Calm” things that I actually like…almost certainly because it features a certain Little Stuffed Bull of some note.

  • Andrew picked a good’un for the latest installment of Nobody’s Favorites…but mostly I’m just jealous of that post title that I wish I’d thought of first.

  • And now, some “Then…KOREA” pics.

    First, from the aforementioned Bully, the Little Stuffed Bull, comes this slightly revamped version of a post of his from a couple of days ago:


    From the equally aforementioned Andrew comes this shocking tale of an evening’s festivities gone horribly wrong:


    And the esteemed Dr. K has this, a tale of tragedy:


    Oh dear.

I’m pretty sure the transitional phrase “Speaking of Swamp Thing” is implied in most of my posts.

filed under Categories swamp thing 20 Comments

So reader Bryan was playing around with that “Then…KOREA” panel from yesterday, and sent me this:


Very nice. …But then it got me to thinking that, sooner or later, someone’s gonna attempt a M*A*S*H “reboot” and what a bad idea that would be. I’m depending on you young folks to keep that from happening should someone attempt it after I’m gone.

Also, Rich Handley, fan of both apes and swamps, sent along a link to his own Swamp Thing-ified version of the “Then…KOREA” transition, which you can see by clicking on this little ol’ link here.

Speaking of Swamp Thing, over here in this John Byrne Forum message thread someone posted a commissioned sketch Byrne did of Swampy ‘n’ Abby. Also in that thread, Byrne relates a couple of stories about not being allowed to use Swamp Thing in comics he was working on.

As Dave pointed out to me on the Twitter regarding the one incident that occurred during Byrne’s initial Action run in the ’80s, Byrne blames the Vertigo editors despite that imprint’s existence being several years away, so the Vertigo/DC editorial split wouldn’t have been the excuse to keep Byrne from using Swamp Thing in a Superman team-up. Interesting that, as it’s told, the Big Name Creator DC essentially put in charge of the entire Superman franchise at the time couldn’t use whatever character he wanted from the DC Universe, but the New Guy Writing the Weird Horror Book could use a Superman character (Lex Luthor) over the Big Name Creator’s protests. …Perhaps the first stirrings of the coming DC/Vertigo split, or just favored treatment of one creator over another as Byrne says…who knows. But it’s certainly an interesting story about that period of Swamp Thing’s history I hadn’t heard before.

(If you want to read about that specific usage of Luthor in the Swamp Thing comics which Byrne objected to, I discussed it briefly a few years back.)

In other Swamp Thing news, there’s an interview with Swamp-writer Scott Snyder where he hypes Swamp Thing’s arrival (finally!) in the new Swamp Thing series. Also noted is the return of “a really classic villain” from Swamp Thing’s past, not named by Snyder, but really, aside from Arcane, how many other “classic villains” does Swamp Thing have? Jason Woodrue, the Floronic Man? General Sunderland? M’nagalah? God help us, Sabre? …Seriously, if this ends up being the return of Nathan Ellery, well, you know what’s gonna happen then?