Comic Book Creator #6: Swampmen

#6 presents

Muck-Monsters and Their Makers!

Interviews with:

Bernie Wrightson Alan Moore Steve Gerber Mike Ploog Len Wein Stephen R. Bissette Rick Veitch John Totleben Val Mayerik Jim Mooney

Swamp Thing TM & © DC Comics. Used with permission.

& C REATURE FEATURES!

Cover art & color by Frank Cho

Man-Thing TM & ©2014 Marvel Characters, Inc. Illustration ©2014 Arthur Adams.

Swamp Thing TM & © DC Comics. Man-Thing TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. The Heap TM & © the respective copyright holder.

edited by jon b. cooke & george khoury • spread art by ronn sutton • colors by tom ziuko Swamp Thing TM & © DC Comics. Man-Thing TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. “It” TM & © the Theodore Sturgeon Literary Trust. The Heap, Bog Beast, Lurker in the Swamp TM & © the respective copyright holders.

twomorrows publishing

raleigh, north carolina

Dedicated to

George Khoury

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers • 2014 Annual Jon B. Cooke/Editor & Designer • George Khoury/Guest Editor • John Morrow/Publisher & Consulting Editor • Michael Aushenker/Associate Editor Frank Cho/Front Cover and Frontispiece Artist & Colorist • Douglas Klauba/Back Cover Artist • Ronn Sutton/Opening Spread Artist • J.D. King/Swamp Woody Icon Richard J. Arndt, Christopher Irving, Tom Ziuko/Contributing Editors • Brian K. Morris/Senior Transcriber • Aaron Kushner, Steven E. Tice, Steven Thompson/Transcribers J.D. King/Cbc Cartoonist • Ronn Sutton/CBC Illustrator • Tom Ziuko/CBC Colorist Supreme • Rob Smentek/Cbc Proofreader Seth Kushner, Greg Preston/CBC Contributing Photographers • Jackie Estrada/Guest Contributing Photographer • Fred Hembeck/CBC Hembeck

Softcover ISBN: 978-1-60549-057-1 • First Printing • November 2014 • Printed in the USA • ISSN 2330-2437 TwoMorrows Publishing • Raleigh, North Carolina • www.twomorrows.com • email: store@twomorrows.com Comic Book Creator™ is published quarterly by TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Dr., Raleigh, NC 27614 USA. Phone: (919) 449-0344. Comic Book Creator editorial offices: P. O. Box 204, West Kingston, RI 02892 USA. E-mail: jonbcooke@aol.com.

Send subscription funds to TwoMorrows, NOT to the editorial offices. Four-issue subscriptions: $40 US, $50 Canada, $60 elsewhere. All characters are © their respective copyright owners. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted.

All editorial matter © Jon B. Cooke/TwoMorrows. Comic Book Creator is a shared trademark of Jon B. Cooke/TwoMorrows. All Rights Reserved. No portion of this publication may be reproduced in any manner without permission from the publisher.

™

Annual 2014

This Comic Book Creator special was initially conceived as a book project over ten years ago and, back in the day, our friend and artist extraordinaire Frank Cho agreed to contribute the Swampmen cover (thank you, thank you, thank you, Mr. Cho!).

We just had to use some of the cover space to list the superlative creators we’ve interviewed herein but, in acknowledgment of Frank Cho’s amazing work, as our frontispiece on page one, we include Frank’s cover art unaltered, sans logos and blurbs. What a gloriously macabre and atmospheric masterpiece!

Chicago artist Douglas Klauba, who has been a buddy since we met at a WizardWorld convention a good while back, contributes our back cover painting, a wonderfully eerie and evocative portrait of bayou beasties. Doug has contributed to Moonstone’s Kolchak and Phantom comics, and was part of the Dynamite Entertainment’s Project: Superpowers titles art directed by Alex Ross. Visit Mr. Klauba at www.douglasklauba.com.

Our opening spread — drawn by remarkable Ronn Sutton and colored by terrific Tom Ziuko — is, of course, a pastiche of the iconic “March of Progress” infographic delineating human evolution illustrated by Rudolph Zallinger for the 1965 Early Man volume of the Time-Life’s Life Nature Library.

From left: Ted Sturgeon’s It, The Heap from Airboy Comics, Atlas/Seaboard’s Bog Beast, Lurker of the Swamp from Gold Key, Marvel’s Man-Thing, and Swamp Thing from DC Comics.

Cover details on page four, clockwise from upper left: Airboy Comics Vol. 9 #5 [June ’52], Ernest Schroeder, artist; Swamp Woody icon by J.D. King; Psycho #2 [Mar. ’71], Hector Varella, artist; Monsters Unleashed #3 [Nov. ’73], Neal Adams, artist; The Occult Files of Dr. Spektor #21 [Aug. ’76], Jesse Santos, artist; and Swamp Thing #9 [Mar.–Apr. ’74], Bernie Wrightson, artist.

Page five photo by Erik Henne of www. erikhenne.com.

Used with permission.

Endpapers

by Arthur Adams.

Table of Contents Introduction: Love, Envy, and Bayou Beasts........................................ 8 Born of the Bayou: What Is—and What Isn’t—a Swampman....... 10 Sturgeon’s Monster: It All Began With “It”........................................ 12 SWAMPMEN The Heap: From Monster to Villain to Hero at Hillman Comics....... 18 Between That Heap and Those Things: ’50s Swamp Monsters..... 24 Silver Sludge & Boggy Bronze: ’70s Muckman Chronology........... 26 Marvin, the Dead-Thing: Mr. Kanfer’s Short Life-After-Death*...... 37 The Glob: Hillman’s Heap Done Marvel-style.................................... 38 Return of the Heap: Skywald’s Grotesque Revisioning.................... 40 Man-Thing: The Savage Beginnings of the Marvel Monster.......... 44 Swamp Thing: The Tragic Creature’s Roots....................................... 52 Bog Beast: A Tar-Monster Rises at Atlas/Seaboard........................ 60 Lurker in the Swamp: Gold Key’s Haunted Swamp Dweller........... 62 “It” by Theodore Sturgeon*.................................................................. 64 THE MUCK-MONSTER MAKERS Swamp Thing: Len Wein.............................................................................................. 74 Bernie Wrightson............................................................................... 90 The Man-Thing: Steve Gerber..................................................................................... 112 Val Mayerik....................................................................................... 124 Mike Ploog........................................................................................ 126 Jim Mooney...................................................................................... 130 The Swamp God: Alan Moore....................................................................................... 132 Steve Bissette.................................................................................. 150 Rick Veitch........................................................................................ 162 John Totleben................................................................................... 174 Swampmen Contributors.................................................................... 183 Creator’s Creators: Ronn Sutton......................................................... 190 Coming Attractions: Bernie Wrightson headlines CBC #7............ 190 A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words............................................. 191 One Last Thing: The Thing of It Is….................................................. 192 * Alas, we had hoped to feature the short story “It” immediately following the essay on Mr. Sturgeon’s tale, but printing expenses prohibit the inclusion of a b-&-w signature amidst the color section, thus poor ol’ Marv had to shoehorned where he doesn’t fit chronologically. Instead “It” appears at the end of the color pages, where Marvin is supposed to be, on pg. 64. Oh, well…!

THIS SPREAD: Previous page ghost image is pulp illustration master Edd Cartier’s macabre drawing of Theodore Sturgeon’s “It,” with Kimbo the hunting dog meeting his grim demise. From Unknown [Aug. 1940], courtesy of Will Murray. Cover details on the bottom tier of page previous, from left, “It!” by Jim Steranko, Supernatural Thrillers #1 [ Dec. ’72]; The Glob by Herb Trimpe, The Incredible Hulk #121 [Nov. ’69]; Frank Thorne’s Bog Beast, Tales of Evil #2 [Apr. ’75]. This page cover details from top: Marvin, the Dead-Thing, by Enrich Torres, Eerie #49 [July ’73]; Neal Adams’ Spectre of the Stalking Swamp, The Phantom Stranger #14 [July–Aug. ’71]; and Taboo by Jack Kirby, gracing Strange Tales # 75 [June ’60].

Love, Envy, and Bayou Beasts

Lessons found in the strange sub-genre of American horror comics, swamp monsters

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Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Swamp Thing TM & © DC Comics. Tales of Horror, Bog Beast TM & © the respective copyright holders.

C’mon, admit it: the swamp monster phenomenon, the origins of which stretch back to early days of the form but, bubbling out of the ooze, becoming a genuine sensation by the early 1970s, is certainly a weird ’n’ wonky — and decidedly resilient — trend in comic books. At its base essence, the sub-genre is about decomposing corpses, rotting in sinister marshes, and somehow miraculously transforming into sentient monsters that are oft hellbent on terrorizing local townsfolk. While, as you’ll see, the direct roots of this bizarreness actually stretch back to a science-fiction/fantasy pulp magazine in 1940, it was in four-color funnybooks where arose the likes of innumerable two-legged man-critters from the musty, rank bayou. Taken at face value, it’s a head-scratcher what this strange category of horror comics actually means, wouldn’t you agree?

Comic book publishers, like most purveyors of popular culture, have always chased the latest Big Thing to satiate their audience’s fickle, ever-changing tastes, and though precursors can be found in the titles of decades prior, it was the early ’70s liberalization of the Comics Code that summoned forth a legion of monster men from the miry muck. Virtually every imprint in the field had a respective version: DC introduced Swamp Thing; at the same time, Marvel offered the debut of Man-Thing; Skywald boasted a revival of the original comic-book beastie, The Heap; the short-lived Atlas/Seaboard gave us the crimson-hued Bog Beast; even Gold Key got in the game with the Lurker of the Swamp; and Warren Publications featured Marvin, the Dead-Thing. And this line-up doesn’t include supporting characters in other titles such as The Glob in The Incredible Hulk. Good lord, there’s a trail of muddy footprints throughout that notorious ten-year span called the Me Decade!

But so what? Why produce an entire book studying these macabre characters? The Comics Magazine Association of America had eased up the rules in 1971 and newsstand racks subsequently exploded with sub-genres of horror: vampires, werewolves, zombies, monsters of Frankenstein, Satan spawn, ghouls, exorcists, living mummies, and manphibians… What makes the category of reanimated dead people born of the swamp so special? Why focus 192 pages on creatures formerly known as Roger Kirk, Baron Eric von Emmelman, Alex Olsen, Ted Sallis, Alec Holland, Jim Roberts, some guy named Marvin, and brethren of like demise? The premise, used to superbly creepy effect in prose by renowned fantasy author Theodore Sturgeon and then rather cheesily for a decade in Hillman’s Airboy Comics of the ’40s and ’50s, was admittedly somewhat silly, never mind becoming a cliché due to tremendous overuse in the ’70s. Why, begs your humble editor, should we even care?

Well, dearest reader, maybe it’s less about the premise than it is the execution. Maybe it’s about the quality infused by a handful of comic book creators who produced sometimes resplendent work. Mind you, not all of the material was top shelf (we’ll get to the wildly variant degrees of craftsmanship herein, don’t fret!) but some of the comic books — those helmed by Len Wein, Bernie Wrightson, and Nestor Redondo; Steve Gerber, Val Mayerik, and Mike Ploog; as well as Alan Moore, Steve Bissette, John Totleben, Rick Veitch, and company — transcend the genre and speak directly to the vagaries of the human condition.

But, in all honesty, that’s only partly why I initially started this project over ten years ago, originally planned as a standalone TwoMorrows book. Don’t get me wrong: at the time they first appeared, I loved the Wein/Wrightson/Redondo Swamp Thing and Man-Thing by Gerber/ Mayerik/Ploog… and the Moore/Bissette/Totleben reinvention of Swamp Thing, perhaps the best continuing horror comic series ever done. But, truth be told, it was sheer and utter jealousy at the heart of this tome’s conception. I blame it on my co-editor, George Khoury.

Let me start at the start. I first encountered George via email and prompted by TwoMorrows publisher John Morrow, George audaciously asked me, a stranger whose work he admired, to design a book cover for him — for either a pittance or (choke!) no money.

I immediately took a liking to this bold

Artwork © Mike Ploog. Man-Thing TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

Introduction young man and, in due course, we became pals and confidants, and I volunteered to design and lay out his superb examination of one of the most important comic series ever, Kimota! The Miracleman Companion. And what a glorious time I had participating in that astonishing (and sadly out-of-print) volume, which fortified the already great esteem I held for writer Alan Moore, as a creative force and a man of dignity. Naturally, as George is my brother from another mother, I was compelled to became competitive, and I schemed of my own Moorebased project in which, roles reversed, Khoury would assist me in putting together a definitive book.

Thus was born Swampmen: The Muck-Monsters and Their Makers. George and I jumped in with gusto, even traveling together on a whirlwind journey to Northampton, England, for an interview with Mr. Moore. While my buddy interviewed any number of swampmen by phone, I flew to California for a huge Bernie Wrightson interview and day-long visit to Len Wein’s Woodland Hills abode.

Then, after a flurry of activity talking to dozens of creators and a great deal of time accumulating material and conducting research… stuff happened. The entire project was shelved indefinitely by yours truly. It had been abortively revived on occasion, once solicited by TwoMorrows, but that too fell apart — my fault entirely.

(Let’s just say Ye Ed had his own regenesis to undergo, a personal transformation to become something different, experience a reinvention, resurrection, into… Jon-Thing, if you will!) And, thus, with the aughts behind us and my rejoining the TwoMorrows family, finishing this awesome collection has finally become a blessed reality.

What started off as a product of envy, Swampmen has grown into the study of something quite resonant and, we hope, as you traverse these pages, you’ll recognize that there’s often deeper meaning than talented artists and writers merely telling scary stories about spooky muck-monsters. We find that (among many other fascinating aspects) at the heart of Swamp Thing is not just a love story about a mutated vegetable and a whitehaired woman named Abby; it’s very conception is the result of love and loss in the lives of creators Wein and Wrightson themselves. We hear firsthand from the late Steve Gerber about his bringing an abiding poignance and absurdity to Man-Thing, and introduce a unforgettable talking fowl along the way. We learn how Moore fortuitously picked the character he deemed the worst in comics and, through sheer happenstance, was able to extrapolate that outline, done for his own amusement, into one of the most sublime series in the history of the form. And then there’s Rick Veitch’s futile struggle to tell a story of Swamp Thing at Calvary on that dark Friday afternoon some 2,000 years ago. And that unpubbed S.T. graphic novel… This is about much more than just man-monsters emerging from the morass to frighten.

Alas, despite the fact we accumulated material that reached into recent years, we are limiting our main focus to the 1970s swamp monsters when the fad exploded and specifically to the ’80s revival of Swamp Thing, precisely the Alan Moore era (though we are remiss in not covering the Saga of the Swamp Thing issues prior).

Before this decision to leave out much of the ’80s and all of the ’90s to the present day, many folks who wrote and drew in those eras generously gave of their time and shared artwork. We ask the pardon of all left out of Swampmen, and thank everyone who participated. We hope, too, all who helped are listed on our contributors page. Any oversight (it has been over 12 years in the making!) will be duly noted in future issues of CBC.

You might think it odd that a co-editor is named on the dedication page. Truth is George doesn’t know I’m dedicating this tome to him and I hope it stands as testament to our enduring friendship. G.K. supported and encouraged yours truly in those dark days of isolation and for that — and for his tremendous, invaluable help with Swampmen — I am forever grateful.

One final note: After much discussion with Ye Publisher, we’ve decided this will be the final CBC Annual.

This decision comes because we just might jump to change frequency next year, and also due to confusion created by these double-sized issues as they don’t explicitly look like the regular CBC. Much as I’ve loved this twice-the-length indulgence, it’s time to focus on the regular mag. (That doesn’t preclude possible CBC Presents books, mind you!). Now, bring on the horrors!

— Ye Crusading Editor.

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Previous page: Far left was auctioned by Heritage, which dated this Bernie Wrightson illustration as from 1975. The piece included a Post-It notation: “Bill — I’m not sure if this is the first Sw. Th. —Bernie.” Inset bottom right is a cover repro of the Australian comic book Tales of Horror, #3 [1976], published by Gredown Pty. Ltd. and featuring a Bog Beast reprint from Atlas/Seaboard’s Weird Tales of the Macabre #2. Painting by Phil Belbin.

Below: Certainly one of the high-points of the initial Man-Thing series was the Steve Gerber and Mike Ploog tour de force, “Night of the Laughing Dead,” Man-Thing #5 [May ’74]. This is a 2002 pencil recreation

by Mr. Ploog of the artist’s classic cover.

9 9

Below: At the request of the artist, Matt Kaufenberg photomanipulated Francis Tsai’s superb Man-Thing illustration and created an entirely new edition of ManThing #11, complete with some cleverly made-up cover blurbs.

* “Solomon Grundy, born on a Monday/Christened on Tuesday/Married on Wednesday/Took ill on Thursday/ Grew worse on Friday/Died on Saturday/Buried on Sunday/That was the end of Solomon Grundy.”

10 10

because it resembles the Gillman) the Manphibian from Legion of Monsters #1 [Marvel, Sept. ’75]. We say they’re more related to reptilian bi-peds — think the Gorn from Star Trek or API’s The Alligator People movie [’59] — lest we allow Howard the Duck adversary Garko, the Man-Frog, into the mud-drenched mix!

Some might also think there’s a slew of behemoths and shamblers from the pages of the horror comics and Atlas giant monster titles of the 1950s warranting inclusion. Alas, most of those gargantuans — whether Monstrom, the Dweller in the Black Swamp; the Thing from the Swamp; Creature from the Black Bog; or Thing from the Hidden Swamp — are actually alien invaders bent on world domination. And because contributor David A. Roach includes the Marvel/ Atlas critters in his survey, we’ll be giving the nod to some of these fetid fellers, especially the now world-famous Groot, the walking tree creature (and Parliament of Trees member…?) and breakout character (with pal Rocket Raccoon) from the 2014 summer movie blockbuster Guardians of the Galaxy.

But enough about who is not a Swampmen and let’s introduce those we have selected for inclusion: • Swamp Thing: Say what you will about the seminal Theodore Sturgeon character “It,” but when most of us think of monsters rising from the morass of the sinister bayou, it’s the resilient DC character Swamp Thing who first comes to mind. Maybe it’s the fact that the sympathetic creature became an instant fan favorite upon his debut in 1971 due to the mastery of emerging comics artist Bernie Wrightson; or maybe it was the burgeoning and resonant romance between Swampy and Abigail Arcane as developed by scripter Len Wein; or perhaps the two major motion pictures that have been made — Swamp Thing [1982] and The Return of Swamp Thing — plus a television series [’90–’93] and a cartoon show [’91]. They all bring Swampy to mind. (The NBC series Constantine, set to debut around the time this book is released, has teased that the Plant Formerly Known as Alec Holland might be appearing in that occult drama series. NBC tweeted a picture of Constantine holding a business card plus the message “Experiencing a demon problem? Call John #Constantine, Master of the Dark Arts at 404-248-7182.”

When you call, a recording says, “Hello, you’ve reached John Constantine. And that’s John Constantine. If you’re looking for Alec Holland, try the bloody swamp.” [http:// tinyurl.com/q3ka2cy].) Whether, courtesy of an bio-restorative formula, a reanimated corpse made into a muscular giant composed of swamp debris or as redefined as a

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Man-Thing © Marvel Characters, Inc. Illustration © Francis Tsai.

Just what makes a Swampman?

Early on, we pretty much decided to focus more on the so-called descendants of Theodore Sturgeon’s “It” and less on the Frankenstein monster-inspired dead men who snap back to life.

The general criteria — though not rigid, mind you — are that they are those reanimated corpses taking on the physical characteristics of swampland. That is, creatures of once living and breathing human flesh but, through whatever horrid process, they are transformed from man into monster, now composed of mud, debris, and muck ’n’ mire, and often great strength.

Some folks take exception to our rather arbitrary selections and decry, for instance, the omission of the Golden Age nemesis of the Green Lantern and Justice Society of America tormentor, Solomon Grundy. Yes, the horror is “born on Monday” in Gotham City’s Slaughter Swamp, grown from the skeleton that “lay in a bog for 50 years and an incredible biological miracle took place! On his bones a pseudo-life was built. Bits of rotten wood and leaves built themselves into the monster of Solomon Grundy.” Or so explains Alan Scott, a.k.a.

Green Lantern, at the end of “Fighters Never Quit,” the Solomon Grundy debut story in All-American Comics #61 [Oct. ’44], by writer Alfred Bester and drawn by Paul Reinman. But we reckon, despite the “It”-like origin and vivid description of a living corpse rising “out of the oozing slime,” Grundy (who was given his moniker from the 19th century nursery rhyme*) is more inspired by Mary Shelley and Boris Karloff, given his resemblance to the Universal Studio monster from the long-running Frankenstein motion picture franchise.

There are also advocates who say we should include swamp monsters such as The Creature of the Black Lagoon and (perhaps

“It” ©1994 Theodore Sturgeon Literary Trust. Illustration © the respective copyright holder.

Inset right: The illustrations of the late Joan Hanke-Woods, winner of the 1986 Hugo Award for “Best Fan Artist,” graced the cover and interior of a limited edition reprinting of Theodore Sturgeon’s classic short story “It.” The stapled pamphlet, originally selling for $2, was published in 1978 by Misfit Press for the Eastern Michigan University SF Society. Small, low-resolution repros of Hanke-Woods superb drawings can be found at http:// www.collectorshowcase.fr/divers_ edit_amer_page_5.htm.

Dramatis Personae Just what makes a Swampman?

Swamp Thing, Solomon Grundy, Green Lantern © DC Comics. Sporr © Marvel Characters, Inc. Creature from the Black Lagoon © Universal Studios, Inc. MAD © William M. Gaines, Agent. Swamp Thing illustration © Glen Ostrander.

walking and talking plant that somewhat resembles a humanoid, Swamp Thing is the definitive Swampman.

• Man-Thing: Though erroneously viewed as Marvel Comics’ answer to Swamp Thing — both characters, we shall learn, were actually developed simultaneously — Man-Thing was the resident bog dweller at the House of Ideas during the ’70s, with a personality (or is that lack of personality?) distinct from the sensitive navel-gazing vegetable-partner of Abigail “Abby” Arcane Cable Holland. Scientist Ted Sallis, facing imminent death, injects himself with a “super-soldier serum,” drives his car into a swamp, dies, and his decaying body melds with the detritus of the quagmire, transforming the poor soul into a grotesque, mute, bug-eyed, horrible-looking miscreation dubbed the Man-Thing. Based in the Florida Everglades, endowed with rudimentary sensitivities, and able to inflict hellacious pain with a mere grip — “For whatever knows fear… burns at the Man-Thing’s touch!“ — the Marvel creepy critter is most definitely a top-tier Swampman.

• The Heap: If Swamp Thing is the Big Daddy of Swampmen, The Heap is the comic-book Grande-Père of them all. In honesty though, there are at least three distinct incarnations of the character that first appeared in Air Fighters Comics #3 [Dec. ’42]. First, you got your Hillman Heap, the shaggy brute born in the wake of Ted Sturgeon’s “It,” once German World War I air ace Baron Eric von Emmelman, whose decaying dead body absorbs forest litter to metamorphose into the carrot-nosed (and initially fanged) walking stack of hay. He becomes an instant reader favorite, stalking through 11½ years of Air Fighters and its 1945 retitling into Airboy Comics, as villain, hero, and oft silent witness to horror and crime, remaining a featured player until the very last issue.

Second, upstart Skywald Publications presented their version of The Heap in the second issue of black-&-white horror mag Psycho [Mar. ’71], a truly terrifying monster made from the cadaver of cropduster pilot Jim Roberts courtesy of toxic waste. That version lasted a couple of years at ill-fated Skywald.

And, third, Todd McFarlane used the moniker for a Spawn #73 [June ’98] guest star, the dead Eddie Beckett whose carcass (are we sensing a pattern here?) intermingles with “necroplasm,” plus soil and garbage to manifest into a gargantuan adversary for Spawn. (Herein, you’ll also see even more variants of The Heap, but suffice to say these are the three main incarnations.)

• The Bog Beast: While not actually born of the bayou, the Atlas/Seaboard comics Swampman certainly was of the same ilk as his surface-born brethren. Crimson-hued Boggy actually hails from “within the dark and mysterious regions of this planet’s depths,” or so says the character’s first color comic story, in Tales of Evil #2 [Apr. ’75]. Subterranean or not, the creature was a ’70s monster, lived in a swamp, and certainly seemed made of rotting flesh and muck. Check!

• The Lurker of the Swamp: Like Bog Beast, this Swampman — a creation of writer Don Glut and artist Jesse Santos — appeared only in a handful of stories, but the criteria is certainly met in this good-guy monster who started off as the remains of a nameless murder victim forever changed by the “Haunted Swamp” into an eventual ally of Gold Key’s Dr. Spektor.

Inset left top: Let’s not forget HEAP! — a wacky parody of the Hillman comics character — was featured in writer/editor/layout artist Harvey Kurtzman and artist Will Elder’s “Outer Sanctum” story in MAD #5 [June-July 1953]. Here’s a couple of panels depicting the pulsating, quivering, and growing beastie’s origin. Inset left bottom: From top, monsters from the wild we consider outside the parameters of our definition of “swampmen”: the Creature from the Black Lagoon (from the cover of Arthur Adams’ 1993 adaptation of the ’50s movie, Universal Monsters: Creature from the Black Lagoon); Solomon Grundy, in a cover detail of All-American Comics #61 [Oct. ’44] by Paul Reinman; and SFbased critters like Sporr, from Tales of Suspense #11 [Sept. ’60], from the Jack Kirby/Dick Ayers cover.

Below: Glen Ostrander’s faux Swamp Thing cover.

• Marvin, the Dead-Thing: Croaked dude becomes monster “by toxic waste as an amalgam of vegetation and undead flesh,” as one Internet observer writes.

Double-check!

Wish we had the space to discuss other creatures of the comics — Sludge, Bog Beast Demon, Muckman, etc. — but the accursed swamp denizens listed are our featured players. So grab your galoshes and mosquito repellent, and let’s get into the mire, Swampfans!

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

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It All Began With…

The horror comics sub-genre that won’t die began as a 1940 pulp magazine story…

by JON B. COOKE with George Khoury There’s no definitive evidence yet found that Theodore Sturgeon’s classic 1940 horror short story “It” had a direct influence on the creation of the first of the comic-book swamp monsters, The Heap, in the pages of Air Fighter Comics #3 [Dec. ’42], but it’s a stretch to doubt that the seminal tale was swimming around in the noggin of writer Harry Stein as he typed up the Sky Wolf exploit, “Wanted by the Nazis.” (When Alter Ego editor Roy Thomas directly inquired of Mort Leav if “It!” was an inspiration, the Heap artist-creator riposted, “I don’t know a Theodore Sturgeon”). Despite the lack of concrete proof, relatively early on a connection was recognized by aficionados, as Thomas reveals in his superb introduction to the first volume of the PS Artbooks series, Roy Thomas Presents The Heap: My first hint of the “secret origins” of the Hillman Heap came in the Nov. 1960 issue (#2) of the science-fiction fanzine Xero… In an attempt to recruit writers for the mag’s iconic comicbook nostalgia series “All in Color for a Dime,”co-editor/publisher Dick Lupoff wrote as an aside to a fan-friend:

“(Dick Schultz, research The Heap, willya? Check it back to its source, Sturgeon’s ‘It’ in the August ’40 Unknown…)”

Presumably, Schultz accepted his friend’s directive and completed the legwork, as book co-editor Lupoff discusses the It-Heap connection quite explicitly in his chapter “The Propwash Patrol Flies Again,” included in the 1973 collection of essays The Comic-Book Book [Arlington House] (itself a 12

sequel to the All in Color for a Dime edition). Lupoff goes so far as to reprint verbatim the opening sentence and following paragraphs of Sturgeon’s horror yarn, using that excerpt (and subsequent passage) in a clever ruse to suggest the prose could have easily referred specifically to the shaggy, fanged beast who would become a frequent Air Fighter guest star and eventual lead of a long-running solo feature.

And likely the reason a connection was so readily made attests to the terrific impact this understated, chilling and downright horrific story had on readers of the day and thereafter.

Les Daniels, in his important study Living in Fear: A History of Horror in the Mass Media [’75, Charles Scribner’s Sons], describes “It” as Unknown’s best known horror tale, “about a mindless creature spontaneously formed on the skeleton of a murdered man.”

(Oddly, Stephen King’s book devoted to the same subject, Danse Macabre [’81, Everest House], grants nary a mention of this important piece of supernatural literature.)

“It” was acknowledged as one of Sturgeon’s best tales, enough so to be collected by the end of the ’40s in a hardback edition, Without Sorcery: Thirteen Tales by Theodore Sturgeon, [Prime Press, ’48], in which the writer briefly described the genesis of the eerie yarn in a pair of italicized paragraphs: I have been asked repeatedly how this story was written, or how one gets ideas like this, or what one has to be or go through to be able to write such a horror.

I can only answer that it wrote itself. It unfolded without any single effort on my part from the first sentence. The names of the characters were taken off my ubiquitous coffee-maker. I was supremely happy

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Header image background © the respective copyright holder. Unknown © Condé Nast. Theodore Sturgeon photograph © Theodore Sturgeon Literary Trust.

Below: Undated photograph of writer Theodore Sturgeon, presumably from the 1970s or early ’80s, courtesy of daughter Noël A. Sturgeon, who kindly — with encouragement — gave us permission to reprint “It,” which can be found on page 16. Inset right: Cover of the Aug. 1940 [Vol. 3 #6] edition of the science-fiction/fantasy pulp magazine, Unknown, which included the first appearance of the author’s seminal horror tale.

Sturgeon’s Monster

Illustration © the respective copyright holder. Unknown © Condé Nast. “It” ©1994 Theodore Sturgeon Literary Trust c/o The Lotts Agency, Ltd. . Alfred Hitchcock anthology ©1967 Random House, Inc.

as I wrote it — no twistings, no warpings, no depressions.

Possibly it was catharsis — in other words, I was feeling so good that I took what poisons were in me at the moment and got rid of them in one pure plash of putrescence. It was very easy to do and I wish I could do it again.

The grotesque beauty, perhaps, of Sturgeon’s yarn lies in the unstintingly wholesome, bucolic setting — the quintessentially American, folksy farm venue — juxtaposed against the otherworldly, amoral detachment, and hideous appearance of a monster, a fantastically strong human-shaped corruption made of muck, forest debris, and putrescence. The story is simple (and — spoiler alert! — those who haven’t read “It” can skip the next paragraph synopsis and discover for themselves the complete tale reprinted complete herein): A sentient, intelligent thing comes to consciousness in the woods; kills a rabbit, a dog and a hunter; terrorizes a farming family; and is fatally neutralized by being dissolved in water, but not before threatening and traumatizing a nine-year-old farmer’s daughter, perhaps permanently. In an aside, we learn the monster formed on the skeleton of a local man, one Roger Kirk, who had gone missing in the backwoods years prior. We never truly learn how it came to be.

But, naturally, it is the excellence of Theodore Sturgeon’s prose that makes the tale a stand-out. Succinct and simply written, conveyed with intelligence, boasting moments of abject terror, oft expressed in understated language, the narrative — even if it hadn’t spawned an entire subgenre of horror comics — is unforgettable and remains well-remembered nearly 75 years after the man put pen to paper.

Ray Bradbury, a contemporary and friend of Sturgeon, pointed out in his 1948 introduction to Without Sorcery, “‘It,’ a very serious tale, an unsmiling mask of a story, was evidently written in a black refrigerator at two in the morning.”

The science-fiction/fantasy author continued (correctly as

it would turn out), “I also believe that ‘It,’ partaking of a locale all too often neglected by American writers, will be with us for a good number of years as one of the finest weird tales in the genre.”

Good as the fable is, “It” would not be the highlight of Sturgeon’s career, as the writer would go on to scribe the SF novel More Than Human, among others, and innumerable short stories, including “Killdozer!” Best known as scripter of the original Star Trek television episodes, “Shore Leave” and “Amok Time,” Sturgeon is also recalled as creator of the Vulcan phrase “Live long and prosper,” and of the oft-invoked “Sturgeon’s Law,” which postulates that 90% of everything in popular culture is… well, crap.

(Sturgeon was also the inspiration for Kurt Vonnegut’s fictional SF writer Kilgore Trout, who appeared in a number of Vonnegut novels. The Cat’s Cradle author told an interviewer in 1996, “He was modeled after Theodore Sturgeon, a really swell science-fiction writer. When I met him on Cape Cod, he was down on his luck, making a penny a word. I think it’s funny when someone is named after a fish… He may be remembered as a dignified, capable writer.”)

Pulp/comics historian Will Murray reports that publishing records indicate “It” was paid for by Unknown on April 5, 1940, and it soon appeared in a summer issue of the mag.

Since that debut, a bibliography at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (www.isfdb.org) lists over 60 reappearances, confirmation of its status as a classic of weird fiction.

And beyond the chiller’s undeniable influence on comic-book swamp monsters thereafter, “It” was itself finally adapted properly into sequential art format in 1972, by Marvel, in the pages of the inaugural issue of a brand-new, fancily-named bi-monthly horror comic book.

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

This page: Generations devoured “It” between the covers of many anthologies, though an early appearance was as a stand-alone chapbook (upper inset) promoting the author’s first collection, Without Sorcery [Prime Press, 1948] (cover seen above top, L. Robert Tschirky illo seen bottom), given away at the ’48 World Con, held in Toronto. According to an inscription, only 80 copies were made. Many — including Ye Ed — first encountered the tale in Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Stories That Scared Even Me [Random House, ’67], cover seen above. Below, courtesy of Will Murray, is a repro of the British edition of Unknown, which did sport “It” on the cover table of contents, unlike the American version, which did not.

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“It” ©1994 Theodore Sturgeon Literary Trust c/o The Lotts Agency, Ltd. Artwork © the respective copyright holder.

In the wake of the early 1970s liberalizing of the censors at the Comics Code Authority, the line-up at the House of Ideas exploded with innumerable horror titles, with no genus left unexploited. The plan was to “introduce something new into this kind of anthology title,” writes editor Roy Thomas in the first issue text page of Supernatural Thrillers [Dec. ’72], “by adapting the works of some of the premiere fantasy authors of the twentieth century.”

In a 2002 interview with George Khoury, Thomas explained how “It” was the first “world-famous chiller” to be adapted. “As for the story of how Supernatural Thrillers happened, it’s a weird story. I got into the adaptation thing by doing Robert E. Howard [Conan, Kull, Solomon Kane, etc.] and a few other things. We were going to do this new book, Supernatural Thrillers, and Stan had given me permission to go to science-fiction and horror writers and adapt their stories, so I thought, ‘Well, let’s go to the original of the Heap and that whole thing and do “It”!’ It was a good name, Stan approved it (verbally, at least, I’m sure).”

The story got weird when the Rascally One was to reach out to the renowned writer. “The funny part of it came when I had to phone Theodore Sturgeon, whom I had never met. Gerry Conway, who at the time was 20 or so, [was] a very young member of the Science Fiction Writers of America because of the couple of books and short stories he’d written. Through SFWA, he got hold of Sturgeon’s 14

phone number for me; Sturgeon lived on the West Coast then. And I remember, I was at my apartment on East 86th Street one evening with my first wife, Jeanie, and Gerry, and I had them wait in the living room and I went off in our bedroom, whose corner served as my office, with the phone number to call Theodore Sturgeon.”

Thomas continued, “I’d gotten permission to offer, I think, $150 a book… some of the terms for these adaptations [were left] a little bit vague, and probably should have been handled in a more businesslike manner. But it cost money to talk to a lawyer, so we winged it… I was sitting there for 10 or 15 minutes in the bedroom, and finally I walked out to get a drink of water.

And Gerry and Jeanie asked, ‘Well, what did he say?’ I answered, ‘I don’t know. I haven’t gotten the nerve up to call him yet!’ I was so intimidated at the thought of phoning the author of More Than Human, a real writer.”

Esteem issues came into play for Stan Lee’s right-hand man at the prospect of talking to a published — and revered — author. “I loved comics,” Thomas confessed, “but I always thought of them, whether now or then, as sort of ‘slumming’ from a literary point of view. Not just for me, but for everybody. And here I was going to be calling a guy who was really a first-class writer, as far as I was concerned, about one of his stories, and I just hadn’t worked up the nerve to do it, to offer him this little bit of money.

“It was one thing to call up Glenn Lord and offer him that kind of money for Conan, because it wasn’t Glenn Lord’s character; he was just the literary agent. But this was Ted Sturgeon. So I finally went back in and I did it, and we had a wonderful talk, after I introduced myself, for about 15 minutes or so. And by the time we hung up, I not only had the rights to do the book — and we may have even talked about the ‘Killdozer’ story we adapted a little later [in ST’s sister mag, Worlds Unknown #6, Apr. ’74] — but I’d actually written out a check, ready to send it off to him myself, and later get reimbursed by Marvel. Sturgeon asked me to do that, because he could use the money fast for an alimony payment. [laughs] So within a few days he had his check and we were working away on the story. I got Marie Severin and Frank Giacoia to do it.” Thomas handled the scripting himself.

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

“It” ©1994 Theodore Sturgeon Literary Trust c/o The Lotts Agency, Ltd. Artwork © the respective copyright holder. Supernatural Thrillers, Masters of Terror © Marvel Characters, Inc.

The resulting Thomas/Severin/Giacoia collaboration proved one of the finest — and faithful — adaptations from a mainstream comic book publisher, a 21-page tale that expertly captured the rural environment and horrific subtext, still fondly-recalled today. The writer revealed his approach: “One of the things I tried to do was to keep as much of Sturgeon’s prose as possible, because there’s no sense in just doing the story with pictures alone. Someone else might prefer to do it that way, as was done with the new adaptations of Bradbury’s stories in the 1990s for that Topps Illustrated Man comic, with a minimum of text. I hate that approach.

“My feeling was and is, I wanted to have a combination of pictures and words, because I wanted to not just ‘picturize’ what the writer did, but I also wanted to preserve some of his writing, if he was a good writer, like a Robert E. Howard or a Theodore Sturgeon. I had to edit it down, of course, and leave out more than I wanted to. I wish I could have done the story 10 or 20 pages longer. I’d love to be able to do it again and do it a different way. But I managed to keep a fair amount of the flavor. And I think the ending was fairly effective. Considering the fact that it’s harder sometimes to carry that off with when you’re showing drawings than it is to carry off in prose, I thought it worked out fairly well.”

Plus the art team of Severin and Giacoia was working on six cylinders, and the scripter was especially impressed with the pencils. “I thought Marie did a very nice job with it,” Thomas shared. “She did a really good job of storytelling.

And it had a different look about it. So I was very happy with it.” And then there was that other associated art job: the cover by comics legend James Steranko, which featured a creature somewhat different than the monster inside.

“Steranko decided to give It a more humanoid look,” Thomas said, “which was probably okay from a commercial aspect, because the more human look would probably make it sell better. Since I wanted a Steranko cover, I wasn’t going to mess around with it and try to change it, even though I’d have preferred something closer to what was inside. We had asked Steranko for a cover, so I wanted to use his interpretation. I think it was quite effective.”

Before going to press, the de facto Marvel editor-in-chief typed up one of his legendary, informative, and friendly text pages, where Thomas wrote about not only the new comics title, but about storyteller Sturgeon, as well.

[H]ere in Supernatural Thrillers (unwieldy title, that — but what the hey, it’s printed tiny on the cover!), we’re proud to introduce a new generation to a spine-tingling piece of prose-poetry which, in 1940, established once and for all the reputation of Theodore Sturgeon, surely one of the most honored and respected fantasy authors of all!

Soon after ‘It’ appeared in Unknown (the pulp-mag competitor of the Weird Tales title which showcased Conan and Kull and Lovecraft), Ted Sturgeon’s name was a household word — at least if you lived in a household where fantasy books lined creaky shelves.

More Than Human, ‘Microcosmic God,’ and The Synthetic Man were still in the future, but it was all there newborn and naked and writing in a story called ‘It’ which has never been topped in its field, and which has itself directly or indirectly spawned a virtual army of gloopyglop monsters which have infiltrated nearly every comics company which ever went into hock for a fourcolor printing press.

(As if it weren’t enough simply to create such a modern classic on very nearly his first outing, the quietly affable Mr. Sturgeon had to go and admit to one and all he hacked it out one morning on his honeymoon for some fast bread and that it was one of the easiest stories he ever wrote — thereby making a whole generation of pop writers turn slimegreen with envy!)

After publication, the soon-to-become official Marvel editor-in-chief did hear from the author. “I met [Sturgeon] a couple of times later, in the ’70s, at San Diego conventions,” Thomas said, “and he seemed pleased enough with it.”

Though the original prose story has been reprinted in excess of three-score occasions, the comics version has only since been published once, in black-&-white, in the Marvel magazine Masters of Terror [#1, July ’75]. Speculation has it that potential copyright concerns might be holding up any new printing of this and other Marvel literary adaptations.

This spread: Pages, panel detail, and cover of Supernatural Thrillers #1 [Dec. ’72], featuring the “It” adaptation. Art by Severin, Giacoia, and Steranko. Inset left is cover blurb from Worlds Unknown #6 [Apr. ’74]. Below is Gray Morrow’s take on the ST #1 Steranko cover.

Masters of Terror #1 [July ’75].

Mr. Sturgeon’s splendid depiction of a hideous manlike creature from the forest primeval doubtless influenced all the bayou beasts and mud-monsters arriving in the wake of “It.” And these shambling hulks of muck ’n’ mire, these man-beasts and bog things, all hell-born sons, brothers, and cousins of Sturgeon’s horrid abomination, would find refuge in a sanctuary of four colors, settling into the saddle-stitched ooze of a new sub-genre of horror, the swampmen comics.

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

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Man-Thing TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. Swamp Thing © DC Comics.

The Comic Book Muck-Monsters from the 1940s and into the ’80s

All characters TM & © their respective copyright holders. Painting © Douglas Klauba.

Inset right: The very first comic-book muck-monster of them all, the legendary, unforgettable creature called “The Heap” first appeared in the aerial war title Air Fighters Comics #3 [Dec. ’42], as guest star in the “Sky Wolf” feature. Cover art by Charles Biro.

Below: Arguably the most impressive (that is mammoth!) look given the Heap was in late ’45 and mid’46 ‘Sky Wolf” stories, where he is depicted as downright gargantuan!

Here is his monstrous entrance in Air Fighters Comics V2 #10 [Fall ’45]. Words and art by unknown.

When his solo feature began in Oct. ’46, the Heapster was down 250 lbs. and two-foot shorter.

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Bloodlust was big in comics back when the form was new, and yet, though prominent in the pulps and on radio programs of that period, horror wasn’t a proper genre in the field until as late as 1947, with the advent of ACG’s Adventures into the Unknown #1 [Fall]. Still, in the late ’30s and early ’40s, especially with the prospect of world war reaching our shores, kids were fed a steady diet of heroes killing bad men and terrifying monsters. Horror itself was ingrained in comics from the very beginning.

American children sensed people were suffering terribly in Europe and Asia, that the “Ratzis” and the “Nips” were often savage to innocents not of their liking. Newspapers and radio reports blared about the rape of entire cities and tragic loss of civilians when the Blitzkreig indiscriminately rained its payloads.

So it was natural for the freshmen class of superheroes, that joyful legion of characters so shiny and new, joined with the adventurers, aviators, crime-fighters, and secret agents sharing the funny-book pages, to betray not the slightest regret in taking the lives of their adversaries.

Unfettered by killjoy self-censorship, comic book publishers gave youngsters (before ma and pa took note) heapin’ helpings of violence.

Batman sported a gun holster on his utility belt and even Superman would blithely allow a villain to fall to his demise. And, boy, once WWII was on for the good ol’ U.S. of A., dispatching

squinty-eyed, rabid Germans and Japanese with pointy teeth and sharpened fingernails was de rigueur across the industry.

Monsters, whether vampires, ghouls, werewolves, Frankenstein-like reanimated corpses, and hunchbacks — more often than not knock-offs of the fiends starring in Universal motion picture franchises — were frequent guest-stars in any number of comic book stories. For all practical purposes, Captain America Comics was simply a horror title that just so happened to star a super-endowed, patriotic monster-killer.

Such was the environment where arose from a fetid, dank Polish swamp, the very first muck-monster in comics, this version a white-maned, blood-thirtsy, vampiric beast sporting extended fangs dripping saliva. The publisher was Hillman, an movie star magazine outfit which, since 1940, had been looking for a breakthrough in the profitable comic book game. After three dud titles, they finally hit it big with Air Fighters Comics, but only after a quick revamp when the first issue sputtered, with #2 [Nov. ’42] introducing Airboy (who becomes a bona fide sensation) and Sky Wolf, two colorfully-clad aviators gleefully taking on our enemies, as the U.S. was fighting a real war with Japan and Germany.

A Blawkhawk wanna-be, Sky Wolf was a pilot with apparently a singular distinction: his helmet. “He wore the pelt of a white wolf into battle, arranged so the wolf’s head covered his own,” writes Don Markstein on his Toonpedia website, ”with the man’s face visible through the wolf’s wired-open mouth.” Oh, and Sky Wolf kills Nazis.

After Sky Wolf’s debut (where we discover that Hitler himself has taken a sinister interest in the airman), it’s in his second episode, AFC #3 [Dec. ’42], when enters proper our subject of interest, the behemoth called by Jim Steranko in his Steranko History of Comics, Vol. 2 [’72], “One of the most fantastic and original characters ever created in the history of comics.” On page two of “Wanted by Nazis,” we learn the story of a WWI German air ace who crashes to his death in a desolate Eastern European marsh… “But Baron Emmelmann’s will to live has been a powerful force,” a caption explains, “time passes… and brings an unearthly transformation that has drawn its oxygen food from the vegetation… a fantastic HEAP that is neither animal… nor man….”

Steranko breathlessly expresses the appeal of the monster: “Heap! The very name conjures up images of the unknown — unspeakable, indescribable, undying. Heap!

Neither human nor beast, yet with the form and instincts of each. Heap! Covered with a thatch of bristly swamp growth and decades of fetid swamp — and alive!!!”

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Header panel detail from Airboy Comics V7 #7 [Aug. ’50]. Art by Ernest Schroeder. The Heap, Air Fighters Comics, and Sky Wolf TM & © the respective copyright owner.

by JON B. COOKE with Christopher Irving

The Heap, Air Fighters Comics, and Sky Wolf TM & © the respective copyright owner.

What made the character so instantly compelling with kids of the day was evident in that first story. First, he is a gigantic monstrosity, savage and feral, covered in shaggy detritus (at first a pale white).

Plus he feeds off the blood of animals he pounces on to suck dry the poor critters with his prominent fangs.

And the Heap could even be goofy, with cartoon hearts floating above his head indicating infatuation with a hapless German soldier. And he possesses lethal strength and just enough intelligence to be proactive, less observer than participant.

The Heap’s first appearance was written by Harry Stein with art by Mort Leav, although Hillman editor Ed Cronin likely had a strong hand in the character’s execution, given the editor’s story conferences. Artist Ernest Schoeder related to interviewer Jim Amash in Alter Ego #42 [Nov. ’04], “My editor at Hillman was Ed Cronin and we became close friends. We wrote together. I’d come in at lunch time and we’d discuss plots. Ed would leave it up to me to fill out the story. He was a good writer and came up with brilliant plots. He could take any idea, no matter how far out it seemed, and make a good plot out of it.”

The artist-creator, in an essay written for A/E #19 [Dec. ’02], mentions only briefly the fateful creation. “Although my work appeared in books of Fiction House, Hillman, MLJ, and Lev Gleason,” Mort Leav relates, “I never worked directly for any of those outfits.

My jobs went there only by way of the [Jerry] Iger shop. That included the creation of ‘The Heap’ with Harry Stein. We were having a ball coming up with names before settling on ‘The Heap.’ That was in the ‘Sky Wolf’ strip, where I also drew a villainous character; half his head and body were made of steel.”

Steranko writes, “Writer Harry Stein’s concept turned the character into the greatest monster of all by adapting freely from the world’s classic horror tales. He lived on blood like a vampire, had the strength and immortality of Frankenstein, looked like a combination of a werewolf and abominable snowman, and had a touch of the Golem, too. With all this going for it, how could it miss? The Heap returned. And returned. And returned.”

The Heap was obviously a big hit with readers, and though his return to the title would be slow and shambling, he would

come back, his demeanor oft less monstrous and more heroic, his fangs gone, fur changed to darker hues, yet always mysterious and violent enough to keep his fans wanting more, enough so that when the title was renamed Airboy Comics [V.3 #9, Oct. ’46], the muck-monster was granted a back-up series of his own.

The wonderful, often wonky solo stories, now usually set in the U.S., introduce for a period a revolving-door supporting cast, including Rickie, a boy sidekick with a toy airplane, a regular player for a spell; and even Roman dieties (who are shown to be instrumental in his origin (a revelation that turns the Heap’s birth from freak accident to divine intervention), with the god of war and goddess Ceres now wagering on the creature’s fate.

(Of the multitudinous “Heap” tales themselves, rather than rehash the oft macabre, sometimes ferocious stories, we urge all to check out the three-volume hardcover set, Roy Thomas Presents The Heap, published by PS Artbooks, which reprints the complete run. But, of the artists behind the exploits, one in particular, we’ve more to discuss…. )

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Inset left: Panel detail from Air Fighters V2 #10 [Fall ’45]. Above: The Heap began his career as guest-star/villain in the “Sky Wolf” feature. This repro of the Air Fighters #3 [Dec. ’42] splash page is by artist Mort Leav. Below: More Leav art from AFC #3 — the origin sequence of the then-white furred Heap with a panel detail overlay.

Below: A continuing motif in the Kanigher-scripted “Enemy Ace” exploits was the relationship between the German air ace Von Hammer and a wolf who hunts in a Bavarian forest. An evocative panel from the same SSWS issue listed above. Art by Joe Kubert.

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The Heap and Airboy TM & © the respective copyright owner.

This page and next: Above, left to right, are the Airboy covers that include “The Heap”: V9 #3 [Apr. ’52]; V9 #5 [June ’52]; V9 #6 [July ’52]; V9 #8 [Sept. ’52]; V9 #12 [Jan. ’53]; and V10 #1 [Feb ’53]. All art by Ernest Schroeder. The page below is a slightly photo-manipulated cover blurb announcing the solo “Heap” series on Airboy V3 #9 [Oct. ’46]; and at bottom is the splash panel from “The Heap” in Airboy V5 #2 [Mar. ’48], with art possibly by Frank Bolle (pencils) and Leonard Starr (inks). Next page far right is panel detail from Airboy V6 #8 [Sept. ’49], artist unknown.

Next page bottom right is the dramatic opening splash from “The Heap,” in Airboy Comics V4 #11 [Dec. ’47] with art by Dan Barry.

Artists Arthur Peddy, Bernard Sachs, Dan Barry, Frank Bolle, Leonard Starr, Carmine Infantino, John Belfi, and Paul Reinman (along with some unidentified talents) would contribute requisite pages to the series, but the arrival of Ernest Schroeder in late 1949 would take “The Heap” to a new level. “With no disrespect intended to the other celebrated artists who drew The Heap before him,” Roy Thomas enthused in his Heap Vol. 2 introduction, “Ernest Schroeder simply did the best Heap ever. And he did it over and over again, month after month, with rarely a dud in terms of story — and never a major misfire in terms of art.”

Herb Rogoff, Hillman assistant editor in the early ’50s, concurs in an essay written for that same Heap collection, offering, “As for his work at Hillman, in my opinion, ‘The Heap’ never shone as glitteringly as it did until Schroeder wrote and drew the feature. Granted, he also had versions that preceded his use as an important guide, but he also injected a mysticism that increased the eerie quality of Baron von Emmelman’s mucky, muddy, vegetated existence.”

The Heap’s potential was truly realized when Schroeder arrived to take on not only the drawing, but some scripting as well. Previously, in the Airboy lead feature, the artist had proven he could scribe a bang-up yarn. Dec. 1948’s “Airboy and the Rats” is a darkly absurd and sinister tale that literally has the young pilot overcoming a rodent takeover of New York City. The story is brimming with atmospheric shots that reflect the film noir of the era, as Schroeder’s use of blacks

and powerful line work place him in the Milton Caniff school of accomplished cartoonists.

About the development process, the artist told Jim Amash for A/E, “I had story conferences with the editors, who gave me the assignments. They would tell me what they wanted a story on and we’d work out the particulars. Once I started doing the stories, they left me alone. I never had to get my pencils approved; I’d draw the story and then ink it.” While Schroeder did write his own stories, they always germinate from a story conference with editor Ed Cronin, a collaboration so strong that, the artist admits, “Our ideas were so intermixed that we couldn’t even tell who came up with what.”

One year after the rat story, in Dec. ’49, Schroeder contributes to “The Heap” with relish. It veers from the “crime comics” infusion it had suffered in years prior and became more mysterious, more bizarre, more just plain weird. Horror by then had become a full-fledged genre, and it was exploited (naturally, as the series always had it in degrees). The swamp monster evolved into a catalyst that was unwillingly thrown into conflicts with giant octopi or huge monsters in Danish castles… The Heap goes from being unknowing and lumbering to more childlike and pitiable. Soon, the large shapeless figure developed muscular accents under his fur-like vegetation. This behavioral change was ruminated upon by comics historian Dick Lupoff in his fine essay “The Propwash Patrol Flies Again,” from The Comic Book Book [Arlington House, 1973]: Almost every story had eerie overtones to it, and almost always the Heap was portrayed as a melancholy figure, an outcast from all life, a creature of pathos as much as terror, if not more pathos than terror.

Whether the creators of the Heap were concious of this characteristic, or if things just worked out that way, I do not know; but conciously or otherwise they hit upon the great secret of monster storytelling. For if the moster is just a bogeyman waved to frighten children, he will never amount to much.

But if the monster is pathetic, then he is Quasimodo, then he is Karloff ’s Frankenstein monster, then he is truly touching and memorable.

And so was the Heap, that great, shaggy, half-man, half-plant, that child of the goddess Ceres, that tragic ace of the Flying Circus.

We see the Heap carrying the broken body of a child to its swampy home, there to tend her with the gentle tenderness of the huge and mighty.

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Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

The Heap and Airboy TM & © the respective copyright owner.

Roy Thomas Presents The Heap © PS Artbooks.

The Heap could bring tears of pity to our eyes as well as gasps of terror to our lips.

That was his greatness, and that was the strange appeal that brings back his image to this day, the appeal of a very powerful image that stirs something deep within the subconcious memories of us all. Perhaps deeply buried recollections of those days when we were ourselves tiny babies, carried about and handled by our parents, huge creatures of inconceivable power.

As Roy Thomas relates in his Heap Vol. 2 introduction, few comic book characters would have their origin recounted and modified as often as did the Heap, and Thomas smartly suggests, “Not until the legendary Mort Weisinger began to expand the universe and cast in DC’s Superman adventures after the late 1950s would any comics editor wring so much out of the telling and re-telling of an origin as Hillman editor Ed Cronin would get out of his stable of (sadly anonymous) writers.” Yet, recalling the Cronin method of story conferencing, Thomas surmises, “Perhaps we’re really mostly hearing the voice of one man….”

Still, Schroeder’s fine artwork would continue to make the strip as appealing as did the plotting. The Heap would travel the world to disparate locales, to Africa one episode, the coast of Ireland the next. Here he fights aliens, there a 16th century French gargoyle. And, by 1952, the character is frequently featured on the title’s cover, typically battling horrendous monsters and sometimes even knocking Airboy entirely off the cover… a likely testament to the exploding popularity of horror comics. But even as he graduated to headlining status, the finale was coming fast for the shaggy monstrosity. By mid-1953, the endless wandering of the Heap would, in fact, end with Airboy Comics V.10, #4 [May ’53], with the Hillman comics division shuttering its doors. And it was just as well, as the anti-comics onslaught prompted

by Dr. Fredric Wertham and soon-to-emerge Comics Code would certainly have banned the Heap’s presence anyway.

How did the Heap manage to stick around during his Hillman reign? The character’s decade-long stint, beginning as a disposable “It” knock-off and ending as one of the Golden Age’s most tragic figures, is testimony to the collective vision of editor Ed Cronin and artist/writer Ernie Schroeder. Also, the constant revising of his origin gave the writers opportunity to continually consider new story angles. While many fans and historians alike would consider the Heap a horror comic, the debate could go that it was also rife with some elements of science-fiction interspersed with Gothic horror.

Perhaps the true elixir of life for the Heap’s stories was

in the genre-crossing nature of the character.

While The Heap may fall under the “monster” classification, his catalytic nature allowed him to fight shamans riding Thunderbirds and aliens, as well as bug-eyed monsters like the Man of Moonlight.

Regardless of whether the character was revered or reviled by readers, one can sympathize, as Dick Lupoff has noted, with the Heap as easily as we do with Boris Karloff’s Frankenstein monster. Unlike the man-made monstrosity though, the Heap tended to always fight for good, unwittingly or not. The fact that he drained canines

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

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Above: Cool logo redesign from 1949. Below: Detail from the Heap’s second appearance, in Air Fighters Comics V1 #9 [June ’43].

Artist unknown.

and sheep dry for sustenance was quickly overshadowed by the good deeds he committed through instinct or survival.

Except for a one-shot appearance in Harvey Kurtzman’s parody “The Outer Sanctum,” in MAD #5 [June–July ’53] (cover-dated a mere 30 days since the final true appearance of the character), itself a comedic take with his name truncated to simply “Heap!,” the world’s first comic book muck-monster would shunter out of the limelight and into posterity for another three decades before being properly revived. Oh, as we will see, his name and girth would eventually be appropriated by an outfit during the heyday of the muck-monster craze, but the creature that was once a WWI German aviator? His golden age was over.

It’s curious that one of the Heap’s greatest proponents and the gentleman who lent his name to the three-volume collected edition, and who as a youngster read Airboy Comics for the title character’s adventures, though repelled by the crime and horror elements in the back-up series, would come to ferevently embrace the shaggy beast and, when the opportunity arose, suggest that the monster should rise again.

Roy Thomas, a few years into his tenure at Marvel Comics, reveals he was directly responsible for the character’s resurrection… of a sort. “I had lunch with [former Marvel production manager] Sol Brodsky when he went off and co-founded [Skywald Publishing],” Thomas told George

Khoury. “He was looking for characters and I couldn’t write for him, so he was kind-of picking my brain. I liked Sol and wanted to help him. So I said — of course, we had the Man-Thing and all that — so I mentioned the Heap to him, which he then remembered. And I said, ‘You know, you ought to get somebody to revive the Heap.’ I wasn’t that wild with the way it was eventually done, with fangs and all.” Roy added with a laugh, “But that Heap actually looks very close to the way Mort Leav originally drew it back in Air Fighters #2 and #3.”

Of course, the Skywald Heap, featured in his own section herein, has no relation to the Hillman version other than in name. A true revival would come in 1986 when Eclipse Comics ambitiously launched a regeneration of the Air Fighters crew set in modern times, but with the same old Heap. The bi-weekly Airboy title is helmed by writer Chuck Dixon and artists Stan Woch, Ernie Colon, and Ron Randall, among others, all under the guidance of comics creator Timothy Truman, credited as “co-concept” and editor. The energetic series, which featured the Heap as a frequent co-star (once spinning him off into the wonderful Airboy-Mr. Monster Special [Aug. ’87], which had him in a titanic battle with Doc Stearn, the flamboyant monster-killer, in a tale written and drawn by Michael T. Gilbert), would last until #50 [Oct. ’89]. The Hillman Heap, alas, hasn’t been seen since.

Former Hillman editor Herb Rogoff, in his description of the character in The Heap Vol. 2 writes, “He was German, he was an air ace, he was shot down in a swamp in Poland, and his barely-alive body became enmeshed with vegetation. He stirred, he moved, he walked. He didn’t speak; he was without emotion. That’s it. In essence, I’ve told the story of the Heap.” Rogoff is essentially right, of course, but strangely, weirdly maybe, the character endures and, weirder still, we care for him. Go figure.

Huge Heapin’ Helpings of “The Heap”!

Back in the day, such as in the mid-’80s, when the Heap was revived proper as mentioned above, reprints of Golden Age comics were fairly infrequent and any thought that there would come a time when an entire run of a 1940s–50s series would be presented again — especially in color and with adequate resolution — was but a fleeting fancy. But today comic book collectors are blessed to be living in an era when even boutique publishers are resurrecting the delightful four-color fantasies of a time long gone by.

And so it is that the complete run of “The Heap” as published by Hillman Periodicals is now available in a smart, handsome three-volume set published by British outfit PS Artbooks (and, don’t fret, they’re sold individually as well), helmed and edited by — who else? — the finest Golden Age historian of them all, Roy Thomas, also one of the best writers and editors American comics has ever produced (and, to boot, Eisner Award-winning head honcho of CBC sister mag, the great Alter Ego!). The imprint, which includes other series, is called Roy Thomas Presents, even!

Growing up on Thomas-edited comics, this writer always looked forward to the occasional text piece by Stan Lee’s trusty right-hand man, invariably written engagingly and chockful of historical facts and insight, doling out the information us young fans craved about comics of the past.

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Why, I reckon it was a golden age to read Golden Age history! T’was to me!

So, anyway, this is a long-winded way of telling you that possessing these three tomes of the “Collected Works of The Heap” is essential… and not only to bask in the glory of the first muck-monster’s adventures, but especially to revel in the wealth of historical material Roy features in the front of each volume, whether a succinct, well-researched 5,000-word essay by R.T. or an excellent Jim Amash interview showcasing a Golden Age great.

You can find the PS Artbooks ad in the back pages of this book, and take note that the set features cover art by a trio of the finest swamp monster artists alive, Mike Ploog, Frank Brunner, and Stephen R. Bissette, and are available in special slipcase editions that each include a signed, limited-edition print. You can visit them online at http://psartbooks.com/catalog/ the-heap.html — Ye Ed. Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

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Panel detail fromfrom Airboy V6 #12.

Ernest Schroeder.

The Heap TM &TM ©2014 Panel detail Airboy V6 Art #12.by Artthe byincredible the incredible Ernest Schroeder.

The Heap & © the respective copyright holder.

The Monster from Swamp Sinister Captain Marvel, Shazam! ©DC Comics. “Swamp Monster,” Weird Mysteries © the respective copyright holder.

Basil Wolverton’s Weird Mystery!

Comics genius Basil Wolverton contributes art for the classic “Swamp Monster” story in Weird Mysteries #5 [June ’53]. Scripter is unknown but the artist for the gruesome cover at left is Bernard Baily. The splash [above] is misleading but jailbreaker “Killer” Cabot is transformed by supernatural design into an ill-fated fiend [right] who runs amok.

Even wholesome Captain Marvel met up with a muck-monster, battling a creature from "Swamp Sinister" in "The Hand of Horror" from Captain Marvel Adventures #140 [Jan. ’53], an eight-pager with art by the indomitable C.C. Beck and script most likely by Otto Binder. Lots of ghastly cartoon-style swamp action!

Beware the Man-Lawn

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Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Journey Into Mystery © Marvel Characters, Inc.

Okay, maybe technically not a swamp critter, though most definitely an anthropomorphized plant with good spelling and sign-painting skills, “Keep Off the Grass,” in Journey into Mystery #13 [Dec. ’53], the sumptuous front yard of bad guy Al Morgan’s palatial estate inexplicably comes to animated life and gives his owner a lethal throttling for bad lawn grooming.

This pair of panels are by artist John Forte and an unknown writer. The above cover is by Carl Burgos.

Bit Players It Came From the 1950s!

The Avenging Bog

© William M. Gaines, Agent.

© the respective copyright holder.

© William M. Gaines, Agent.

Haunt of Fear #27 [Sept.–Oct. ’54] features “Swamped!” where a ghoul (called a “man-thing”) receives his comeuppance from the swamp — an “avenging bog”! Art by Reed Crandall, story probably by Jack Oleck, and cover

by Graham Ingels.

Here’s The Thing!

Charlton Comics’ The Thing! #2 [Apr. ’52] [above] features the “weird, slimey creature” from Dimension 2-K-31, the Creature!

Art by Albert Tyler and Bob Forgione. You had us at “weird” and “slimey,” Creature!

Hep Heap

© EC Comics.

Zoot-suited Heap [left] in a panel detail from MAD #5’s horror parody, “Outer Sanctum,”

by Harvey Kurtzman and Will Elder.

Here’s Another “Thing” Repro’ed from colorist Marie Severin’s silverprints (hence the color formula notations), the story title and panels [right] from Haunt of Fear #15 [May–June ’50], edited, written and drawn by Al Feldstein.

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

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The Welsh comic book historian and author — as well as 2000 AD artist — ferrets out the lineage of muck-monsters post-E.C. Comics up until the emergence of the Alan Moore brand. Roach, who co-edited The Warren Companion with yours truly and recently scribed The Art of Vampirella: The Warren Years for Dynamite, makes some startling discoveries in this detailed and entertaining overview of the advent of the shambling and ever-so deadly creatures emerging from the backwoods in American comics.

Swamp creatures of various sorts have been a staple of comics ever since The Heap oozed onto the scene in Air Fighters #3, in 1942, but the genre really came into its own in the late ’60s and early ’70s. The roots of this explosion were planted in a series of “pre-hero” monster stories in Marvel’s Atlas titles, such as Strange Tales and Journey into Mystery, usually produced by the team of writer Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby. The first of these, “I Hear It Howl in the Swamp!” from Tales of Suspense #6 [Nov. ’59], pretty much established the pattern for these early swamp yarns. A grizzled bayou dweller hunts his way through the muck and stumbles upon a colossal creature emerging from the water, and he flees the scene, rounds up a posse, and confronts the beast. The twist in this first story (drawn by a young Steve Ditko — not the usual selection for a giant monster saga — and possibly written

by Larry Lieber) is that the beast is an alien baby crying its eyes out after being misplaced by its ever more gargantuan parents, who swing by in their U.F.O. to rescue the child and take off.

Between 1959

and ’62, Marvel dredged up seven swamp-based thrillers, including such deathless epics as “I Found Monstrom, the Dweller in the Black Swamp!” [Tales to Astonish #11, Sept. ’60]; “The Glob” [Journey into Mystery #72, Sept. ’61]; and “The Thing from the Hidden Swamp” [TTA #30, Apr. ’62].

However only one monstrosity came back for more: the star of “Taboo! The Thing from Murky Swamp,” an alien summit of sludge drawn with gloopy gusto by Kirby and Dick Ayers in Strange Tales #75 [June ’60] and the ST #77 [Oct. ’60] encore.

Taboo, of course, was bent on world domination and was quickly dispatched upon both appearances. Once Marvel’s super-heroes supplanted the monsters, these evil extraterrestrials seemed to stop invading America’s swamps and went into temporary retirement. But, by 1969, horror seemed to be the next big thing and as the various comics publishers dipped their feet in the stagnant pools, the swamp creature rose again, and this is where our story really begins.

For most fans, the sub-genre was fully revived with the advent of Swamp Thing, Man-Thing or even (for a few intrepid souls) Skywald’s Heap revival. Not so…

Mar. 1969: DC Editor Dick Giordano’s Witching Hour premieres with several short stories narrated by three (Alex Toth-designed) witches, but running throughout their narrative thread is the oncoming approach of a shambling creature who has just emerged from the fetid swamp. Ultimately the beast is revealed as merely the witches’ faithful servant but, in Egor’s wake, a legion of swamp creatures would subsequently arise from the putrid muck.

Apr. ’69: Creepy #26’s “Stranger In Town,” by writer Bill Parente and artist Tom Sutton, has not only the first Bronze

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

“Stranger in Town” © New Comic Company.

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by DAVID A. Roach

Taboo, Monstrom, The Glob TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

This page: The Atlas Age of Monsters, that glorious era preceding the advent of the Marvel super-heroes, gave us plenty of muddy mucksters, though usually visitors of extraterrestrial origin, and more often than not in exploits by writer-editor-AD Stan Lee and artists Jack Kirby (pencils) and Dick Ayers (inks), though scribe Larry Lieber and delineator Steve Ditko were often involved. Right inset are the Kirby/Ayers covers of Tales To Astonish #11 [Sept. ’60] and Journey Into Mystery #72 [Sept. ’61], and below the splash

by K&A in Strange Tales #75 [June ’60]. Bottom right is a panel from “Stranger in Town,” by Bill Parente (words) and Tom Sutton (picture). which graced Creepy #26 [Apr. ’69].

Toxic Timeline

The Glob, the Beast from the Bog TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

David A. Roach’s Swampmen Chronology from the ’60s to the ’70s… and Beyond!

Age swamp yarn as it also inadvertently provides the blueprint for most of the monsters to come. The story introduces us to the grotesque young outcast Wilfred Mapes who presents a local beauty with a bunch of flowers. Sadly, the efflorescence had been cultivated by Wilfred’s scientist father and they eat her, following which the enraged locals torch the Mapes’ hilltop manse and drive Wilfred into the nearby swamp, who re-emerges as a colossal, evil swamp creature. Returning to his father’s shattered lab, the hybrid merges with the remnants of Dr. Mapes’ malignant plants and then turns on the terrified villagers who shout, “Run! Run for your lives! The whole garden’s alive! It’ll kill us all!! Aaaaawk! Aaargh!!” Sutton’s monster is considerably bigger than most of its brethren, but most of the elements for successive swamp strips are all present and accounted for, thank you very much, even at this early stage.

The Witching Hour © DC Comics.

Nov. ’69: Writer Roy Thomas and artist Herb Trimpe give us The Incredible Hulk #121, “Within the Swamp There Stalks a Glob,” where the Hulk touches down in a bayou and accidentally breaks some inconveniently scattered radioactive canisters, which seep into the stagnant waters. Soon they merge with the life-essence of a recently drowned convict, Joe Timms, creating a hulking mass of muck and weeds called The Glob. Drawn with great relish

by Trimpe, who was then very much at the height of his creative powers. As is inevitable, Hulk and Glob slug it out until the muck-monster is killed by radiation but, due to public demand, he was back within the year (in Incredible Hulk #129 [July ’70]). What is significant about the strip is that it introduced (or should I say re-introduced, in the tradition of The Heap) the notion of the swamp creature as

tortured soul, as a tragic hero almost. It is also revealed that readers rather liked reading about a giant pile of mud wreaking havoc on an unsuspecting world.

June ’70: Chamber of Darkness #5 presents “The Beast from the Bog!” by scribe Denny O’Neil and artist Paul Reinman, a touching little tale which see a vast green alien called Chalo rescued from a Louisiana swamp by an old couple. The grateful creature rewards them by transforming the elderly pair back into 20-year-olds and then flies off into space in his giant transparent egg. The strip is a must for those who want their monsters to resemble ragmops. The observant will also spot a Herb Trimpe splash page, which is rather more effective than Reinman’s art in the rest of the story.

July ’70: “The Swampchild” is featured in Unexpected #119, written by Carl Wessler and drawn by Werner Roth and Frank Giacoia. The same month that plays host to the Glob’s second slugfest with the Hulk sees DC’s first foray into the swamp in a somewhat confused and sadistic tale. Dr. Starke experiments with “primordial gunk” from a swamp and miraculously creates a living baby. The years pass and Starke’s beautiful assistant Julia stumbles upon his notes and their astonishing secret. She suspects the swampchild may be one of the Evans brothers; is it gentle Ben or hothead Luke? The pair fight for her affections and, in the ensuing mêlée, Julia gets shot and — gasp! — she dissolves into a rather unappealing pile of sludge….

Above: Inspired by the Hillman comic-book character The Heap, Roy Thomas conjured up The Shape as an adversary in The Incredible Hulk #121 [Nov. ’69], only editor Stan Lee thought the moniker not… umm… Marvel enough, so it was changed to The Glob! Panel detail artwork by Herb Trimpe. Below: Herb also contributed this splash detail in Chamber of Darkness #5 [June ’70]. Inset left: Exquisite Alex Toth splash page, featuring swamp shambling servant, the mopey Egor, in the evocative opening of The Witching Hour #7 [Feb.–Mar. ’70].

Aug. ’70: Creepy #34 has “The Swamp in Hell!” by Al Hewetson (words) and Don Vaughn (pictures). In 1970, Warren Publications was on the cusp of regaining its earlier mastery of horror strips but was still producing some distinctly average material, such as this bythe-numbers effort. The tale is that odd staple: monster comes into town, everyone runs for the hills except the kindly old blind man (“Oh my God! Papa! We forgot about him!”), who tames the beast with his generous heart. In this case, the beast conveniently dissolves Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

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Mar. ’71: The Heap is (sort of) resurrected by writer Chuck McNaughton and the stalwart art team of Ross Andru and Mike Esposito in Psycho #2. Presumably thinking that Hillman’s original Heap is in the public domain (or, alternatively, the original publisher not caring), Skywald decides to dream up their own version with “The Heap.”

In this case, The Heap is cropduster Jim Roberts whose sabotaged bi-plane careens into a vast vat of nerve gas.

The combination of lethal biological agents, chemicals, and fire transforms the unfortunate pilot into the monstrous shambling Heap, quite possibly the most repellent of all the muck-monsters. (I refer the reader to The Heap’s breakfast scene on page nine, which shows our “hero” chewing on a rat!)

Inexplicably, the creature proves to be quite popular with Psycho’s readership and he becomes the first swamp star of the ’70s, predating Marvel and DC’s better-known efforts by a couple of months.

June ’71: House of Secrets #92’s “Swamp Thing” emerges. Writer Len Wein and artist Bernie Wrightson (assisted by Jeff Jones, Michael W. Kaluta, and others) give us the third classic swamp creature to appear over a mere four-month timespan, though this first sighting of Swamp Thing actually bears little resemblance to later tales. In this Victorian period piece, scientist Alex Olsen is nearly killed in an explosion rigged by a jealous colleague who is obsessed with Olsen’s fiancée, Linda. The treacherous colleague drags

Man-Thing TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

May ’71: “Man-Thing,” by plotter Roy Thomas, scripter Gerry Conway, and artist Gray Morrow appears in Savage Tales #1. Man-Thing may not be the first swamp monster of the ’70s, but he is the first truly inspired one. This initial offering may very well have been intended as a one-off but all concerned imbue great pathos and emotion into the story of how Ted Sallis injects himself with a super-soldier serum before driving into a swamp and emerging a shambling monster. Morrow’s art is breathtaking and his muck-monster is memorably striking — even while borrowing The Heap’s root-like “nose.”

The Heap TM & © the respective copyright holder.

into a pile of goo and, really, the only significant thing about the story is that it is an early (and uncharacteristically gentle) offering from the future Skywald gore supremo, “Archaic Al” Hewetson.

The Grotesques of Gold Key Comics Sept. ’72: “The Lurker in the Swamp” is the bona fide Gold Key entry in the comic book industry’s 1970s swamp monster sweepstakes and though the beastie had only two appearances during that era — and almost four years apart at that!

— the evocative writing of Don Glut and excellent Jesse Santos artwork, make the monster an unforgettable candidate for muck-monster of the decade. This Mystery Comics Digest #7 appearance relates the origin of the Lurker (which you’ll find detailed in his own section to follow).

Never let it be said that esteemed colleague and good chum David A. Roach is anything less than perfect, so the listings for the Gold Key muck-monsters most certainly must’ve been lost during his manuscript’s transatlantic journey.

Thus please indulge Ye Editor as he pinch-hits and takes a brief look at the critters shambling over at Western Publishing during the late ’60s and ’70s.

June 1969: In Boris Karloff Tales of Mystery #26, we find “The Beast of the Bayou,” about a 28

“demonized” mansion purchased by a real estate agent looking to make a quick buck only to have his mind wiped by the Bayou Monster!

Mike Roy (pencils) and Mike Peppe (inks).

Aug. ’76: “A Lurker Stalks the Swamp,” The Occult Files of Dr. Spektor #21, has the Glut and Santos muck-man’s return.

Dec. ’69: The result of a scientific experiment gone woefully astray after some crooks get involved, “Creature of the Swamp,” in Boris Karloff Tales of Mystery #28, is less Glob and more Blob, being a giant, lime-green protoplasmic growing thing. With art by John Celardo.

Above: Panel from Mystery Comics Digest #7 [Sept. ’72]

by Jesse Santos. Right: George Wilson’s Boris Karloff Tales of Mystery #28 [Dec. ’69] cover painting.

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

All Gold Key/Western Publishing comics © the respective copyright holders.

Dec. ’72: Artist Jack Sparling offers a unique take on a swamp monster by making him an ill-tempered cyclops! “Beast of the Bog” is featured in Boris Karloff Tales of Mystery #44.

Olsen’s stricken body to the swamp but, six months later, Olsen returns as the Swamp Thing to dispatch the devious wretch. On the face of it, the story is a fairly routine E.C.-esque revenge-from-beyond-the-grave piece but Wein’s scripting is remarkably affecting and Wrightson’s art begins to reach its wonderful maturity. The clamor for more and more starts growing….

Aug. ’71: Writer Len Wein and artist Tony DeZuñiga’s “The Spectre of the Stalking Swamp” backs-up The Phantom Stranger #14 in the “Dr. Thirteen” episode. The bayou beast actually turns out to be a scientist in a monster suit but, more significantly, it is the incredible Neal Adams artwork that makes for an absolutely stunning, inspired cover to the issue. Interestingly, the cover’s monster bears more than a passing resemblance to Marvel’s recently-released “Man-Thing” installment.

Sept. ’71: “Shadow of Satan,” written by Robert Kanigher, with Tom Sutton and Jack Abel artwork, leads The Heap #1. Despite the character dating back to 1942, this was The Heap’s first solo book and, indeed, the first muck-monster to headline his own title. Clearly intended to be the first of a regularly published series, the comic was a victim of Skywald’s sudden axing of its color line but, of course, the beast continued in his Psycho slot. The strip itself is a typically frenzied Kanigher concoction with freaks, soldiers, a madman with a scythe, hallucinations, Frankenstein’s grandson, and a blind blonde (there is always a blind blonde!). To Sutton and Abel’s credit, The Heap never looked sludgier.

Oct. ’71: Bernie Wrightson and an unknown writer give us, in House of Mystery #195, “Things Old… Things Forgotten,” a mostly forgettable Victorian-era ditty with a would-be middle European dictator battling a race of forest-dwelling moss-men. It is the strip’s date that is the most significant feature. While it was published in 1971, the strip was actually drawn back in ’68, pre-dating all the various bronze-age monsters and establishing Wrightson as the real swamp pioneer. That said, the somewhat rotund and shaggy moss-men are nobody’s idea of terrifying swamp monsters.

Swamp Thing, The Phantom Stranger © DC Comics.

Apr. ’72: Ghostly Tales #94 boasts “Monster in the Muck,” by author unknown, penciler Joe Staton and inker Charles Nicholas (signing as “Nick,” in an odd match-up), Charlton Comics’ first swamp monster strip. The story is the highest of high concepts: a mind-blowing collection of ’70s schlock staples, including swamp monsters in the ’Nam! Actually the monster in this case proves to be rather benign, leading a frightened G.I. to his wounded buddy, and the execution is somewhat pedestrian all around. Conceptually, however, it is a Zeitgeist-surfing masterpiece.

June ’72: The Man-Thing returns in Astonishing Tales #12’s “Ka-Zar” feature, “Terror Stalks the Everglades,”

by Roy Thomas (script), Rich Bucker (pencils), and Dan Adkins (inks). Swamp beast meets jungle man in this initial chapter of a two-part adventure (concluded in AT #13), a little over a year since Man-Thing’s debut outing in Savage Tales #1. Most interestingly, the issue incorporates a short “Man-Thing” strip by writer Len Wein and artist Neal Adams, which was originally intended to run in (the much-delayed) Savage Tales #2, explaining, perhaps, Adams’ very Man-Thing-esque Phantom Stranger cover.

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Previous page: On the left is a panel of the repulsive Skywald version of The Heap delectably delineated by Ross Andru (pencils) and Mike Esposito (inks), from Psycho #2 [Mar. ’71]. Right inset is panel detail from Gray Morrow’s “Man-Thing” art assignment in Savage Tales #1 [May ’71].

Above: Neal Adams’ much-swiped swamp critter from the cover of The Phantom Stranger #14 [Aug. ’71]. That monster, alas, isn’t even featured in the Stranger tale and, come to think of it, not really in the back-up “Dr. Thirteen” story! Inset left: The muck-monster craze really started rockin’ with the appearance of scribe Len Wein & artist Bernie Wrightson’s “Swamp Thing” in House of Secrets #92 [June ’71].

Here’s a moody panel detail from that classic yarn’s splash page.

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Above: Skywald’s color and Code-approved version of The Heap differed significantly than the one in their black-&-white horror magazine Psycho. He was, well, sensitive and not so mean. This panel, words by Bob Kanigher; art

by Tom Sutton and Jack Abel, is from the one-shot The Heap #1 [Sept.’71]. Below: Gray Morrow cover detail, from Fear #10 [Oct. 72] appears to have Man-Thing and friend running from Tom Sutton’s Haunted #8 [Nov. ’72] cover and Psycho #4 [Mar. ’73] cover by Fernando Fernandez. Next page: On the top left are Jack Sparling panels (swipes of Neal Adams’ Phantom Stranger #14 cover) from The Witching Hour #30 [Apr. ’73].

Center is from Bernie Wrightson’s Swamp Thing #1 art job. Right is House of Mystery #217 [Sept. ’73] cover detail by Bernie Wrightson.

July ’72: “All in the Family,” by Virgil North, the nom de plume of writer Mary Skrenes, makes for artist Bernie Wrightson’s third printed swamp outing, this time in House of Mystery #204. The viscous little double-crossing potboiler tells the story of a henpecked husband’s horrid spouse, who is offered to a family of swamp-dwelling, hayseed blob monsters. The husband’s reward is the hand of fair Gloria — the looker of the family — who inevitably turns out to be a gelatinous slime creature just like dear old ma and pa. Great Wrightson cover, too!

Oct. ’72: Man-Thing earns his own book, starting with Fear #10, as Marvel is apparently so pleased with the shambler’s guest spot in Astonishing Tales that they bring back (albeit for a single issue) the original Savage Tales creative team of writer Gerry Conway and artist Gray Morrow — the latter ably assisted by young Howard Chaykin providing the layouts of “Man-Thing,” the self-titled first installment. After several months of musical chairs regarding creators, the series eventually coalesces around scribe Steve Gerber and penciler Val Mayerik, and heads off to the furthest corners of horror… and absurdity!

That same month also gives us Ghostly Tales #98’s “The Gallows Cheat,” attributed by the Grand Comics Database

Nov. ’72: Swamp Thing #1 features “Dark Genesis” by writer Len Wein and artist Bernie Wrightson, and the muck-monster renaissance has truly begun. Pipped at the post by Marvel yet again, DC’s own swamp creature gets an origin overhaul which borrows liberally from “ManThing” (scientist in swamp, attacked by enemies of the state, stumbles into swamp and emerges a monster…) and Len Wein had, lest we forget, earlier written ManThing’s second appearance. Nevertheless, the series diverges with Wein traversing the monster archetypes (werewolf, Frankenstein monster, witches, aliens, etc.) and Wrightson emerging as one of the decade’s true star artists.

An unknown writer and artist Jack Abel turn in Haunted #8’s “Lure of the Swamp,” the second swamp monster strip of the month, as well as Charlton’s second entry into the ’70s horror sub-genre. The story is surprisingly downbeat as a bayou family is picked off, one by one, by a monolithic, tentacled sludge creature. The creature’s shtick is to impale its victims on a tentacle and use them as bait like an angler fish. In the tale’s doom-ladened denouement, the last person alive — the husband — offers himself up as a sacrifice after swallowing eight bottles of rat poison, ensuring that if he goes, so goes the monster, too! Abel contributes one of his most pleasing solo jobs, dreaming up a satisfyingly corpulent creature and a moody cover to boot!

Dec. ’72: Way back in 1940, honeymooning Theodore Sturgeon hacks out a horror short story for a science-fiction pulp magazine and whips up a classic that singlehandedly creates the swamp monster genre. And, in 1972, writer Roy Thomas, and artists Marie Severin and Frank Giacoia perfectly adapt “It” for the first issue of Supernatural Thrillers, with Thomas wonderfully capturing the story’s intensity and Severin creating some of the best art of her career.

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Haunted, Psycho TM & © the respective copyright holders. Man-Thing TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

Mar. ’73: Psycho #4 includes “The Thing in Horror-Swamp!” by wordsmith “Archaic Al” Hewetson and master artist Pablo Marcos, the first of several Skywald strips centered around the Darkos Mansion in swamps near New Orleans. Set at the height of slavery, this is more zombie story than swamp monster feature, but the twist is the zombies emerge from the swamp, so it’s really just jumping on the swampmen bandwagon. (Great Fernando Fernandez cover though!)

Apr. ’73: “The Monster,” in Forbidden Tales of Dark Mansion #10, features art chores handled by the great Alfredo Alcala. And who better to pen this E.C.-inspired yarn than E.C. Comics veteran Jack Oleck, who contributes the “dead man rises from the swamp to wreak revenge on his murderous two-timing wife and her lover” story?

In a nice touch of pathos, he befriends his daughter, picking her flowers, and she falls for him despite his looking like a walking pile of weeds and sludge. Ultimately he is consumed in fire, but once the muck burns off, his skeleton is revealed,

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The Heap TM & © the respective copyright holder.

to an anonymous writer and the art team of Mo Marcus and Vince Alascia, and a more generic strip is impossible to imagine, from its tired plot (criminal kills gypsy after she curses him, flees into swamp, becomes monster, and is shot by hero) to its blander-than-bland art.

“Trapped,” Swamp Thing, House of Mystery © DC Comics.

uncovering an incriminating monogrammed ring which condemns the lovers to life in jail.

Alcala reveals himself to be Wrightson’s main challenger for the title “King of the Swamp.”

Witching Hour #30 gives us not a swamp story per se, but “Trapped” by Carl Wessler (script) and Jack Sparling (art) actually a genuinely scary little narrative about the terrors of walking home in the dark. The story’s young protagonist is beset by spectral figures telling him to enter a “coolifresh grave,” and the twist here is that Sparling has based the main apparition on Neal Adams’ swamp creature from the cover of The Phantom Stranger #14 (for reasons best known to Jack).

In the end, it turns out little Joey was dead all along, but then you probably guessed that, didn’t you?

July ’73: In Psycho #13, “When Dies a Lunatic… So Dies a Heap,” writer Al Hewetson, with Villanova handling the art, exacts his revenge on the series regular whom the Skywald editor loathed. The Heap was the first Bronze Age swamp creature to get his own series and here he was the first to lose it as well. Despite continued reader enthusiasm, “Archaic Al” humiliates the monster by first dropping The Heap from a helicopter, who then he free falls down an elevator shaft of the Empire State Building, crashing through the cellar and onto a subway track where he is flattened by a train. Undeterred by this debacle, the foul creature hi-jacks a plane, crashes it into a farmer’s field, which just turns out to be owned by his former self Jim Roberts’ parents! Hewetson’s message is completed by a ludicrous “American Gothic”-style happy family shot with a smiling Heap beaming back at the stunned reader.

During that same July, a confused — and confusing — tale, “The Thing from the Bog,” by plotter Kit Pearson, writer Marv Wolfman, and artist Pablo Marcos, in Tales of the Zombie #1, gives us witches, 3,000-year-old bog people, a young boy, Satan, and angry villagers. Marcos’ splash page is a masterpiece however, as the ubiquitous artist proves yet again that dead things are his forte.

Eerie #49 dishes out “Marvin, the Dead-Thing: One is the Loneliest Number,” yet another swamp saga from that month, by author Allen Milgrom and artist Esteban Maroto. Lonely nebbish Marvin Kanfer ties a stone around his neck and throws himself into a river where, over time, Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

chemicals dumped from nearby factories re-animate his bog-encrusted body. Emerging from the water, he heads off to work again, forgetting that he is, in fact, a hideous muck-monster. From thereon in things get a bit more comedic with Marvin heading off to the swamp and befriending a little girl (which begs the question: why do so many parents let their kids cavort alone in the fetid swamps?). Angry locals turn up and accidentally blast the girl but Marvin takes her into the bog and, a month later, she pops up as a little bog-creature playmate for him — how touching! Maroto’s art is impressive throughout, though some of the pages seem to be, shall we say, inspired by Neal Adams’ “Man-Thing” strip. Swamp fans are treated to a lovely, sensitive Enrich cover depicting Marvin.

Aug. ’73: Writer Nicola Cuti and artist Tom Sutton’s “Those Tentacles,” in Ghostly Tales #106, is yet another murderous little tale with a tentacled swamp creature. Jake’s pal is unexpectedly eaten during a fishing expedition, though Jake could have saved his friend but chose not to so he could move on the poor soul’s wife. Unfortunately, she was already seeing someone else and is overjoyed by her husband’s demise. Anyway, in the end, Jake is tormented by tentacles popping out all over the place, which finally strangle him. We never do find out quite why there is an enormous tentacled monster with a beak lurking in the swamp, and no one forms the question why it is there, so clearly it wasn’t important!

Sept. ’73: House of Mystery #217 includes “Swamp God,” by word maestro Steve Skeates and art god Alfredo Alcala, describing the tale of a Swamp God in a tree stump, which sounds silly but is actually a very scary tree stump that coerces cute little woodland creatures to lure young children to their doom.

In the end, everybody dies (of course). Another great Alcala art job.

Nov. ’73: In the pages of Monsters Unleashed #3 we find a reprint of the hard-to-find Savage Tales #1 “Man-Thing” origin story, bringing the swamp beast into Marvel’s black-&white horror magazine line-up.

Issue five carries a new follow-up to the origin with fantastic Vincente Alcazar art, while #8 and 9 serializes a text story.

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Above: Marvin, the Dead-Thing panel by Esteban Maroto, Eerie #49 [July ’73]. Inset right: Cover detail by Nick Cardy. The Unexpected #152 [July ’73]. Below: Mike Ploog’s slam-bang cover for Giant-Size Man-Thing #1 [Aug. ’74].

Jan. ’74: Leaving Fear behind, the Man-Thing graduates to his own comic title, in Man-Thing #1’s “Battle for the Palace of the Gods,” while still finding time in the same month to duke it out with the Thing (of Fantastic Four fame) in Marvel Two-In-One #1’s “Vengeance of the Molecule Man!” To kick off a new series, it is traditional to feature a big guest-star, so this would seem to suggest that, by this point, Man-Thing is becoming a serious box-office draw.

Apr. ’74: Mike Ploog takes over from Val Mayerik as penciler of writer Steve Gerber’s saga of the Citrusville swamp monster, in Man-Thing #5’s classic “Night of the Laughing Dead,” as the title enters its finest period.

June ’74: Bernie Wrightson’s final Swamp Thing as artist comes in #10, “The Man Who Would Not Die,” bringing forth much wailing and gnashing of teeth by fans, but his successor, Nestor Redondo, proves to be every bit as stunning. Len Wein sticks around to script the next few issues before David Michelinie takes over but, again, the quality is sustained.

Aug. ’74: Clearly a color ManThing monthly and regular black&-white magazine appearances of the character are not enough for a swamp-mad public so Marvel unveils the quarterly Giant-Size Man-Thing title. This first issue is the very epitome of swamp-oriented fun as Mike Ploog revels as artist of a slime-a-thon that is Man-Thing versus The Glob! “How Will We Keep Warm When the Last Flame Dies?” is written by Steve Gerber. The unfortunately-titled comic book would go on to feature seven lengthy “Man-Thing” stories and, in #4, the unsuspecting world would be foisted the first “Howard the Duck” solo strip.

Monsters Unleashed #7 includes “Blind Man’s Bluff” by Gerry Conway (story) and Carlos Freixas (art), which is the old “jungle adventurers steal ancient amulet and unleash giant horned alien/demon/swamp beast on the world” plot. Frankly, the story doesn’t go anywhere you wouldn’t expect, but it provides a rare U.S. outing for Spanish veteran Freixas and an early cover for Richard Hexcos.

“Archaic” Al strikes again with his script for “Wanted: More Dead Than Alive,” with art by Emilio Bernardo and published in Nightmare #20. Only the fevered Hewetson imagination could dream up comics’ first swamp Western: executed bandit “Ghastly” Ingels(!) rises from the swamp to hunt his killers down. Throw in a Mexican female werewolf and you have a gonzo masterpiece, marred only by Bernardo’s rather stiff drawing. This month proves another bumper period with five swamp comics on the stands for the fans.

Oct. ’74: With Steve Gerber writing the Man Without Fear’s title, it was inevitable that sooner or later Man-Thing would pop up — and here he is, in Daredevil #114’s “A Quiet Night In the Swamp,” featuring Bob Brown pencils and inks by Vince Colletta.

The by-the-numbers revenge story — “The Coxsackie-Axe Murder,” words by Ed Fedory and pictures by John Agras — appears in Nightmare #22, telling of a murdered man who rises from the swamp to exact vengeance… etc., etc. After nine one-shot swamp comics stories in 1973, the following year produced only four and this unimaginative trifle offering suggests that maybe all the good tales had already been written.

Dec. ’74: Monsters Unleashed gives us its final black-&white “Man-Thing” installment with #9, the concluding chapter of Steve Gerber’s “Several Meaningless Deaths”

Next page: Counter-clockwise from top center a still from the classic German horror movie The Golem [1920]; movie poster from same; cover for the trade paperback edition of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay [2000] by Michael Chabon; splash panel for young Joe Kubert’s “The Golem,” The Challenger #3 [July–Sept. ’46]; detail of John Romita’s cover art for Strange Tales #76 [Oct. ’74]; Dave Wachter’ cover art for Breath of Bones #3 [Aug. ’13]; Mendy and the Golem #9 cover; bravura Weird War Tales #8 [Nov. 72] cover by Neal Adams; and Herb Trimpe’s cover for The Incredible Hulk #134 [Dec. ’70].

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Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Man-Thing, The Glob TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

May ’74: The Many Ghosts of Dr. Graves #45 has “The Treasure Seekers,” by Joe Gill (script) and Don Newton (art). A decent Gill story is transformed into something quite special by Newton in his only second published story as a pro. The tales describes backwoods loner Crazy Jawn who rides into town on his mule, ladened with gold. A couple of no-good rednecks follow him back to his shack and force Jawn to take them through the moonlit swamp to his secret horde.

There they are suddenly set upon by murderous swamp creatures. In many respects the story is a typical spiel of outsider taking his revenge upon mocking townsfolk with a few green muck-monsters thrown in, but Newton’s art elevates it to above the norm.

There is a wonderful intensity, mood, and sense of place to the drawing, and you can almost feel the sticky heat and Crazy Jawn himself emerges a memorably dissolute but amiable hick whose mad stare lives long in the memory. A small gem of a strip.

Marvin, the Dead-Thing TM & © New Comic Company. The Unexpected © DC Comics.

Clearly the craze for all things swampy is still in full force.

House of Secrets #113 includes “Not So Loud… I’m Blind,” by writer Doug Moench, penciler Mike Sekowsky, and inker Nick Cardy, where yet another bunch of kids are out playing in the swamp and they stumble upon a hideous ex-hobo swamp monster and guess what? He’s blind!

Much wanton carnage ensues but the main attraction is the unusual teaming of comic book veterans Sekowsky and Cardy, which works surprisingly well.

Author Michael Fleischer and artist Alex Niño add to another bumper month for swamp creatures with “The Dark Secret of the Swamp,” in Unexpected #152, though this yarn is a faux monster tale.

The creatures herein are actually statues, but on Nick Cardy’s tie-in cover we have a hideous apparition rising from the murky depths to sucker us swamp fans into buying the issue.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay ©2000 Michael Chabon. The Golem, The Incredible Hulk TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. Breath of Bones: A Tale of the Golem ©2013 Steve Niles, Matt Santoro, and Dave Wachter. Mendy and the Golem TM & © the respective copyright holder. Weird War Tales © DC Comics.

Though not made of muck or mire, the legendary hulking creature of Jewish myth, the Golem, is certainly composed of organic material — mud or clay — and, like its swamp dweller cousins, it is alternately considered a hero and/or monster. The behemoth is described as “an automaton, typically humanoid and typically male, created as the result of an intense, systematic, mystical meditation. The word golem means (or implies) something unformed and imperfect, or a body without a soul.” And the giant, brought to life when the name of God or the word “Truth” (both having, in essence, the same meaning) is marked by a rabbi upon its forehead, has long been a presence in comic books, doubtless prompted by perennial interest in the classic German silent horror movie, The Golem: How He Came Into the World [1920, PAGU].

Still, celluloid influence or not, and even removed from the horror context, the legend of the Golem is, well, about as cool as it gets. While the myth reaches back before 500 a.d., the most common telling has a Golem created by Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel in the 16th century. During that time, in the Prague of the Holy Roman Empire, Jews of the city faced violent persecution and the rabbi created the Golem out of the clay of the Vltava River to protect the minority. It was a super-hero, if you will, who patrolled ghetto streets, endowed with supernatural abilities — to be invisible and also summon dead spirits.

The connection between the Golem and comic books has never been more eloquently expressed than in the prose of Michael Chabon’s novel, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, whose central character escapes the coming Holocaust by hiding in the automaton’s “casket” in 1939 and, by the ’50s, creates the first comic-book masterpiece, a graphic novel featuring the exploits of the monolith.

Various incarnations of the mythological being were seen in comics well before that 2000 book won the Pulitzer, from writer Robert Bernstein and young artist Joe Kubert’s retelling of Rabbi Loew’s creation in “The Golem,” The Challenger #3 [July–Sept.

1946], though this recitation is in context to the just-thwarted attempt to exterminate the Jews of Europe (a rare acknowledgment of the Holocaust for a U.S. publication of that era), to the appearance of R. Crumb’s “The Golem” (script by David Zane Mairowitz), in the 2014 release Jewish Comix Anthology [Alternative History Comics]. Among Golem tales that occurred in the 60+ years between those two stories are: Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Best as we can ascertain, a character called The Golem appears next, in June 1966’s T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #5, as Dynamo battles an orange-hued ogre with that appellation, as the blue-&-white garbed U.N. hero throws the giant to certain death down a pit.

(The tale’s writer is unknown; art is by Reed Crandall and Wallace Wood.)

The ubiquitous Roy Thomas (with artist Herb Trimpe) introduces the Golem into the Marvel Universe with The Incredible Hulk #134 [Dec. ’70], and later gave us a different, WWII version in The Invaders #12–13 [Jan., Feb. ’77], drawn

by Frank Robbins and Frank Springer.

Over at rival DC Comics, another World War II incarnation also takes on Nazis in “Thou Shalt Not Kill,” Weird War Tales #8 [Nov. ’72], with art by Steve Harper and Neal Adams, the latter contributing an outstanding cover depicting an avenging Golem.

A little earlier that same year Superman meets the Galactic Golem, created by arch rival Lex Luthor using interstellar matter [Superman #248, Feb. ’72].

But it was the House of Ideas that introduced the mythical creature as a genuine super-hero with a three-issue appearance in Strange Tales [#174, 176 & 177, June, Oct., Dec. ’74], though this Golem is actually chiseled out of rock. Initially set in the Middle East, smack dab during the Arab-Israeli conflict of that time — the villains are clearly Muslim — the series ends in Florida, with the Golem battling a badguy sorcerer by the oddly Hebraic name of Kaballa. The character then appears in Marvel Two-In-One and thereafter pretty much disappears.

• Atlas/Seaboard’s The Scorpion #3 [July ’75] features a golem.

• Mendy and the Golem, an inspirational comic for Jewish kids, is published for nine issues starting in 1981.

• Saga of the Swamp Thing #11–13 [Mar.–May ’83] features our swamp hero battling a golem.

• Characters with the name Golem appear in Primal Force, Suicide Squad, Marvel Knights 4, Mystery Society Special, and in the Israeli comic book HaGclem: Sipuroshel.

• James Sturm’s The Golem’s Mighty Swing is named “Best Comic 2001” by Time magazine.

• The 2013 mini-series, Breath of Bones: A Tale of the Golem, by writers Steve Niles and Matt Santoro, and artist Dave Wachter, is set during WWII. 33

Mar. ’75: The Atlas/Seaboard b-&-w magazine Weird Tales of the Macabre #2 gifts readers with the first appearance of the wonderfully-named Bog Beast in a story named (ahem) “The Bog Beast,” written by Gabe Levy and drawn

by Modesty Blaise artist Enrique Badía Romero. Atlas was nothing if not scrupulous in copying their big rivals and, if Marvel had a swamp monster, so too would the shortlived comics imprint… though, to be fair, at least their muck-monster was a subterranean from miles below our surface.

Apr. ’75: Bog Beast gets his own color series in Tales of Evil #2, with the story “The Fifty Dollar Body,” written by John Albano with the art of Jack Sparling, all behind Frank Thorne’s dynamic “Bog Beast at the circus” cover.

Above: The subterranean tarmonster on a quest to save his race, Bog Beast was the Atlas/ Seaboard entry for the muck-monster sweepstakes in 1970s American comic books. This panel detail is from Tales of Evil #2 [Apr. ’75] with art by comics veteran Jack Sparling. Inset right: Tom Sutton’s Creepy Things #2 [Oct. ’75] cover, detailed here, fronts “Slimes, Slogs and Glumps,” a tale written

by Nicola Cuti and drawn by T.S. Charlton Comics never produced a regular swamp creature series, but its horror anthology titles had a plethora of grotesque beasties (more often than not delineated by the late, great artist Mr. Sutton).

Below: Panel from Secrets of the Haunted House #7 [Sept. ’77]’s “It’ll Grow On You,” with art by Jess Jodlomon, the Filipino import probably best known for his work on Weird War Tales, whose renderings in this ditty feature what Our Man Roach calls, “One of the most pustulently repellent monsters ever committed to paper”!

July ’75: Bog Beast gets the axe with his untitled story in Tales of Evil #3, written by Gabriel Levy and art credited to Romero. Ah, the fickle world of publishing!

Giant-Size Spider-Man #5 (“Beware the Path of the Monster,” Gerry Conway words, Ross Andru, Mike Esposito and Dave Hunt art) gives us another Man-Thing guest spot would seem to suggest all was in full bloom in the swamp but appearances are deceptive.

Aug. ’75: Giant-Size ManThing #5 is cancelled with this issue featuring a trio of tales framed by “Fear Times Three,” a sequence featuring the human Ted Sallis learning of his fate as a muck-monster from a fortune teller. Scripts

by Steve Gerber, with art from Ed Hannigan, Dan Adkins, Tom Sutton, John Buscema, and Frank Springer.

Oct. ’75: The shambler formerly known as Ted Sallis has his swamp drained with the final issue of the initial run, ManThing #22. Fittingly, “Pop Goes the Cosmos,” has writer Steve Gerber actually able to give readers a send-off by starring in the story to reminisce about the muck-monster’s bizarre exploits over years prior.

The exuberant art is by veteran Jim Mooney. The series goes out not with a whimper but with a bang.

If Marvel and (soon) DC were content to leave the swamp behind than the legendary independent Charlton clearly felt there was yet life in the genre. Creepy Things #2’s “Slimes, Slogs and Glumps,” written by Nicola Cuti and art by Tom Sutton, is another one of those “kids playing in the swamp” scenarios, with the children in question

discovering a whole range of slimy green critters (the “slimes, slogs, and glumps” of the title) which, naturally, the youngsters take home. In the middle of the night, little Joe’s slovenly father discovers the repulsive beasts and squishes them with an axe handle. Then when the slimes, slogs, and glumps vast, slimy, many-fanged parents pop up to take their little ones home… oh, dear. Sutton is at his peak here with his wonderfully atmospheric depiction of the swamp and comically gruesome creatures. His vivid cover is a treat as well.

Dec. ’75: Charlton continues its mid-’70s swamp foray with the very next issue of Creepy Things, #3, with “The Grass is Always Greener,” a story written by Mike Pellowski and illustrated by Mike Vosburg. Bayou lush Rud Pangley is floating through the swamp when he happens upon a group of little — very little — emerald-hued people which he recognizes as the mythical “green folk” of legend.

Returning with a net, he captures one and puts the feller on show in the local carny, but the creature refuses to eat and, within a few days, it starves to death. Rud returns to the swamp to capture another little green person, but the folk surprise him and put him on display in their own version of a carnival… with only moss to eat.

Bog Beast, Creepy Things TM & © the respective copyright holders.

prose piece, illustrated by Pat Broderick and Al Milgrom.

Feb. ’76: “Fear-Feeder” makes for three Charlton entries in a row, this one in Scary Tales #4.

Scripter unknown and artist Carlos Vila give us a transparent Man-Thing rip-off as a large green swamp creature (a double for Marvin, the Dead-Thing) waddles through the swamp killing critters in order to “feed” off their fear. In the end, he stumbles upon a servile old woman who mistakes the monster for her long-lost husband and her outpouring of affection kills the beast stone dead. Vila’s art is enjoyably textured and atmospheric but appears to be entirely made up of Neal Adams and Esteban Maroto swipes. Look out for yet another gorgeous Tom Sutton cover though, alone worth the price of admission!

Mar. ’76: Gone but not forgot, Man-Thing is called up from the bench for a romp against another green behemoth in the pages of The Incredible Hulk #197, “…And Man-Thing Makes Three,” the first of a two-parter written by Len Wein, with art from Joe Staton and Sal Buscema. Bernie Wrightson, the quintessential DC swamp monster artist, takes a turn at the loyal opposition with a stunning cover.

May ’76: Writer Budd Lewis and artist Leopold Sanchez give us “The Expedition,” in Eerie #74. This may have a plot we’ve all seen many times before — two pals on a fishing

“It’ll Grow on You” © DC Comics.

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Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Man-Thing TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

trip, one has an Indian amulet which controls a horrible old monster and he orders it to kill his chum only to then be eaten himself — but it is nevertheless done very well. Strong, intelligent dialogue is complemented by some very nice art by the underrated Sanchez.

Summer ’76: The third Iron Man Annual (“More or Less... the Return of the Molecule Man,” with Sal Buscema and Jack Abel art) has longtime Man-Thing scribe Steve Gerber bringing back his old favorite for a follow-up to Marvel Two-In-One #1 featuring a rematch with that Fantastic Four villain from way back.

Sept. ’76: The comic-book bog beast binge is bust and the muck-monster meltdown made manifest as the last of the ’70s mud creature titles dissipates like so much swamp gas. Swamp Thing, the swamp king, is cancelled with #24’s “The Earth Below,” plotted by Gerry Conway, scripted by David Anthony Kraft, and the artwork of Ernie Chan (pencils) and Fred Carrillo (inks).

Sept. ’77: Secrets of the Haunted House #7 brings “It’ll Grow On You,” a story by Ed Fedory and E. Nelson Bridwell (plot), Marty Pasko (script), and Jess Jodlomon (art). A scientist experimenting with mutated fungus injects himself with a gooey green serum and — guess what? — he turns into a gooey green pile of mush. Jodlomon’s moss-man is one of the most pustulently repellent monsters ever committed to paper, which is high praise indeed! Hard to imagine that it took three people to think up the story though.

House of Mystery © DC Comics.

Nov. ’77: Challengers of the Unknown #83, “Seven Doorways to Destiny,” by writer Gerry Conway, penciler Keith Giffen, and inker John Celardo. Once a year, starting in 1977 and up until ’80, DC reprints the original Swamp Thing run by Len Wein and Bernie Wrightson [DC Special Series #2, 14, 17 & 20 — the initial pair with new Wrightson covers], so the timing was right for a Swamp Thing crossover with the Challs. Over a year since his last sighting, this mini-revival featured our hero between #83–87 in a fanciful story co-starring Deadman (a little piece of continuity that Alan Moore chose to ignore/write out of canon when he took on the strip some years later).

Dec. ’77: As when scribe Cary Burkett and artist Francisco Redondo gave us “When You Wish Upon a Star,” in House of Mystery #253, it was common practice on the various horror anthology books to first commission a striking cover and then write a story around it. In this case, Bernie Wrightson’s brilliant wash-cover of a great swamp creature looking up at a U.F.O. started life in 1971 as an illo for the fanzine Infinity. He then reworked it later that year for DC, who inexplicably had it inventoried for six years before exhuming for this “Dollar Comic.” The retro-fitted story itself describes how a young witch tries to summon up her dream man and succeeds only in getting the comic’s unappealing cover star. It turns out the creature was actually an alien in disguise (he had the wrong planet and was trying to blend-in with the “locals”) who zooms off into space when he reveals his true form that is — you guessed it! — the spitting image of the witch’s handsome dream man. Some might feel it wasn’t worth the wait but Redondo does a credible job, and the comic itself also boasts strips by Gray Morrow and Alex Niño, so it’s well worth hunting down.

Feb. ’78: For no obvious reason, in the story “Among the Great Divide,” in Rampaging Hulk #7, we are given a

“Man-Thing” tale by writer Steve Gerber and artist Jim Starlin, though few fans would have complained! This was the character’s first sighting in almost two years.

Nov. ’78: A baffling little tale, “Freed from the Infernos of Hell,” by scribe John Albano and artist Ruben Sosa, appears in House of Mystery #262, which seems to involve an evil blacksmith being changed into a hairy swamp beast by sinister devil worshipers.

It gets more confusing from there but probably the most interesting thing about the strip is the way the time period seems to fluctuate from top-hatted Victorian riding horsedrawn carriages to present-day Mac-wearing detectives and back again to the 19th century. Did nobody notice?

Above: In his Man-Thing send-off, writer Steve Gerber and his wizard character, Dakimh, review the title’s run. Art by Jim Mooney from #22 [Oct. ’75]. Below: Bernie Wrightson cover art for House of Mystery #253 [Dec. ’77], actually a piece done years prior.

Feb. ’79: A terse, if formulaic yarn is found in Creepy #105, writer Bruce Jones and artist Gonzalo Mayo’s story “The Summoning.” It’s about a young couple holed-up in a tiny shack who blow a dog whistle and inadvertently summon up a slavering monster from the swamp’s depths. Everybody dies. By this point, swamp tales are appearing at ever-longer intervals and, as is typical, this strip doesn’t say anything new.

Apr. ’79: DC Comics Presents #8 gives us a Superman and Swamp Thing team-up as they do battle with… guess who?

Hint: the tale, with words by Steve Englehart and art by Murphy Anderson, is called “The Sixty Deaths of Solomon

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

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Above: Both Marvel and DC revived their headliner swamp monsters after the initial runs petered out. On left is Bob Wiacek’s cover of Man-Thing #1 [Nov. ’79] and at right the inaugural edition of The Saga of Swamp Thing [May ’82] with cover art by Tom Yeates.

Next page: Nestor Redondo, the great Filipino komiks artist, was a superb choice to succeed departing Bernie Wrightson on the initial run of Swamp Thing. Here the master depicts the battle that has yet to happen: The Big Two’s big two mucksters, Swamp Thing versus Man-Thing. This appeared as a cover of The Comic Buyer’s Guide.

Colors by Tom Ziuko.

Below: The end of a dynasty.

Released the same month as the last Warren-published Famous Monsters of Filmland, Creepy #143 [Mar. ’83] was the swan-song for the black-&-white horror comics.

Cover art is by Jose Mirelles

Grundy.” All this muckish mayhem takes place behind a sigh-inducing José Luis Garcia-Lopez cover.

Nov. ’79: Marvel’s original muck-monster returns for a second run four years after the end of his first, with ManThing, Vol. 2, #1, relaunched with a story by Mike Fleisher (writer), Jim Mooney (penciler), and Bob Wiacek (inker), entitled “Regeneration — and Rebirth.” On paper the creative team of Fleisher and Mooney should have insured a good and scary time to be had by all, but the revival falls ever so flat…

July ’81: …But not even the late arrival of X-Men supremo Chris Claremont as writer can save the comic. Man-Thing Vol. 2, #11’s “Hell’s Gate,” is the final issue.

Feb. ’82: Speaking of revivals, Eerie #129’s “Ode to a Dead Thing,” by wordsmith Bill Dubay and artist Rudy Nebres, a sequel to 1973’s “Marvin, the Dead-Thing,” springs out of nowhere, amazing the handful of Warren fans still paying attention. (Actually, in Eerie’s final years, all sorts of old favorites are being exhumed… so why not Marvin? This time around, it’s an unfortunate teenage mother who gets the “resurrection in the swamp” treatment, but the real treat is Nebres’ fantastic artwork, bursting with boggy sinews and sinewy bogs!

Feb. ’83: As one door tentatively opens, another one (or two) closes. “The Iceman Killeth,” words by Mike Fleisher and drawings by Delando Nino, is the final strip in the final issue (#145) of Warren’s legendary flagship title, Creepy, and within a month the last Warren-published Vampirella would hit the stands, signaling the end of the company that horror built. Later that year, DC’s House of Mystery would be cancelled and the tradition of newsstand horror comics, one stretching back to the debut of ACG’s Adventures Into the Unknown in 1948 and weathered the almost insurmountable Wertham onslaught of the mid-’50s (only by succumbing to produce watered-down drivel), and returned to supreme, breathtaking glory during the non-Code Warren Publications heyday of the mid-’60s — and, truth told, the mid-’70s resurgence — was over, nails hammered into the coffin. Dead, so too, was the era of the muck-monsters as we know (and sometimes loved) them. Alan Moore and company would create something new and sophisticated for a select audience in the comics shops. Back to the strip in question, it is fittingly all about the new replacing the old, as an enterprising young Frigidaire salesman in the 1950s is offed by an old-time ice seller, worried about newfangled technology taking away his livelihood. Immediately the Frigidaire man rises from the swamp and wreaks suitably icy revenge on his murderer. In comics, the swamp monster would live again, but not as we once knew him.

Inset below: Almostswamp creature Solomon Grundy, tag-teaming with real deal Swamp Thing, is preparing to pummel the Man of Steel in this cover detail from DC Comic Presents #9 [Apr. ’79].

Art by the great José Luis Garcia-Lopez.

May ’82: Despite the fact the horror genre was fading away all around them, DC Comics gives their resident bog monster another run (and, of course, the fact a Wes Craven film production was forthcoming stoked corporate enthusiasm) with The Saga of Swamp Thing #1’s tale, “What Peace There May Be in Silence,” written by Marty Pasko and drawn by Tom Yeates. Of course, we now all know how Alan Moore, Steve Bissette, and John Totleben transformed both the title and the entire horror genre itself, but actually the early Pasko/Yeates issues are pretty solid stories. However, 36

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Man-Thing TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. Swam Thing, Superman, Solomon Grundy © DC Comics. Creepy TM & © New Comic Company.

in 1982, no one would have wagered on the comic lasting more than a year… two, tops! And certainly nobody foresaw it would inspire the creation of a whole publishing imprint, Vertigo, or usher in an era of mature comics published by mainstream publishers — and, come to think of it, all sprung from a swamp!

Inset right: Spanish artist legend Esteban Maroto reveals Marvin, the Dead-Thing, in this splash to his Eerie #49 [July ’73] job, which was scribed by Allen Milgrom.

Below: Painter Enrich reinterprets a Maroto panel as the cover painting for the same issue.

Bottom: The incomparable Rudy Nebres drew the only other Marvin story to date, “Ode to a DeadThing,” written by Bill DuBay, a tale that adds another companion to the growing Dead-Thing clan.

Panel detail, Eerie #129 [Feb. ’82].

TM & © New Comics Company.

by Jon B. Cooke A fair-minded comics fan would naturally assume, given Warren Publications was the king of horror comics in its time (albeit of the b-&-w magazine variety), maverick publisher James Warren would add a muck-monster series to his creature-filled line-up. After all, shambling beasts were all the rage in the ’70s, and Warren had begun featuring exploits of regular characters. But, if they blinked, fear-fans probably missed the singular appearance during that era of Warren’s self-pitying, mopey monstrosity, Marvin, the Dead-Thing.

Behind a poignant Enrich cover painting depicting the swamp-dweller in tears, Eerie #49 [July ’73] leads off with “One is the Loneliest Number,” drawn by fan-favorite Spanish artist Esteban Maroto and written by someone many of us know better as an artist and editor: Allen Milgrom, who freelanced briefly at Warren Publications… as a scribe.

On his first visit, Milgrom relates with a laugh, “Jim Starlin and I took art samples up and Jim Warren made us pay for an evaluation of our work.” And while the monster mogul gave what Milgrom admits was a fair and reasonable assessment, it did not result in any job. But friend Starlin had moved to New York. “He was actually living on Staten Island with several other comics pros,” Milgrom says, “and among them was Bill DuBay, who was working at Warren [as managing editor]. So Bill and I were roommates for awhile, and he said, ‘Hey, have you ever tried your hand at writing?’” And so thus, Milgrom becomes a professional comics writer.

About the story, while Milgrom does recall titling it after the Harry Nilsson song popularized by Three Dog Night, “I don’t know if Bill specifically wanted a swamp creature; he might’ve because Warren had started doing series based on different monsters. They had a werewolf series, a vampire series… But I did write the story as a one-off thing. It was not your typical muck-monster killing people. Ultimately he’s lonely and befriends this little girl and it’s kind of a sweet story, as I recall. So I wrote the story for Bill, he liked it, and published it. That was probably my first professional, published written story. I also did a couple of other scripts for him.”

The tale presents the odyssey of one Marvin Kanfer, middle-aged schlep despondent over a life filled with loneliness, who commits suicide by jumping into a polluted river. The waste-engorged waters transform him into — you guessed it! — a muck-monster. Oblivious to his reanimation and monstrous appearance, Marvin returns to his day job but is shocked into realization and then attacked by the police. He flees to the woods, befriends a perky, friendly little girl, and the two frolic through the forest. But the nameless child’s father takes umbrage at her new bosom buddy and organizes the obligatory mob of villagers to pursue poor Marvin. The girl is accidentally shot dead and Marvin dumps her corpse in the “strange river waters,” and — you guessed it! — she emerges as a li’l muck-monster, and the BFFs live happily ever after.

The character was actually named for an old buddy of Allen’s. “Marvin Kanfer was one of my best friends when I was growing up,” Milgrom shares. “I used his name as the civilian name of the swamp monster. He actually got a kick

out of it… I don’t know if his mother thought it was funny!”

About his collaborator, Milgrom opines, “Esteban was a very good artist. His storytelling was not what I was used to in comics books. His stuff was very illustrative, nicely drawn, decorative artwork. There was a panel of the two skipping and it was very cute,” Milgrom said with a laugh.

“It told the whole story. And I was very happy with the published story; I got a big kick out of it.” Plus early Warren writing assignments such as this helped Milgrom in his subsequent career. “It was certainly a good exercise and it gave me a lot more respect for writers. Y’know, it’s not easy! And it probably helped me down the line as an editor, as I learned what it is to do both disciplines. It was definitely beneficial.”

In postscript, Marvin and his playmate do return to the pages of Eerie almost nine years later in the story “Ode to a Dead-Thing” [#129, Feb. ’82] (written by Bill DuBay and drawn

by Rudy Nebres), in which, suffice to say, the pair become a company of three as Bobby-Jean, who dies from a butchered abortion, is transformed by the river to finally join “the family she wanted for as long as she can remember!” Cue curtain!

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

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Next page: Herb Trimpe graciously and generously contributed this awesome pin-up of “The Glob” for us! Thanks very much, H.T.! Murky and miry colors by Tom Ziuko.

Inset right: The Glob origin sequence from The Incredible Hulk #121 [Nov. ’69]. Words by Roy Thomas and art by Herb Trimpe.

Below: Herb Trimpe’s art graces the covers of these two Incredible Hulk appearances of the Glob, #121 [Nov. ’69] and #129 [July ’70].

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In 1969, when Stan Lee offered scripting duties on The Incredible Hulk, Marvel staffer Roy Thomas jumped at the chance to return a childhood favorite to the four-color realm… in a fashion. “I didn’t see the old original Air Fighters Comics, with all the flying heroes,” Thomas told George Khoury, “but by the age of six or seven I started reading Airboy, and the Heap was in every issue. And I always was intrigued by this character who just kind-of shambled on stage to mop up a story and fight a different monster every issue and never say a word. There were these heavy captions that had an almost literary feel.

There was some very good artwork near the end, which we now know was by Ernie Schroeder, who also wrote ‘The Heap’ stories then, as well as writing and drawing lots of Airboy. So when I was working with [artist] Herb [Trimpe] and we were looking for new characters, I said, ‘Let’s do the Heap.’ I believe Herb was familiar with him, too.”

Thus, in the pages of The Incredible Hulk #121 [Nov. ’69], Thomas and Trimpe debuted the first muck-monster of that era, a time eventually replete with myriad creatures crawling out of swamps everywhere, from virtually every comic book publisher. Courtesy of Thomas’ introduction to his Heap Vol. 1 collection, the writer describes that introduction (in the tale entitled “Within the Swamp, There Stirs… a Glob!”): “[The story] had Bruce Banner’s socially challenged alter ego punting several cans of radioactive waste (what else?) into the Florida Everglades, where they and the swamp and a fleeing prison inmate combined into a very Heap-like concoction…”

Only the original name Thomas had decided on for the bayou beast was… The Shape! He told Khoury, “[It was] a name I’d originally used for a Plastic Man-type character whose plot I ghosted for Charlton around 1966, with Grass Green doing the finished script and art [“It’s… the Shape,” Charlton Premiere #1, Sept. ’67, with additional inks by Frank McLaughlin]. I didn’t want to call the new Marvel character the Heap; I didn’t feel I should. So I called it the Shape, but Stan thought that sounded feminine. I said, ‘Well, men and women both have shapes.’ But he insisted on changing it to the Glob, which was a name he had used before [for an Atlas-era monster, in Journey Into Mystery #72, Sept. ’61].

And of course, the Glob was the first Heap-type character in the Silver Age or after.”

In his Marvel Masterworks The Incredible Hulk Vol. 6 introduction, Thomas explained, “I wanted to see the Glob — or at least some character echoing the feeling of the 1940s Heap — return to prominence in comics. Little did I know that, a couple of years down the road, Marvel and DC Comics would each introduce such a creature, and that each would go on to star in his own comics title. I’d have been even more surprised if someone had told me I’d wind up plotting the origin of the Marvel entry (‘Man-Thing’ for Savage Tales #1). I believe that eventually, in some tale or other, Man-Thing and the Glob even wound up fighting each other. Be careful what you wish for!”

Before he was done with the character, Thomas brought the man-monster back for a second bout with Ol’ Greenskin a few months later, in The Incredible Hulk #129 [July ’70] in “Again, the Glob,” with Herb Trimpe again providing the artwork. “Herb and I had a heap of fun with the Glob,” Thomas

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

The Incredible Hulk, The Globe TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

by JON B. CookE with George Khoury

Pin-Up by

Herb Trimpe

Artwork © Herb Trimpe. The Heap TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

Color by Tom Ziuko

puns in Marvel Masterworks. “At the end, we destroyed him again… but we showed that already the tiny exploded particles of his body were beginning to ‘wriggle towards each other with a mindless purpose’ —so that ere long the Glob would live again.”

Verily, the Glob would return anew, most prominently in a Steve Gerber-scripted story that, yes, did indeed pit the monster against Man-Thing [“How Will We Keep Warm When the Last Flame Dies?“ Giant-Size ManComic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Thing #1, Aug. ’74] visualized by the great artist Mike Ploog.

“We did a couple of Glob stories in Hulk. I did at least two, and then other people did some. The first of these came out before Man-Thing or Swamp Thing. So that’s another reason I didn’t have that much interest in doing Man-Thing,” Thomas explained.

“After all,” he said with a chuckle, “I’d already done the Glob.”

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by RICHARD J. ARndT Richard J. Arndt, a frequent byline in these pages and now a CBC contributing editor, is the author of TwoMorrows’ Star*Reach Companion and, recently for McFarland, the tome Horror Comics in Black and White: A History and Catalog, 1964-2004. A habitual bibliographer, Arndt has likely indexed more horror comics (including the complete Skywald checklist) than any other living soul, and he has also interviewed innumerable comic book creators. Some of his scholarship can be found at www.enjolrasworld.com.

By 1971, there were two Heaps (well, three if we count “Heap!” from MAD comics… but we’ll just stick with the two). The original Heap was from Hillman Periodicals and looked pretty much what you might expect from a swamp monster: mossy, mucky, and pretty much vegetative. The Heap of Skywald Publications, on the other hand, was… well… a phlegm monster — bubbling, oozing, festering with pustulant sores, and quite literally half-melted in

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

The Heap TM & © the respective copyright holders.

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appearance. He, the ugliest swamp creature of them all, first appeared in Psycho #2 [Mar. ’71], with a script by Chuck McNaughton and art by Ross Andru (pencils) and Mike Esposito (inks). Like most such creatures, he was originally a human being — in this case, an irresponsible crop-dusting pilot named Jim Roberts who crashes his bi-plane into a restricted Army training center storing nerve gas. The mishap, resulting fire, and merging of the plane’s pesticides with the lethal biological agent results in one of the more nauseating looking creatures in comicdom. There’s no delicate way to put it: The Heap is essentially a man-sized creature composed of snot, with a snake-like tongue Gene Simmons would envy, a gaping mouth with fanged, broken teeth, who eats rats whole, both living and dead, for nourishment.

It turns out that prior to the accident, Roberts’ gold-digging girlfriend and her surreptitious lover team-up to sabotage the cropduster and kill the pilot so they can claim his life insurance. No goody-goody himself, the newly-transformed Heap crashes their celebratory party, kills the five attendees, and thus concludes his first adventure.

Artist Ross Andru assumes the mantle of co-writer for the second episode [“The Heap Meets The Horror Master,” Psycho #3, May ’71] where the Heap battles an unhinged scientist who’s reanimated some of the most notorious villains in history to be his zombie slaves—including Adolf Hitler, Giles De Rais, Lucretia Borgia, Attila the Hun, Rasputin, Caligula, Tamerlane, Ilse Koch — the “She-Wolf of the S.S.” (according to a hit drive-in grindhouse movie of the time), and even British royalty, Richard III. You know the villain’s gotta be a real megalomaniacal Horror Master when these are the folks he decides to bring back to life and control!

In the third Heap Psycho outing [“Night of Evil,” #4, Sept. ’71], Andru is sole writer and he has the monster locate an old friend,

Nightmare, The Heap TM & © the respective copyright holder.

Prof. Elliot, and by scratching in the dirt, the pathetic beast relates the origins of his horrible transformation. Elliot then begins to search for a cure to relieve Jim Roberts of the “stinking, oozing blob of miasmic flesh” he has become. Unfortunately, the Heap comes across two escaped prisoners while he himself is being hunted by local police and, in the ensuing three-way encounter, the prisoners are killed and the story ends with the Heap stumbling into quicksand, sinking to his apparent demise. (This issue is also graced with a back cover pin-up of the Heap by Bill Everett, easily the best rendering of this particular muck-monster ever!)

The fourth chapter in the tragic epic of Skywald’s swamp creature [“The Cavern of Doom,” Psycho #5, Nov. ’71] sees the Heap bursting out of an underground river in which the quicksand had miraculously deposited him. He finds himself in a cave filled with human dwellers who are slowly turning reptilian from chemicals leaching into the stream from the U.S. military’s buried canisters of bacteriological poison. The Heap fights and kills the strongest and most mindless of the reptile people, and makes his way back to Prof. Elliot’s lab where he receives an injection hoping to be cured. Meanwhile, police have found the cave and are being threatened by the reptile people. The Heap returns and tries to save the police but discovers, in the cliffhanger ending, that his hands are reverting back to human form.

Episode five, “Dark Victory,” from Psycho #6 [May ’72], didn’t appear for nearly six months thanks to a hiatus caused by the collapse of Skywald’s color line. Andru is still the penciler, but Pablo Marcos, Peruvian comics artist newly arrived in the states by way of Mexico, is now the inker. The Heap fully reverts to human form and Jim Roberts finds himself alongside a surviving policeman to battle against both the reptile people and a giant spider. Even though Roberts has rescued the sheriff, the blinded officer vows vengeance on the man who was the Heap for the death of a fellow officer.

The sheriff, of course, is never heard of again. Then Roberts, while kissing the professor’s beautiful daughter, reverts back

to the Heap (don’t you just hate when that happens?) and crashes back into the forest. End of story.

The next Heap exploit, “A Spawn of Satan,” Psycho #7 [July ’72], is scribed by new editor Alan Hewetson and fully illustrated by Marcos.

Stumbling through the forest the Heap attacks and beats up a group of hunters, then destroys one of the Army’s remaining chemical storage tanks, the fumes of which change him back into Jim Roberts. He then begins a Hulk-like existence of being Roberts during daylight hours, but changing to the Heap at night (though now appear more mud-like and less tumorous). He stows away on a freighter, where over time he depletes the ship’s entire population of rats by eating them. Unsatiated and driven by hunger to roam the ship’s deck at night, he finds the vessel under attack from a giant Kraken that drags him into the sea. He kills the beast and makes his way, carcass in tow, to an island.

In his next appearance, “What Hath Hell Wrought?” in Psycho 1972 Annual [Aug. ’72], the Heap attempts to crawl on shore, but is attacked by what appears to be either a giant jellyfish, an animated clump of seaweed, or perhaps a giant amoeba. The creature, now split into three entities, attacks a nearby town, but the Heap chases them back into the sea where they dissolve. The attack on the town, however, is blamed on their rescuer by terrified townspeople.

The character then vanishes for a period (at least in part because editor/ writer Hewetson confessed he hated the character, nicknaming the Heap “Bubbles” in the Skywald offices) but reemerges in Psycho #10 [Jan. ’73] with “Even a Heap Can Die.” By this time, Hewetson has fully launched

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Previous page: Tom Sutton (pencils) and Jack Abel (inks) cover of The Heap #1 [Sept. ’71]. Bottom is the opening spread of Psycho #2’s debut Heap story drawn by penciler Ross Andru and inker Mike Esposito. This page: Inset left is the cover of Nightmare #1 [Dec. ’70], appearing a few months before The Heap’s Skywald debut, has a monster looking awfully like our hero. Below: The snot-monster detailed from the splash of Psycho #4 as drawn by Andru & Esposito.

Next page: Top tier is Psycho #2 [Mar. ’71], the only Skywald black&-white horror mag cover featuring the Heap; and panels from May ’71’s Psycho #3 by Andru/Esposito.

Bottom left and inset are details from Javier Vilanova’s art on the last “Heap” tale from the Skywald era, Psycho #13 [July ’73].

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a small girl and raise her above his head to throw her on the third rail. What will happen next? Find out next issue!

In Psycho #13 [July ’73], “When Dies a Lunatic... So Dies a Heap,” we find that writer Hewetson is clearly bored out of his mind by the character, and has both Heap and child struck by an oncoming train, which kills the child. The mother blames the surrounding crowd instead of the monster, since none of them wanted to get within arm’s reach of a giant phlegm monster. The police then shoot the Heap with “weird serum” shells that knock him out. The Air Force then flies the Heap to a Texas holding area, but he awakens and causes the plane to crash on a “Ma and Pa Kent” type farm. The Ma Kent character, clearly demented, immediately proclaims the snot monster to be her dear missing son. Her befuddled husband bundles the monster into a wheel barrow and takes the Heap into a bedroom (what could that incredibly foul smelling phlegm monster be doing to those sheets?) where it awakes with Jim Roberts’ mind back in control, at least for the moment. The Heap recaps his story for the farm couple and is told by the clearly delusional husband and wife that he can live with them as their son. What are they going to do when he eats their dairy cows live? The story ends with Hewetson providing a cut-out coupon asking the readers if they want to see the saga of the Heap continued or if he could have a happy ending with this story.

Just before his death in 2004, “Archaic” Al Hewetson confided to this writer that he strongly hoped readers would kill any further “Heap” stories as the editor/writer truly hated the entire notion of the series, but was chagrined to have the readers overwhelming demand more “Heap” tales. Hewetson agreed to do more but delayed the next installment until he could find someone willing to do a complete re-design of the Heap. Hewetson finally settled on artist Gene Day to revamp the character. Probably fortunately for the readers, Skywald Publishing collapsed before the relaunch could take place. So ends the scintillating ’70s saga of Skywald’s sinister, slithering Heap!

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Psycho, The Heap TM & © the respective copyright holders.

into the infamous Skywald “Horror-Mood” phase, a style of story presentation often written as if the author suffers from an extremely high fever. This tale presents the Heap with monsters that look like dinosaurs.

Not the actual flesh-and-blood prehistoric beasts, mind you, but animated skeletons created by an aged special effects artist who wants to roam the island as a caveman with a high-powered rifle!

“A Ship of Fiends,” in Psycho #11 [Mar. ’73], has Jim Roberts captured and placed as the figurehead on a pirate galleon from two centuries prior! The utterly unexplained ship and crew is then attacked by another giant (and also unexplained) Kraken that sinks the vessel, but Roberts changes into the Heap in time to escape. He makes it back to land but is slowly reverting back to the snot version of the Heap and is immediately attacked by — again unexplained — a werewolf as he emerges from the surf. Somehow, the Heap absorbs the lycanthrope within his body and is no longer Jim Roberts but a “Heap who is a lunatic,” intent on slaughter.

Utter madness is only beginning as the next chapter (“And the World Shall Shudder,” Psycho #12, May ’73), now illustrated by Spanish artist Javier Vilanova, features the Heap attacking a cow at a railroad stockyard and eating it alive, then hopping a train to New York City where he kills the conductor and a large number of cops. A police helicopter lassos him around the neck, then drops him on the top of the Empire State Building (!) where he plummets through the roof and down an elevator shaft.

As he falls, the Heap crushes to death at least a half-dozen passengers in the elevator, and then completes his fall by landing in a subway tunnel where he attacks a train, causing even more fatalities as the subway patrons crash through glass doors and windows. His last act this episode is to grab

Pin-Up by

Pablo Marcos

The Heap TM & © the respective copyright holder.

by JON B. COOKE with George Khoury

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Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Savage Tales TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. Conan TM & © Conan Properties, Inc.

Above: John Buscema’s cover painting for the poorly distributed black-&-white adventure magazine published by Marvel, Savage Tales #1 [May ’71], which included the very first appearance of ManThing, in the origin tale as plotted

by Roy Thomas, scripted by Gerry Conway, and drawn by Gray Morrow. The second issue (sans Ted Sallis) wouldn’t appear for another 29 or so months, in Oct. ’73.

Tempting as it is to speculate that the liberalization of the Comics Code launched the ’70s craze (though those changes certainly made for a permissive environment), the legion of comic-book beasts from the bayou began their onslaught even before the 1971 modifications and, indeed, entirely outside the Authority’s purview. It was in the Code-free pages of black-&-white magazines published by competitors — one a brand-new outfit — where commenced the odd category within horror comic books, the muck-monster genre.

Right off, Stan Lee must have realized the upstart rival would be trouble for his House of Ideas. After all, it was being run by his longtime right-hand man, Marvel production manager Sol Brodsky, who had just quit to form that new challenger, Skywald Publishing. Brodsky and partner Israel Waldman’s plan was to respectively take on both Marvel and the top purveyor of black-&-white comic magazines, Warren Publishing. Lee need not have worried about the color line, as it folded after no more than a few issues each of Tender Love Stories, Wild Western Action, Jungle Adventures, and Butch Cassidy; but the Skywald horror line, comprised of Nightmare, Scream, and their flagship title, Psycho, would last a few years longer. Of concern, perhaps, was Skywald’s inclusion of regular features in their horror books, even resurrecting the Golden Age Heap.

Despite Marvel publisher Martin Goodman’s reluctance to get into the b-&-w comics magazine field again (after ill-fated Spectacular Spider-Man and Pussycat), Stan the Man wanted in on Jim Warren’s action and planned an adventure title — “rated M for Mature readers” — that, like the Skywald line-up of Hell-Rider, The Crime Machine, and horror books, would showcase continuing characters. Thus a new title was scheduled, #1 featuring the first installments of a Conan the Barbarian series, Ka-Zar, the Femizons, Black Brother, and a shambling, Heap-knock-off called Man-Thing.

Roy Thomas, who worked closely with his boss in the Marvel bullpen at the time, remembered, “Stan Lee called me in… to begin this new book called Savage Tales…. Stan wanted to do a series called ‘Man-Thing.’ He just had a sentence or so, just the idea of some guy doing some experimental drug and getting sort of fused with the swamp, so he becomes this creature. It sounded a lot like the Heap, but Stan never mentioned that character (although he’s said in many other places since then that he was very familiar with the Heap). I knew of the Heap, of course, but didn’t mention it. I didn’t like the name ‘Man-Thing,’ because we already had a character the Thing, and I thought it was confusing….”

“So with that couple of sentences,” Thomas continued, “I went off and plotted the story. I don’t remember writing it down, but apparently I did, because someone sent me a copy of my original two-page plot…. I gave it to Gerry Conway, who wrote a script from it, and it was given to Gray Morrow to draw. It was my intention to basically bring the Heap into comics. By that time, of course, we were actually picking up the ball fairly late, because I’d already done the Glob in The Incredible Hulk, and the Glob was clearly the Heap, with a couple of minor changes.”

Gerry Conway concurs, “Man-Thing was really Roy’s idea, something that he wanted to do because of his interest in the old Heap character… I got the assignment from Roy. I was Roy’s pinch-hitter, so whenever he would start something that he didn’t really feel like he wanted to carry forward, he would turn it over to me. I did Tomb of Dracula; I did the ‘Man-Thing.’ I think my first several assignments were to write the dialogue on Astonishing Tales, X-Men, ‘The Inhumans’ in Amazing Adventures. Just stuff that he would start and that he wasn’t really that enthusiastic about.”

The “Marvel Method” predominated at the House of Ideas at the time, where a written or verbal plot was given to a pencil artist, who would pace the story to his liking, sometimes adding elements, sometimes not, who would then return it to editorial for dialogue and captions to be added.

Thereafter the story would be lettered and inked.

“I didn’t really like doing what I thought of as horror material,” confessed Thomas, “even though this was sort of super-hero horror. It started as early as when I plotted the first issue of Tomb of Dracula, from a very brief verbal concept by Stan — or sometimes on my own, like the first issue of [Marvel Spotlight] ‘Werewolf by Night.’ I would plot the story, in greater or lesser detail, sometimes even giving a written plot to the artist, sometimes not. And then I’d give it to somebody else, usually Gerry at that stage, to write. Once I had done the general concept, I went back to my other books. I had no desire to write the first story of ‘Man-Thing’ or ‘Werewolf by Night,’ or [Tomb of] Dracula, or whatever.”

Thomas did have specific ideas with the characterization as first presented. “We wanted him to be quite different from

Man-Thing TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

characters like the Thing and the Hulk. And whatever stage the Hulk was at, at least remembered something, at least he spoke, and I thought we needed a different twist. The Hulk had had about 12 different speech patterns, the Thing maybe just a couple. And besides this, in my mind at least — and I was overseeing this more closely than Stan was — he was the Heap, and the Heap was silent, so it made sense for this guy to be silent, too. Except because the human being was alive within Man-Thing, instead of just some bones in a swamp as in the case of the Heap, he had more of a humanity about him, potentially, than the Heap did. But I never really brought that through. That was for the writers to do.”

Gerry Conway recalls receiving the dialoguing job because Thomas may have been underwhelmed with the art.

“I think he started off with wanting to do ‘Man-Thing,’ and then, as I kind of recall, he wasn’t all that thrilled with Gray’s pencils, so he just turned it over to me to write it. Then I added my two cents to the thing, in terms of characterization and general writing style, and that was pretty much it.”

The late Gray Morrow, who had achieved notable success as artist on the Warren b-&-w horror titles a few years earlier and at the time of Savage Tales #1 was gaining notice on the DC mystery books, probably designed the character based on the old muck-monster prototype. “As far as I know,” Thomas says, “Gray Morrow just drew it. He probably knew about the Heap, whether it was mentioned to him or not, so he just drew it about as close to the Heap as anything could be, which is exactly what Gerry and I wanted.

Stan certainly had no objection. And everybody was very happy with it.”

The nascent writer was delighted to be teamed with the veteran artist. “Gray was a great character,” Conway said.

“He looked like an artist. I think at this time he had this very saturnine type look. He had this little goatee and this pointed hair that came down into a point on this forehead. He was angular, and a very serious guy too. I don’t think he really enjoyed writing and doing comics that much, but he liked working, as did we all. He didn’t have a great sense, from a storytelling point of view, of how to break things down but, boy, could he draw. He’d draw the heck out of stuff. I think we did two or three stories together over the years. I was always very happy to be working with him… I just loved the idea of working with Gray Morrow, who I had been a fan of since seeing his artwork on the covers of paperback books in the early ‘60s.”

Personal touches by the creators found their way into the yarn. Thomas says, “I remember Gray drew in a couple of people he knew, like a friend of mine (and maybe his and Phil Seuling’s) named Chester Grabowski, who I used to play poker with, as one of the hooligans in there, and I recognize him every time I see Chester at a convention somewhere.

Carole Seuling tells me the other male hoodlum in the story

Above: Andy’s evocative Batman #655 [Sept. 2006] cover sans trade dress. Colors by Dave Stewart.

Above: Spectacular “Man-Thing” splash page done in ink-&-wash by the incomparable Gray Morrow, originally appearing in Savage Tales #1 [May ’71] and superbly remastered for the Man-Thing Omnibus [2012] by the folks at Marvel Comics. Courtesy of Marvel Masterworks’ master-man Cory Sedlmeier.

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

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at least back then, was not contributing much by way of interaction. He would plunk down into the middle of the story, and then everybody would try to deal with his impact. I think I saw that if the Man-Thing was going to go on from that first story, then it would be a similar kind of thing, where he’d go into a situation wander in, bumble, stumble — whatever — and he would actually be following the supporting characters into another story.”

While Thomas doesn’t recall the specifics of audience response to the Man-Thing story, “We were all happy about how it came out.” But the anthology title itself was dead on arrival at Marvel.

“Goodman never really wanted to do Savage Tales,” Thomas said. “I believe he didn’t want to do a non-Code black-&white book; he didn’t want trouble over there, or to get into magazines as much as Stan did (and, of course, I liked the idea, too). So he wasn’t very enthusiastic and looked for an excuse to cancel it. I heard we had some problems getting into Canada, that somebody at the competition, DC, told the Canadians it was salacious material or some such, but I never got any confirmation of that. At any rate, we had these big returns of unsold copies. For several years, there were copies in a warehouse, but a thousand or two, at least, sitting in a hallway at Marvel. Hundreds of copies of bales of 50 or 100 each, that we were told to take home — ‘Get ’em out of there!’ I eventually took home some, I don’t remember how many it was, a couple hundred or so, as did other people. I partly financed my move to California in 1976 by selling them for, I don’t know, maybe $10 each — or maybe it was more. By that time, it had become a kind of a collector’s item, primarily because of Conan being in it — and, to a lesser extent, Man-Thing and Ka-Zar.” But while the black-&-white comics line stalled for a time, the Marvel shambler quickly found a spot in the color books, first as a guest-star in “Ka-Zar,” which conveniently found a home for the completed “Man-Thing” tale intended for the unpublished Savage Tales #2, a mini-masterpiece written by Len Wein and drawn in pencil by Neal Adams.

This was soon followed by a solo series in Fear. Thomas explains, “When you start looking around for various kinds of ‘horror’ or mystery titles to do, you can have one or two werewolves (as we ended up doing), one or two vampires, a mummy, this or that, and other things. Well, the Man-Thing was a very obvious choice, because he already existed, he was different somewhat from the other characters, so why not use him? At that stage we were adding an awful lot of books, and the Man-Thing made sense to be one of them.”

What made less sense to those at the bullpen was the arrival of the Distinguished Competition’s Swamp Thing,

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Man-Thing TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

was a friend of her and Phil’s, too.”

And the scripter, filled with the enthusiasm of youth at the time, added his own touches. As Conway relates, “Well, I was an eager beaver. I liked everything, so for me it was another exciting opportunity to do something fun. I wasn’t really a fan of that type of material, so I didn’t really bring to it any convention, like, ‘Oh God, I have to write this.’ It was mostly, ‘Oh, gee, I’ve always liked Gray Morrow. Ooh, this’ll be wonderful, I’ll be working with Gray Morrow.’ That was probably more my excitement on the thing than anything else. Plus, I was also able to use the names of people that I knew.”

Conway said with a laugh, “I put Jim Sallis into it as Ted Sallis. Jim Sallis is a writer that I knew from Clarion [a workshop for new and aspiring SF and fantasy writers] — who Above: Attesting to his stature in actually has got a number of really good mysthe emerging Marvel universe, the tery novels out now featuring a detective in monster formally known as Ted New Orleans — which is great, since I knew Sallis was included in the 1974 Jim was in New Orleans. I thought, ‘Well, I’m Topps bubble-gum sticker set doing something down here in the swamp, Comic Book Heroes, which includ- so it’ll be fun.’ The other namesake for that ed sticker illustrated by a detail character was [editor] Ted White, who from the cover of Man-Thing #1 bought my first short stories in science-fic[Feb. ’74] drawn by Frank Brunner. tion magazines, Amazing and Fantastic. It Inset right and below: The text was just an opportunity to wave hello to a page of Savage Tales #1 [May ’71] couple of friends.” featured this section on the characThomas was happy to emphasize the ter, which was written by Roy Thomas, who shared with us his young writer in that debut issue. “I remember plot (submitted 11/10/70) for the I wrote the text page that appears in Savage story appearing in the same issue, Tales, anonymously,” Thomas said. “And I the first page seen below. Next emphasized Gerry in it, because he was only page: Wonderful photo-illustration 19 or so, and had a published science-fiction composed by John Gallagher of book or two.”

Conway doesn’t feel he added much our Marvel monster of the hour, appearing here courtesy of J.G. to that initial tale. “My position on that story was really the position of an inker working on the pencils,” he said. “I came in after most of the creative work had been done by Roy. I just gave it some language and some mood, and a little bit of backstory.”

The writer would not go on to work on the character again, fortuitous as he cannot now recall what would’ve come next. “I don’t even know if I plotted the second one or not,” Conway confessed. “I know Len [Wein] wrote it… I don’t really know what we were thinking was going to happen. I think, if I thought about it at all, I would feel that the stories would be sort of like the stories done in The Incredible Hulk, where the Hulk is a catalytic figure to the stories around him, to the people around him. He himself,

Illustration © John Gallagher. Man-Thing TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

whose origin recounted in the first issue of the solo title was strikingly similar to the transformation of Ted Sallis. Thomas recalls, “Gerry and I thought that somehow, unconsciously, of course, Len just took a bit too much from Gerry’s and my story, even as opposed to the original Heap. In fact, there was talk, at the time — and I don’t know how much Stan was involved in this, but it certainly would have had to involve him to some extent, or Goodman, not Gerry or me —there was vague talk about possible legal action. I don’t know if letters ever changed hands. Because, after all, the Swamp Thing origin was just too similar to the Man-Thing origin. It came out quite a few months after Savage Tales #1. Even the dissimilar story in House of Secrets [#92], which was to all intents and purposes a different character, came after Man-Thing.

Not to mention the Glob, that I had done with Herb Trimpe earlier. I was not happy about the similarity, but I knew it was an accidental thing.”

The author of the Swamp Thing #1 origin story, “Dark Genesis,” was, of course, Len Wein, who happened to have a close association with Gerry Conway during the time of the “Man Thing” story in Savage Tales #1 was written. A very close association.

“Len was my roommate,” Conway said. “When I was doing Man-Thing, there was a period where I had moved out of my house and was living, for about two months I was going from one place to another, living with Steve Englehart for a brief period, living with Alan Weiss for a brief period, just bumping around. I ended up rooming with Len; we shared an apartment in Queens. We were hanging out all the time.

We would occasionally help each other out on scripts. Len always had a problem meeting deadlines.”

Thomas shares, “Gerry was rooming with Len at the time and says he tried to convince him to change his story. Len just didn’t seem to see the similarities, so he just went ahead with what he was doing.

And in the long run, the characters verged off after that origin, so it didn’t make too much difference, anyway. There were never any hard feelings about it.”

Len Wein recalls his relationship with Conway: “We were sharing an apartment.

We were roommates. We had different rooms,” Wein said with a chuckle, “but we had the same apartment. The insane part of the simultaneous creation of Swamp Thing and Man-Thing was that neither of us knew what the other one was doing. We’d never talked about that.”

Was there any thought that his roommate might be swiping Wein’s ideas? “Who cares?” Wein replies. “I mean what he was doing was going to be an on-going series character; I was doing a one-shot mystery story [for House of Secrets #92]. Why would we talk about it? But who knew?”

Wein also described another oddity.

“The weirdest thing that nobody seems to recall or know is that I wrote the second ‘Man-Thing’ story [intended for Savage Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Above: Contributor Mike Fleming believes these two shots of Clan Kubert are from a show in Chicago, “I would guess 1994.”

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Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Man-Thing, Fear TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

Tales #2 but published in Astonishing Tales #12]. I originated what was to become the character’s tagline: ‘Whosoever knows fear burns at the Man-Thing’s touch.’ I basically came up with it because in Gerry’s original story, anything the monster touched, burned. In the original story, anything he touched, burned, so I surmised, ‘You know, you can never do an on-going character who can never interact with anything without setting it on fire.’ So I came up with the idea that you had to be afraid of Man-Thing to suffer the chemical reaction.”

When asked how he came to write for Savage Tales, Wein replies, “Oh, I followed Gerry on a lot of things. I ended up at Marvel in the early ’70s sort of by accident. Gerry and I were roommates for a good chunk of that. I was at DC, Gerry was at Marvel, and every time Gerry would leave a book, I would get offered the gig. I only found out later that this sequence of events was intentional, that Gerry and Roy Thomas planned it that way. Gerry would say, ‘I’m leaving Marvel Team-Up. You want to take it over?’ I said, ‘You mean like write Spider-Man? God, sure!’ He would consistently offer me books he was leaving so that I woke up one day and realized I’m working for Marvel. Y’see, little by little, I had to give up DC assignments to take on the Marvel stuff and it turned out to be a calculated plan on their part to get me over there. I was never aware of it.”

Discussing the “Man-Thing” story that appeared in Astonishing Tales #12, Wein said, “This was done Marvel style. If you look at the art on some of the panels, especially the scene where the girl tears free of the villain and what looks to be her blouse is being torn off, but isn’t, you’ll see that that stuff was redrawn

by John Romita when it became a Code-approved book. Originally, she was topless. This was originally intended for Savage Tales, which was an adult book. I remember Neal wrote a panel where the guy has got his arm around her with a shotgun and he threatens her life, Neal telling me to come up with the foulest, most disgusting things I could think of for the guy to say, because we weren’t bound by the Code here. But I just couldn’t think of anything that wouldn’t pass as Code-approved.”

Reading some dialogue in the printed story, Wein recites with a laugh, “‘You cruddy broad.’ That wasn’t the original dialogue. I don’t remember what I originally wrote, but ‘cruddy’ isn’t a word I would have naturally used.”

When asked why John Romita would have repeatedly redrawn a woman character’s face (especially considering Neal Adams draws especially beautiful women), Wein said, “I don’t recall, but I’m sure there was something to it. I think she may have been beaten-up and bloody. There was something that was going on there. She might well have been brutalized with blackened eyes and bloody lips.”

And the ending: Did the story really abruptly end with Man-Thing going “Arghh”?

Wein answers, “Yes, it did. The dialogue would have been different. I don’t remember exactly what the script was, but it would have been written to have more of an ending sense to itself, that it was an ending. Some words did change in the transition, some captions and dialogue would have had to change to meet Code approval.

But it’s not radically different from the original script. I would say it’s probably 95% of the script I wrote originally.”

Of course, with the character graduating to his solo series in Fear, Man-Thing would begin (after a stand-alone fill-in story written by Gerry Conway and drawn by Gray Morrow with Howard Chaykin) a legendary series of stories written by Steve Gerber. Thomas recalls, “I don’t remember how much before that he’d come in, but not too long. And we needed something for him to experiment on with the writing, so ‘Man-Thing’ seemed to fit. Gerry was always in demand on other things, so I’m sure it gravitated toward Steve. Maybe he wanted to do it, and at the same time he wanted just an assignment. As with a lot of these things, you just end up doing something because it’s available, and maybe you get attached to it and maybe you don’t. In this case, Steve developed his own style with it, and in many ways, he did it very much like the old ‘Heap’ series, because in a lot of Steve’s stories the ManThing would only come in at the end to kind of wrap things up. He wasn’t as involved in some of the stories as he could have been, and from a commercial viewpoint, I

Man-Thing, Monsters Unleashed TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

think that didn’t help sales much. But overall, he did some very interesting things with the book.”

Thomas doesn’t recall whether Fear was a particularly big seller, but he adds, “It did do well enough to go monthly.

Of course, we tried to go monthly with everything, if we could. Sometimes the idea was just, if a book was doing okay and you get it out there every month, then people get more used to seeing it.”

The emerging writer was given some freedom on the title said his former editor. “[Steve] had a lot of leeway. Occasionally we’d have to make some changes. Of course, I had him kill off Howard the Duck, with the idea that we might bring it back later, but I wanted him to get the duck out of there because I felt that was not in the right spirit of the book. In retrospect, I don’t think that was necessarily the right move, although I do think it wasn’t a bad idea to get rid of it. We brought it back soon, anyway. And, in fact, I offered Steve a spot with ‘Howard the Duck’ in a comic I was doing titled Arrgh!, but he told me he had already placed it in [Giant-Size] Man-Thing.”

Thomas does recall a controversy in the Gerber run. “We got in some trouble over one of his ‘Man-Thing’ stories, with the Wundarr character, where he made the origin too close to Superman. And that was my responsibility. I didn’t watch him closely enough. Basically, I felt that writers and artists understood how far they could go, and sometimes Steve would try to push the envelope a little bit. Sometimes his judgment was to push as far as he could and not worry so much about whether he was going to get the company into hot water. And by the time we would see a story — Stan and I — it had already been drawn and we’d try to make some changes it, but they weren’t quite enough. And DC ended up complaining about it, perhaps justly so, and Stan was really angry about it, at me and especially at Steve, who perhaps doesn’t realize how close he came to being fired over it at the time.”

The former Marvel editor-in-chief remembers another contentious event working with the fan-favorite scribe.

“Steve and I had a big argument once, over one line in a Howard the Duck story. He threatened to quit the book if I changed that line. And I said, ‘Well, then, goodbye. I’m going to change the line.’ And I did. But that was my job as editor.”

Thomas added with a laugh, “I’m not going to stick my neck out for one stupid line. Even if it’s not a bad line. We went round and round about that from time to time, and I’m sure each of us has our own view that we did what we felt we had to do. But, other than that, I gave Steve a fair amount of leeway. I think that probably he would have benefited from a closer hand on my part around that time. I think the book would have been more commercial and done better if he’d been guided a little bit more. But I was the only person really making editorial decisions, besides Stan, when he got into things, and there were dozens of books coming out every month. In addition, I was sort-of losing interest in the editor-in-chief job, so I probably didn’t watch Steve as closely as I should have. And it still did all right. He and the artists did some fine work on it.”

Did Thomas have any favorite Gerber stories? “Obviously, in retrospect, I think the Howard the Duck introduction was a real stroke of genius. I found it interesting even when I made him kill him off. Other than that, I didn’t pay that much attention to the book. I just saw it was going in generally the right direction, and I figured, he’s writing the book, not me, so why should I try to impose on it too much as long as he was doing basically the right thing. I think he could have used a little more editorial guidance, but other than that, I think he did fine.”

Gerard Jones and Will Jacobs’ The Comic Book Heroes describe the Gerber-scripted Man-Thing run, arguably the best in the character’s history: “Gerber’s voice united the flowery Marvel style with a tongue-in-cheek wit and a truly audacious pretension. No one else could have begun a story with a declaration, ‘Reality: Plato found it in the shadowy

confines of a cave — Descartes, in a syllogism… “Cogito ergo sum”… “I think, therefore I am.” They blew it — both of them.’ It was that audacity that made Gerber charming, and he ran with it until he overreached himself… [His] best stories were smaller, as in the haunting tale of a pathetic little carnival clown who commits suicide and then, as a ghost, compels four people and the Man-Thing to act out the story of his wretched life while three cloaked figures sit as ‘critics,’ judges of the clown’s soul. As a moral fable, a supernatural story, and a very sad portrait of a man, it was a work of true feeling and originality. It helped, too, that it was drawn by Mike Ploog, pausing on his way out of comics to do his most evocative work yet.”

[Gerber and his artist collaborators describe their ManThing work in the pages to follow. — Ye Ed.] Man-Thing would, during the character’s initial ’70s run, star in nine issues of Fear, 22 issues of his own title with another five Giant-Size editions, as well as guests shots across the Marvel universe (and membership in the one-shot “Legion of Monsters”!), not to mention a presence in the b-&-w magazine line. For a butt-ugly character, bizarre facial appendages and all, a headliner who never said a word, and was more often than not an observer of the story’s action (until his brawn was inevitably cued into play), ManThing was a surprisingly effective star during his heyday, one who has never quite faded from view at the House of Ideas, even to this present day.

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Previous page & above: Though he drew but one story [Astonishing Tales #12, June ’72] — panel far left — and a couple of covers [Fear #11, Dec. ’72, and Monsters Unleashed #3, Nov. ’73], Neal Adams’ rendition of the character is definitive. Below: The entire ’70s Man-Thing run is available in an 1,188-page omnibus [2011].

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Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Man-Thing, Fear TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

This page: Some sweet Man-Art. At left, courtesy of Jonathan Ross, is a Mike Ploog commission piece of the monster formally known as Ted Sallis. Above top to bottom are particularly fine covers from the character’s first self-titled series; Frank Brunner’s Man-Thing #1 [Jan. ’74], and Ploog’s #5 [Apr. ’74] and #8 [Aug. ’74].

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© Fred Hembeck. Man-Thing, Daredevil, Black Widow TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

by JON B. CookE

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Swamp Thing, House of Secrets TM & © DC Comics.

If the Heap at Skywald and Marvel’s Man-Thing echoed, with their ferocious brutality and scantily-clad damsels, those cheap, knocked-out horror comics of the early 1950s, the resident muck-monster at DC Comics resonated with the very best that bygone era offered in four-color tales of the macabre. By the early ’70s, the home of fondly-recalled titles Tales From the Crypt, Haunt of Fear, and Vault of Horror might have been 15 years gone from American newsstands and yet, in the pages of Swamp Thing, the exquisite quality of Entertaining Comics seemed resurrected courtesy of the excellent Graham Ingelsinspired pen of a young, brilliant artist and clever writing of a smart up-and-coming fan-turned-pro not unaccustomed to Feldstein & Gaines twist endings. And, truth be told, it’s likely no coincidence that delineator Bernie Wrightson and scribe Len Wein were shepherded by a notable E.C. Comics alumnus, talented artist and clever plot-man Joe Orlando (who, only a few years prior, had been story editor at the black-&-white horror mag outfit Warren Publishing), whose second act in life as DC’s premier mystery comics editor was in full flower. Through these three emerged the most famous swamp monster of all.

By 1971 Joe Orlando was earning his keep (and then some) at the House of Superman. A few years earlier, editorial director and future publisher Carmine Infantino had, born of desperation and pressure from the executive suites upstairs to boost circulation, implemented the renowned age of artist-as-editor at DC Comics, which ushered in extraordinary and innovative material from, among others, multi-talented creators Jack Kirby, Joe Kubert, and Mike Sekowsky. Infantino wisely snatched artist-editor Dick Giordano from Charlton Comics and also the street-smart Orlando, then freelancing for MAD magazine and other commercial accounts (including, now and again, DC), to both head up their own titles for a revitalized mystery comics line inspired by the E.C. of old.

Though once featuring suspenseful if rather innocuous tales of the strange and unusual, by the time of the Batman TV show, House of Mystery and sister title House of Secrets had gone “super-hero,” with HOM showcasing “Dial H For Hero” (sockamagee!) and the exploits of Eclipso and Prince Ra-Man sharing HOS (the latter title actually suffering cancellation in late ’66). But, by the decade’s close, the comics industry was facing imminent doom. Readers, particularly girls, were leaving the field in droves and those who remained often became attracted more to the inter-connected Marvel universe. Infantino is hired to bring on the era of the “daring and the different”

by DC’s new corporate owners in an effort to return the company to those glorious — and profitable — days of Batmania. Then-publisher Irwin Donenfeld orders a revival of the mystery anthology books and, after hours at DC, buddies Infantino and Orlando, both Italians sons from the boroughs of New York City who had met a few years earlier and hit it off, conspire to come up with new concepts. “While I was an artist,” Infantino told this writer, “he would come up to DC working on a few things and we would just sit and talk. I just listened… and Joe was full of ideas.” (Infantino later boasts to interviewers that

Swamp Thing TM & © DC Comics. Photo © the respective copyright holder.

Orlando, known for helming the family of “weird” anthology titles from Plop! to Weird War Tales, was for a time the editor responsible for DC’s best-selling comics.)

In his memoir, The Amazing World of Carmine Infantino, the late artist/publisher wrote, “Super-heroes were doing well in the late-’60s and early-’70s, but I always looked for other types of characters to do, just in case the super-heroes died off again. I threw out a barrage of different titles partially as a smoke screen. I wanted to sneak out House of Mystery and House of Secrets without Marvel noticing. We launched a chain of lightweight horror/mystery books, and they were successful before anyone at Marvel realized what we were doing.”

Infantino continues, “I knew Joe Orlando would be perfect to put those kind of books together and his books became bestsellers. Marvel tried to compete, launching [short-lived mystery anthology comics] Tower of Shadows [and Chamber of Darkness]… and then using some of our own talent — Neal Adams, Wally Wood, and Bernie Wrightson all did a few stories for them. But they couldn’t get Orlando and he was our best-kept secret weapon!”

As the DC mystery books hummed along, editor Orlando searched for ways to entice girl readers back into the fold, first by ripping off the Archie Comics template with retooled teen humor titles Swing with Scooter and Leave It to Binky, and then introducing a (perhaps Dark Shadows-inspired) Gothic slant to the line-up, which even permeated Wonder Woman and Batman for a spell. “That’s because, at that time,” Orlando told this writer, “the Gothics in the paperback market were doing so well. I studied the covers on the paperbacks and they always had the woman in the foreground, a sinister guy pursuing them, and a house or castle in the background with always one window lit. So that was a formula I used.”

And, verily, it is during this period when came job number J-1135, an eight-pager fronting the June–July 1971 issue of House of Secrets, #92, a modest story of Victorian-era ill-fated romance, albeit a bizarre revenge fable replete with a creature born of death. Thus, behind a Gothic “lady in peril” cover, arrives “Swamp Thing,” effectively introducing a character which, to date, has headlined nearly 300 U.S. comic books, two major motion pictures, one live action television series, an animated cartoon show, a toy line, a plethora of merchandising, and multiple generations of devout fans. And while this, the first Swamp Thing episode, is not precisely canon but actually a nascent prototype, if you will, the origin of Alex Olsen’s sad, tragic opus has three fathers — writer Len Wein, artist Bernie Wrightson, and editor Joe Orlando — the same trio of creators who subsequently spawned the man-monster once called Alex Holland, the creature we today all know and love.

The editor-creator, in an interview with Comic Book Artist, recalls his influence on the initial tale came from his former place of employment. “In fact, the first story was done in House of Secrets,” said Orlando, “and I fed to Len the idea from an old E.C. story that I loved (which I didn’t draw) where they took the brains out of this guy and put it into an ape and the last panel is that it’s Christmas time and he looks into the window of his home and sees his wife and children celebrating Christmas and there’s a picture of Daddy. The family turns and screams and he has to run and leave. I thought that that’s such a powerful idea and it’s in the first Swamp Thing story.”

Left: Exceptional commission piece courtesy of Jonathan Ross. All artwork on previous and this page by the incomparable Bernie Wrightson.

Previous page: Far left is an enlarged panel detail from Swamp Thing #4 [Apr.–May ’73]; top inset a commission from ’74; bottom inset the cover of House of Secrets #92 [June–July ’71]. This page: Top left is the cover of Swamp Thing #1 [Oct.–Nov. ’72]; left is Louise “Weezie” Jones posing for the HOS #92 shoot by Jeffrey Jones (used as photo reference), courtesy of Michael W. Kaluta.

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Above: Original art to the opening page of House of Secrets #92 [June–July ’71]. Words by Wein, art by Wrightson. Below: Weezie Jones and Bernie Wrightson pose in 1971 for “Swamp Thing.” Photo

by Weezie’s then-husband, Jeffrey.

Courtesy of Michael W. Kaluta.

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Swamp Thing © DC Comics. Photo © the respective copyright holder.

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(Orlando may be remembering “Gorilla My Dreams,” Haunt of Fear #17 [Jan.–Feb. ’53], written by Al Feldstein and drawn by George Evans, which does feature an ape with a transplanted human brain looking at his wife and children through a window, though other details differ.)

Decades earlier, the editor, interviewed by Paul Levitz for the “Many Worlds of Joe Orlando” feature in The Amazing World of DC Comics #6 [May–June ’75], recalled another influence. “Swamp Thing began with my fondness for Otto Binder’s ‘Adam Link, Robot’ stories and my desire to create a character with a similar alienated feeling,” said Orlando. “The first story… was done like any other mystery story: I talked it out with Len Wein, he wrote it, and I gave it to Bernie to draw.”

In a nutshell, ‘Swamp Thing” is about the rivalry between two friends, Alex

Olsen and Damien Ridge, each vying for the love of a woman named Linda, who chooses to wed Alex. Seized with jealousy, Damien sabotages his unwitting foe’s lab, which explodes and kills Alex, whose body is secretly buried in a swamp. But the deceased returns to life as a “muck-encrusted mockery of a man,” while Damien marries widow Olsen and the couple reside in an old manse. Linda continues to mourn her late husband, and Damien, fearing he may be revealed as a killer, prepares do away with his bride. As the scoundrel is about to inject Linda with poison, the Swamp Thing attacks and kills Damien. But, alas, the damsel recoils from her savior, horrified and unaware it was once her beloved. Shambling dejectedly to his new, fetid home, so ends the tragic tale.

As a kid, the writer-creator of “Swamp Thing” recalls being repulsed by E.C. books. “When I was nine or ten, and my best friend at the time lived down the block,” Wein explains, “his older brother had a bunch of E.C. Comics and he gave them to us. We looked at them and found them so disgusting at the time. The E.C. stuff was really hard-boiled.

We didn’t want to keep them, so we wound up selling them off for like a nickel each. You can still see the palm print on my forehead every time I slap myself in the head, going, ‘What the hell did I do?’ But, at the time, we just thought they were gross and disgusting.”

Asked how the House of Secrets yarn came about, Wein replies, “Well, I wish I had a better story, but it’s as simple as this: I was on the subway on my way into the DC office and I needed something to pitch to Joe. I didn’t have any ideas and that came to me in the subway out of the blue. I honestly don’t know where it came from.” But the writer doesn’t recall being instructed to create any particular type of mystery story. “The gist of Gothic romance is suggested, I’ll grant you that, but I don’t remember any editorial dictum.”

The tale is more than a mystery, Wein explains. “It’s a love story. A lot of that mystery stuff are stories of love when you get down to it. It’s about unrequited love, a man who loves his wife, is killed, and comes back to protect her.” The scribes adds with a laugh, “The funny thing is the title came up by accident. I didn’t have a title for the story and I kept referring to it as, ‘That swamp thing I’m writing,’ the ‘thing’ being the story, not the character. But that’s how it ended up being titled ‘Swamp Thing,’ and we went from there.”

The plot approved, Wein approached the perfect artist for the assignment. “We were out at a party at Marv [Wolfman]’s place. Bernie was very depressed [because of a break-up with a girl], so we went out, sat in my car to talk about it, and I said, ‘I’ve got a story I just wrote that expresses exactly the way you’re feeling right now.’ So I told him about the story and he said, ‘I want to do it.’ That’s how we started ‘Swamp Thing,’” Wein said with a chuckle.

The artist-creator remembers looking at the horror comics of other publishers from a tender age, “But I knew the E.C. stuff was the best,” Bernie Wrightson told this writer.

“You know, I couldn’t have told you at the time that they were better drawn because I was just a kid, so how’re you going to know? But looking back on it, that’s what I responded to. I responded to that level of artwork in most comics.

They were much more realistic. You know, I looked at an E.C. comic and it was like this is a drawing of a real guy, this is a drawing of a real woman. And I’d look at the other ones and, ‘Well, that’s a cartoon.’” And the artist the youngster best responded to? “I knew the styles were different [in respective E.C. horror tales] and that the stories by Graham Ingels were going to be the creepiest. His stories are the ones that stick in my memory and I remember being really, really disturbed by them, really affected by them, you know? Graham’s was the stuff that made me feel the most guilty.”

Recalling the first Swamp Thing story, Wrightson says, “Len and I were friends by that time. We would go to the same parties together, knew the same people, traveled in the same circles and everything.” The artist, though recalls someone other than he suffering heartbreak at the time.

“Len had written the script for the ‘Swamp Thing’ short story

Illustration © John Gallagher. Swamp Thing © DC Comics.

for House of Secrets. I think he had broken up with a girlfriend and writing that story was cathartic for him. It meant a lot to him at the time because he was working his way through the breakup and getting through it partly through writing the story, writing it all out of himself as an allegory or something,” Wrightson explains. “I remember reading the script and saying, ‘Hey, this is really cool. I like this. Can I draw this?’ I can’t remember if I was there and happened to see it, or if he brought it to me, or if it was at the office and Joe Orlando gave it to me to look at, I don’t remember the circumstances.”

When told of Wein’s recollections, Wrightson says, “I have a vague, fuzzy memory of something like that, but it’s kind of unfocused, like maybe this is something we did more than once. But I remember sharing a lot of that stuff with Len at the time. You know, a lot of personal and emotional stuff, things we were going through at the time. I’m sure that it happened just that way [Wein describes].”

Wrightson particularly responded to the romantic aspect of the story. “I took ‘Swamp Thing’ completely seriously as a horror story and as a romance. You know, it was my kind of story. The guy’s a monster and I love monsters — I always have — and he’s a human being wrapped inside a monster’s body. So what is that? It’s Frankenstein, it’s the Wolf Man. You know, it’s the same thing to me. He’s horrifically ugly and that’s cool because that makes him a lot of fun to draw. And also, yeah, I thought the story was very heartfelt. I read the script and it put tears in my eyes.”

The writer concurs and shares in finding emotional resonance in the tale. “It absolutely is a romance,” says Wein “Someone once said that the reason the character worked so well when I was writing it was because the character is essentially me. I said, ‘What are you talking about?’ He said, ‘Just think about it: Because you were so sickly, your body failed you and it really isn’t working the way you want. Yet your heart and your spirit are still the same, and you try to keep a positive outlook and try to believe everything’s going to work out at the end.’ I realized, ‘Oh sh*t! You’re right!’”

Pondering the House of Secrets short story, Wrightson describes it thus: “‘Swamp Thing’ started off as a tale of unrequited love, basically the story of a guy who is transformed into a monster. He returns to life because the swamp resurrects him, replacing his human form with Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Above: Dramatic photo illustration

by John Gallagher replicating the character’s pose (as drawn by Bernie Wrightson) on the cover of Swamp Thing #9 [Mar.–Apr. ’74].

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Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Swamp Thing TM & © DC Comics.

moss, mud, and grass. The love of his life has been taken away from him by a bad guy, the same guy who killed his human form, so he comes back and gets his revenge, only, in the end, now he’s a monster and he can’t ever get the girl.

He’s lost the girl twice. It’s very sad. It’s a very unhappy ending.”

The story as drawn, which features the artistic assistance of friends (and future Studio mates) Jeffrey Jones and Michael W. Kaluta, as well as Alan Weiss, is atypical for a Wrightson comic book tale in its reliance on photo reference. “The story needed to be done in a hurry,” explains Wrightson.

“There was a tight deadline. I can’t remember how much time, but I really had to push this thing out (although, looking back on it, I think I got the script late so there wasn’t a lot of time)… At the time, Jeff Jones photographed everything because he always worked from reference. He had a couple of really

good black-&-white cameras and had an photo enlarger, all the equipment, and everything. He had a darkroom set-up in a closet in his apartment downstairs. He did all his own developing. None of us had any money so we couldn’t hire models or anything, so we would model for Jeff.”

Coming together for a photoshoot wasn’t all work and no play for the friends. “It was a lot of fun getting all these people together,” the artist remembers, “coming up all kinds of make-shift costumes — or something approximating a costume, because even if it didn’t look authentic, it’s okay, because I could fix it in the actual drawing, so long as the shape was generally okay — and it was like a party. We’d all get together, set up the lights, everybody would take turns posing. Composing everything in the photo was a lot of fun.

We’d always have a couple bottles of wine and just a lot of laughs doing this, put it together this reference.” Wrightson added he art directed the shoot while Jones took the photos.

In an email, Jones told this writer, “Bernie wanted to use his friends, So he and I shot pictures. All I remember is doing a lot of pencil work, and a little inking [on HOS #92].”

The cast was, naturally, chosen by the artist. “I was the hero, of course, because it was my story,” says Wrightson.

“Then I was the guy who got turned into a monster, so that was cool. Kaluta was the bad guy and he was great. At the time, he had kind of longish hair and this great mustache, a great bushy one, and if he wet his hair and slicked it back, and he would leer at you with this really oily kind of snakeish expression, and he just looked delightfully sinister. I said, ‘Michael, you’re perfect. You be the bad guy.’ And Weezie, of course, was the heroine of the story.”

At the time — and this was prior to her days as lauded pro comic book writer and editor — Louise “Weezie” Jones was the wife of Jeffrey Jones, friend to the young cadre of artists and writers, and adored by all. “She was just great and I had such a crush on her,” confesses Wrightson.” I think all of us were in love with her. You couldn’t not fall head over heels with her! She was just so sweet. None of us, I think, had met anybody like her. She was just the best.”

The writer, too, felt a fondness for the tale’s “leading lady.” Wein says, “Weezie, by that point, was beloved by all of us. There wasn’t one guy in the group who just wasn’t madly in love with that woman… because she’s Weezie! She was — and still is — wonderful. She was cheery as a bucket of buttons and a great human being to boot. I mean she was just so funny and attractive. She was married to Jeff Jones at the time (which is a little problem for the rest of us), but we were all crazy about Weezie, just the same.”

Artist Alan Weiss, a regular with the crew, says about the lady, “There couldn’t have been a cuter, spunkier, more delightful young housemother for a batch of crazy comic-book Cub Scouts!”

graphs, I’m not sure I would remember this happening at all.

It was so long ago. Although I do remember somehow dressing up, but it must of been another story — a Medieval story?

— tying a pillow around my head, some weird Medieval hat with a scarf around my neck… I have some vague memory doing that. I can kind of remember posing [for HOS #92] but it was nothing special. I remember I had shortish hair at the time, so I had this thing called a fall that was popular during the ’60s, which was a long-hair piece that you could put on the back of your head. That isn’t all my hair [in the story].”

Simonson laughs off not realizing at the time what they were doing would be repeatedly asked about. “Honestly,” she says, “who would have thought that this batch of kids — we were only in our early 20s, and Bernie may have been younger than that — getting together, taking pictures, because it was fun, and years later it should be this big thing?

Who knew?”

Presented with her late ex-husband’s photos of that session, she did take note of an important bystander. “You can see my daughter Julianna in one of the pictures sitting in the background,” Simonson notes. “She was four at the time.”

Simonson does recall first meeting the artist of that fabled tale. “I first met Bernie when he was about 17,” she says. “He came by our apartment when we first moved to New York, where we lived in the studio apartment in the

Previous page: Bernie Wrightson replays the main splash image for the original “Swamp Thing” fable on this full-pager from Swamp Thing #4 [Apr.–May ’73], and (inset below) the artist revisits a scene from ST #5 [July–Aug. ’73] for the cover of the 1977 Comic Art Convention souvenir book.

Above: From left, iconic covers from the original Swamp Thing series, all drawn by Bernie Wrightson — #4 [Apr.–May ’73] #5, [July–Aug. ’73], #7 [Nov.–Dec. ’73], and #9 [Mar.–Apr. ’74].

Below: Breathtaking panel details of Bernie Wrightson’s version of The Batman, all taken from the landmark Swampy-meets-Bats issue, Swamp Thing #7 [Nov.–Dec. ’73]. Yes, Ye Brazen Editor digitally manipulated the panels for clarity and, truth to tell, because it made ‘em even awesomer. What nerve!

Swamp Thing, Batman TM & © DC Comics.

Weezie was not auburn-haired as depicted in the story or on the House of Secrets #92 cover, also drawn by the artist.

“No, she was blonde,” admits Wrightson. “Of course, since it was my story (at least, artwise) I wanted her to be my love interest and I’m the hero.”

Now married to working comics legend Walter Simonson, and actively writing for DC Comics herself — with a long distinguished career as scribe (and onetime Warren editor!) — Louise “Weezie” Simonson doesn’t remember much of that particular photoshoot, but she does recall those fun days. “I remember the guys went through a phase where they started using photo reference or at least giving it a shot. It was unusual for Bernie to use reference. Bernie kind of made everything up and continued to afterwards. His work was so personal and he created so much of his own universe — in the same way that [Richard] Corben does.”

Wrightson, Kaluta, and Jones were a tight-knit trio, she recalls. “Those three were all pals and I think we all lived in the same apartment building,” Simonson says. “I think Bernie and Michael were upstairs and we were downstairs somewhere, on the second or third floor. We all lived on West 79th St., between Columbus and Amsterdam, right down the road from the American Museum of Natural History.”

But, again, of that specific posing session, Simonson is uncertain of specific aspects. “If we didn’t have the photo-

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

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In his 1975 interview with Levitz, Orlando said, “Reader response was so great that I talked Carmine into letting us do it as a book.” Thus word got around that DC was preparing its own regular muck-monster title and, as Infantino notes, “A funny thing about Swamp Thing: It premiered at the same time as Marvel’s character ManThing. Stan Lee sent me a letter saying Man-Thing came out a month or so before Swamp Thing and if we didn’t drop [plans for a] Swamp Thing [title], Marvel would sue. I reminded Stan of the character I’d worked on decades earlier: the Heap!

Not only were Swamp Thing and ManThing both derivative of the Heap, but a case could be made that so was the

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Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

All art and characters TM & © DC Comics.

By the spring of 1971, HOS #92 is on the stands and it is, by all accounts, an unmitigated hit. “The book sold like a son-ofa-bitch,” Wein says. “I know this because I was told that fact by everybody, by [future DC publisher] Paul Levitz later on, as well as all kinds of people at the time. It outsold Superman that month. [Then-publisher] Carmine’s immediate response after seeing the sales figures was, ‘I want us to do an ongoing book.

It’s a big hit, so let’s do a continuing title.’”

All art and characters TM & © DC Comics.

basement of the building — a horrible, roach-infested studio apartment! He came by and showed us this work — Bernie was just a kid! — but he was a prodigy. You could tell. It was such beautiful, sophisticated work for someone so young. It was amazing. You took one look and knew this kid was going places.”

It was good that the comic book did so well on the newsstand, she says. “I remember that happening and we were all very pleased for Bernie and Len.” Simonson adds, “It’s interesting: Len did that character [Swamp Thing] and he came up with Wolverine, so he’s put a pretty good stamp on comics!”

Was it cool to be on the cover of the best-selling DC comic book that month?

“Yeah, it was cool,” Simonson shares, “but, honestly, I was so used to posing — I did a lot of posing for Jeff — so it wasn’t really that big a deal. It was a fun thing to do, it was fun to see in print, but it wasn’t at all a big deal.”

But, she is reminded, it has become a big deal.

“Well, yeah, they’re going to put it on my tombstone: ‘She posed for this cover and wrote a few things, too.’ It’s cool that people want to hear stories about it.”

Though he merely posed as a stand-in for the leads, artist Alan Weiss, says, “I remember the session clearly. It was highly unusual for Bernie to use photos. I think this might have been the first time. Surely the first I was aware of. I seem to recall that this experience caused him to decide not to use photos again, ’cause it slowed him down way too much, as compared with drawing from his unique imagination.”

Poring over the printed story, Wrightson shares, “It was basically just the three of us, yeah, though [DC staffer] Mark Hanerfeld makes a brief cameo. (Mark, as you no doubt know, was Joe Orlando’s assistant and, visually, he was the basis for the House of Secrets host, Abel.) It’s hard to recognize me as Alex Olsen because the colorist made me blonde… I love Kaluta’s face! I mean I played with his mustache and made it a little more handlebar than it actually was.”

Wrightson today recognizes other hands at play in the drawing.

Indicating page five, the artist states, ”This page was penciled by Jeff.

You can tell immediately because of the composition and design of it.

[Pointing to a panel] That’s not mine… My memory of it is that we did this over a weekend, although it had to have taken longer than that. Maybe we photographed and penciled it over a weekend, say between Friday through Monday. The inking took longer, but it was definitely done in a hurry… and Jeff drew the very last panel. On the last page, last panel, Jeff drew that and I inked it because I couldn’t get it right.”

When told the closing panel looks to be quintessential Wrightson, the artist replies, “I said, ‘I want the guy walking away, disappearing into the swamp, but I can’t do it.’ Of course, me, I’m trying to draw the whole swamp! Then, when Jeff does it, he just throws those branches in the foreground and it’s like, ‘God, that’s perfect.’ You know, he is such a great designer.”

Weiss specifically recalls being a part of the art team. “While I didn’t get to be an actual character in the story, like Michael and Weezie, I did, however, ghost-pencil a bit on the story, as did Kaluta and Jones,” he reveals. “I know I drew many of the Weezie heads, and did them from shots taken during that session. I really tried to do her justice, ghosting those shots of her in that story. Not as fine as the real thing, of course.”

All art and characters TM & © DC Comics.

Incredible Hulk! Well, I didn’t hear any more complaints from Stan about Swamp Thing.”

(Indeed, one of the Heap’s frequent artists back in the days of Hillman Publications was a young Carmine Infantino, who drew any number of the shambling beast’s exploits in the pages of Airboy Comics.)

So, given the green-light for an ongoing series was sanctioned after HOS #92 sales figures arrived at the DC offices, why was there such a delay between the initial story and Swamp Thing #1, some 16 months later, cover-dated Oct.–Nov. ’73? “Now, Bernie and I… we were young, we were foolish,” says Len Wein. ”Boy, were we foolish! And we didn’t want to spoil the short story. It meant that much to us. We said, ‘No, if you do anything else with the short story, it’s just going to water it down, and we don’t want to do that.’ So, a year or so later, I was sitting around one day in my apartment and I thought, ‘Schmuck, why don’t you just do something like it? You don’t have to do anything that undercuts the original story. Just start over again!’ Then I called Joe and said, ‘I think I’ve come up with a way to do the Swamp Thing book Carmine wants us to do. We can start all over. We don’t need to mess with the short story at all.’

He said, ‘That’s great! Who are we going to get to draw it?’ I said, ‘I’ll call Bernie.’ So I did and talked him into it.”

When it comes to the modern version of Swamp Thing, credit gets a little murky, at least in the memory of DC’s publisher during that period. “Swamp Thing was initially [editor] Joe [Orlando]’s brainchild and he knew Wrightson and Wein would be perfect for the assignment,” writes Carmine Infantino in his autobiography. “As time went by, Joe’s

name would be mistakenly left out of the list of Swamp Thing creators. If asked about it, Joe would point out that DC knew, because every time a Swamp Thing movie was made, Joe would get a check for being one of the creators.”

Orlando himself acknowledges that not everyone agrees whether he should be credited as a co-creator. “I’m going to tell you the story even though there’s a difference of opinion between Len Wein and myself though I think that Bernie Wrightson agrees with me,” the editor told this writer in 1998. “I was given the job to create books in genres because there would be a slot and I’d be told to take a book on. I wouldn’t bring in a concept to get an okay. I would be told to do a Western book or horror book. So, when I was given an assignment to do a new horror book, I would think about what I wanted to do that was different than the rest of the books that I was doing.

“I’ve told this story before, but I would read the Atlantic Monthly as I rode the bus as it went along Broadway. I was reading this article on the way to the office and it was about famine in the world and how to relieve it. The author said that food was cheap but the transportation to get the foods to areas of the world that needed it was expensive.

The article also said that if only we knew how to accelerate growing time for food — plant life — and that was the story idea! Whoever could figure that out could rule the world. We were in a Cold War and if the U.S. suddenly found the formula… it was the idea for the story. You can come up with a million characters but if the premise doesn’t work, you don’t

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

continued on page 184

Previous page: At top is Nestor Redondo’s great Swamp Thing #13 [Nov.–Dec. ’74] cover, the last issue with Len Wein as writer. At bottom is an outstanding rendition of Swampy by sculptor Jason Crager, who tells us he spent 20 years in and out of the comics industry, “Until I found sculpting four years ago and never looked back.”

He also explains that the piece was done in monsterclay over an aluminum armature, painted with acrylics using an airbrush. Finally, plastic flowers and trees were used for a more realistic flare.

In all, it took Crager 25 hours to finish! Visit him on Facebook at Necropolis Comics and Kits.

Above: Two superb creators we regret not examining in more depth are writer David Michelinie and the late artist Nestor Redondo, who went on to ably continue the initial Swamp Thing run after the departure of Wrightson and Wein.

This double-page spread by the new creative team is from ST #14 [Jan.–Feb. ’75], and watercolored at a later date by Redondo.

Courtesy of Jonathan Ross.

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by Jon B. Cooke Below: Spanish artist Badía Romero, best known for his work on the British newspaper strips Modesty Blaise and AXA, was first to visualize the grotesque appearance of the Atlas/Seaboard monster, the Bog Beast. Here’s a detail of Romero’s art appearing in the Tales of Evil #3 [July ’75] story.

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Bog Beast TM & © the respective copyright holders.

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Let’s tell it like it is: Atlas/Seaboard, the outfit created by Martin Goodman, the former Marvel publisher still seething over perceived ill-treatment by the company he founded, was created not only to give son Chip a job but to primarily stick it to the House of Ideas.

Atlas wasn’t shy about ripping off every other competitor during its ever-so brief run in the mid-’70s, whether Stan Lee’s company or the black-&-white horror mags of James Warren. Iron Jaw was a riff on Conan the Barbarian; The Brute swiped the Hulk; Devilina channeled Vampirella…

And, you guessed it, with muck-monster mania all the rage, from Atlas slogged its own version, the crimson-hued Bog Beast!

Born not of the swamp but rather California’s La Brea Tar Pits, and despite his appearance as a boiled lobster-red, rotting corpse with bug-like eyes and alienesque head, Bog Beast is actually a lone explorer from some subterranean realm ruled by so-called Elders. Here to study the surface world and violent humanity, he is mute, misunderstood, intelligent, empathetic, and appreciative of beauty, yet through his aimless wanderings Bog Beast consistently encounters human evil and constant death.

The creation of Bog Beast was initiated by Atlas magazine editor Jeff Rovin’s desire to limit interference.

“I preferred the black-&white magazine format for several reasons,” Rovin says.

“First, we didn’t have to deal with the Comics Code Authority, which was antagonistic without let-up from the first [color comic] title, Ironjaw #1.

Second, the anthology format allowed us to experiment with a great diversity of art styles and plots.”

Then the opportunity to solicit inexpensive but accomplished art came into play.

Rovin explains, “At the time, in order to make budget, it was helpful —

and then necessary — to buy from the Spanish art agency Selecciones Ilustradas. In brief, SI provided the art for a very low price… then got to syndicate it around the world, keeping that money. Warren Publishing had the top talent tied up (including José González and Esteban Maroto, for instance). Some of the artists offered to us didn’t quite work; one of them (Xirinius, I think) drew to the wrong page-size specifications. When I saw Badía Romero’s work in the catalog, I knew we could — and should — build a series around him. ‘Bog Beast’ was the result.”

The first story appeared in Weird Tales of the Macabre #2 [Mar. ’75], credited to Romero and fledgling writer Gabriel Levy, though Rovin initially conceived the character. “The origin story was inspired by a trip to Los Angeles in 1973 and my own (then limited) brushes with Hollywood,” says Rovin. “I’d been to the La Brea Tar Pits and was fascinated by the idea that ancient fossils occasionally burbled to the surface. Why couldn’t a subterranean race do the same? Maybe they fed on the mammoths that were sucked down.” As an aside, he adds, “Obviously, the science needed work… a lot of it.”

Rovin was able to give a nod in that initial tale to two personal heroes. “The characters Elias Harrysen and John Pierce in that first story were tributes to special effects master Ray Harryhausen and make-up genius Jack Pierce,” he confesses. “The first storyline was triggered by Ray’s brushes with unions in Hollywood. I provided Romero with reference for Universal’s tram ride (there was then a ‘Parting of the Red Sea’ attraction) and the La Brea Tar Pits… which he either never received or he chose to ignore. Which was fine: what he did worked perfectly in context.”

The editor gave the writing chore to a newcomer in the comics field. “Gabriel Levy was a newly-minted writer,” Rovin says. “This was one of his first (and ultimately, very few) assignments. (I think he had only done the first Tiger-Man‚ which was heavily redacted by [artist] Ernie Colón — and the third Scorpion, previously.) Gabe was at home with the misunderstood loner and, by the end of the script, I felt we were headed in a good direction. Gabe came in off the street, no appointment, and had promising samples. I was looking for non-Marvel, non-DC ‘voices’ and he had one. It never really got to flower, did it?”

Atlas publisher Charles “Chip” Goodman was looking for a feature to use in his color-line horror anthology title, Tales of Evil, and he eyed the tar-monster. Rovin says, “Swamp Thing was selling well for DC and Chip Goodman wanted to try Bog Beast as a color comic. Fast. It wasn’t just about coming up with a commercial title: we were ‘at war’ with

Tales of Evil, Bog Beast TM & © the respective copyright holders.

Marvel for rack space and had to cram product into as many slots as possible, or lose them to Marvel’s reprints.”

But, time being of the essence, the original creative team wasn’t initially included in the Tales of Evil episodes.

“Romero’s style wasn’t ideal for color and, anyway, there wasn’t time to work with Spain,” Rovin says. “Communications were done

by Telex with SI, which was problematic given the different time zones, and the art itself had to be shipped from Europe.

There also wasn’t time to work with Gabe. I assigned the script to one of my favorite people and one of our top writers, veteran John Albano (he didn’t need to have stories plotted: ‘Here’s the origin story, John; retell it, rework it, do what you think is best!’), and when that came in, I assigned the art [assignment] to Jack Sparling, who was a dear man and a great, under-appreciated professional.”

Appearing in TOE #2 [Apr. ’75], the monster boasted his singular cover appearance courtesy of artist Frank Thorne, all under a delightful Gaspar Saladino logo design. Oddly, for a character intended to compete with other muck-monsters, Bog Beast was colored in a crimson palette.

“The red coloring, that was after my departure,” explains Rovin. “I wanted Bog Beast to be in b-&-w in the color comic, partly because it would have been difficult to color all those dripping crags on his body, and partly because it would have been different from Swamp Thing, the Heap, etc.

The red didn’t make sense, since he was essentially made of tar and mud, and it spilled over into the black areas… it was just a mess.”

The editor still has affection for the writer of the first color Bog Beast comic-book script, “The Fifty Dollar Body.”

Rovin reminiscences, “John Albano was just such a positive presence to be around, always in a jaunty hat of some kind, always smiling, never difficult, and he really enjoyed sparking off editorial discussions. Albano was such a sweetheart.

I met him first at DC, when I think he was doing the Laurel and Hardy reprint. The man was just so enthusiastic and unflappable.” (The late writer also co-created Jonah Hex.)

Before quitting Atlas, Rovin had intentions for Bog Beast. “I had in mind to do six to eight stories and then collect them in a stand-alone b-&-w title,” he said. “As with so many things at Atlas, those plans were derailed.”

The editor also recalls a Bog Beast rarity. “We did a second b-&-w story; unfortunately, there wasn’t a third Weird Tales of the Macabre issue. That tale was called “The Sun-Spawn Stalks,” as I recall, and Romero did a bang-up job on the gelatinous form of Bog Beast. Again, I’d sent him reference, this time from the Hammer film The Quatermass Xperiment… which he did follow). I believe that tale was published somewhere… abroad, perhaps, as part of the S.I. deal…?”

Indeed, that story did see print… in Australia.

Though Atlas had folded, its unpublished inventory would be sold to Sydney publisher Gredown, and the final Bog Beast tale appeared in Tales of Horror #3 [’76]. The b-&-w eight-pager is tantalizing as we learn more of Bogg’s quest (we see him called thus by another of his species herein), which is to search for a rare surface chemical that can neutralize a poisonous gas killing the subterraneans. We even get a look at the vast Cavern of Science and get introduced to a bodacious new co-star, a deafmute telepathic woman. Plus we learn Bogg can speak!

The creature’s creator, Jeff Rovin, would never see the finished art or cover for TOE #2, having left before final production. “Indeed,” he shares, “John Albano had arrived for a 4:30 appointment on January 20, 1975, to discuss the next adventure, when I quit.”

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Inset left: Frank Thorne depicts a scene that appears nowhere in the interior “Bog Beast” story, but he does it so well! Inside, “The Fifty Dollar Body,” drawn by Jack Sparling and written by Jonah Hex co-creator John Albano, is an exuberant, if a bit confusing, romp where Bogg, our subterranean on a quest, gets mixed up with a pair of bank-bombing radical revolutionaries, Ralphie and Judy, the latter who sells our hero to the carnival!

Below: Opening page of the unpublished-in-the-U.S. final “Bog Beast” story, “The Sun-Spawn Stalks,” where we learn BB’s real name, find out he can speak, and learn of his quest on the surface world. It did see print in the Australian comic book Tales of Horror.

View the eight-page story online by visiting http://tinyurl.com/ mmz2obn. Art by Badía Romero.

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by Jon B. Cooke

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Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Lurker in the Swamp TM & © the respective copyright holder.

Above: We’re unsure if this is a preliminary cover for Mystery Comics Digest #7 [Sept. ’72], containing the first appearance of The Lurker (especially as the dimensions are wrong for a Gold Key digest-sized comic magazine), though it does resemble a panel in that story. Still, this Jesse Santos piece (found at the Heritage Auctions website) is certainly worth showcasing.

Though no haven for the super-heroes then rising ascendant in comic books, even cartoon-centric Gold Key got into the 1970s muck-monster craze. An outfit with plenty of mystery anthologies, the California-based publisher tapped the imagination of noted comics fan and aspiring filmmaker Don Glut, who had come to GK’s attention while visiting their offices to research an article. Editor Chase Craig suggested that Glut, by then a frequent Warren horror magazine contributor, submit scripts for their new Mystery Comics Digest, and the first one published teamed the writer with his frequent GK collaborator, talented Filipino artist Jesse Santos. One of those early MCD tales was a 10-page “Midnight Mystery” featured in #7 [Sept. ’72].

“The Lurker in the Swamp” is a revenge story with robber Martin Kraz, released from a 10-year prison sentence, returning to the Haunted Swamp, where long ago he buried ill-gotten gains — and secretly killed his partner-in-crime. The victim had fallen lifeless in the muck but, as Glut scripts, “A powerful will to live, a desire for vengeance, and the cursed elements of the swamp produced an awesome result. And one night when the full moon bathed the haunted swamp… ‘It’ stirred…” Kraz is killed by the Lurker and thrown into the mire, but not before inflicting mortal wounds on the monster, who bleeds life back into the swamp. In the kicker comeuppance, Kraz himself, by the rays of the mystic moon and fetid waters of the ghastly place, rises to become the new Lurker.

Prompted by the “‘It’ stirred” comment, Glut is asked if Theodore Sturgeon’s classic tale was an influence. “Yes, I was familiar with both The Heap and ‘It’ — also, the E.C. [“Outer Sanctum”] parody, the old [DC] Solomon Grundy character,” he explains. “Plus, of course, that plethora of swamp monsters lumbering through myriad comics during

the early ’70s. I’d owned a number of Airboy back issues in the ’60s and liked the Heap character, although I hadn’t read Ted’s story. There was also a quite effective low-budget horror movie I’d seen on TV [in the early ’50s] called Strangler of the Swamp [’46]. And, although the title character was a ghost rather than a muck-monster, the story had a lot of atmosphere that would later be the typical environment of so many of those comic-book swamp creatures yet to come.”

The genesis of “The Lurker in the Swamp” started with Glut wanting to get in on a growing trend in horror comics.

“By the time I came up with the ‘Lurker’ idea,” Glut shares, “there were already a plethora of swamp monsters stalking the comics, most notably DC’s Swamp Thing and Marvel’s Man-Thing. I believe by that time Skywald had even revived the Heap. And I seem to recall some of the companies — Charlton, Warren, even Gold Key — publishing one-shot horror stories featuring various species of swamp monster.

So, I wanted to jump on that same bandwagon and do a swamp monster of my own creation.”

But Glut wanted his creature to be different than those beasties haunting the competition. “Most of the swamp monsters out at the time were basically variations on the Heap,” he said, “or, if you will, the Sturgeon story with a tenuous basis in science. Some poor soul dies in the swamp and the swamp elements, combining with the elements of his body, transform him into a shambling, anthropomorphic pile of muck. Thinking back to H.P. Lovecraft (and even lifting a word that he liked to use), I came up with the concept and name for my character. And what made the Lurker different from the other swamp monsters, I like to believe, was that his origin was not based in pseudo-scientific principles but, rather, in the supernatural.”

The tale was intended as a one-shot with a surprise ending. “There were actually two Lurkers in that story,” he says. “That’s because the story was patterned after a number of those old Atlas stories by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, wherein someone goes out searching for some legendary being — the Yeti, a demon, etc. — only to end up literally replacing that character at the end of the story. So, the original Lurker dies in that tale, only to be replaced by the guy (in this case a criminal) who encounters it.”

But, as is often the way with these monsters, the Lurker just couldn’t lay dormant. “When I started writing The Occult Files of Dr. Spektor stories,” Glut says, “I thought it would be a cool idea to create a little Gold Key ‘universe’ by having the good Doc encounter various one-shot characters I’d made up for Mystery Comics Digest, like the vampire Baron Tibor, mummy Ra-Ka-Tep, and were-lion Simbar. The Lurker seemed to fit that bill perfectly. I brought him into Spektor in #18 [“Masque Macabre,”Dec. ’75] — as a ‘float’ character [albeit a paper-mâché version] in the Rutland [Vermont Halloween] parade, who, along with various other monsters, is briefly brought to ‘life’ by an evil sorceress.”

Lurker in the Swamp, Dr. Spektor, Lakota TM & © the respective copyright holders.

Another craze in ’70s comics was to feature the aforementioned annual event in stories. “Again, I wanted to jump on a bandwagon,” he confessed, “partially for my own ego gratification, but also in an attempt to make the largely ignored (and even unseen) Gold Key books more ‘mainstream,’ more like the immensely popular competition, namely Marvel and DC. They were doing Rutland stories, sometimes crossing over company lines. Hey, if Don Glut and Gold Key did something similar, maybe people would take notice. So, although the Gold Key editors had no idea what a Rutland story was, and probably because of their ignorance of those stories and apathy towards what the competition was doing, it took none of my usual arguing with them to get the story accepted. And because the Rutland stories traditionally featured lots of comic-book characters on floats, I thought it might be cool to have my floats occupied by figures of past and present characters that Gold Key owned — including my own beloved Lurker.”

The Occult Files of Dr. Spektor # 21 [Aug. ’76], though, boasts the honest-to-goodness return of Glut’s monster, in a story featuring the investigator and his companions visiting the Haunted Swamp and encountering the Lurker, now a good guy and — sounding suspiciously like a set-up for a projected stand-alone series — we learn the mud-thing has “his own telepathic abilities… [and] can also communicate with plants and animals and sometimes get them to do his bidding!” Saving Spektor and crew, he apparently sacrifices all, though his grotesque hand is seen rising from the swamp, and a character quips in the final panel, “The Lurker still has a lot of life in him… even if it is an unnatural life!”

Alas, this unfortunately would prove the final appearance of the Lurker, though the writer did have hopes for a solo book. “I would like to have spun off the Lurker into his own series, although I never gave it much thought at the time,” while Glut adds that today is a different matter. “Now, probably not. There’s only so much one can do with a swamp character without departing too much from the original concept. And just about everything that can be done with these very limited characters seems to — to me, anyway — have been done, decades ago and very well indeed.”

Upon reflection, Glut believes this odd sub-genre of the comics was merely a sign of the era. “I think that the ‘swamp monster’ character was just another archetype that reflected the resurgence and popularity of horror comics at that time. The ‘swamp monster’ — like the vampire,

werewolf, zombie, laboratory-created monster, etc., that the Comics Code Authority was again allowing to be featured in the four-color comics — was just another classic-type character (although with less background ‘history’ than Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster, and the others) that was visual and, therefore, worked well in comics.”

Glut remembers, too, working with his artist collaborator.

“Jesse had a style all his own and was really able to convey emotion and mood in his work,” the writer recalls. “I think Jesse was happier doing portraits and fine art than comic books. He did a great painting for the cover of that issue where the Lurker and Dr. Spektor meet.”

When asked what the Lurker might be up to today, Glut joked, “The Lurker is probably up to about seven- or eightfeet tall. Seriously, though, the Lurker, to my mind, is still lurking… just as Dr. Spektor is still around looking for Lakota (and long ago I’d worked out how to keep them looking like they both did back in the 1970s). And if the Lurker has passed on to that Great Swamp in the Sky, I’m sure someone else will fall — or has already fallen — into that pool of glop to re-emerge as Lurker number three or beyond.”

In closing, Don Glut offers, “Just remember the Lurker’s (never before stated) motto: ‘Lurk before you leak!’”

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Above: The denouement of writer Don Glut and artist Jesse Santos’ first swamp monster story, “The Lurker in the Swamp,” Mystery Comics Digest #7 [Sept. ’72]. Inset below left: Panel from The Occult Files of Dr. Spektor #18 [Dec. ’77].

Below: Chilling Santos cover painting of TOFODS #21 [Aug. ’76].

63

It walked in the woods. his tail as low as his lowered head and a ruff of fury round his neck.

It was never born. It existed. Under the pine needles the fires The thing raised its arm again, waited. burn, deep and smokeless in the mold. In heat and in darkness and Kimbo slowed, then flipped himself through the air at the decay there is growth. There is life and there is growth. It grew, monster’s throat. His jaws closed on it; his teeth clicked together but it was not alive. It walked unbreathing through the woods, and through a mass of filth, and he fell choking and snarling at its feet. thought and saw and was hideous and strong, and it was not born The thing leaned down and struck twice, and after the dog’s back and it did not live. It grew and moved about without living. was broken, it sat beside him and began to tear him apart.

It crawled out of the darkness and hot damp mold into the cool of a morning. It was huge. It was lumped and crusted with its own “Be back in an hour or so,” said Alton Drew, picking up his rifle hateful substances, and pieces of it dropped off as it went its way, from the corner behind the wood box. His brother laughed. dropped off and lay writhing, and stilled, and sank putrescent into “Old Kimbo ’bout runs your life, Alton,” he said. the forest loam.

“Ah, I know the ol’ devil,” said Alton. “When I whistle for him It had no mercy, no laughter, no beauty. It had strength and great for half an hour and he don’t show up, he’s in a jam or he’s treed intelligence. And — perhaps it could not be destroyed. It crawled something wuth shootin’ at. The ol’ son of a gun calls me by not out of its mound in the wood and lay pulsing in the sunlight for a answerin’.” long moment. Patches of it shone wetly in the golden glow, parts of Cory Drew shoved a full glass of milk over to his nine-year-old it were nubbled and flaked. And whose dead bones had given it the daughter and smiled. “You think as much o’ that houn’ dog o’ yours form of a man? as I do of Babe here.”

It scrabbled painfully with its half-formed Babe slid off her chair and ran to her hands, beating the ground and the bole of uncle. “Gonna catch me the bad fella, Uncle a tree. It rolled and lifted itself up on its Alton?” she shrilled. The “bad fella” was crumbling elbows, and it tore up a great Cory’s invention — the one who lurked in handful of herbs and shredded them against corners ready to pounce on little girls who its chest, and it paused and gazed at the chased the chickens and played around gray-green juices with intelligent calm. mowing machines and hurled green apples It wavered to its feet, and seized a young with powerful young arms at the sides of A SHORT STORY by sapling and destroyed it, folding the slender the hogs, to hear the synchronized thud trunk back on itself again and again, watchand grunt; little girls who swore with an ing attentively the useless, fibered splinters.

Austrian accent like an ex-hired man they And it snatched up a fear-frozen field-creahad had; who dug caves in haystacks till ture, crushing it slowly, letting blood and they tipped over, and kept pet craw­fish in pulpy flesh and fur ooze from between its tomorrow’s milk cans, and rode work horses fingers, run down and rot on the forearms. to a lather in the night pasture.

It began searching.

“Get back here and keep away from Uncle Alton’s gun!” said Cory. “If you see Kimbo drifted through the tall grasses like the bad fella, Alton, chase him back here. a puff of dust, his bushy tail curled tightly He has a date with Babe here for that stunt over his back and his long jaws agape. He of hers last night.” The preceding evening, ran with an easy lope, loving his freedom Babe had kind-heartedly poured pepper on and the power of his flanks and furry the cows’ salt block.

PAINTING BY shoulders. His tongue lolled listlessly over “Don’t worry, kiddo,” grinned her uncle, his lips. His lips were black and serrated, “I’ll bring you the bad fella’s hide if he don’t and each tiny pointed liplet swayed with his get me first.” doggy gallop. Kimbo was all dog, all healthy animal.

Alton Drew walked up the path toward BLACK & WHITE He leaped high over a boulder and landed the wood, thinking about Babe. She was a ILLUSTRATIONs BY with a startled yelp as a long-eared cony phenomenon-a pampered farm child. Ah shot from its hiding place under the rock. well — she had to be. They’d both loved Kimbo hurtled after it, grunting with each Clissa Drew, and she’d married Cory, and great thrust of his legs. The rabbit bounced they had to love Clissa’s child. Funny thing, just ahead of him, keeping its distance, its love. Alton was a man’s man, and thought ears flattened on its curving back and its little legs nibbling away at things out that way; and his reaction to love was a strong and dis­tance hungrily. It stopped, and Kimbo pounced, and the rabbit frightened one. He knew what love was because he felt it still for his shot away at a tangent and popped into a hollow log. Kimbo yelped brother’s wife and would feel it as long as he lived for Babe. It led again and rushed snuffling at the log, and knowing his failure, him through his life, and yet he embarrassed himself by thinking curvetted but once around the stump and ran on into the forest. of it. Loving a dog was an easy thing, because you and the old devil The thing that watched from the wood raised its crusted arms and could love one another completely without talking about it. The waited for Kimbo. smell of gun smoke and wet fur in the rain were perfume enough Kimbo sensed it there, standing dead-still by the path. To him it for Alton Drew, a grunt of satisfaction and the scream of something was a bulk which smelled of carrion not fit to roll in, and he snufhunted and hit were poetry enough. They weren’t like love for a fled distastefully and ran to pass it. human, that choked his throat so he could not say words he could The thing let him come abreast and dropped a heavy twisted fist not have thought of anyway. So Alton loved his dog Kimbo and his on him. Kimbo saw it coming and curled up tight as he ran, and Winchester for all to see, and let his love for his brother’s women, the hand clipped stunningly on his rump, sending him rolling and Clissa and Babe, eat at him quietly and unmentioned. yipping down the slope. Kimbo straddled to his feet, shook his head, His quick eyes saw the fresh indentations in the soft earth behind shook his body with a deep growl, came back to the silent thing the boulder, which showed where Kimbo had turned and leaped with green murder in his eyes. He walked stiffly, straight-legged, with a single surge, chasing the rabbit. Ignoring the tracks, he

“It” ©1994 Theodore Sturgeon Literary Trust c/o The Lotts Agency, Ltd. Used by permission. Painting © Bob Eggleton. Edd Cartier illustrations from Unknown (Aug. 1940) courtesy of Will Murray.

It Theodore Sturgeon

Bob Eggleton Edd Cartier

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

65

looked for the nearest place where a rabbit might hide, and strolled over to the stump. Kimbo had been there, he saw, and had been there too late. “You’re an ol’ fool,” muttered Alton. “Y’ can’t catch a cony by chasin’ it. You want to cross him up some way.” He gave a peculiar trilling whistle, sure that Kimbo was digging frantically under some nearby stump for a rabbit that was three counties away by now. No answer. A little puzzled, Alton went back to the path.

“He never done this before,” he said softly.

He cocked his .32-40 and cradled it. At the county fair someone had once said of Alton Drew that he could shoot at a handful of corn and peas thrown in the air and hit only the corn. Once he split a bullet on the blade of a knife and put two candles out. He had no need to fear anything that could be shot at. That’s what he believed.

The thing in the woods looked curiously down at what it had done to Kimbo, and tried to moan the way Kimbo had before he died. It stood a minute storing away facts in its foul, unemotional mind. Blood was warm. The sunlight was warm. Things that moved and bore fur had a muscle to force the thick liquid through tiny tubes in their bodies. The liquid coagulated after a time. The liquid on rooted green things was thinner and the loss of a limb did not mean loss of life. It was very interesting, but the thing, the mold with a mind, was not pleased. Neither was it displeased. Its accidental urge was a thirst for knowledge, and it was only — interested.

It was growing late, and the sun reddened and rested awhile on the hilly horizon, teaching the clouds to be inverted flames. The thing threw up its head suddenly, noticing the dusk. Night was ever a strange thing, even for those of us who have known it in life. It would have been frightening for the monster had it been capable of fright, but it could only be curious; it could only reason from what it had observed.

What was happening? It was getting harder to see. Why? It threw its shapeless head from side to side. It was true-things were dim, and growing dimmer. Things were changing shape, taking on a new and darker color. What did the creatures it had crushed and tom apart see? How did they see? The larger one, the one that had attacked, had used two organs in its head. That must have been it, because after the thing had torn off two of the dog’s legs it had struck at the hairy muzzle; and the dog, seeing the blow coming, had dropped folds of skin over the organs — closed its eyes. Ergo, the dog saw with its eyes. But then after the dog was dead, and its body still, repeated blows had had no effect on the eyes. They remained open and staring. The logical conclusion was, then, that a being that had ceased to live and breathe and move about lost the use of its eyes. It must be that to lose sight was, conversely, to die.

Dead things did not walk about. They lay down and did not move.

Therefore the thing in the wood concluded that it must be dead, and so it lay down by the path, not far away from Kimbo’s scattered body, lay down and believed itself dead.

Alton Drew came up through the dusk to the wood. He was frankly worried. He whistled again, and then called, and there was still no response, and he said again, “The ol’ flea-bus never done this before,” and shook his heavy head. It was past milking time, and Cory would need him. “Kimbo!” he roared. The cry echoed through the shadows, and Alton flipped on the safety catch of his rifle and put the butt on the ground beside the path. Leaning on it, he took off his cap and scratched the back of his head, wondering. The rifle butt sank into what he thought was soft earth; he staggered and stepped into the chest of the thing that lay beside the path. His foot went up to the ankle in its yielding rottenness, and he swore and jumped back.

“Whew! Somp’n sure dead as hell there! Ugh!” He swabbed at his boot with a handful of leaves while the monster lay in the growing blackness with the edges of the deep footprint in its chest sliding into it, filling it up. It lay there regarding him dimly out of its muddy eyes, thinking it was dead because of the darkness, watching the 66

articulation of Alton Drew’s joints, wondering at this new uncautious creature.

Alton cleaned the butt of his gun with more leaves and went on up the path, whistling anxiously for Kimbo.

Clissa Drew stood in the door of the milk shed, very lovely in red-checked gingham and a blue apron. Her hair was clean yellow, parted in the middle and stretched tautly back to a heavy braided knot. “Cory! Alton!” she called a little sharply.

“Well?” Cory responded gruffly from the barn, where he was stripping off the Ayrshire. The dwindling streams of milk plopped pleasantly into the froth of a full pail.

“I’ve called and called,” said Clissa. “Supper’s cold, and Babe won’t eat until you come. Why — where’s Alton?”

Cory grunted, heaved the stool out of the way, threw over the stanchion lock and slapped the Ayrshire on the rump. The cow backed and filled like a towboat, clattered down the line and out into the barn-yard. “Ain’t back yet.”

“Not back?” Clissa came in and stood beside him as he sat by the next cow, put his forehead against the warm flank. “But, Cory, he said he’d—” “Yeh, yeh, I know. He said he’d be back fer the milkin’. I heard him. Well, he ain’t.”

“And you have to — Oh, Cory, I’ll help you finish up. Alton would be back if he could. Maybe he’s—” “Maybe he’s treed a blue jay,” snapped her husband. “Him an’ that damn dog.” He gestured hugely with one hand while the other went on milking. “I got twenty-six head o’ cows to milk. I got pigs to feed an’ chickens to put to bed. I got to toss hay for the mare and turn the team out. I got harness to mend and a wire down in the night pasture. I got wood to split an’ carry.” He milked for a moment in silence, chewing on his lip. Clissa stood twisting her hands together, trying to think of something to stem the tide. It wasn’t the first time Alton’s hunting had interfered with the chores. “So I got to go ahead with it. I can’t interfere with Alton’s spoorin.’ Every damn time that hound o’ his smells out a squirrel I go without my supper. I’m gettin’ sick and—” “Oh, I’ll help you!” said Clissa. She was thinking of the spring, when Kimbo had held four hundred pounds of raging black bear at bay until Alton could put a bullet in its brain, the time Babe had found a bear cub and started to carry it home, and had fallen into a freshet, cutting her head. You can’t hate a dog that has saved your child for you, she thought.

“You’ll do nothin’ of the kind!” Cory growled. “Get back to the house. You’ll find work enough there. I’ll be along when I can.

Dammit, Clissa, don’t cry! I didn’t mean to — Oh, shucks!” He got up and put his arms around her. “I’m wrought up,” he said. “Go on now. I’d no call to speak that way to you. I’m sorry. Go back to Babe. I’ll put a stop to this for good tonight. I’ve had enough.

There’s work here for four farmers an’ all we’ve got is me an’ that… that huntsman.

“Go on now, Clissa.”

“All right,” she said into his shoulder. “But, Cory, hear him out first when he comes back. He might be unable to come back. He might be unable to come back this time. Maybe he… he—” “Ain’t nothin’ kin hurt my brother that a bullet will hit. He can take care of himself. He’s got no excuse good enough this time. Go on, now. Make the kid eat.”

Clissa went back to the house, her young face furrowed. If Cory quarreled with Alton now and drove him away, what with the drought and the creamery about to close and all, they just couldn’t manage. Hiring a man was out of the question. Cory’d have to work himself to death, and he just wouldn’t be able to make it. No one man could. She sighed and went into the house. It was seven o’clock, and the milking not done yet. Oh, why did Alton have toBabe was in bed at nine when Clissa heard Cory in the shed, slinging the wire cutters into a corner. “Alton back yet?” they both said at once as Cory stepped into the kitchen; and as she shook her Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

head he clumped over to the stove, and lifting a lid, spat into the coals. “Come to bed,” he said.

She laid down her stitching and looked at his broad back. He was twenty-eight, and he walked and acted like a man ten years older, and looked like a man five years younger. “I’ll be up in a while,” Clissa said.

Cory glanced at the corner behind the wood box where Alton’s rifle usually stood, then made an unspellable, disgusted sound and sat down to take off his heavy muddy shoes.

“It’s after nine,” Clissa volunteered timidly. Cory said nothing, reaching for house slippers. “Cory, you’re not going to—” “Not going to what?”

“Oh, nothing. I just thought that maybe Alton—” “Alton,” Cory flared. “The dog goes hunting field mice. Alton goes hunting the dog. Now you want me to go hunting Alton. That’s what you want?”

“I just — He was never this late before.”

“I won’t do it! Go out lookin’ for him at nine o’clock in the night?

I’ll be damned! He has no call to use us so, Clissa.”

Clissa said nothing. She went to the stove, peered into the wash boiler set aside at the back of the range. When she turned around, Cory had his shoes and coat on again.

“I knew you’d go,” she said. Her voice smiled though she did not.

“I’ll be back durned soon,” said Cory. “I don’t reckon he’s strayed far. It is late. I ain’t feared for him, but —” He broke his 12-gauge shotgun, looked through the barrels, slipped two shells in the breech and a box of them into his pocket. “Don’t wait up,” he said over his shoulder as he went out.

“I won’t,” Clissa replied to the closed door, and went back to her stitching by the lamp.

The path up the slope to the wood was very dark when Cory went up it, peering and calling. The air was chill and quiet, and a fetid odor of mold hung in it. Cory blew the taste of it out through impatient nostrils, drew it in again with the next breath, and swore.

“Nonsense,” he muttered. “Houn’ dawg. Huntin’, at ten in th’ night, too. Alton!” he bellowed. “Alton Drew!” Echoes answered him, and he entered the wood. The huddled thing he passed in the dark heard him and felt the vibrations of his footsteps and did not move because it thought it was dead.

Cory strode on, looking around and ahead and not down since his feet knew the path. “Alton!”

“That you, Cory?”

Cory Drew froze. That corner of the wood was thickly set and as dark as a burial vault. The voice he heard was choked, quiet, penetrating.

“Alton?”

“I found Kimbo, Cory.”

“Where the hell have you been?” shouted Cory furiously. He disliked this pitch-darkness; he was afraid at the tense hopelessness of Alton’s voice, and he mistrusted his ability to stay angry at his brother.

“I called him, Cory. I whistled at him, an’ the ol’ devil didn’t answer.”

“I can say the same for you, you… you louse.

Why weren’t you to milkin’? Where are you?

You caught in a trap?”

“The houn’ never missed answerin’ me before, you know,” said the tight, monotonous voice from the darkness.

“Alton! What the devil’s the matter with you? What do I care if your mutt didn’t answer? Where—” “I guess because he ain’t never died before,” said Alton, refusing to be interrupted.

“You what?” Cory clicked his lips together twice and then said, “Alton, you turned crazy? What’s that you Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

say?” “Kimbo’s dead.”

“Kim… oh! Oh!” Cory was seeing that picture again in his mind — Babe sprawled unconscious in the freshet, and Kimbo raging and snapping against a monster bear, holding her back until Alton could get there. “What happened, Alton?” he asked more quietly.

“I aim to find out. Someone tore him up.”

“Tore him up?”

“There ain’t a bit of him left tacked together, Cory. Every damn joint in his body tore apart. Guts out of him.”

“Good God! Bear, you reckon?”

“No bear, nor nothin’ on four legs. He’s all here. None of him’s been et. Whoever done it just killed him an’ — tore him up.”

“Good God!” Cory said again. “Who could’ve —” There was a long silence, then. “Come ’long home,” he said almost gently.

“There’s no call for you to set up by him all night.”

“I’ll set. I aim to be here at sunup, an’ I’m going to start trackin’, an’ I’m gain’ to keep trackin’ till I find the one done this job on Kimbo.”

“You’re drunk or crazy, Alton.”

The original caption from Unknown [Aug. 1940]: “It was very curious about the dog’s attack — so It tore the dog apart —”

67

The original caption from Unknown [Aug. 1940]: “The little man didn’t see It reach out — but he started walking just then and the bludgeoning fist missed—”

“I ain’t drunk. You can think what you like about the rest of it.

I’m stickin’ here.”

“We got a farm back yonder. Remember? I ain’t going to milk twenty-six head o’ cows again in the mornin’ like I did jest now, Alton.”

“Somebody’s got to. I can’t be there. I guess you’ll just have to, Cory.”

“You dirty scum!” Cory screamed. “You’ll come back with me now or I’ll know why!”

Alton’s voice was still tight, half-sleepy. “Don’t you come no nearer, bud.”

Cory kept moving toward Alton’s voice.

“I said” — the voice was very quiet now — “stop where you are.”

Cory kept coming. A sharp click told of the release of the .32-40’s safety. Cory stopped.

“You got your gun on me, Alton?” Cory whispered.

“Thass right, bud. You ain’t a-trompin’ up these tracks for me. I need ’em at sunup.”

A full minute passed, and the only sound in the blackness was that of Cory’s pained breathing. Finally: “I got my gun, too, Alton. Come home.”

“You can’t see to shoot me.”

68

“We’re even on that.’’ “’We ain’t. I know just where you stand, Cory. I been here four hours.”

“My gun scatters.”

“My gun kills.”

Without another word Cory Drew turned on his heel and stamped back to the farm.

Black and liquidescent it lay in the blackness, not alive, not understanding death, believing itself dead.

Things that were alive saw and moved about. Things that were not alive could do neither. It rested its muddy gaze on the line of trees at the crest of the rise, and deep within it thoughts trickled wetly. It lay huddled, dividing its new-found facts, dissecting them as it had dissected live things when there was light; comparing, concluding, pigeonholing.

The trees at the top of the slope could just be seen, as their trunks were a fraction of a shade lighter than the dark sky behind them. At length they, too, disappeared, and for a moment sky and trees were a monotone. The thing knew it was dead now, and like many a being before it, it wondered how long it must stay like this. And then the sky beyond the trees grew a little lighter. That was a manifestly impossible occurrence, thought the thing, but it could see it and it must be so. Did dead things live again? That was curious. What about dismembered dead things? It would wait and see.

The sun came hand over hand up a beam of light.

A bird some­where made a high yawning peep, and as an owl killed a shrew, a skunk pounced on another, so that the night-shift deaths and those of the day could go on without cessation. Two flowers nodded archly to each other, comparing their pretty clothes.

A dragonfly nymph decided it was tired of looking serious and cracked its back open, to crawl out and dry gauzily. The first golden ray sheared down between the trees, through the grasses, passed over the mass in the shadowed bushes. “I am alive again,” thought the thing that could not possibly live. “I am alive, for I see clearly.” It stood up on its thick legs, up into the golden glow. In a little while the wet flakes that had grown during the night dried in the sun, and when it took its first steps, they cracked off and a small shower of them fell away. It walked up the slope to find Kimbo, to see if he, too, were alive again.

Babe let the sun come into her room by opening her eyes. Uncle Alton was gone — that was the first thing that ran through her head. Dad had come home last night and had shouted at mother for an hour. Alton was plumb crazy. He’d turned a gun on his own brother. If Alton ever came ten feet into Cory’s land, Cory would fill him so full of holes, he’d look like a tumbleweed. Alton was lazy, shiftless, selfish, and one or two other things of questionable taste but undoubted vividness. Babe knew her father. Uncle Alton would never be safe in this county.

She bounced out of bed in the enviable way of the very young, and ran to the window. Cory was trudging down to the night pasture with two bridles over his arm, to get the team. There were kitchen noises from downstairs.

Babe ducked her head in the washbowl and shook off the water like a terrier before she toweled. Trailing clean shirt and dungarees, she went to the head of the stairs, slid into the shirt, and began her morning ritual with the trousers. One step down was a step through the right leg. One more, and she was into the left. Then, bouncing step by step on both feet, buttoning one button per step, she Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

reached the bottom fully dressed and ran into the kitchen.

“Didn’t Uncle Alton come back a-tall, Mum?” “Morning, Babe. No, dear.” Clissa was too quiet, smiling too much, Babe thought shrewdly. Wasn’t happy.

“Where’d he go, Mum?” “We don’t know, Babe. Sit down and eat your breakfast.”

“What’s a misbegotten, Mum?” the Babe asked suddenly. Her mother nearly dropped the dish she was drying. “Babe! You must never say that again!”

“Oh. Well, why is Uncle Alton, then?”

“Why is he what?”

Babe’s mouth muscled around an outsize spoonful of oatmeal. “A misbe—” “Babe!”

“All right, Mum,” said Babe with her mouth full. “Well, why?”

“I told Cory not to shout last night,” Clissa said half to herself.

“Well, whatever it means, he isn’t,” said Babe with finality. “Did he go hunting again?”

“He went to look for Kimbo, darling.”

“Kimbo? Oh Mummy, is Kimbo gone, too? Didn’t he come back either?”

“No dear. Oh, please, Babe, stop asking questions!”

“All right. Where do you think they went?”

“Into the north woods. Be quiet.”

Babe gulped away at her breakfast. An idea struck her; and as she thought of it she ate slower and slower, and cast more and more glances at her mother from under the lashes of her tilted eyes. It would be awful if daddy did anything to Uncle Alton. Someone ought to warn him.

Babe was halfway to the woods when Alton’s .32-40 sent echoes giggling up and down the valley.

Cory was in the south thirty, riding a cultivator and cussing at the team of grays when he heard the gun. “Hoa,” he called to the horses, and sat a moment to listen to the sound. “One-two-three.

Four,” he counted. “Saw someone, blasted away at him. Had a chance to take aim and give him another, careful. My God!” He threw up the cultivator points and steered the team into the shade of three oaks. He hobbled the gelding with swift tosses of a spare strap, and headed for the woods. “Alton a killer,” he murmured, and doubled back to the house for his gun. Clissa was standing just outside the door.

“Get shells!” he snapped and flung into the house. Clissa followed him. He was strapping his hunting knife on before she could get a box off the shelf. “Cory —” “Hear that gun, did you? Alton’s off his nut. He don’t waste lead.

He shot at someone just then, and he wasn’t fixin’ to shoot pa’tridges when I saw him last. He was out to get a man. Gimme my gun.”

“Cory, Babe—” “You keep her here. Oh, God, this is a helluva mess. I can’t stand much more.” Cory ran out the door.

Clissa caught his arm: “Cory I’m trying to tell you. Babe isn’t here. I’ve called, and she isn’t here.”

Cory’s heavy, young-old face tautened. “Babe — Where did you last see her?”

“Breakfast.” Clissa was crying now.

“She say where she was going?”

“No. She asked a lot of questions about Alton and where he’d gone.”

“Did you say?”

Clissa’s eyes widened, and she nodded, biting the back of her hand.

“You shouldn’t ha’ done that, Clissa,” he gritted, and ran toward the woods, Clissa looking after him, and in that moment she could have killed herself.

Cory ran with his head up, straining with his legs and lungs and eyes at the long path. He puffed up the slope to the woods, agonized for breath after the forty-five minutes’ heavy going. He couldn’t Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

even notice the damp smell of mold in the air.

He caught a movement in a thicket to his right, and dropped.

Struggling to keep his breath, he crept forward until he could see clearly. There was something in there, all right. Something black, keeping still. Cory relaxed his legs and torso completely to make it easier for his heart to pump some strength back into them, and slowly raised the 12-gauge until it bore on the thing hidden in the thicket.

“Come out!” Cory said when he could speak.

Nothing happened.

“Come out or by God I’ll shoot!” rasped Cory.

There was a long moment of silence, and his finger tightened on the trigger.

“You asked for it,” he said, and as he fired, the thing leaped side­ ways into the open, screaming.

It was a thin little man dressed in sepulchral black, and bearing the rosiest baby-face Cory had ever seen. The face was twisted with fright and pain. The man scrambled to his feet and hopped up and down saying over and over, “Oh, my hand. Don’t shoot again! Oh, my hand. Don’t shoot again!” He stopped after a bit, when Cory had climbed to his feet, and he regarded the farmer out of sad china-blue eyes. “You shot me,” he said reproachfully, holding up a little bloody hand. “Oh, my goodness.”

Cory said, “Now, who the hell are you?”

The man immediately became hysterical, mouthing such a flood of broken sentences that Cory stepped back a pace and half-raised his gun in self-defense. It seemed to consist mostly of “I lost my papers,” and “I didn’t do it,” and “It was horrible. Horrible. Horrible,” and “The dead man,” and “Oh, don’t shoot again.”

Cory tried twice to ask him a question, and then he stepped over and knocked the man down. He lay on the ground writhing and moaning and blubbering and putting his bloody hand to his mouth where Cory had hit him.

“Now what’s going on around here?’’

The man rolled over and sat up. “I didn’t do it!” he sobbed. “I didn’t. I was walking along and I heard the gun and I heard some swearing and an awful scream and I went over there and peeped and I saw the dead man and I ran away and you came and I hid and you shot me and —” “Shut up!” The man did, as if a switch had been thrown. “Now,” said Cory, pointing along the path, “you say there’s a dead man up there?”

The man nodded and began crying in earnest. Cory helped him up. “Follow this path back to my farmhouse,” he said. “Tell my wife to fix up your hand. Don’t tell her anything else. And wait there until I come. Hear?’’

“Yes. Thank you. Oh, thank you. Snff.”

“Go on now.” Cory gave him a gentle shove in the right direction and went alone, in cold fear, up the path to the spot where he had found Alton the night before.

He found him here now, too, and Kimbo. Kimbo and Alton had spent several years together in the deepest friendship; they had hunted and fought and slept together, and the lives they owed each other were finished now. They were dead together.

It was terrible that they died the same way. Cory Drew was a strong man, but he gasped and fainted dead away when he saw what the thing of the mold had done to his brother and his brother’s dog.

The little man in black hurried down the path, whimpering and holding his injured hand as if he rather wished he could limp with it. After a while the whimper faded away, and the hurried stride changed to a walk as the gibbering terror of the last hour receded.

He drew two deep breaths, said: “My goodness!” and felt almost normal. He bound a linen handkerchief around his wrist, but the hand kept bleeding. He tried the elbow, and that made it hurt. So he stuffed the handkerchief back in his pocket and simply waved 69

the hand stupidly in the air until the blood clotted. He did not see the great moist horror that clumped along behind him, although his nostrils crinkled with its foulness.

The monster had three holes close together on its chest, and one hole in the middle of its slimy forehead. It had three close-set pits in its back and one on the back of its head. These marks were where Alton Drew’s bullets had struck and passed through. Half of the monster’s shapeless face was sloughed away, and there was a deep indentation on its shoulder. This was what Alton Drew’s gun butt had done after he clubbed it and struck at the thing that would not lie down after he put his four bullets through it. When these things happened the monster was not hurt or angry. It only wondered why Alton Drew acted that way. Now it followed the little man without hurrying at all, matching his stride step by step and dropping little particles of muck behind it.

The little man went on out of the wood and stood with his back against a big tree at the forest’s edge, and he thought. Enough had happened to him here. What good would it do to stay and face a horrible murder inquest, just to continue this silly, vague search?

There was supposed to be the ruin of an old, old hunting lodge deep in this wood somewhere, and perhaps it would hold the evidence he wanted. But it was a vague report — vague enough to be forgotten without regret. It would be the height of foolishness to stay for all the hick-town red tape that would follow that ghastly affair back in the wood. Ergo, it would be ridiculous to follow that farmer’s advice, to go to his house and wait for him. He would go back to town.

The monster was leaning against the other side of the big tree.

The little man snuffled disgustedly at a sudden overpowering odor of rot. He reached for his handkerchief, fumbled and dropped it. As he bent to pick it up, the monster’s arm whuffed heavily in the air where his head had been — a blow that would certainly have removed that baby-face protuberance. The man stood up and would have put the handkerchief to his nose had it not been so bloody. The creature behind the tree lifted its arm again just as the little man tossed the handkerchief away and stepped out into the field, heading across country to the distant highway that would take him back to town. The monster pounced on the handkerchief, picked it up, studied it, tore it across several times and inspected the tattered edges. Then it gazed vacantly at the disappearing figure of the little man, and finding him no longer interesting, turned back into the woods.

Babe broke into a trot at the sound of the shots. It was important to warn Uncle Alton about what her father had said, but it was more interesting to find out what he had bagged. Oh, he’d bagged it, all right. Uncle Alton never fired without killing. This was about the first time she had ever heard him blast away like that. Must be a bear, she thought excitedly, tripping over a root, sprawling, rolling to her feet again, without noticing the tumble. She’d love to have another bearskin in her room. Where would she put it? Maybe they could line it and she could have it for a blanket. Uncle Alton could sit on it and read to her in the evening — Oh, no. No. Not with this trouble between him and dad. Oh, if she could only do something!

She tried to run faster, worried and anticipating, but she was out of breath and went more slowly instead.

At the top of the rise by the edge of the woods she stopped and looked back. Far down in the valley lay the south thirty. She scanned it carefully, looking for her father. The new furrows and the old were sharply defined, and her keen eyes saw immediately that Cory had left the line with the cultivator and had angled the team over to the shade trees without finishing his row. That wasn’t like him. She could see the team now, and Cory’s pale-blue denim was nowhere in sight. She giggled lightly to herself as she thought of the way she would fool her father. And the little sound of laughter drowned out, for her, the sound of Alton’s hoarse dying scream.

She reached and crossed the path and slid through the brush beside it. The shots came from up around here somewhere. She 70

stopped and listened several times, and then suddenly heard some­ thing coming toward her, fast. She ducked under cover, terrified, and a little baby-faced man in black, his blue eyes wide with horror, crashed blindly past her, the leather case he carried catching on the branches. It spun a moment and then fell right in front of her. The man never missed it.

Babe lay there for a long moment and then picked up the case and faded into the woods. Things were happening too fast for her.

She wanted Uncle Alton, but she dared not call. She stopped again and strained her ears. Back toward the edge of the wood she heard her father’s voice, and another’s — probably the man who had dropped the brief case. She dared not go over there. Filled with enjoyable terror, she thought hard, then snapped her fingers in triumph. She and Alton had played Injun many times up here; they had a whole repertoire of secret signals. She had practiced birdcalls until she knew them better than the birds themselves. What would it be? Ah — blue jay. She threw back her head and by some youthful alchemy produced a nerve-shattering screech that would have done justice to any jay that ever flew. She repeated it, and then twice more.

The response was immediate-the call of a blue jay, four times, spaced two and two. Babe nodded to herself happily. That was the signal that they were to meet immediately at The Place. The Place was a hide-out that he had discovered and shared with her, and not another soul knew of it; an angle of rock beside a stream not far away. It wasn’t exactly a cave, but almost. Enough so to be entrancing. Babe trotted happily away toward the brook. She had just known that Uncle Alton would remember the call of the blue jay, and what it meant.

In the tree that arched over Alton’s scattered body perched a large jay bird, preening itself and shining in the sun. Quite unconscious of the presence of death, hardly noticing the Babe’s realistic cry, it screamed again four times, two and two.

It took Cory more than a moment to recover himself from what he had seen. He turned away from it and leaned weakly against a pine, panting. Alton. That was Alton lying there, in — parts.

“God! God, God, God—” Gradually his strength returned, and he forced himself to turn again. Stepping carefully, he bent and picked up the .32-40. Its barrel was bright and clean, but the butt and stock were smeared with some kind of stinking rottenness. Where had he seen the stuff before? Somewhere — no matter. He cleaned it off absently, throwing the befouled bandanna away afterward. Through his mind ran Alton’s words — was that only last night? — “I’m goin’ to start trackin’. An’ I’m goin’ to keep trackin’ till I find the one done this job on Kimbo.”

Cory searched shrinkingly until he found Alton’s box of shells.

The box was wet and sticky. That made it-better, somehow. A bullet wet with Alton’s blood was the right thing to use. He went away a short distance, circled around till he found heavy footprints, then came back.

“I’m a-trackin’ for you, bud,” he whispered thickly, and began.

Through the brush he followed its wavering spoor, amazed at the amount of filthy mold about, gradually associating it with the thing that had killed his brother. There was nothing in the world for him anymore but hate and doggedness. Cursing himself for not getting Alton home last night, he followed the tracks to the edge of the woods. They led him to a big tree there, and there he saw something else — the footprints of the little city man. Nearby lay some tattered scraps of linen, and — what was that?

Another set of prints-small ones. Small, stub-toed ones.

“Babe!”

No answer. The wind sighed. Somewhere a blue jay called.

Babe stopped and turned when she heard her father’s voice, faint with distance, piercing.

“Listen at him holler,” she crooned delightedly. “Gee, he sounds Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

mad.” She sent a jay bird’s call disrespectfully back to him and hurried to The Place.

It consisted of a mammoth boulder beside the brook. Some up­heaval in the glacial age had cleft it, cutting out a huge V-shaped chunk. The widest part of the cleft was at the water’s edge, and the narrowest was hidden by bushes. It made a little ceilingless room, rough and uneven and full of pot-holes and cavelets inside, and yet with quite a level floor. The open end was at the water’s edge.

Babe parted the bushes and peered down the cleft.

“Uncle Alton!” she called softly. There was no answer. Oh, well, he’d be along. She scrambled in and slid down to the floor.

She loved it here. It was shaded and cool, and the chattering stream filled it with shifting golden lights and laughing gurgles. She called again, on principle, and then perched on an outcropping to wait. It was only then she realized that she still carried the little man’s brief case.

She turned it over a couple of times and then opened it. It was divided in the middle by a leather wall. On one side were a few papers in a large yellow envelope, and on the other some sand­wiches, a candy bar, and an apple. With a youngster’s complacent acceptance of manna from heaven, Babe fell to. She saved one sandwich for Alton, mainly because she didn’t like its highly spiced bologna. The rest made quite a feast.

She was a little worried when Alton hadn’t arrived, even after she had consumed the apple core. She got up and tried to skim some flat pebbles across the roiling brook, and she stood on her hands, and she tried to think of a story to tell herself, and she tried just waiting. Finally, in desperation, she turned again to the brief case, took out the papers, curled up by the rocky wall and began to read them. It was something to do, anyway.

There was an old newspaper clipping that told about strange wills that people had left. An old lady had once left a lot of money to who­ever would make the trip from the Earth to the Moon and back. Another had financed a home for cats whose masters and mistresses had died. A man left thousands of dollars to the first person who could solve a certain mathematical problem and prove his solution.

But one item was blue-penciled. It was: One of the strangest of wills still in force is that of Thaddeus M. Kirk, who died in 1920. It appears that he built an elaborate mausoleum with burial vaults for all the remains of his family. He collected and removed caskets from all over the country to filll the designated niches. Kirk was the last of his line; there were no relatives when he died. His will stated that the mausoleum was to be kept in repair permanently, and that a certain sum was to be set aside as a reward for whoever could produce the body of his grandfather, Roger Kirk, whose niche is still empty. Anyone finding this body is eligible to re­ceive a substantial fortune.

Babe yawned vaguely over this, but kept on reading because there was nothing else to do. Next was a thick sheet of business correspondence, bearing the letterhead of a firm of lawyers. The body of it ran: In regard to your query regarding the will of Thaddeus Kirk, we are authorized to state that his grandfather was a man about five feet, five inches, whose left arm had been broken and who had a triangular silver plate set into his skull. There is no information as to the where­abouts of his death. He disComic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

The original caption from Unknown [Aug. 1940]: “It wasn’t vicious; it was simply curious — and very horribly deadly!”

appeared and was declared legally dead after the lapse of fourteen years.

The amount of the reward as stated in the will, plus accrued interest, now amounts to a fraction over sixty-two thousand dollars. This will be paid to anyone who produces the remains, providing that said re­mains answer descriptions kept in our private files.

There was more, but Babe was bored. She went on to the little black notebook. There was nothing in it but penciled and highly abbreviated records of visits to libraries; quotations from books with titles like History of Angelina and Tyler Counties and Kirk Family History. Babe threw that aside, too. Where could Uncle Alton be?

She began to sing tunelessly, “Tumalumalum tum, ta ta ta,” pretending to dance a minuet with flowing skirts like a girl she had seen in the movies. A rustle of the bushes at the entrance to The Place stopped her. She peeped upward, saw them being thrust aside. Quickly she ran to a tiny cul-de-sac in the rock wall, just big enough for her to hide in. She giggled at the thought of how surprised Uncle Alton would be when she jumped out at him.

She heard the newcomer come shuffling down the steep slope of the crevice and land heavily on the floor. There was something about the sound — What was it? It occurred to her that though it was a hard job for a big man like Uncle Alton to get through the little opening in the bushes, she could hear no heavy breathing.

She heard no breathing at all!

Babe peeped out into the main cave and squealed in utmost 71

horror. Standing there was, not Uncle Alton, but a massive caricature of a man: a huge thing like an irregular mud doll, clumsily made. It quivered and parts of it glistened and parts of it were dried and crumbly. Half of the lower left part of its face was gone, giving it a lopsided look. It had no perceptible mouth or nose, and its eyes were crooked, one higher than the other, both a dingy brown with no whites at all. It stood quite still looking at her, its only movement a steady unalive quivering.

It wondered about the queer little noise Babe had made.

Babe crept far back against a little pocket of stone, her brain running round and round in tiny circles of agony. She opened her mouth to cry out, and could not. Her eyes bulged and her face flamed with the strangling effort, and the two golden ropes of her braided hair twitched and twitched as she hunted hopelessly for a way out. If only she were out in the open-or in the wedge-shaped half-cave where the thing was-or home in bed!

The thing clumped toward her, expressionless, moving with a slow inevitability that was the sheer crux of horror. Babe lay wide­ eyed and frozen, mounting pressure of terror stilling her lungs, making her heart shake the whole world. The monster came to the mouth of the little pocket, tried to walk to her and was stopped by the sides. It was such a narrow little fissure, and it was all Babe could do to get in. The thing from the wood stood straining against the rock at its shoulders, pressing harder and harder to get to Babe.

She sat up slowly, so near to the thing that its odor was almost thick enough to see, and a wild hope burst through her voiceless fear. It couldn’t get in! It couldn’t get in because it was too big!

The substance of its feet spread slowly under the tremendous strain and at its shoulder appeared a slight crack. It widened as the monster unfeelingly crushed itself against the rock, and suddenly a large piece of the shoulder came away and the being twisted slushily three feet farther in. It lay quietly with its muddy eyes fixed on her, and then brought one thick arm up over its head and reached.

Babe scrambled in the inch farther she had believed impossible, and the filthy clubbed hand stroked down her back, leaving a trail of muck on the blue denim of the shirt she wore. The monster surged suddenly and, lying full length now, gained that last precious inch. A black hand seized one of her braids, and for Babe the lights went out.

When she came to, she was dangling by her hair from that same crusted paw. The thing held her high, so that her face and its feature­less head were not more than a foot apart. It gazed at her with a mild curiosity in its eyes, and it swung her slowly back and forth.

The agony of her pulled hair did what fear could not do — gave her a voice. She screamed. She opened her mouth and puffed up her powerful young lungs, and she sounded off. She held her throat in the position of the first scream, and her chest labored and pumped more air through the frozen throat. Shrill and monotonous and in­ finitely piercing, her screams.

The thing did not mind. It held her as she was, and watched.

When it had learned all it could from this phenomenon, it dropped her jarringly, and looked around the half-cave, ignoring the stunned and huddled Babe. It reached over and picked up the leather brief case and tore it twice across as if it were tissue. It saw the sandwich Babe had left, picked it up, crushed it, dropped it.

Babe opened her eyes, saw that she was free, and just as the thing turned back to her she dove between its legs and out into the shallow pool in front of the rock, paddled across and hit the other bank screaming. A vicious little light of fury burned in her; she picked up a grapefruit-sized stone and hurled it with all her frenzied might. It flew low and fast, and struck squashily on the monster’s ankle. The thing was just taking a step toward the water; the stone caught it off balance, and its unpracticed equilibrium could not save it. It tottered for a long, silent moment at the edge and then splashed into the stream. Without a second look Babe ran shrieking away.

Cory Drew was following the little gobs of mold that somehow indicated the path of the murderer, and he was nearby when he 72

first heard her scream. He broke into a run, dropping his shotgun and holding the .32-40 ready to fire. He ran with such deadly panic in his heart that he ran right past the huge cleft rock and was a hundred yards past it before she burst out through the pool and ran up the bank. He had to run hard and fast to catch her, because anything behind her was that faceless horror in the cave, and she was living for the one idea of getting away from there. He caught her in his arms and swung her to him, and she screamed on and on and on.

Babe didn’t see Cory at all, even when he held her and quieted her.

The monster lay in the water. It neither liked nor disliked this new element. It rested on the bottom, its massive head a foot beneath the surface, and it curiously considered the facts that it had garnered. There was the little humming noise of Babe’s voice that sent the monster questing into the cave. There was the black material of the brief case that resisted so much more than green things when he tore it. There was the little two-legged one who sang and brought him near, and who screamed when he came. There was this new cold moving thing he had fallen into. It was washing his body away. That had never happened before. That was interesting.

The monster de­cided to stay and observe this new thing. It felt no urge to save itself; it could only be curious.

The brook came laughing down out of its spring, ran down from its source beckoning to the sunbeams and embracing freshets and helpful brooklets. It shouted and played with streaming little roots, and nudged the minnows and pollywogs about in its tiny backwaters. It was a happy brook. When it came to the pool by the cloven rock it found the monster there, and plucked at it. It soaked the foul substances and smoothed and melted the molds, and the waters below the thing eddied darkly with its diluted matter. It was a thorough brook. It washed all it touched, persistently. Where it found filth, it removed filth; and if there were layer on layer of foulness, then layer by foul layer it was removed. It was a good brook. It did not mind the poison of the monster, but took it up and thinned it and spread it in little rings round rocks downstream, and let it drift to the rootlets of water plants, that they might grow greener and lovelier. And the monster melted.

“I am smaller,” the thing thought. “That is interesting. I could not move now. And now this part of me which thinks is going, too. It will stop in just a moment, and drift away with the rest of the body.

It will stop thinking and I will stop being, and that, too, is a very interesting thing.”

So the monster melted and dirtied the water, and the water was clean again, washing and washing the skeleton that the monster had left. It was not very big, and there was a badly-healed knot on the left arm. The sunlight flickered on the triangular silver plate set into the pale skull, and the skeleton was very clean now. The brook laughed about it for an age.

They found the skeleton, six grimlipped men who came to find a killer. No one had believed Babe, when she told her story days later.

It had to be days later because Babe had screamed for seven hours without stopping, and had lain like a dead child for a day. No one believed her at all, because her story was all about the bad fella, and they knew that the bad fella was simply a thing that her father had made up to frighten her with. But it was through her that the skele­ton was found, and so the men at the bank sent a check to the Drews for more money than they had ever dreamed about. It was old Roger Kirk, sure enough, that skeleton, though it was found five miles from where he had died and sank into the forest floor where the hot molds builded around his skeleton and emerged — a monster.

So the Drews had a new barn and fine new livestock and they hired four men. But they didn’t have Alton. And they didn’t have Kimbo. And Babe screams at night and has grown very thin.

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

73

From the collection of Robert Knuist. Courtesy of and © the artist Stephen R. Bissette. Swamp Thing TM & © DC Comics. Man-Thing TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

Creating That Dreadful Thing Len Wein, writer-creator of Swamp Thing, on working with Wrightson and Alan Moore Conducted by JON B. COOKE Inset right: In a photo by Alan Light, Len Wein attends the 1982 San Diego Comic Con. Below: A few of the titles fledgling writer Len Wein worked on before his Swamp Thing stint. From top is Teen Titans #18 [Nov.–Dec. ’68; Twilight Zone #35 [Dec. ’70]; and Hot Wheels #5 [Nov.–Dec. ’70].

Comic Book Creator: What were the first comics that you remember, Len? Len: I remember vaguely buying one of the very last issues of Plastic Man, in 1952, sometime around then. I must have been four or five. The first I actively remember purchasing on my own, I guess, was Detective Comics. I don’t remember the issue number, but the story was “The Man Who Ended Batman’s Career,” and it introduced Professor Milo, who I later reintroduced to the book when I was writing it. I felt I owed him that much, at least. [chuckles] CBC: Where did you grow up?

Len: I was born in the Bronx, but moved to Levittown, on Long Island, when I was seven-and-a-half. I had a generally fine childhood, though I was a very sickly kid. The first time I remember getting a bulk of comics was during a stay in the hospital when I was seven. I had all sorts of colitis and so there was not one year of school that I didn’t spend at least a month or so in bed and, occasionally, in the hospital. I did not go through one full year of grade through high school without missing a month here and there.

CBC: Was it painful?

Len: Oh, yes. It was very painful, the equivalent of having ulcers. Seven years old and have ulcers. I was a very highstrung young boy. So my dad bought me that first batch of comics and I just became a collector from that moment.

CBC: Did you encounter, as a kid, the E.C. Comics?

Len: Yes. I remember when I was nine or ten, and my best friend at the time lived down the block. His older brother had a bunch of E.C. Comics and he gave them to us. We looked at them and found them so disgusting at the time. The E.C. stuff 74

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Len Wein portrait © Alan Light. Teen Titans TM & © DC Comics. Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone TM & © CBS Corporation. Hot Wheels © Mattel, Inc.

[One of the wave of Young Turk fans-turned-pros arriving at DC Comics in the late 1960s and early ’70s, award-winning writer/editor Len Wein has risen to make a significant impact in the field, if but for his co-creations of the characters Swamp Thing for DC and Wolverine at Marvel. The writer of innumerable scripts for comic books in a variety of genres, the New York-born creator has also been an renowned editor, working on Alan Moore’s initial Swamp Thing exploits, as well as editing Watchman. Len has worked as a writer in the animation field, as well as video gaming. The following interview took place on January 23, 2004, in a California home filled to the rafters with rare and beautiful mementos of a well-spent career in comics. During the interview, Len’s dog Sheba would wander in and out of the living room. Five years later, both home and beloved pet would be lost in a tragic fire.

The following was transcribed by Brian K. Morris.]

was really hard-boiled. We didn’t want to keep them, so we wound up selling them off for like a nickel each. You can still see the palm print on my forehead every time I slap myself in the head, going, “What the hell did I do?” [laughter] But, at the time, we just thought they were gross and disgusting.

CBC: When did you start drawing?

Len: I always had to scribble as a kid.

When I was in eighth grade, in one of my art classes, I had a teacher named Mr. Smedley. He was a very nice man. I drew a picture of a shark, of all things, and he came up, looked at the shark, and said, “You know, you actually have real artistic talent. That’s a hard thing to do and you did it very well. You could be an artist.” I went, “Gee, if I could be an artist, I could be a comic book artist!” And that was it. From that point on, I was an art major. Throughout junior high and high school, I took every art class, and I went to college as an art major.

My goal was to get into comics as a comic book artist.

CBC: Did you read the Atlas monster books?

Len: Later on, I did, when I stumbled upon “Doom, The Thing That Ate My Lunch,” and all the rest of those. I went back and got some, but not at the time they were being published.

CBC: Were your favorites from DC? Len: That’s all there was when I was starting to read! I never got into Archie. I was never an Archie fan, but I read all the DC books, especially the Julie Schwartz-edited books.

CBC: How did you meet Marv Wolfman?

Len: I met Marv through a friend of mine. There was a group of us geeks in Levittown who were comic fans, and one of them, was a guy named Ron Fradkin. There was a group of New York City fans called TISOS, so named by the late [DC editorial assistant] Mark Hanerfeld (who was the model for Abel, the host of House of Secrets), which was an acronym for The Illegitimate Sons of Superman. Ron and I were fans and we decided we wanted to meet other fans to create a bigger group. So we wrote Julie Schwartz, God bless him. His letter columns listed names and addresses, and we found a Marvin Wolfman in the letters page of Mystery In Space #75, and his address was listed as Flushing.

So we looked up the phone number and called Marv. By the most bizarre coincidence, his older sister, married with her own kid at that point, lived in Levittown and he was coming out that weekend to visit. So we went over to his sister’s place, met Marv, and he and I began a life-long friendship, one that has lasted for 45 years, to this day.

CBC: What were you drawing? Were you copying from comic books?

Len: Yes, though I also learned to draw from classes I took, but I worked with Marv on fanzines. We would so a lot of fanzine stuff together.

CBC: What was the name of your fanzine?

Swamp Thing TM & © DC Comics. Illustration © Bernie Wrightson. Len Wein portrait © Jackie Estrada.

Len Wein portrait © Jackie Estrada.

The Muck-Monster Makers Len: The original version was a ditto-zine called Heoreh, which I thought was cool because it was “hero” backwards with an extra “eh” in it. My grandfather, God bless him, bought a ditto machine for my birthday. Once I saw what that was like, I completely restructured. I ended up doing a half-dozen issues of Heoreh, a couple issues of Trident, and one or two others, and I worked with Marv on his zines, Strange Stories of Suspense and Super-Adventures, which were much better produced than mine.

CBC: You guys would visit the DC offices?

Len: As kids, we went there all the time. Back in the 1960s, on every Thursday, DC would have a tour and, at least once a month, Marv and I would come up to the office and take the tour every week, so we became familiar. They started to recognize us up there, which helped later on.

CBC: Who else went on the tour?

Len: Mark Hanerfeld, [future colorist] Andy Yanchus, [letter hack] Irene Vartanoff and her sister Eileen, and a couple of other guys (who didn’t get into the business).

CBC: Did you have letters published in the comics’ letter columns?

Len: I never, ever wrote letters, not a one. Marv did, thank God, or I never would have met him. But I never did.

CBC: And you attended the early comic conventions?

Len: I was actually one of the three guys who threw the very first comics convention in New York, back in 1964. I’m actually the person who coined the phrase “comic-con.”

Our guests were [renowned Marvel secretary] Flo Steinberg and [Lone Ranger artist] Tom Gill. Howard Rogofsky and Phil Seuling were the two dealers we had in back of the room.

Oh, and some guy named [Spider-Man artist and co-creator] Ditko was a guest, back before he became the reclusive Steve Ditko.

CBC: Did you eventually enjoy the Marvel books as much as the DC titles?

Len: Oh, yeah, I got into the Marvel stuff. It was radically different than DC. They really were yin and yang. DC’s books were very intellectual and Marvel books were very emotional, so they were the antithesis of one another.

CBC: How about Warren?

Len: Oh, yes! I started with Creepy #1. Those books contained the classiest art.

CBC: So you didn’t have the same kind of revulsion as you had with the E.C. Comics?

Len: By the time I got into Creepy, I was older and it wasn’t quite as shocking. Still, Warren didn’t have as many decapitated heads as did the E.C.s. Warren was more traditional horror.

CBC: Were you attracted by the quality of the art?

Len: Oh, absolutely! I was pulled in by the Jack Davis cover and, looking inside, I said, “There’s Frazetta! And there’s Al Williamson! And there’s Joe Orlando!” These people were at the height of their powers, all doing amazing work.

CBC: What was your drawing style like?

Len: Bad, or I’d be doing that for a living. Well, I did end up drawing one story that was published, in Grimm’s Ghost Stories, for Gold Key. I drew a four-pager. I had some background help on the inking by Steve Mitchell, before he became a professional. I became Gold Key’s fair-haired boy for a while, though as a writer.

CBC: How did you get involved with [Gold Key’s outfit] Western Publishing?

Len: There was a point when Marv and I were blackballed at DC, and so Marv left the business, became an art teacher, and I looked for other places to sell comics. Down the block was Gold Key. So I went there — I was 20 or 21 at the time — and I met with Wally Green and Paul Keune, the editors

up there. They’re wearing jackets and ties and this was an older company. I introduce myself, show them my résumé and work, and I said, “I’d like to write for you guys.” Wally looks at me and, in all sincerity, he said, “Why? We’re older.

We do quieter stuff. You’re a young guy.” I said, “Because I like your stuff,” and I did — Doctor Solar, Magnus: Robot Fighter, and others — though I didn’t realize those were done on the West Coast, but they hired me. So, for the next year or two or three, I wrote a bunch of stuff for Gold Key. I wrote The Twilight Zone; created a book called Microbots; did Star Trek for a while (my second favorite gig); Boris Karloff Tales of Mystery; Mod Wheels (my favorite)…

I had written Hot Wheels at DC and, when I moved over, Gold Key offered me Mod Wheels because they saw my Hot Wheels credit. Funny for a guy who, at that point, didn’t even have a driver’s license! [laughter] CBC: With Carmine Infantino’s ascension as the editorial director of DC Comics, did it seem like this was an exciting time?

Len: Oh, it was an exciting time. There were great books being published. Beware the Creeper, Bat Lash, Secret Six… CBC: Did you meet Joe Orlando when he came over as Carmine’s premier artist/ editor?

Len: Well, Joe was one of the first men who hired me!

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Above: Courtesy of Jackie Estrada, Len Wein, in a photograph taken during the San Diego Comic Con. Below: A relatively recent rendition of Swamp Thing by the character’s co-creator Bernie Wrightson.

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Above: Gray Morrow, artist-creator of Man-Thing, contributes this Gothic romance-inspired cover of House of Secrets #89 [Dec. ’70– Jan. ’71]. Below: Example of the popular Gothic paperback genre during that era, this one based on the daytime TV hit Dark Shadows.

an anthology book.” So I went home and came up with some story ideas, which something I had never done before, as I’d only written to give myself stuff to draw. So he bought “The Final Day of Nicholas Tombs,” and suddenly, I’m a writer! I’ve been a writer ever since. [laughs] CBC: And you never looked back?

Len: By the time I looked back, I was a successful writer and I thought, “Well, maybe I should give becoming an artist a shot.” I was six months into my marriage to my first wife, Glynis, and I felt it wasn’t fair to her to risk our income just to see if I could make it as an artist at that point. So I stayed a writer.

CBC: Do you regret it?

Len: No, though I do think my artistic ability has made me an excellent editor because I am able to think visually. A lot of old-timers up at DC — guys like Irv Novick and a few others — would ask for scripts written by me because they always said, “I can always see exactly what Len wants with his scripts. It’s all so visual.” So it’s helped me as a writer and as an editor.

CBC: The first issues of House of Mystery and House of Secrets were basically child-endangerment covers, usually

by Neal Adams. There’d be a gargoyle about to leap on some kids who are peeking in windows voyeuristically. Then the entire mystery line adapted a Harlequin romance, Dark Shadows kind of Gothic approach with distressed women in nightgown running from castles. Did you know anything about that shift?

Len: At one point, when they thought the Gothic horror novels were very hot, they tried, very briefly, a line of comics — The Dark House of Forbidden Love, Secret House of Gothic Romance, whatever the hell they were named — and those just didn’t succeed. Actually, I wrote one of them for Dark House of Sinister Love or whatever the hell else it was called.

CBC: Forbidden Mansions?

Len: Yes. They were cancelled pretty quickly but two became anthologies like House of Mystery and they dropped the Gothic romance angle. If there had been a policy across the board, I was unaware of it.

CBC: House of Secrets #92, which had the first Swamp Thing story, had a Gothic cover.

Len: Oh yeah, absolutely. The gist of Gothic romance is suggested, I’ll grant you that, but I don’t remember any editorial dictum.

CBC: How did the genesis of the first story come about?

Len: Well, I wish I had a better story, but it’s as simple as this: I was on the subway on my way into the DC office and I needed something to pitch to Joe. I didn’t have any ideas and that came to me in the subway out of the blue. I honestly don’t know where it came from.

CBC: Had you been going through a romance that went sour?

Len: No, I hadn’t at the time; Bernie had. We were going to have him draw the story.

CBC: Bernie misremembered that it was you?

Len: It was Bernie who went through a break-up. We were out at a party at Marv’s place. Bernie was very depressed, so we went out, sat in my car to talk about it, and I said, “I’ve got a story I just wrote that expresses exactly the way you’re feeling right now.” So I told him about the story and he said, “I want to do it.” [chuckles] That’s how we started Swamp Thing.

CBC: How would you describe the story?

Len: It’s a love story. A lot of that mystery stuff are stories of love when you get down to it. It’s about unrequited love, a man who loves his wife, is killed, and comes back to protect her.

CBC: But can’t consummate his love?

Len: He can’t do anything about it. The funny thing is the title came up by accident. I didn’t have a title for the story and I kept referring to it as, “That swamp thing I’m writing,” the “thing” being the story, not the character. But that’s how

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

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I must have met him before he hired me.

When Marv and I started taking the tour, it was the “old” DC. It was [editors] Murray Boltinoff, Jack Miller, and George Kashdan (who ended up working for me in later years), Jack Schiff, Mort Weisinger… then Carmine took over and in came Dick Giordano, Mike Sekowsky, Joe Kubert, and Orlando, of course.

CBC: Was the revamping of House of Mystery and House of Secrets into an E.C.-kind of format cool?

Len: Oh, yeah!

That was great!

House of Mystery is where I sold my first professional work. It was a story I never did see published called “The Final Day of Nicholas Tombs” Years later, Joe always used to hold it over my head that Jack Sparling had drawn the story. It was okay. Joe would threaten, “If you don’t do what I ask, I’m going to print that story!” [laughter] By that point, I said, “Go ahead, Joe, and I’ll bet you $50 right now that it’ll be the best-received story in the book, and not because that title isn’t any good, but because right now, I’m hot and people know my name and the fact I wrote it will give it credibility.” But he never did print the story.

CBC: Were you given assignments to start?

Len: Oh, no, we pitched DC. Marv and I decided to break into the business and we started putting together work samples, stuff he wrote and I drew. Marv would ink and we’d work back and forth, to some degree, but most of the writing was his and most of the art was mine. We intended to sell to [then-Charlton editor-in-chief] Dick Giordano over at Charlton because Dick was doing his Action Heroes line [1966-67]. But, because we were so damn slow, by the time we finished the samples, Dick had already been hired by DC. So we went up one day to show our samples to Dick. We didn’t make an appointment — we didn’t know anything! We just showed up at the office! — and we said, “Hi, we’re here to see Dick Giordano!”

They said, “We’re sorry, gentlemen, but Dick is not in today.” So we’re standing around, moping, moaning, “What are we going to do now?” Carmine and Joe Orlando came back from lunch and Carmine recognized us from when we would take the tour, and he said, “Oh, it’s you guys again!

Why are you here?” I said, “Well, we’re here to show our samples. We actually want to get into the business, but Dick’s not in today.” He said, “Well, show them to my boy Joey here. If he likes ’em, then he’ll make whatever decision he decides to make.” (I’ve never forgotten what Carmine said.) So Joe took the samples, came back about 15 minutes later, and said, “Look, I don’t think the art is really there yet, but the writing shows promise. If you guys want to submit stories to House of Mystery, I’m looking for submissions. It’s

TM & © DC Comics.

it ended up being titled “Swamp Thing,” and we went from there. [laughter] CBC: Were you familiar with the Heap at all?

Len: Not then. Joe mentioned The Heap and I started looking up old Airboy Comics and I even started collecting them.

One of the coolest parts of my career at one point was when Eclipse was doing the Airboy revival, back in the ’80s, with “The Heap” back-ups. I wrote a three-part “Heap” backup Carmine penciled. Since Carmine had penciled the old “Heap” stories back in the ’40s, it was a very nice consummation going all around.

CBC: What did you think of the Heap when you familiarized yourself?

Len: The character was very different. You know, the Heap is much more Man-Thing than Swamp Thing. The Heap and Man-Thing are both re-active characters. They don’t initiate an action; they respond to outside influence.

CBC: Did you ever read Ted Sturgeon’s short story, “It”?

Len: No, but I read Roy’s adaptation in Supernatural Thrillers years later. Later on, I realized “It” was essentially where [Golden-Age Green Lantern villain] Solomon Grundy came from and Solomon Grundy was always a villain I liked, but I never made the connection he was another swamp monster.

I just liked the big, white visual and the black tattered suit.

CBC: What makes Solomon Grundy a swamp monster?

Len: The origin. He’s still around, still an ongoing character. He’s a guy who is shot, whose body is dumped into a swamp, which interacts with the dead body and resurrects the corpse. When he stands there, white-skinned and naked, a bunch of hobos ask, “Who the hell are you?” He says, “I don’t know my name. All I remember is I was born on a Monday.” They say, “Oh, like the old nursery rhyme, ‘Solomon Grundy, born on Monday,’ and that’s where the character got his name.

CBC: Obviously, “Swamp Thing” was a one-shot story, right?

Len: That’s all it was meant to be, yep.

CBC: Did you know about the evolution of the artwork? It’s a very atypical Bernie Wrightson-drawn story, relying as it does on photo-reference.

Len: Yes, because he didn’t really draw all of it. He had people helping him. Weezie Jones/Simonson plays the wife, the villain is Mike Kaluta, most of the gang is in that in one way or another. Bernie himself is Alex Olsen….

CBC: Right, and there’s a little more conflict in the background. Were you involved in that photo shoot?

Len: No, I wasn’t any one of the characters.

CBC: So you sympathized with Bernie’s heartache and wanted him to do the story?

Len: Well, as I said, we were just talking about it. I like Bernie and we were pals. He was going through that romance problem, and though I haven’t gone through too many romances in my own life — most of my relationships were long-term — I could see he was hurting. He was so forlorn that I said, “The story fits just into the way you’re feeling.”

CBC: Do you know where you might have gotten that idea while on the subway ride?

Len: No, absolutely not. If I would have known then how pivotal it was going to be to the industry and to my career, I’d have made notes, but I didn’t. You know, it was just “that swamp thing I was writing.” [laughs] CBC: In writing for the DC mystery line, did any number have romantic elements to them?

Len: Well, as I said, I wrote one of the Gothic horror romance comic-book “novels,” but I would have to go back and look at most of my stories to be more precise. I don’t remember Gothic romance as being anything significant in particular. I mean we’re talking decades ago now, Jon. CBC: Swamp Thing, it seems to me, is essentially a romance set in the horror genre.

Len: Oh, it absolutely is a romance. Someone once said that the reason the character worked so well when I was writing it was because the character is essentially me. I said, “What

are you talking about?” He said, “Just think about it: Because you were so sickly, your body failed you and it really isn’t working the way you want. Yet your heart and your spirit are still the same, and you try to keep a positive outlook and try to believe everything’s going to work out at the end.” I realized, “Oh sh*t!

You’re right!” [laughter] CBC: Obviously, there was a year between House of Secrets #92 and Swamp Thing #1. What happened?

Len: Well, what happened is the book, HOS #92, sold like a son-of-a-bitch. I know this because I was told that fact by everybody, by [later DC publisher] Paul Levitz later on, as well as all kinds of people at the time.

It outsold Superman that month. Carmine’s immediate response after seeing the sales figures was, “I want us to do an ongoing book. It’s a big hit, so let’s do a continuing title.”Now, Bernie and I… we were young, we were foolish — boy, were we foolish! — and we didn’t want to spoil the short story. It meant that much to us. We said, “No, if you do anything else with the short story, it’s just going to water it down, and we don’t want to do that.” So a year or so later, I was sitting around one day in my apartment and I thought, “Schmuck, why don’t you just do something like it? You don’t have to do anything that undercuts the original story. Just start over again!” Then I called Joe and said, “I think I’ve come up with a way to do the Swamp Thing book Carmine wants us to do. We can start all over. We don’t need to mess with the short story at all.” He said, “That’s great! Who are we going to get to draw it?” I said, “I’ll call Bernie.” So I did and talked him into it.

CBC: Now because I don’t know exactly who to put it this way, but Carmine’s a reactionary very often, that he hears something and he’ll jump on it like, okay. But you did indeed see or hear that factually.

Len: Yes, it sold like a son of a bitch, yeah.

CBC: What was it about the original short story that made it sell as well as it did?

Len: I haven’t the faintest idea because, if I did, I would have done it with every story I ever wrote from that point on.

CBC: It’s also interesting to note that the short story is very personal. Weezie is on the cover, Michael Kaluta plays the villain, Bernie himself posed as the hero. It’s a real person on the cover, as are all the characters in the story.

Len: You’re correct. Weezie, by that point, was beloved by all of us. There wasn’t one guy in the group who just wasn’t madly in love with that woman.

CBC: Why? Len: Because she’s Weezie, she was — and still is — wonderful. She was cheery as a bucket of buttons and a great human being to boot. I mean she was just so funny and attractive. She was married to Jeff Jones at the time, which is a little problem for the rest of us [laughs], but we were all crazy about Weezie, just the same.

CBC: Was it a personal story for you?

Len: Yeah, it is emotional. I never got any better payment for anything I ever scripted than from those people who wrote in after reading that story, telling me, “I read your story and it made me cry.”

CBC: And did you encounter people coming up to you in

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Above: DC attempted to lure back female readers — a demographic that, according to editor Joe Orlando, which had inexplicably fled comics in the late 1960s, by brazenly aping the Archie Comics line, even audaciously co-opting logo styles and cover designs, as well as jumping on the Gothic romance craze dominating the paperback market at the time (perhaps fueled by the enormous popularity of the Dan Curtis ABC television serial Dark Shadows, with its horror elements and period flashbacks).

The experiment, which dominated the covers of House of Mystery and House of Secrets for a time, bled over into the super-hero line, as evidenced by these Batman #227 [Dec. ’70] and Wonder Woman #199 [Mar.–Apr. ’72] covers.

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Above: Page seven of the House of Secrets #92 [June–July ’71] “Swamp Thing” tale; words by Len Wein, art by Bernie Wrightson (with Jeff Jones and Michael W. Kaluta assists). See the Bernie Wrightson interview for the photo reference taken for a panel or two here, as well as for the remaining pages of this seminal tale.

Courtesy of Heritage Auctions.

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

TM & © DC Comics.

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person, saying the same?

Len: Oh, yes. Absolutely! That was the most gratifying.

CBC: Was that the best story you had written to date?

Len: Certainly. It was nominated for various awards even though there was no “Best Short Story” category at the Shazam Awards that year. It would have won if there had been because the very next year Swamp Thing won for “Best New Series” and “Best Story,” and, the year after that, for “Best Series.”

CBC: Whose idea was it to place Swamp Thing in a contemporary setting, as opposed to the period setting of the short story?

Len: That was my idea. It took me a year to realize that, when I suddenly slapped myself on the forehead and went, “But wait! I can start over again and do it present-day!” So I spoke with Joe on a Friday, called Bernie on that Saturday and said, “Do you want to do it as a series?” He said, “Well, I don’t think I want to undercut the original story.” I said, “No, we’ll just start all over. Let’s forget the original short story, which doesn’t have to relate to this new series. Let’s just do something brand-new with the same basic concept.” Bernie said, “Oh cool! Okay.” So we both went in to Joe’s office on Monday and went, “Hi, we’re here. Let’s do a book.”

CBC: How did you consider Bernie’s abilities as an artist?

Len: [Dismissively] Pssh! He sucked. I never thought he was any good. [laughs, then incredulous] What are you talking about? I thought his work was brilliant.

CBC: Bernie truly labors over his art and this would be his first regular book assignment. He’d be responsible for 22 or so pages every two months. You were convinced that he was up to the task?

Len: Uh-huh. Bernie was up to it, I was up to it… I mean I’m sure DC would have been happy if I’d made it a monthly book, but it was scheduled as a bi-monthly because that’s as quick as Bernie could draw an issue.

CBC: What was the process of you and Bernie working together?

Len: Well, the process was pretty much the same for every issue: We’d make an appoint to see Joe, go into his office, block aside a date with a general, rough idea of what we wanted to do, and we would plot the thing out in front of Joe with Joe kibitzing as an editor periodically. I mean that Joe would make suggestions. I wanted to work Marvel style, but Joe was not comfortable with that initially, but we talked him into it. We’d get a stack of typing paper and Bernie would basically break down the issue right there during the story conference. We’d plot it out page-by-page in front of Joe, so that made him more comfortable. Then Bernie would go home with that broken-down story, rough panel sketches along with very rudimentary notes (sometimes with just a word or two of direction) and he would pencil the pages.

When he was finished, I would dialogue from the pencils, then it would be reviewed by Joe and then lettered by Gaspar Saladino. Then Bernie would ink it and my then-wife, Glynis, would do the coloring.

CBC: What was Joe’s contribution?

Len: Sometimes what Joe added was tremendous; sometimes he added nothing. Joe was there to guide us, to serve as sounding board, and so basically, he would make suggestions. I can’t remember any specific things he did for the regular series but I do recall, in the short story, he suggested losing the bracelet at the end, which was a very poignant touch, which I had not thought of. But he did make suggestions. He was there as editor, he was the coach.

CBC: Was Joe a good editor?

Len: When Joe Orlando was good, he was excellent. Joe did not think of himself as a terribly educated person, so he took great pride in the fact that he read The New York Times from cover-to-cover every morning on the way to the office and was a self-educated man. He worked very hard at his job. I think he was very much an instinctual editor, working very much from the gut, and he had a good sense of what made a really emotional story.

CBC: When I spoke to him years ago about Swamp Thing, I got from him a sense of sour grapes to some degree.

Obviously, because the character went on to become a movie property, as well as TV show, cartoon series and toy line, Swamp Thing became a property of some worth. He strongly felt that he should have shared with you and Bernie a co-creator credit after having suggested the bio-regenerative formula aspect of the origin’s plot. Is that any of your recollection?

Len: I don’t remember at all, honestly. I don’t recall. It’s possible. I don’t think that is the contribution made the character what it is. It could have been called “bubble bath” and still accomplish the same events. But no, I will not denigrate his contribution and as an editor, he was a terrific editor… but he was the editor. He was not one of the writers. That said, for most of our issues, there’s equal billing with the credit line, “A Len Wein-Berni Wrightson-Joe Orlando Production.”

CBC: The entire run by you guys has the look-and-feel of a prestige book. You can see by looking at the covers — all sans type and blurbs — that this was the Tiffany of the DC line. Did you get a feeling from Carmine and from Joe that this was a special book for them?

Len: Everybody loved this book, everybody. Who in God’s name would want to cover up Bernie’s artwork? [chuckles]

TM & © DC Comics.

And certainly when he was at the height of his artistic powers as he was on this book. The best thing he ever did was Frankenstein, certainly, but Swamp Thing is a close second in terms of the effort he put into a project.

CBC: You know, the villain in ST #1 has an uncanny resemblance to a certain gentleman who worked in the production department at the time.

Len: Oh yeah! Sure, he was Jack Adler!

CBC: Bernie’s recollection was that, during that initial story conference, you had two or three issues already conceptualized.

Len: Yes, I pretty much did. I knew where I wanted to go with the book and what I wanted to do.

CBC: Which was where and what, Len? Len: I wanted to revisit all the classic horror genres: #2 is The Island of Dr. Moreau, #3 is Frankenstein, #4 is your classic werewolf story….

CBC: With #2, I said to Bernie, “Tod Browning’s Freaks,” and he agreed.

Len: Yes, that’s part of it, absolutely.

CBC: Is #4, Werewolf of London or The Wolfman?

Len: It’s any werewolf. We just wanted to do a spin on a werewolf story, only we didn’t want to do any tributes to specifics necessarily. All we ever wanted to do was spins on the character. We didn’t want to do, “Let’s do our tribute to such-and-such.” If we were doing this story, how would we approach it? But Bernie’s visual for the werewolf was later ripped-off. I’m watching a movie called The Howling, and when we see the werewolf for the first time, I’m going, “I’ve never seen a werewolf like that — yes, I have! Where?” And it took me hours after the movie. I was home and happened to pick up Swamp Thing #4 and I realized, “Oh crap! He ripped-off Bernie’s werewolf.” Because you never see werewolves with animal legs like that on a humanoid body.

[Indicates ST #5] We were going to get back to the States, but before we did that, I realized we needed to pace ourselves a little and out of that need came the witch story, “The Last of the Ravenwood Witches,” in ST #5. Though we were slowing down the pace slightly, we ended up having one of the more famous scenes in the run, when Swamp Thing’s arm is chopped off and re-grows.

CBC: Bernie was very specific in remembering this being one of Joe’s suggestions.

Len: I wouldn’t be surprised. It could very well be one of Joe’s ideas.

CBC: Doesn’t the re-growth foretell Alan Moore’s re-invention of the character as a plant?

Len: Absolutely. I saw Swamp Thing as a guy who had been consumed with the plants. I never assumed he had a human skeleton anymore. In fact, in the second issue, when Arcane is going through him, Arcane says it’s a wooden skeleton and everything’s been replicated. I assumed that the formula had changed him. You know, I assumed Alex Holland was Swamp Thing, that Swamp Thing was Holland. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have done that whole transitional thing in the second issue with Arcane restoring Swamp Thing to human form, to becoming Holland again and Arcane becoming the Swamp Thing.

CBC: You had problems with the Comics Code Authority.

Bernie pointed out the change in #1 from “fire-engulfed flesh” to “fume-engulfed flesh.”

Len: Oh, yes. That was one time the Comics Code said no.

He was engulfed in the flames originally and the Code said, “No, can’t do that!” They wouldn’t allow it so I had to go back and rewrite that line. They had the coloring changed , as well. Originally, it was all red and yellows and oranges. He was on fire.

CBC: Did you know the dog was visually based on Mike Kaluta?

Len: No, no but it doesn’t surprise me at all. As I recall, Bernie originally didn’t want to do the dog. He didn’t think he could draw dogs.

CBC: So he drew his friends as dogs. [laughter]

Len: Exactly.

CBC: Bernie also recalled using full-page splashes.

Len: Yeah, that’s something we wanted to do because we wanted the impact that a full-pager would have.

CBC: Do you remember Carmine saying not to do that?

Len: No. CBC: Bernie said that he recalls Carmine complaining that the writer got full-page rate for one word.

Len: That wouldn’t surprise me.

CBC: What was “A Clockwork Horror” based on?

Len: Well, that was just a story with robots, just general science-fiction stuff, and based on nothing specific. We just wanted to do another little take on the genre. [indicates ST #7] This one was a primer on how to do a super-hero crossover and, if you were going to do a super-hero in Swamp Thing, the only one who could work was this guy.

CBC: Is Batman your favorite character?

Len: Oh yeah! Far and away, Batman is my favorite DC character. My favorite Marvel character is the Hulk, but not the current incarnation, rather the Hulk that I used to write.

As a result, one of my favorite assignments of all time was to write the Batman/Hulk crossover [the Treasury-size DC Special Series #27, Sept. ’81].

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Above: The forlorn creature shambles into history in this, the final page of the “Swamp Thing” tale that began a dynasty. From House of Secrets #92 [June–July ’71], with art by Bernie Wrightson, with the help of Jeffrey Jones and Michael W. Kaluta. Script by Len Wein. Courtesy of Heritage.

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Above: We believe this Joe Orlando illustration first appeared as the inside back cover of the last issue of the mini-series Roots of the Swamp Thing [#5, Nov. ’86], reprinting the legendary run produced by the threesome, Swamp Thing #1–10. Editor Joe caricatures himself, writer Len Wein, and artist Bernie Wrightson, observing their greatest, most beloved creation.

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Illustration TM & © DC Comics.

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CBC: What is it about Batman that you like?

Len: You could be Batman. Your parents could be killed when you’re a kid and you could grow up to be Batman.

You could never grow up to be Superman. The odds of your planet blowing up and your scientist parents sending you to another solar system are pretty slim. [indicates ST #7, page 12, panel four] That’s got to be my all-time favorite Batman shot, ever.

CBC: But there’s no way you could be seeing what’s going on below with a cape as long as that blowing between your legs! [laughter] Len: Who cares? That’s the… best… panel… ever.

CBC: Had you written Batman stories prior to this?

Len: Sure. One of the very first things I did for DC was a Batman story Marv and I wrote together that Neal Adams drew, “The House That Haunted Batman.” [indicates ST #8] Then, of course, we had to get to Lovecraft eventually!

M’nagalah!

CBC: Where did that name come from, Len? Len: It comes from the old song [sings “Mahna Mahna”].

It’s like a little “Spanish Flea,” M’nagalah? That had a rhythm to me, so the name came out of it, because the whole song was my head.

CBC: Bernie misremembered it as being sung by the Mup-

pets. I can hear Jim Henson’s voice in my head…

Len: Right! The Muppets did sing it, only before there was The Muppet Show. They used to appear regularly on The Ed Sullivan Show and they would use that song from a bit they did. I always liked that song and it was in my head when I was trying — and just the rhythm, M’nagalah comes off that song.

CBC: And the alien story [ST #9]…?

Len: Again, next genre. We hadn’t done aliens, we hadn’t done [Howard Hawks’ 1951 movie] The Thing [From Another World].

CBC: But this is a benevolent alien…

Len: Yeah. Well, because we weren’t doing The Thing, we were just doing our take. It’s got one of my favorite sequences in terms of Swamp Thing, in terms of the art. [indicates ST #9, page 15] You know, there were six soldiers, in essence, who were after this alien, and they’ve captured him, and they all let their opinions be known. “What are we going to do with this creature? Are we going to kill it? Are we going to save it?” As the page goes on, by the time you’re done, two camps are on opposite sides of the creature, who is the center. They have made their positions known physically and they literally have taken sides — one side is on one side, the other on the other side. It’s a brilliant page. I always thought this was great choreography because it’s very subtle. You don’t realize until you’re down to the end of the page that two camps are firmly on their respective sides of the issue.

CBC: Bernie said he was under a rush getting this issue out, so a good portion of this issue is inked by Jeff Jones.

Len: Yes, the back-half was inked by Jeff.

CBC: Bernie remembers being disappointed because he wanted it to be very specific about which character was moving to what side.

Len: Yes, because it was critical to the story. The faces were not inked with Bernie’s incredibly tight lines so you’re not quite sure who is who. Still, this was something we were very proud of at the time. It didn’t play out exactly the way we wanted, but that was our idea.

CBC: Swamp Thing #10: Was this done straight Marvel style? Bernie is credited as plotter.

Len: This is a very weird story. I had a kidney stone attack, my first one, and I was in the hospital for a while. Bernie had a girlfriend at the time who was convincing Bernie that he alone was the reason the book was successful. By the time I went into the hospital, she convinced him that he could do this whole thing by himself, the writing and the art. So he convinced Joe to let him do the next issue on his own. Of course, I’m arguing, “But I’ll be out of the hospital in a couple of days!” But Bernie went ahead and plotted the whole issue out and, before he dialogued it, I came out of the hospital and Joe said, “Well, Len’s back. We should at least let him dialogue the issue,” so they gave me the plot and it had a lot of holes in it. I went through it and said, “You realize if you do this and that and this and that,” because I do have editorial skills, and Joe said, “Oh, Len’s right,” and made Bernie redraw about half the issue to re-plot to match my plot.

Because Bernie was so embarrassed by the ordeal, he left the book after that issue. And so Bernie left. By his doing that story, it completely f*cked-up my original plans for Arcane.

My plan was to have Arcane come back as a big monster himself, to come back in a type of robot chair. The idea was that while the fall had broken every bone in his body and he now had devices to prop himself up and inflate his lungs for him, and he would return in a whole different incarnation, coming back as a great big grotesquerie. But, so what?

CBC: Was it all that you had hoped for, the run with Bernie?

Len: Oh God, yes!

CBC: Did you feel that with Bernie off the book that it would start a downward slide?

Len: Well, I thought it could go on. I did write three more issues and it took those three issues to realize, no, it’s not the same book. While Nestor Redondo was a fine choice as artist, it just wasn’t the same book. The fun wasn’t there any

TM & © DC Comics.

more. I now had to do full scripts all by myself, and we didn’t have those great, wonderful story conferences that Bernie and I would have together with Joe. It became a job.

CBC: Whose choice was it to assign Nestor?

Len: I think that was Joe’s idea, but I thought it was a good choice at the time. Nestor was a terrific artist with a great line.

CBC: [Indicates ST #11] Was this story originally plotted with the thought that Bernie would be drawing it?

Len: No. When Bernie left, Bernie left. That was picked up from an old story I had done in The Phantom Stranger [#14, July–Aug. ’71]. Zachary Nail, the villain of the story, was a guy I’d created in a “Dr. 13: Ghostbreaker” story, “The Specter of the Stalking Swamp.”

CBC: That issue of The Phantom Stranger had a very interesting cover. It was a swamp monster cover by Neal Adams.

Len: Yes, it’s a swamp-like monster, but it really was bought off the back-up story because the lead story was “The Man With No Heart,” the first Phantom Stranger I wrote and one that did not lend itself to a great cover scene.

CBC: Didn’t that issue appear almost simultaneously with House of Secrets #92?

Len: Oh no, that came before. I did Swamp Thing for like a year after I did Phantom Stranger, but I have no head for the dates.

CBC: Did you talk to Nestor at all?

Len: No, he was living in the Philippines at the time so I never actually spoke to him. If I ever did, it was briefly at a convention.

CBC: It was a great disappointment, as a fan, when Bernie moved on, but Nestor really rose to the challenge and did extraordinary work.

Len: [Indicates ST #13] In fact, I was originally going to go elsewhere with the ending of this story but, as I got to the end of it, I went, “You know, this is just no fun at all to stick around anymore.” So I rewrote my ending to end my run on the book. It ends with the same last line as the original short story: “And if tears could come, they would.”

CBC: What are your best memories of the post-Bernie run on the original title?

Len: Well, just the quality of Nestor’s work. Nestor was a genius. But part of the fun I was having on the book was working with Bernie — that sitting down, getting together — and that was gone by then. I thought the stories in the last three issues were fine, but the bounce we had, that kind of energy, was gone.

CBC: Were you privy at all to the sales figures of your run?

Len: Yes, the book was one of the best-selling titles DC had. I was gratified when Paul [Levitz], who made a point to tell me not long after, that the sales didn’t drop significantly after Bernie left. Sales actually continued pretty much the same. They dropped just a little, a slight dip, but sales were still very high. After I left, the book’s sales plunged, which I thought was amazing. I went, “Wow, validity. I actually did make a difference!” [chuckles] CBC: David Michelinie followed you up as scripter. Did you two talk about the book at all?

Len: No, I was done. I didn’t want to be involved.

CBC: Did you continue to read the title?

Len: Of course, I always read it. I read every incarnation of the thing

through and up to Nancy Collins’ run, which I found abominable. I couldn’t read the book after that. People always talk about my style but I never had any idea what my style was until I started reading David’s issues. I went, “Oh, so that’s my style, I write like that. Cool, okay.” [chuckles] I never really knew. You’re never aware of your own quirks in your work, but I got to see what I wrote like.

Reading David’s run, he wrote very much in my style on that book.

CBC: What was it like to win the Shazam Award?

Len: Like winning the Oscar. [hands over the award] There it is, the winner.

CBC: Cool. It’s so heavy. [reading inscription] “Best Writer, Dramatic; Len Wein, 1972”. Did people come up to you and say, “Gosh, Len, the best thing you ever wrote was Swamp Thing, you can go die now.”

Len: You get that occasionally. But in later years, I’d sit there, moping about the state of my career and what I was currently working on, and I’d remember what Harlan Ellison said to me: “You know, if you never work again after today, you wrote Swamp Thing and that’s all you need to remember.”

CBC: And how does that make you feel? Isn’t there some ambivalence to that?

Len: Well, I could believe the best is yet to come. I have gotten much better as a writer over the last dozen or so years and I’ve worked on projects I’m just as proud of. I mean the Batman: Nevermore mini-series I did this past year is something I’m incredibly proud of. I think it’s as good as anything I’ve ever written.

[Artist] Guy Davis did a great job.

CBC: How

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Above: The editor who midwifed the Swamp Thing, Joseph Orlando, in a portrait appearing in Roots of the Swamp Thing #3 [Sept. ’86].

Below: The four heads of Joe Orlando, as depicted by the artist/ editor/story man for the cover of his special issue of The Amazing World of DC Comics [#6, May ’75].

Bottom: Editor, writer, and artist are credited as a team.

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was it, working with Bernie? Was it always fun?

Len: Well, except for that weird little rift on his last issue, yes. I loved working with Bernie. We tried to work together a few other times when I was at Marvel. We were going to do an issue of The Hulk together. He penciled like the first three or four pages, but I don’t know whatever happened to them. But at least he did draw one or two covers for me.

He did a Glob cover

and that was fun. Also, a Hulk Man-Thing cover.

CBC: Did Man-Thing appear prior to Swamp Thing?

Len: I don’t know. You’d have to check the release dates. If so, it was maybe a month or two, if that. You have to remember these things are done months and months in advance. So the fact that it may have come out a month or two earlier doesn’t mean it was done any earlier.

CBC: The writer of the first Man-Thing story was Gerry Conway. What was your relationship with him at the time?

Len: We were sharing an apartment. We were roommates. We had different rooms [chuckles], but we had the same apartment. The insane part of the simultaneous creation of Swamp Thing and Man-Thing was that neither of us knew what the other one was doing. We’d never talked about that.

CBC: You never had suspicions that maybe Gerry was swiping your idea?

Len: Who cares? I mean what he was doing was going to be an on-going series character; I was doing a one-shot mystery story. Why would we talk about it? But who knew? The weirdest thing is that nobody seems to recall or know is that I wrote the second Man-Thing story. I originated what was to become the character’s tagline: “Whoever knows fear burns at the Man-Thing’s touch.” I basically came up with it because in Gerry’s original story, anything the monster touched, burned. In the original story, anything he touched, burned, so I surmised, “You know, you can never do an on-going character who can never interact with anything without setting it on fire.” So I came up with the idea that you had to be afraid of Man-Thing to suffer the chemical reaction.

CBC: How did writing for Savage Tales come about?

Len: Oh, I followed Gerry on a lot of things. I ended up at Marvel in the early ’70s sort of by accident. Gerry and I were roommates for a good chunk of that. I was at DC, Gerry was at Marvel, and every time Gerry would leave a book, I would get offered the gig. I only found out later that this sequence of events was intentional, that Gerry and [Marvel editor-in-chief] Roy Thomas planned it that way. Gerry would say, “I’m leaving Marvel Team-Up. You want to take it over?” I said, “You mean like write Spider-Man? God, sure!” He

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Photo © the respective copyright holder. Man-Thing TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

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would consistently offer me books he was leaving so that I woke up one day and realized I’m working for Marvel. Y’see, little by little, I had to give up DC assignments to take on the Marvel stuff and it turned out to be a calculated plan on their part to get me over there. I was never aware of it. [laughs] CBC: So you had read the initial Man-Thing story?

Len: Oh, sure. How else would I have known what to do with the second story? But again, at that point, Swamp Thing was a dead issue. This was after the short story and I was done. I didn’t expect we were going anywhere else with it so they asked me to do the next “Man-Thing” and I said, “Sure.”

I took it on and I made the changes on the character that stand. I also wrote another Man-Thing story years later for Giant-Size Man-Thing that John Buscema drew, a contemporary riff on Romeo and Juliet.

CBC: I didn’t see a listing for that.

Len: It’s in there [“The Sins of the Fathers…,” GSMT #5, Aug. ’75].

CBC: You edited Man-Thing for a period?

Len: Oh, anything at Marvel I didn’t write that has my name on it was more of a courtesy title than anything. I wasn’t hands-on. At DC, every book that has my name on it went through my hands: I edited, worked with the writers and artists, as well as everybody — colorists, letterers. At Marvel, I was overseeing a line of 50-something titles a month and they were just basically going through with my name on them. I wasn’t looking at much. I just didn’t have the time.

CBC: [Indicates Astonishing Tales #12] This was done Marvel style with [artist] Neal Adams?

Len: This was done Marvel style. If you look at the art on some of the panels, especially the scene where the girl tears free of the villain and what looks to be her blouse is being torn off, but isn’t, you’ll see that that stuff was redrawn by John Romita when it became a Code-approved book. Originally, she was topless. This was originally intended for Savage Tales, which was an adult book. I remember Neal wrote a panel where the guy has got his arm around her with a shotgun and he threatens her life, Neal telling me to come up with the foulest, most disgusting things I could think of for the guy to say, because we weren’t bound by the Code here. But I just couldn’t think of anything that wouldn’t pass as Code-approved. “You cruddy broad.” [laughter] That wasn’t the original dialogue. I don’t remember what I originally wrote, but “cruddy” isn’t a word I would have naturally used.

CBC: I’ve never fathomed why the girl faces in this story were redrawn by John Romita. Neal Adams draws maybe the most beautiful women in the world and, sure, Johnny is excellent, but why erase Neal’s pencils?

Len: I don’t recall, but I’m sure there was something to it. I think she may have been beaten-up and bloody. There was something that was going on there. She might well have been brutalized with blackened eyes and bloody lips.

CBC: There’s a thought. Unfortunately, we’ll never know as the changes weren’t paste-ups. The art was actually erased on the originals, as I’ve seen on photocopies of the original art.

Len: [Pained] Oh, God. CBC: Did the story really end with Man-Thing going, “Arghh”?

Len: Yes, it did.

CBC: The pacing is such that it seems to come abruptly.

Len: Well, the dialogue would have been different. I don’t remember exactly what the script was, but it would have been written to have more of an ending sense to itself, that it was an ending. Some words did change in the transition, some captions and dialogue would have had to change to meet Code approval. But it’s not radically different from the original script. I would say it’s probably 95% of the script I wrote originally.

CBC: What did you think of the art?

Len: Oh, marvelous. I always loved working with Neal.

CBC: Did your star rise with Swamp Thing?

Len: Oh, absolutely. Are you kidding?

CBC: Did you command a better rate?

Len: Yes, I was getting top rate, but comics wasn’t an industry where “top rate” meant very much back then. But, yeah, I became a superstar. [laughter] CBC: How did you meet Glynis?

Len: In college. I went to a two-year school, the State University at Farmingdale. I was taking advertising art and design. (I was going to be an artist, remember.) Those two years were probably the best two years of my life. I loved college. It was one of those classic universities you see in the movies — ivy-covered walls, church bells chiming at noon — and I just loved the place. I loved it so much that I just dropped in for another year after I graduated. I met Glynis during that

All art and characters TM & © DC Comics.

additional year.

CBC: What was she like?

Len: Well, aside from being an axe murderess? [laughs] She was fine. Glynis was a student who was also taking art classes. She was a year behind me. Her family was from Wales, but they had moved here. Her mom was a housewife, her dad was a scientist or an engineer with NASA. He designed the escape hatch of one of the Apollo capsules, I believe.

CBC: How did Glynis get into comics production?

Len: Well, I dragged her. [laughs] A lot of us were dragging our girlfriends into the business at that point. She started working at DC production. I introduced her to Jack Adler and she was interested in coloring and thought it might be fun to try. [Renowned colorist] Tatjana Wood taught her how to color at DC and Tatjana was as good a colorist as DC ever had.

And, of course, Glynis learned from Jack, who had helped design the color system used by comics. Then she went to Marvel and was taught by Marie Severin, so Glynis had the best teachers the industry could offer.

CBC: Did you specifically lobby to get her on the Swamp Thing book?

Len: You bet! But Glynis only did one issue, I think #2.

Bernie wanted to color the book himself, but none of us were happy with his coloring on the first issue, that pinkand-green bar, for example. I pushed for Glynis to color #2, but I think there was a little reaction from Bernie — “Well, how come your girlfriend gets to do it and I can’t?” — and so we settled (settled, like Roxette said to Lord DeVol), we all agreed to have Tatjana color the book, and she was the perfect person for the job.

CBC: How do you look upon letterer Gaspar Saladino’s contribution to Swamp Thing?

Len: Oh, Gaspar contributed significantly to the look of Swamp Thing. I came up with the idea of doing specific

kinds of captions and balloons. When you’re working in a silent visual medium, you have to try to evoke what you want people to “hear” visually, as opposed to actual sound. So I worked very hard to create balloon shapes, and I always did, if you look through a lot of my other books over the years.

I would try to come up with balloon shapes for characters and different kinds of lettering that would try to tell you how you want to “hear” this in your head. That said, Gaspar was wonderful at executing that type of approach. Even if Gaspar didn’t letter entire books, he would be hired to letter the splash pages, just to get the logos and the story titles in because he’s as good as the industry ever had.

CBC: What is Gaspar like?

Len: He’s a very nice guy, very friendly, and he reminded me of many of the letterers of that time, Ben Oda, who was a yeoman. (Ben was the second-best letterer up at DC and he did a lot of my stuff.) Gaspar was a very friendly, amiable guy, and I liked him and he liked me. I worked with him wherever I could because again, you want to work with the best.

CBC: When Jenette Kahn came in as DC’s new publisher in 1976, did you know how she regarded your run with Bernie on Swamp Thing?

Len: Oh, I think she was a fan, but I don’t recall many conversations.

CBC: That run of Swamp Thing was reprinted in a series of Dollar Comics early in Jenette’s tenure.

Len: That series was reprinted, pretty much, every hour on the hour. Plus they reprinted it again later, in the ’80s.

CBC: Did you get a piece of the action?

Len: Well, we get a piece of the action now.

Back then, I got a standard reprint rate.

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Previous page: At top, an early ’70s Halloweentime pic of Len (standing) and DC staffer Mark Hanerfeld, who would dress up as the brothers Cain and Abel from the DC mystery books. At bottom is a Neal Adams panel from Len’s “Man-Thing” story intended for Savage Tales #2. This page: Top is Bernie Wrightson’s wraparound art for the 1977 DC reprinting of Swamp Thing #1 and 2. Below is a 1977 French edition of same.

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Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

The Incredible Hulk, Man-Thing TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. Illustration © Bernie Wrightson. Swamp Thing TM & © DC Comics.

CBC: How did you hear about the movie production deal?

Len: Well, Michael Uslan used to be one of the Junior Woodchucks up there. After my stint at Marvel as editor-in-chief, DC coaxed me back and I quickly found out a Swamp Thing movie was in the works. So I went into Jenette’s office one day and said, “We should revive Swamp Thing.” She asked, “You going to write it?”

I said, “No.” She said, “Then why should we revive it?” I said, “Because there’s a movie out there to help support it.

At the very least, we should run the book for a few issues to see if the movie makes a difference.” So she said, “That makes sense,” which is why the second issue’s cover is a shot from the film.

So DC went back into the Swamp Thing business with me as the editor. I worked initially with [artist] Tom Yeates and [writer] Marty Pasko.

CBC: Was that the entire thinking, to support

the movie? Or was the character, in fact, worth reviving?

Len: I always thought it was worth reviving, but I just wasn’t going to write it again at that point in time.

CBC: You just had nothing to say?

Len: It’s not that. [sighs] People have asked Steve Ditko over the years, “Would you ever go back and do Spider-Man again?” He would reply, “I’ve thought about it now and again, but I never will.” They said, “Why?” He said, “Because I wouldn’t be in competition with the work I had done way back when. I would be in competition with people’s memory of the work I had done way back when.” That makes a big difference. You know, people remember if they want to remember. It has nothing to do with whatever the reality of the situation was. And I felt there was no way I was going to be able to compete with people’s memories of Swamp Thing, as opposed to whatever Bernie and I had actually done.

CBC: What did you think of the movie?

Len: Where it was good, it was very, very good. Where it wasn’t, it wasn’t.

CBC: Were you involved in the production itself?

Len: I was on the set for a couple of days. They flew me down there to South Carolina, North Carolina, wherever they were shooting it.

CBC: You weren’t hired as a consultant to the movie?

Len: No, I wasn’t involved at all.

CBC: Were you credited as the creator?

Len: Well, I would have been. There was going to be a creator’s credit, but Bernie threatened to sue for more money. Some lawyer got their hands into Bernie and tried to convince him that the company had no legal right to whatever, and so Bernie calls up the day that our credit is supposed to go up on the movie and threatens to sue. At which point, Warner lawyers say, “Take their name off.” They didn’t want to give him anymore ammunition for a lawsuit. So our names were not on the first movie as a result.

CBC: Would the credits have just have been lip service, so to speak?

Would it have amounted to anything?

Len: Define “anything.”

CBC: Money. [laughs] Len: We got a fair bit of money off the movie. It was a token. Technically, after a certain date, there are creators deals where creators get 10% of any licensing. So what they essentially did because Swamp Thing was sold, licensed, for one of the worst licensing fees in history by Sol Harrison because Sol didn’t think the property had any value. He sold all of the ancillary rights to Swamp Thing, the film rights and everything else, to Uslan and Melniker for $60,000, which was just cab fare in terms of Hollywood. So Joe, Bernie, and I split 10% of it. We got about $2,000 each.

CBC: What did you think? Obviously, Siegel and Shuster had gone through their situation. You must have been obviously cognizant of that.

Len: Well, sure, but that time was a different universe. We didn’t realize we had the rights or options. [chuckles] I do remember that when we discovered we had them, we started to exercise them.

CBC: And when did that occur?

Len: The early to mid-’70s.

CBC: Were you perturbed by them yanking your credits off the movie?

Len: Oh, at that time, I was pissed at Bernie because he was single-handedly the reason our names weren’t on the first film.

CBC: But did he have a point?

Len: No, not at that time. A point was there, but he was going at it for all the wrong reasons and with all the wrong arguments. In fact, it was all resolved two or three weeks later when basically, they came back to them and said, “They’re going at this for all the wrong reasons, for all the wrong arguments, and I proved it to him. He went, “Oh, never mind.” But, at that point, it was too late. The movie was out and our names were not on it. But our names have been on every other incarnation after that was resolved. Our names were on the second film, on the TV series… our names, in fact, are the first thing you see on the animated series before anything else, even before the name of the series. It says “Created by Len Wein and Berni Wrightson,” then “Swamp Thing” comes up.

CBC: How did that feel?

Len: Oh, it was great! It’s always nice to see your name on the screen.

CBC: Did you know that Orlando wished his name would have been there, too?

Len: I’m sure he did. Part of it is… [sighs] it isn’t always the fairest, not even in comic books. Your job as an editor is as an editor. There are at least two series at DC, not currently ongoing, that have existed because I, as an editor, created a concept and gave to a writer to develop. I said, “Here’s your name, here’s your basic premise, go give me a finished series.” Those series list the writer’s name as “created by,” not any editor. Still, the concepts are

Illustration © Bernie Wrightson. Swamp Thing TM & © DC Comics.

mine. I created them. I handed the name and the concept to someone else and that’s the act of creation. I don’t see a penny. I see nothing… but that was my job as editor, to give up it. Joe’s job as an editor was to do what Joe did. He was not there as a creator, he was there as an editor, and since I’ve been on exactly the same side of the desk, in exactly the same position, I think he was wrong. It’s not his place to do that. Joe’s job was to be the editor, not to be one of the writers, and so wanting credit as a creator on a thing he didn’t create, but simply directed — sorry, that’s not the way it works.

CBC: It’s the money that creates sour grapes, right? One wouldn’t bitch about if there wasn’t any money, right? It’s just human nature to envy.

Len: It is human nature. Bernie and my deal with DC on Swamp Thing is greatly improved. My wife negotiated us a much better contract when the characters came up for copyright renewal, so now we get 10% of everything. The best check I saw last year came out of my creator’s share of one of the Alan Moore Swamp Thing collections which just got into trade paperback last year. I had nothing to do with that except having co-created the character. So those kinds of things are fine and much better. You know, when this new movie goes through production, whether or not my script ends up being used, I will see a good chunk of change.

Though I created the character, I don’t see Penny One off any of any Wolverine material. I don’t see a cent. But I do see money on Swamp Thing. You know, if I had 1%… f*ck it!… if I had one-half of 1% of all the revenues generated by just Wolverine alone — forgetting Storm, Nightcrawler, and the rest of the X-Men — just Wolverine alone, I would never have to work another day in my life.

CBC: Do you deserve that money?

Len: Of course I do. Everyone else is making a fortune off of it. I’ve never had a problem. I never have thought of my lot as opposed to other lots until the day Chris Claremont bought an airplane.

CBC: You’ve obviously seen your best friend go through a situation with Blade.

Len: At least Marv’s name is on the movies. Where’s my name on the X-Men movies? I mean there’s Stan and Jack together, but where’s my name on the movie? You know, the star of those movies is Wolverine. After X-Men 3, the next movie they’re planning is a solo Wolverine feature, without the rest of the X-Men. CBC: Did you choose the creative team on The Saga of the Swamp Thing?

Len: Yes, sure. I’m the editor. I’m the one who hired Alan Moore.

CBC: Why Tom Yeates?

Len: At the time, I thought his style was kind of similar to Bernie’s. Tom was different — there’s only one Bernie — but something about Tom’s work evoked the same kind of flavor Bernie’s art did for me.

CBC: How did you describe Bernie’s style?

Len: [Sighs] Classical. In his heyday, nobody had a better ink line than Bernie. Bernie’s ink line is impeccable. I used to watch him, in one stroke, go from a line that was as thin as a human hair to as thick as your arm and back again in a stroke of the brush. That’s amazing brush control.

CBC: Why Marty Pasko?

Len: I thought he had the right sensibility for the book.

CBC: Did he?

Len: Yes and no. I think he labored too hard over some of it. You know, I don’t think he was as happy with the book as he could have been. You always have to work with what you’ve got at the moment. You know, a week later, somebody else may have a different view. You have to wonder where somebody was. But you look at who’s available at the time and who seems — and Marty’s a good writer and I thought I could work with Marty. Again, I think he got a little busy and that’s probably my fault for not pulling him back, but he was emotionally committed and involved and sometimes, that’s

more important. A nuance here and there.

CBC: Marty literally took the book out of the swamp, didn’t he?

Len: Yes, for the most part, but so did I. Halfway through the second issue, Swamp Thing’s out of the swamp and doesn’t get back until towards the end of my run.

CBC: How do you assess yourself as an editor?

Len: I think I’m an excellent editor. Not to be facetious, but I’m probably a better editor than I am a writer.

CBC: Did you keep an eye on the Kubert School at all?

Len: No, not really, just when they got to DC or in the business elsewhere. I didn’t look at them as students; I looked at who was in the business, working as professionals.

CBC: Were back-up strips included to help ease up the pressure on the lead feature?

Len: I think part of it was that getting the book on schedule, getting things done, and taking some pressure off of Tom. CBC: Was it an easy run prior to Alan Moore or do you recall it as being difficult?

Len: Yeah, well, keeping the art up was harder than the writing, frankly. Tom was having a

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Previous page: Top, courtesy of Scott Dunbier and IDW, the original art for Bernie Wrightson’s Incredible Hulk #197 [Mar. ’76] cover with his rendition of ManThing. Bottom is a recent Swamp Thing piece by Bernie. This page: Top is Bernie’s pencil layout for “A Clockwork Horror,” Swamp Thing #6 [Sept.–Oct. ’73]; below is Gaspar Saladino’s outstanding logo.

Alas, we had hoped to include the brilliant letterer’s memories of working on the title, but time got the better of us.

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Swamp Thing TM & © DC Comics.

hard time making that schedule, even with the back-ups.

CBC: Did you know he often got help from Stan Woch?

Len: Yes, I was aware. We ended up hiring John Totleben, then Totleben suggested Bissette, and we went from there.

CBC: What did you think of John’s work?

Len: I loved John’s work. It was incredibly detailed.

CBC: And did you enjoy Steve Bissette’s contributions?

Len: Oh, I loved the energy.

His stuff was exactly right for that book. It was unpleasant to look at — and I don’t mean that in a negative way — and it was the best kind of unpleasant to look at in a book that should make you all the more uncomfortable while you read it.

CBC: Did you think, “Hey, this is really getting to be a horror book!”?

Len: Yeah! I mean it had been a horror book that had became horrible… or horrifying, more accurately. [chuckles] I wouldn’t say “horrible,” because everybody did great work, but the book became an oddity so it makes you a little uncomfortable when you read it.

CBC: How did the Alan Moore connection come about?

Len: I remember reading some of Alan’s stuff in Warrior and various other things, going, “This is a guy who might be able to take over the book.”

I think Marty left comics and he went to television. I had Mishkin and Cohn do a couple of fill-in issues and was looking for somebody to take over the book on a regular basis, and there was Alan and his stuff in the British books had exactly the right sensibility, and it

was kind of weird and creepy, and I thought, “I wonder if he’d be interested.” So I tracked down his phone number and called him.

CBC: And? Len: He wouldn’t believe it was me. He hung up on me the first time!

[Imitates Alan] “Come on, who’s havin’ me on?” I said, “No, no! It is me, Len Wein.” He said, “Yeah, right.” Click!

Yep, I had to call him back. [laughter] CBC: “No, no, it’s a trunk call. Don’t hang up.”

Len: Well, it was on DC’s dime, so that didn’t bother me, but I wondered whether he’d be interested in writing Swamp Thing.

CBC: Once he did accept the assignment, did he quickly come up with a proposal?

Len: Oh, absolutely, including “The Anatomy Lesson” and storylines. I had a deal for quite a while at DC, even after I was done editing his books and was not involved, I received copies of his scripts because the art description is every bit as entertaining as what’s actually in the dialogue and captions. He’s the only writer I have ever known who could turn in a 115-page script for a 32-page comic.

CBC: What was the process? You would receive his scripts through the mail, and then what would you do?

Len: Well, he worked on an old manual typewriter and he would write out, type almost to the edges of the paper. There was very little gutter. It was very weird. They were very deep and intense and filled. It was just fascinating to read and so entertaining.

CBC: Okay, he finally accepted your second call, right?

What did you say?

Len: I said, “I’d like you to do the book.” And he said, “All right.” I said, “Well, give me some ideas. Let me know where you want to go with it,” and I got a rough overview of where he wanted to take the book.

CBC: Now you had to have a script very quickly, right? Was it sudden news to you to learn that Marty was leaving?

Len: Pretty much. In fact, the fill-ins were already in place.

I already had a fill-in working because Marty and the gang were falling behind. So Alan turned it around and I got “The Anatomy Lesson” very quickly.

CBC: And what was your reaction to it?

Len: It was cool. “I hadn’t even thought about going this way. This is great.” You know, people are always asking me what do I think about what he did with the character and I keep reminding them I was the editor who let him do that stuff. I had no problems.

CBC: Right. Did he say, right off the bat, “I want to reinvent the character”?

Len: I don’t think he used that phrase exactly, but he was clearly reinventing the character and that was fine. Marv and I have an ongoing agreement about the industry and the history of comics, that every generation is entitled to its own version of a character. The best phrase I ever heard about incarnations goes back to when Tony Isabella was complaining in the pages of The Comics Buyer’s Guide many years ago when the Hawkworld incarnation of Hawkgirl was about to happen. Tony wrote this vitriolic letter, “I hate this. This is not the real Hawkman. To me, Hawkman is always going to be Katar Hall from the planet Thanagar.” You know, the one he grew up on, the one that Kubert drew. Don’s response was, “That’s funny. I always thought the real Hawkman was the reincarnation of the Egyptian prince,” because that’s the one he grew up on. Everybody’s entitled to their version.

I don’t mind Kyle Rayner being this Green Lantern or Wally West being The Flash. That’s this generation’s version, so I have no problem with Alan coming in and doing his genera-

Swamp Thing TM & © DC Comics.

tion’s version of Swamp Thing. That’s fine.

CBC: Was it a profound change?

Len: Well, as it went on and he discovered that towards the fact that our hero was not Alec Holland, but some plant that thought it was Alec Holland. Sure, it was a very profound change.

CBC: How would you characterize it? Was it brilliant?

Len: Oh, it was astonishing. It was looking at something 180-degrees the opposite way.

CBC: Was it one of the favorite scripts you can put your finger as having edited?

Len: Oh, absolutely. When Alan was at his peak, Alan was incomparable. I feel Alan has problems in his works, sometimes, and I started to realize after I left the book and Karen Berger took over at that, every story was structured exactly the same way.

CBC: And how’s that?

Len: With three acts. First act: Fascinating menace rears its head, all the pieces are put into play. Second act: The menace demonstrates how monstrous it is. (Think about the three-part Floronic Man story, for example, in the second act where he’s devastating humanity.) The third Act: Swamp Thing gets wind of the problem, shows up and defeats the menace with one word or action. Literally every story was set up that way. In the case of the Floronic Man, where Swamp Thing finally shows up, and the Floronic Man is going, “Well, we’re going to destroy all the meat. Just the vegetables will rule the world.” Swamp Thing goes, “Well, good. If you kill of the animals, who creates the carbon dioxide we need to live on?” The villain says, “Oh, sh*t,” and it all falls apart, literally. [laughter] In one sentence, he has no questions asked, it’s Crapper City, and that goes on with most of the stories. If you look through them, you’ll discover each one is essentially structured the same way. So I started to get a little tired of that.

But Alan’s wordcraft is never anything less than extraordinary. Even if every plot’s identical, the words never are.

They’re breathtaking.

CBC: What kind of editor are you? Are you a hands-on editor, so to speak, of putting your imprint on the material? You know, that’s kind of two schools, I’d like to think. There’s a Weisinger school of the stick and there’s the Archie Goodwin school of the carrot. One is perhaps imposing on creators, the other more to inspire the creators.

Len: Oh God, I’m probably more of the Goodwin school, I would say, than the Weisinger school. I always felt I did my job best as editor when it appeared I was doing it least because my goal was hire the right people and get the hell out of their way. If they start to veer off course, my job is to steer them back in the direction they want to be going, but otherwise leave them alone and just support them. And again, the covers, the production values, I don’t think you’ll find anybody who ever worked with me who said I was less than the best hands-on technical editor, certainly. I would

edit copy where I needed to edit copy. When I started as a hands-on editor, Marv said to me, “Make sure you don’t imprint your style on everyone else.

They should be allowed to be their own writers,” and I came to believe that. So I worked very hard to never undercut another writer’s style, just because it wasn’t mine.

CBC: How do you finally assess your experience of working with Alan?

Len: Overall, I think it was tremendous.

CBC: Did you two ever argue?

Len: Occasionally. Again, when I received “The Nukeface Papers,” the two-parter he wrote, I didn’t want to use it. I didn’t like that story. I said, “Nope, not doing it.”

He argued and I said, “I understand your points of view, I completely appreciate them, and it’s my job as editor to say ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ and I’m saying, ‘no.’”

CBC: Why were you saying no?

Len: I just didn’t like the story. I don’t remember the specifics of why right now, but what he pitched, I didn’t think was a good story. I felt it was inappropriate for the characters.

Again, I don’t remember all the details. I just remember going, “Nope, I don’t like this. Don’t do this.”

CBC: As far as you recall, was Saga on its last legs?

Len: No. It wasn’t setting the world on fire, but it wasn’t soaking wet, either.

CBC: It wasn’t on the verge of being cancelled?

Len: No, but the notion is wonderful melodrama. You know, “Oh, and Alan Moore comes and saves the day.” No, the book was ongoing.

CBC: I think it was Alan’s memory that it was your suggestion to guest-star the Justice League of America in the book.

Len: It may have been, just tie them to our world, to the DC Universe.

CBC: That immediately followed with The Demon. Was it your suggestion for the Demon to appear?

Len: I don’t remember. I can talk about the whole rhyming thing with the Demon.

Actually, Jack had done it sporadically in the first issue and then dropped it. Also, he dropped the ruffled cuffs and the scalloped cape. When I brought the character back in DC Comics Presents, all of that came back. The rhyming was predominantly my idea, more than anyone else.

CBC: How did Karen Berger become involved?

Len: She started out as Paul Levitz’s assistant protégé and then I worked with her on a lot of things. One of the weirdest compliments I ever got was a few years

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Previous page: Suddenly Swamp Thing merged from second-string status at DC with the release of Wes Craven’s film adaptation in 1982, starring (top) Adrienne Barbeau and Dick Durock as the creature. This page: But it was the relative success of the animated series in 1991 that spawned a bounty of merchandise, including a board game, as well as action figures and accessories. Below is the cover of the handsome 320-pg.

2009 hardcover collected edition of the Wein/Wrightson/Redondo run, DC Comics Classic Library: Roots of the Swamp Thing.

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Swamp Thing TM & © DC Comics.

back at the San Diego Comic-Con was when I was talking to Paul Levitz and I was complimenting [Vertigo editor] Alisa Kwitney (my editor on The Dreaming Special I wrote) and [Marvel editor] Axel Alonso (who I had been talking to about several projects) about how good I thought they were as editors. Paul said, “Well, pat yourself on the back.” I said, “What do you mean?” Paul said, “They’re your grandchildren. Who did you teach?” I said, “Karen.” Paul said, “Who do you think taught them?” [pause] And I went, “Ohhhh.” [laughter] Karen was hired by Paul when he was sort of getting out of editing. I was their top editor and I just basically saw the potential in her. I took her under my wing and taught her a lot. I really think very highly of what she does… about five or 10 years ago, I was in the office one day and she was sitting there, editing a script, hands-on proofreading an issue of something. I watched her do one of the tricks I had taught her a long time ago. There were these little things I would do to clean up a page or make things look more attractive. And here she was, doing exactly the same thing I had taught her, and I said, “That feels good.”

CBC: She was as close to a protégé as anyone in the business?

Len: Oh, yes. I had other people… Joey Cavalieri worked a lot for me and I gave him a his start, and Marc DeMatteis was one of my good protégés.

CBC: Why did you leave as editor of Swamp Thing?

Len: I just moved on to other stuff. I kept getting diagonally promoted in the company. I left Swamp Thing to Karen and that last year I was at DC, my editorial job was the best I ever had. I was troubleshooter, actually paid to make the line better. I had no specific books, maybe a couple of titles towards the end. But for the most part, my job was to walk around the office, sit in with other editors and say, “If you made that balloon, that would be better,” and improve the line. So that was fine. By the time I left, I was not really editing any books I had done. I was writing several books a month. But the transition moving to California was easy because I wasn’t actually hands-on editing much of anything anymore. The other thing I want to touch on was the fact I was editing Watchmen at that point, the first seven issues. Barbara Kesel (or Randall, at the time) edited the last five. In fact, one of my big disappointments in leaving was that I was not going to allow Alan to write the last issue the way he wrote it because I felt it was an insult to go through 11 brilliant issues and then tell everybody in the last issue, “Oh, by the way, this entire story is a rip-off of an old Outer Limits episode,” which he not only does to the point of using that same punchline, but has somebody in his famous twopage spread, when you see the big monster in the middle of the city streets, somebody is up in one of the apartments, listening to that episode of The Outer Limits. There’s a great quote from Michelangelo that says, “Where I steal my ideas, I leave my knife.” Alan was very blatant about that.

CBC: What was the Outer Limits episode?

Len: It’s called “Architects of Fear.” It’s stars Robert Culp is about scientists who basically take a human being, turn him into an alien, then set him up to crash land back on earth to get all of humanity to find something to rally together about. You know, if all the nations of the world believe there is an alien invasion forthcoming, rather than fighting each other, all people will band together to prepare for this other menace they see coming in from beyond. And that was the ending of Watchmen.

CBC: What was the reaction to “Anatomy Lesson”?

Len: Oh, tremendous. I think Alan was a breath of fresh air in the industry.

People were amazed by this guy’s capacity for the language.

CBC: How did the aborted Swamp Thing mini-series come about?

Len: Bernie and I had been talking and decided we wanted to get back onto the DC playground again. They were doing a lot of these graphic novels at DC. You know, Batman: The Cult, various other things, and Bernie was working on that when we thought this is the place to go if we could do something.

CBC: Do you know at what stage this was in Alan’s run?

Len: No, I actually do not. I have no idea.

CBC: But it was well into it?

Len: Yes, because Karen was going to be the editor. She was editing Swamp Thing at that point. We made a pitch to DC. I had a rough idea for what the story would be and it was going to be called Déjà Vu. With DC, we worked out a rough contract for the project as graphic novels were a different universe. We were not paid page rates but were paid in advance against royalties. DC flew me up to Woodstock, where Bernie lived, and for three days, we’d plot out this epic. Just like the old days in Joe Orlando’s office, only with this time Karen Berger playing mediator, Bernie and I worked out the story, which he would break down, page-by-page, panel-by-panel, on the notepaper he sketched on. This turned out to be, arguably, the best story I had ever written and I couldn’t have been more proud. It was a story about Swamp Thing experimenting with the Green. (A number of concepts were diluted out of my outline but, because they paid me a considerable amount of money, I couldn’t complain about them taking some of the ideas I had come up with in this thing.) I came up with the Gray and a number of other concepts including one, which was Swamp Thing’s ability to travel through time. He discovers that moving through the Green, that since a lot of this stuff is eternal, trees and things go back for centuries, he can move through time by moving through some of these trees. You know, the rings of trees every year? And so he goes back into his own past, realizes after experimenting a little bit that he can go back and stop the explosion that created him. He could stop this from ever happening and basically, he does. He goes back to the day at the barn, kills Ferret, Bruno, and Benny before they can get in there, saves the day and Swamp Thing ceases to exist. Alec Holland and Linda go on, their lives are happy, he creates the formula and ultimately, there’s a flaw in the formula and it starts to affect the whole world. The Green starts turning into the Gray. It starts to kill the planet. And all this goes on and finally, Alec ends up having to create himself as Swamp Thing again, knowing that the only way to save the world is to control it. He creates the accident that creates the Swamp Thing and this new Swamp Thing has to go back in time to stop himself from saving himself. So he goes back a third time and, this time, as the Swamp Thing starts to move forward to stop Bruno, Benny, and Ferret, another Swamp Thing grabs him and says, “You can’t,” holds him back and lets it transpire. They watch as the barn explodes and Alec Holland goes racing past them into the water. And everything comes full circle. Everything adjusts, the other incarnations cease to exist, and life goes on as we know it.

CBC: And so it goes.

Len: I thought it was a great story. Bernie laid out the first issue and then had this brain fart. He said, “I can’t do this anymore,” and left the project in the lurch. Paul had no interest in doing it with anyone else but Bernie and I. CBC: For the sake of the story, did you want to go move on?

Len: Desperately. I was trying to find another alternative artist who went to the Wrightson School, so to speak. I suggested Kelley Jones whose stuff was more like Bernie’s at the time, and I suggested a few other people, but Paul said, “No. The whole point was to have you guys go back and do it. If it’s not the two of you, it’s not worth doing.”

CBC: Did you understand Bernie’s reasoning? That he couldn’t go back to the well again?

Len: Not completely. Going back is exactly what the story was about. That’s why it was called Déjà Vu. You know: “Been there, seen this, doing it again.”

It was closure, and that’s why it worked so well as a concept.

CBC: Did it create a rift in your friendship?

Len: Oh, yes. Several times over the years, Bernie did that to me; screwing up our credit in the first movie, screwing up this project.

CBC: Had you done full-script?

Len: No, because otherwise, I would have found some way to get that out there. No, it was going to be done the traditional Swamp Thing style.

CBC: Have you ever considered returning to it?

Len: For a number of years, but there was never a hard copy plot. What I’m working on from now is my memory. Bernie would have to somewhere find his notes that he was drawing from to do this because all we had was running around the room all day as we did with the original and writing down, “Panel one, a picture of a duck. Panel two, Swamp Thing walks into the room. Panel three — ” So we’d have to find Bernie’s stuff to do it because

All art and characters TM & © 2014 Marvel Characters, Inc.

that’s the only place it exists any more.

CBC: This was going to be a three-issue mini-series?

Len: Right, and to be collected as a graphic novel, one of those trade paperback graphic novel collection things, designed from the start to be collected later.

CBC: Have you returned to the character?

Len: I’m writing a film treatment.

CBC: Did you have any input on the television series?

Len: No, this is before, when I was still living back East, before I got into television. So I wasn’t really writing television.

If I had been, I’m sure I would have been working on the show. But I wasn’t here or in the biz at the time.

CBC: What did you think of the show?

Len: It was odd. Every once in a while, they’d do something really interesting. But what Arcane, as created in the original comic book, was in his 90s. As seen in the films, he was 60ish, but seen in the TV show, he’s in his mid-30s, misplayed

by Mark Lindsay Chapman. Now that we’re talking about having Arcane in the new movie, Joel Silver was talking about Christian Bale playing Arcane in the movie. So I’m thinking, “Well, if that’s the case, by the time we get to the TV series, Arcane will have to be played by Haley Joel Osment.”

CBC: [Laughs] The cartoon series, did you see any of that?

Len: Well, I saw the episodes. They were okay. They were what they were. I’m hoping the new feature will do well enough to initiate another TV show to initiate more animated things and toys because now I’ll see money off of all that.

CBC: Is this third movie any relation to the previous two?

Len: No, it starts from scratch. It completely ignores the existence of the first two.

CBC: How did you hear about it?

Len: Paul Levitz set it up. People do not give Paul anywhere near enough credit for the good works he does this business.

He has said to me that one of his goals, before he leaves, is to try to fix all the inequities he possibly can in the history of this business. He had a meeting just a couple days ago with Neil Gaiman about Neil writing the next draft of the Sandman movie and try to figure out what to do. So he suggested me to the people at Silver Pictures to write the Swamp Thing script and I said, “Okay, fine.”

CBC: How much of the script is based on the comics?

Len: It’s based on half my work and half of Alan’s. I’ve made some adjustments in this thing and it may change radically. I have made a number of changes: Arcane is much younger; Linda’s gone; Abigail is the girlfriend from the get-go… but I do use a lot of stuff from “The Anatomy Lesson,” and there’s a scene at the funeral from one of the stories, where he finds Alec’s corpse. That’s in there. The usual guys, Ferret and Benny and Bruno are there.

CBC: Can’t get rid of them, huh?

Len: Well, I like them. It’s a mix-and-match. It’s about 50% me, 50% what Alan did. I actually have a love scene in there.

The one where she eats the tuber — “The Rites of Spring” — is a scene in there, but no one seems to like it but me so it’ll probably be gone. The studio keeps going, “It’s creepy.

We don’t want to do that.”

CBC: Is this coming full-circle, in a way?

Len: It’s always nice to go back and visit this with a new perspective with a new ability in a new medium. So, yeah, I’m having a great time.

CBC: What do you think of Swamp Thing? Does he mean something to you as a character?

Len: It put me on the map. And again, I think there’s a connection with the character that I haven’t had with many other characters. Some I created, but he is special to me because as somebody pointed out (I guess it was Steve Englehart): He’s me without my ever having realized it. He’s my alter ego.

CBC: I guess you would have affection for him.

Len: I do, I do, like a parent for his child.

CBC: Did you ever have any kind of inclination to pitch a Swamp Thing/Man-Thing team-up?

Len: No, it seems incestuous, somehow. [laughter] Also, you’ve got the problem of Man-Thing from the get-go: It only

reacts. The Swamp Thing is a proactive character, the ManThing is reactive. It’s difficult.

CBC: What do you think you guys started off this weird little sub-genre of horror comics within ’70s comics?

Len: It’s where we all came from. We all rose out of the primordial ooze. You know, the first creature that stuck its head above water and went, “Hey, this is interesting. I’ll have to see what this looks like before.” It took the first steps onto the land. There’s something about these kinds of characters, these swamp creatures, which remind us of where we came from, I think, on some deep subliminal level. You see, that’s the only thing that makes sense to me. You know, creatures of the Pecos don’t have anywhere near the same effect on us as do creatures from the swamp.

Previous page: Writer Len Wein and mucky cosplayer at a recent comic con.

This page: Len’s co-creation of Swamp Thing, an immensely popular and enduring character, is not the only success of the writer’s career. As a matter of fact, his character Wolverine, co-created with artist Herb Trimpe, has spawned a solo movie franchise for Sony Pictures, as well as prominent appearances in a whole slew of X-Men films. Top is the Incredible Hulk #180 [Oct. ’74] page that introduced the mutant; pencils by Herb, inks by Jack Abel. This one page of original art was gifted by Herb to a fan in 1983 and was sold by the lucky recipient for $657,250 at auction this past spring. Above right is Wolvie’s first cover appearance, Hulk #181 [Nov. ’74].

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

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Bernie and the Bayou Beast

Wrightson on the monster that made the man and the man who made the monster Conducted by JON B. COOKE [Along with future Studio-mates Barry Windsor-Smith and Michael Wm. Kaluta, Bernard Albert Wrightson became one of the finest artists of his generation to work in the mainstream comic book realm, and it was in the pages of Swamp Thing where the prodigy improved his already considerable talents into an entirely new sphere.

By the time Bernie left the title, the Baltimore-raised creator was in universal demand, and he would produce awesome work for the Warren black-&-white horror line, and then to create his magnum opus, illustrations for Bernie Wrightson’s Frankenstein. Hollywood discovered Bernie shortly thereafter and he would find work as designer on Ghostbusters, Heavy Metal, and The Mist, among others.

He would also become an illustrator for Stephen King’s Creepshow, The Stand and Cycle of the Werewolf, and others. This interview is excerpted from a two day interview conducted on Jan. 21–22, 2004 in his studio in San Fernando Valley, California.

This interview was transcribed by Brian K. Morris. The remaining segment of the discussion will appear in our next issue, which cover-features the artist, where you’ll find out why Bernie gained an “e” at the end of his name! — Y.E.] Comic Book Creator: When did you read your first horror comic?

Bernie Wrightson: I don’t know. But there was a store on the corner in the old neighborhood, before we moved to the suburbs, and they had a soda fountain in there and a candy counter. It was a shop where you went to get soda and cigarettes. (I don’t know what you’d call it — a sundries shop, or

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Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Photo © the respective copyright holder. Illustration © Bernie Wrightson. Swamp Thing © DC Comics.

Above: Bernie Wrightson, artist wunderkind, relaxes in the ’70s.

Below: A pencil sketch from that same decade of Bernie’s most beloved creation, Swamp Thing.

something? — but I always thought of it as the drug store.)

One wall of this place was a comic-book rack and (don’t ask me if I’ve since imagined the amount because I was just a kid!) it seemed like hundreds of comic books on this rack, from the floor, all the way to the ceiling. You know, just one comic book after another… Archie, Little Lulu, Donald Duck, Superman… all the comic-book titles of the day were up there, and, of course, there were also the E.C. Comics.

You know, Tales From the Crypt, The Vault of Horror, and everything, and that was the stuff I wanted. And they had a storefront window and, instead of putting merchandise to display, they built little window seats around this window kid-sized window seats — just these little boxy things. And you could come in and rent a comic book for two cents. I mean you could buy it whole for 10¢, but you had the option to rent the comic for only two cents! They had a little dish on the counter to put your two cents in, right? So you could sit there in the store, read the comic, then put it back on the rack, or pass it to your friend, right? And this is what we did.

You know, both of my parents worked so when I got out of school, which was a couple of blocks away, I knew they wouldn’t be home for an hour so I’d go to this place with a bunch of friends and we’d read comics. That’s where I read most of my first E.C. Comics.

CBC: How old were you?

Bernie: I would have been five or six years old.

CBC: Obviously, it was distasteful to your mother, the horror comics. Did it feel like you were doing something wrong by reading it, that it was forbidden?

Bernie: Oh, absolutely! Part of it was Catholic guilt. I was raised Catholic, so I know about guilt!

CBC: Did you go to church every week?

Bernie: Oh, yes.

CBC: Did you go to confession?

Bernie: Yes, though I never confessed about reading comics, because reading them was not a sin.

CBC: No yet, anyway. [laughter] Bernie: Right. It was something that I knew my mother didn’t like. You know, it was like any time I was reading those things at the store, or at a friend’s house, my mother was always there in spirit, hanging over my shoulder. It’s as if I could feel her presence while I was indulging in a guilty pleasure.

CBC: Did you look at other horror comic publishers as well?

Bernie: [Laughs] Oh, I did, yeah. Early on, very quickly, I was able to tell the difference. For one thing, you couldn’t miss an E.C. comic because the format was so strong. Every title of theirs had the same cover layout with the big, drippy title letters and the pictures of the hosts, the three little circles. So yeah, even if I didn’t read the title, I knew it was an E.C. and knew that these were better than the others, although I did read a lot of the others.

CBC: Did you read the Atlas stuff?

Bernie: Oh, absolutely, but I knew the E.C. stuff was the best. You know, I couldn’t have told you at the time that they were better drawn because I was just a kid, so how’re you going to know? But looking back on it, that’s what I responded to. I responded to that level of artwork in most comics.

They were much more realistic. You know, I looked at an E.C.

Swamp Thing TM & © DC Comics. Bernie Wrightson portrait © Jackie Estrada.

The Muck-Monster Makers comic and it was like this is a drawing of a real guy, this is a drawing of a real woman. And I’d look at the other ones and, well, that’s a cartoon.

CBC: Did you realize that comics were being oppressed at the time? Was there any sermons within the church that there was this nationwide campaign against crime and horror comics?

Bernie: No, not in that large sense. I only knew that my parents and just about any other grown-up that I knew disapproved.

CBC: But they didn’t forbid you to read the comics?

Bernie: Well, no, I was forbidden, but I did it anyway. A couple of times, I was dumb enough to bring these things home and my mom would tear them up and throw them in the trash and tell me, “I don’t want you reading this stuff.”

CBC: Or your dad was reading your comics, right?

Bernie: There was a big difference between war comics and horror comics. A war comic was real because the war really happened, but dead people coming out of their graves? That doesn’t happen.

CBC: When did you start to draw?

Bernie: I’ve been drawing as long as I can remember.

CBC: Were your parents encouraging or passive about it?

Bernie: I think they were indifferent to it. I never got an inordinate level of praise for drawings that I did, but I don’t remember ever being actively discouraged either.

CBC: So when you did something, you didn’t necessarily run up to them to show them?

Bernie: Oh, I always showed them.

CBC: So they were your audience, to a degree?

Bernie: I did my own comic book when I was really young, around six years old. When 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea came out, around 1954, I did my own comic-book adaptation of the movie, which was mostly the fight with the giant squid, of course. I can’t remember where my mom was working at the time, but she brought home this stack of paper that was long and narrow, almost exactly the size of a daily comic strip, right? So I drew this little comic book, this long, skinny comic book, stapled together and everything. I did it in colored pencil, and all, with no word balloons, as I recall. You know, it was just pictures, one right after another. That was my first comic book. My mom was very proud of that, showing it to all my aunts and uncles.

CBC: Were you drawing horror material for your own amusement?

Bernie: Yes, but again, that was like a guilty pleasure and I wouldn’t let my mom see that stuff. I was like a lot of kids. I was fascinated with dinosaurs and I’d get dinosaur books from the library and I would copy pictures out of the books. And of course, my renditions were never as good as the pictures in the books, so I would take wax paper, sandwich-wrapping paper, and I’d lay that over a picture in the book and trace the outlines of these dinosaurs. For some reason, my mother just loved those things.

She didn’t even mind that I was stealing her wax paper. She loved these simple dinosaur tracings and I would try to explain to her, you know, “Mom, it’s like cheating.

I’m tracing.” But she said, “I don’t care. They’re beautiful.” [laughs] She liked the dinosaurs, but again, drawing a dinosaur wasn’t like drawing Frankenstein, right? Because dinosaurs were real and Frankenstein wasn’t and there was this line drawn, figuratively, between

what was real and what not real.

CBC: Did you have a Creature Feature host on Baltimore television?

Bernie: Yes, we had a guy who called himself Dr. Lucifer. He was played by this old B-movie actor named Richard Dix, right? He used to be in Westerns in the ’40s and was a pretty popular guy. He had his own fan following and this was like towards the end of his life and they weren’t making Westerns anymore.

The guy had no work so he ended up in Baltimore, doing this Zacharly rip-off (but he wasn’t a total rip-off, you know).

CBC: Did you see the Hammer movies at all?

Bernie: Oh, I loved the Hammer films. For a long time, I thought Curse of Frankenstein was better than the Karloff version, because I thought it was closer to the book. I thought this was more what the monster would look like, all put-together, with his eyes different colors and all kind of mismatched.

CBC: Did you go to the library much?

Bernie: I spent a lot of time at the library, yes. The only way you could get there was by walking. It was about a forty-minute walk. I looked for horror stuff. I looked for Edgar Allan Poe, which they had, though they didn’t have Lovecraft, except in anthologies.

CBC: What was your first Poe tale?

Bernie: Probably “The Tell-Tale Heart.” That was very scary stuff.

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Above: Courtesy of Comic-Con International: San Diego mainstay Jackie Estrada, a candid shot of Bernie Wrightson at the California get-together some years back.

Jackie’s book of pix, Comic Book People, is now available! See the ad in our back pages. Below: Detail of Bernie’s iconic Swamp Thing #9 cover [Mar.–Apr. ’74] (an image actually derived from the cover of the recent ST collection).

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you see the ugly girl walking, her knees shouldn’t bend the right way. You know? I kept looking for all these details, right? And it’s like everything else should be backwards. You know, she can’t turn her head completely around. [laughter] CBC: Was Ingels your favorite artist?

Bernie: Oh, he still is. I look at that stuff now and it’s amazing. There were certainly guys who drew better: Reed Crandall was a better draftsman, and Al Williamson, Frank Frazetta (although he didn’t do that much), Johnny Craig…

Jack Davis is great. I loved that cartoony aspect he brought to the work. It just fit because all these stories were tonguein-cheek anyway and they gave Davis the really over the top stuff. But Graham Ingels brought this loopy title — I don’t know if “Gothic” is the right word — but the main thing is there was this feeling of decay about everything that he drew and it wasn’t accidental.

You know, Graham Ingels also worked for Classics Illustrated. Before he did the horror comics, he did war comics for Fiction House and it was like he was a totally different artist. All the other stuff he did showed him to be an average comic book artist at the time, but the work he did for E.C. Comics was truly special. He knew exactly what he was doing and, though I never met the man — I don’t really anything know about him — I’m convinced he had to love this stuff, had to love what he was doing.

CBC: Now [Swamp Thing editor] Joe Orlando was one of the E.C. crew. Was there any joy working with Joe? Bernie: Oh, absolutely.

CBC: Did Joe take some of that same sensibility conveyed

by Gaines and Feldstein when he was an editor at DC Comics? Were you doing the work partially to make Joe happy?

Bernie: Joe was almost constantly frustrated when he was doing House of Mystery. He wanted House of Mystery to be like a contemporary Tales From the Crypt, but it never made it. It never quite became a modern-day E.C. comic book.

CBC: But it was good, you know?

Bernie: Yes, but Joe would get scripts for House of Mystery and House of Secrets that were just absolutely ridiculous. He would stay late in the office, rewriting these things as best he could just because you couldn’t give it to an artist the way it was. They were silly. He gave me one of the stories I did for Plop! [#5, May–June ’74] (I can’t remember the writer and probably wouldn’t mention his name if I could because it’s kind of embarrassing), but this was a story that he submitted for House of Mystery.

CBC: A straight story? Not intended to be humorous?

Bernie: A straight story! I walk into the office and there’s Joe sitting at his desk, looking at this script. I’m standing there and he’s got this huge grin on his face and he’s laughing his Joe Orlando laugh, and he says, “Look at this! You’ve got to read this,” and he hands me this script, and I start reading this. I say, “What is this for?” And he says, “It’s for House of Mystery, but I want you to do it for Plop!” [laughter] CBC: This is the sculpture story?

Bernie: Right! [laughs] CBC: For the public record, Carl Wessler wrote the story.

[Yours truly was woefully wrong; “Molded in Evil” was actually written by George Kashdan based on an idea by Ed Noonchester.—Y.E.] Bernie: I’m sitting in his office, reading this thing and the two of us just having the greatest time cracking up. You know, it was so ridiculous! It’s like, “No, this has got to be a gag. The guy, he’s pulling your leg, Joe.” He said, “No, Bernie, this is a straight story.” [laughter] CBC: Did it feel like Joe was trying to recapture the E.C. feel? I think, personally, the DC mystery books — the ones Joe and Dick Giordano edited — was outstanding books for a period of time.

Bernie: Oh, yeah! I think Joe did a great job. He did the best he could with what he had to work with and he had some really talented people, I think. He had Neal Adams do some great stuff, you know. I think up until then, I’d seen Neal’s stuff, I thought he was a brilliant super-hero artist and

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Haunt of Fear TM & © William M. Gaines, Agent, Inc. Illustration © Bernie Wrightson.

CBC: Did you read all his stuff?

Bernie: You know, once I found out who he was, yeah, I sought it out.

CBC: Did you have friends who liked horror, too?

Bernie: I had several friends, yeah.

One in particular, my friend Pete was just totally into it. The two of us spent a lot of time going to the movies, watching TV, drawing pictures, talking about monsters, and stuff.

CBC: Did you wonder about the demise of E.C. Comics?

Bernie: You know, I never really thought about it much. They just kind of went away. You know, I thought that when we moved to the suburbs, in the mid-’50s, you just couldn’t get them outside of the city. I didn’t know that they had stopped publishing. But it was around that time I was old enough to go to the movies with the other kids. We’d pile in the back of a friend’s father’s station wagon, 10 or 15 of us, and all go to the movies for a day.

CBC: Did you recognize, specifically, the stylings of certain artists with E.C. Comics, especially “Ghastly”?

Bernie: I knew the styles were different and that the stories by Graham Ingels were going to be the creepiest. His stories are the ones that stick in my memory and I remember being really, really disturbed by them, really affected by them, you know? Graham’s was the stuff that made me feel the most guilty.

CBC: [Laughs] Does that mean, “The Best”?

Bernie: Oh, yeah! I guess to a pre-pubescent kid, it was the next best thing to pornography, you know? [laughter] CBC: You used to hide E.C.s under your mattress, right?

Bernie: I had a copy of Haunt of Fear #27 [Sept.–Oct. ’54] that I kept under my mattress for about a year-and-a-half.

CBC: Haunt of Fear was “Ghastly’s” book, right?

Bernie: Correct. That copy was worn to tatters, you know. That comic book was definitely a guilty pleasure and I would slip this thing out of the mattress literally every night and read it with a flashlight under the covers. I’m not kidding! It was practically falling apart when my mom finally found it and threw it out.

CBC: What was the Ingels story in there?

Bernie: It was a story called “About Face,” and it was about this Victorian family who had these twin girls who were Siamese twins, but you don’t know that until the end of the whole story, right? You think it’s two different girls, right? And it’s not until the very end of the story that you find out that the evil, ugly, twisted sister is actually the same person as the pretty, sweet one, right? But the evil, ugly, twisted one is that sister’s face growing out of the back of the other one’s head. Incredible. I loved that story. I used to look at the pictures over and over and over and just study that because after you read it the first time and you get that shock, you know that whenever

Illustration © Bernie Wrightson. Characters and “Witches Cauldron” page TM & © William M. Gaines, Agent, Inc.

then I saw this House of Mystery thing he did, the one about Pan [“Nightmare,” #186, May–June ’70]. Remember that?

Geez, that was great! I didn’t know he had it in him. And Alex Toth did some wonderful stuff! Toth is still a master!

CBC: I think much of the work you did for the DC mystery books was just outstanding.

Bernie: I was coming along at the time. I look back on that stuff and, of course, all I see are the mistakes and I think I was still pretty green and still had an awful lot to learn…

CBC: Well, with the early stuff, sure.

Bernie: …and I’ve still got a lot to learn.

CBC: But some of the best work was your covers.

Bernie: You know, that stuff was fun. There’s a line of growth I can follow in my development as an artist. I enjoy looking at it from that standpoint. I look at the earliest stuff I did and then follow it for a few years into the later stuff and there was a lot of improvement, a lot of growth in a very short time, as I can also see in a lot of comic book artists.

Drawing comic books is one of the best art schools that there is… I mean if you’re serious about it because you’re got to do the work. Deadline is paramount, you know. You’ve got to get this stuff done on time.

CBC: So you’re forced to learn?

Bernie: Yes, and you stay up all night and do it the best that you can. And if you have the time, and there’s something that’s not quite good enough, you stay up all night and do it over and just do it until you get it right. So I look back on it and think, “My God, yeah, this field was the best training ground I could have had.” (It was also good to be single and to not have any children, of course!) [laughter] CBC: You know, fanzines were really becoming prominent by the mid- to later ’60s, and you worked on an aborted fanzine. When did you realize there was this whole community of fandom out there?

Bernie: I didn’t get an idea of the scope of fandom until I went to my first convention, the 1967 World Science Fiction Convention in New York. This was through this kid that I’d met in Baltimore. I went because the guests of honor were Frank Frazetta and Hal Foster. And I also met a lot of guys

who did fanzines. A couple of guys from Chicago did Spa-Fon and Squa Tront.

CBC: Did this convention open up the world to you?

Bernie: I not only met Frazetta at this convention, I met Jeff Jones, Michael Kaluta, Al Williamson, Dick Giordano.

CBC: Friends for life, huh?

Bernie: Yeah. Jeff had a couple of stories printed in Creepy, so I knew who he was. Kaluta was just another fan, at the time. We just fell in together and spent the whole weekend at the con, carousing around New York City.

CBC: Now, did you, in fact, meet Frazetta?

Bernie: I did. He was in a ballroom, sitting at a table next to Hal Foster and there were two long lines of people going up to see these guys and get their autographs. I was waiting in line, waiting in line, and thinking, “Wow, that’s Frazetta!”

He was signing stuff, and was actually doing drawings with a ballpoint pen, doing these little sketches for people. (I don’t think he’d ever been to a convention before.) He was obviously very flattered and excited that everybody seemed to know and love his work. He didn’t have any of his work with him so he went back home that night — he lived on Long Island, right? — and filled up his car with paintings, brought them back to the hotel, and had a private show of his paintings in his hotel room.

As I said, one of the first people I met there was Jeff Jones, who had some of his paintings on display and, up to that point, I didn’t know that he painted. All I’d seen of his work were a couple of stories in Creepy or Eerie, which was pen-&-ink work, so I thought he was a comic book artist.

He was just breaking into paperback covers. We met and Jeff seemed very surprised that he had any fans at all. [chuckles] CBC: Is Jeff a few years older than you?

Bernie: Yeah, Jeff is a few years older. And I met Kaluta, who came from Virginia, right over the river from D.C. so probably a little more than an hour from Baltimore.

CBC: Is Michael your age?

Bernie: I think Michael’s a year older than me.

CBC: Was Michael more outgoing than you?

Bernie: Michael was a lot more socially savvy than me. He was a lot more extroverted than I at that point and, yeah, much more outgoing.

CBC: Despite you two only being a year apart in age, is he like an older brother?

Bernie: Yes, he really is. He somewhat assumed that role for me and I really looked on him as an older brother in a way that I could never feel the same way about Jeff because Jeff, as much as I loved him and as much as I loved his work, there was a distance there.

CBC: Jeff was more insular?

Bernie: Yes, and there was a much bigger wall around Jeff, you know? I think that’s just that part of his personality. I didn’t really think about it at the time. Michael, I felt much closer to. Michael was just this big teddy bear of a guy and I think everybody felt that way about him. It’s like, yeah, he’s a very warm, outgoing guy and you just bond with him immediately, just feel really close.

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Previous page: It was the notorious E.C. horror comics of the 1950s that inspired an amazingly talented artist named Bernard Wrightson into fame and fortune as one of the finest comic book artists of his — or any other — generation. Top is the Haunt of Fear #27 a young Bernie hid under his mattress, lest disapproving mom find it (cover art by Graham “Ghastly” Ingels).

Bottom is a self-portrait, drawn for the artzine Abyss #1 [Nov. ’70]. This page: Left inset is the original art for the Bernie’s most prized E.C. story, “About Face,” from Haunt #27, with words by Carl Wessler and art by Ghastly. Below is Bernie’s homage to the E.C. horror hosts. From the cover of The Nostalgia Journal #28 [Sept. ’76] (though drawn in ’71 and used as a Fantastic Fanzine cover.).

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Above: Bernie was tapped to produced impressive covers for The House of Mystery paperback collections of prose stories, also contributing illustrations therein.

Below: House of Secrets art from Berni Wrightson: A Look Back [1979].

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

All art and characters TM & © DC Comics.

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CBC: Obviously, this convention had a big impact on you.

Bernie: Yes! And I enjoyed it so much, I went back to New York the following year for a comic book convention, one of the first Phil Seuling shows, and again hung around Jeff Jones and Kaluta. We all had the same thing in common: We loved comic books and we loved Frazetta. And, besides Jeff (who was a little older), we were all under 20, we were kids, and what more did you need?

CBC: You were all affable and friendly?

Bernie: Right. And, for my part, I hadn’t really met that many other artists so it was a real thrill for me. It was like oh, yeah, this is cool; we’re all the same! I went away with really good memories and warm feelings and everything. Everybody was very friendly.

When I went to the comic-book convention, I brought some samples with me. I’d done this story for a fanzine that was published by a friend of Kaluta in Virginia, Graphic Showcase. It was like seven or eight pages called “Uncle Bill’s Barrel,” and I don’t think it was published yet, but I had the original pages with me.

CBC: Did you write it?

Bernie: Yes. I was showing the pages around at this comic book show.

Kaluta had become friends with Al Williamson during that year and he took me over to meet

Al and I showed him “Uncle Bill’s Barrel,” and Al showed it to [DC editor] Joe Orlando, who showed it to [DC editor] Dick Giordano, who showed it to [DC editorial director] Carmine Infantino. This was even before it was called DC. They were still National Periodical Publications. I knew who Carmine was from “Adam Strange,” right? So Carmine looked at it and said, “Hey, kid. You want to draw comics?”

(Carmine was great! He reminded me of a tall Edward G. Robinson, with the cigar and everything! He was just a really sweet man.)

CBC: The year 1968 was right at the beginning of the renaissance at DC, when Carmine took over as editorial director, the era of artist-as-editor.

Bernie: I think it was around that time, right. I had no clue.

It’s just dumb luck! I just happened to be in the right place at the right time and showing my work to the right people.

CBC: Did these DC editors immediately shine to your work?

Bernie: Yes, they seemed to like it right away. What I didn’t know was that House of Mystery was going to become a horror anthology, in the E.C. vein. I think what they saw in my work, if nothing else, was that I could draw creepy stuff.

I’m convinced I was just lucky. You know, Carmine had recently become head of the company, and Joe Orlando and Dick Giordano were his two new editors, and all of these guys were artists, okay? They were concerned about was what the material looked like. At that time, they placed the biggest emphasis on the graphics, particularly with House of Mystery. It didn’t seem to matter to them very much how good the story was. They just wanted it to look like a horror comic because you couldn’t write it like a horror comic. You know, you couldn’t even use the word “horror” because of the Comics Code restrictions, at the time. They knew, “Okay, we’re kind of walking on thin ice here, but if we don’t come right out and say that it’s horror, we can make it look like horror, and the kids are smart enough to get the idea.” So anyway, they saw me and it’s like, “Oh geez, this kid is great!

Here’s the bastard son of Graham Ingels! We’ll just use him in the new mystery line of comics we’re planning.” So I immediately started working with Joe Orlando, who couldn’t have been a better choice for me to come in and start working with him. I learned an awful lot from Joe. I’d bring my pages in, and he would take out tracing paper, lay a sheet over my page and redraw panels, right? He’d say, “Okay, this is Storytelling 101, okay? I’m going to show you how you can take the three panels you have here, recompose it, condense it into one panel that’s easier to draw, and that

House of Secrets, Plop! TM & © DC Comics. Illustration © Bernie Wrightson.

gets the idea across just as well or better.” I respected those lessons because I didn’t know anything about storytelling. I just thought, “Well, the pictures have to be as pretty as they can be.” Joe taught me a lot about drawing comics.

CBC: Your first assignment was “Nightmaster” in Showcase [“Sing a Song of Sorcery, #83, June ’69].

Bernie: I can’t remember who the editor was on that book [Murray Boltinoff], but, boy, I tanked on that job!

CBC: The first issue was by Jerry Grandenetti.

Bernie: Yeah, but I penciled the first third of the first issue and it was awful. It was terrible.

I just froze up. I’d suddenly come out of the sticks, this kid from Baltimore, and they give me a whole comic book, you know?

CBC: Did they develop the comic book for you?

Bernie: No. This was in the works already due to typical comic-book timing. Sword-&sorcery hit big like around 1964. Here it was ’68 and comics were finally getting around to riding the crest of that longpassed wave. And, of course, they didn’t do it right. I finished the first third in pencil and it was stiff and overworked.

CBC: You choked?

Bernie: Yes, I choked in a really bad way. I took the pages in and again, I don’t remember who the editor was, but they sent me to the principal’s office. I had to go talk to Carmine, and I really thought I was going to get fired. “That’s it for you, Wrightson! You can’t do comics! You’re out of here!

Get a chauffeur’s license.” But Carmine said, “I don’t think you’re ready for your own book yet. I’m going to give you to Joe, and he’ll put you on fillers.” (Like I knew what a “filler” was, you know?) So he sent me to Joe Orlando and that was my first introduction to House of Mystery. Joe showed me some stories he had, and said, “Okay, this is what a filler is: one, two, maybe three pages to round out a book’s page count, because after we’ve put in the stories, ads, and letters page, and, if there’s space left over, we’ve got to fill up the leftover space with inventory material. We have this stuff prepared well ahead of time so, for example, when we need a two-page filler, we just pull one out of the inventory drawer. You’re already paid for it and all, so we put it away in a drawer. When we need it, we use it.” So that’s what I did, I started out doing fillers. My first few jobs were these two- or three-page things, written usually by Marv Wolfman or Len Wein because those writers were just starting out, too.

CBC: Now, you had done the job back in Baltimore?

Bernie: No. I moved to New York in the Summer of ’68.

After I attended that comic book show, I went back to Baltimore (I was still working on the newspaper at the time), and a couple of weeks went by and I got a phone call from Kaluta, who said, “Al Williamson is trying to get in touch with you. Joe Orlando called Al because Dick Giordano called Joe because Carmine Infantino wants you to start working.”

So within a couple of days, I was in New York City looking for an apartment. It was that fast.

CBC: Where was your first apartment?

Bernie: On 72nd Street, just off of Columbus Avenue, right down the street from the American Museum of Natural History, which sounds great, but this neighborhood… a week after I’d moved in, the apartment was broken into and robbed, and it was really a bad neighborhood.

CBC: Was Jeff Jones living in the city at the time?

Bernie: Yeah, Jeff and his wife, Weezie — Louise — were living a few blocks away. They had been there for a year or two before me. At some point in between all of this, I had come up to visit Jeff and he introduced me to Archie Goodwin, Larry Ivie, John Benson, and a few other people.

CBC: Is that when you first met Weezie?

Bernie: Yes, and I first saw Julie, their daughter, when she was still a baby, not yet a year old. They’d lived in this dark little apartment on 80th St. or 81st St. It was one of these basement apartments. You’d go down the stairs into cockroach heaven.

CBC: Were they hosting First Fridays at that point?

Bernie: Not yet, not yet. That hadn’t really gotten off the ground yet. We hadn’t really started a community yet.

Jeff was very eager for me to move to New York because he didn’t really have any artist friends. He and his family had just moved up from Georgia so he could get work in the illustration field. He didn’t really know anybody so yeah, we had met at the convention and like, yeah, here’s me and Kaluta, here’s a couple guys, roughly my age. We’re all into the same stuff and it’d be great to have other artists to hang around with.

CBC: What did you think of Weezie?

Bernie: Oh, I thought Weezie was a doll. I mean all of us did. We all fell in love with her. She was just a bubbly, vivacious, outgoing, happy person.

CBC: Was she a complement, in a way, to Jeff? Was she extroverted?

Bernie: Oh, yes. If I ever thought about it, yeah, I would say, “What are these guys doing together?”

But Jeff wasn’t as introverted in those days as he was later, to my memory. I thought he was more outgoing then.

CBC: Weezie, at this point, was working a regular job and didn’t yet have anything to do with comics?

Bernie: Not at that point, no. I don’t know if she was working or just staying at home with the baby at that point, but yeah, she didn’t get into the comic book field until much later.

CBC: But she apparently enjoyed the company of you guys and felt comfortable?

Bernie: Oh, yeah. She was an artist herself at heart and she genuinely liked artists.

CBC: Getting back to the DC work, you were doing the fillers?

Bernie: Right. Then I started to graduate up to longer stories, eight- to ten-pagers.

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Inset left: Brilliant Wrightson cover for House of Secrets #103 [Dec. ’72]. Above: Panel detail from Bernie’s “The Gourmet,” Plop! #1 [Sept.–Oct. ’73]. Below: A pre-Swamp Thing monster drawn

by Bernie in 1970 was used as the inside front cover for The Amazing World of DC Comics #6 [May–June ’75], the special Joe Orlando ish.

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The “Swamp Thing” Photo Shoot Perhaps a unique occurrence of Bernie Wrightson using photo reference happened during production of House of Secrets #92’s “Swamp Thing” story — because, explains the artist, the deadline was fast approaching — and he enlisted the aid of Jeffrey Jones and the renowned painter/illustrator’s photography skills and equipment. Bernie art-directed the shoot as Jeff snapped the stills, some repro’ed on this and the next page, and gained the help of Jeff’s wife, Louise, and fellow artist pals Michael Kaluta (who shared these pix) and Alan Weiss as models. Jeff, Michael, and Alan also helped with the actual drawing of the story. Weezie played Linda Olsen; Michael, the villain, Damian Ridge; Bernie the hero/monster Alex Olsen/Swamp Thing; and Alan was a stand-in.

Photos © the respective copyright holder. Panels TM & © DC Comics

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Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Photos © the respective copyright holder. Panels TM & © DC Comics

CBC: You and Kaluta worked together a couple of times.

Bernie: A few times. Michael had a slower start getting into DC because his stuff wasn’t as slick as they liked. It didn’t have that nice, solid slick ink on it, which Michael couldn’t do. He could draw like a son of a bitch, but his inking tended to look kind of scratchy.

CBC: Why? Bernie: Yeah, yeah. And it was too fine, too fine a line for them. So it took him about a year, I guess, after me to really kind of break in to DC. I think Michael’s approach was a lot purer than mine and I always had the feeling about Michael that it was very important for him to get it right, that the idea of drawing, say, a human figure was not to stylize it and not to find some kind of good-looking, slick short cut, but to really study the figure and try to figure out how it works. What does this muscle do? What do these muscles in combination do? How do they move under the skin and everything? How do you take then this form and rotate it several degrees, one way or the other, so that it fits and it works and it’s correct?

CBC: The processes?

Bernie: Yes. My approach was a lot lazier than that.

CBC: Perhaps more intuitive?

Bernie: I don’t know… “Intuitive” is a very polite way of putting it, thank you.

But, no, I call it lazy. If I had to draw a horse, I would just draw a very kind of horse-like lump, then put a lot of shadow on it, then move on to something else that really appealed to me because I could give a sh*t about drawing horses.

You know, who cares? But if Michael had to draw a horse, he would really work on it and would open up animal anatomy books. Me, I wanted to have fun and just want to draw the stuff I want to draw. To a large extent, I’m still like that.

CBC: How do you recall House of Secrets #92? This is the “Swamp Thing” short story. You knew Len? Did you socialize with him at all?

Bernie: Oh, yeah. Len and I were friends by that time. We would go to the same parties together, knew the same people, traveled in the same circles and everything.

CBC: Were First Fridays already happening by that time?

Bernie: First Fridays were happening, yes. Len had written the script for the “Swamp Thing” short story for House of Secrets. I think he had broken up with a girlfriend and writing that story was cathartic for him. It meant a lot to him at the time because he was working his way through the breakup and getting through it partly through writing the story, writing it all out of himself as an allegory or something. You’ll have to talk to him about that, but I remember reading the script and saying, “Hey, this is really cool. I like this. Can I draw this?” I can’t remember if I was there and happened to see it, or if he brought it to me, or if it was at the office and Joe Orlando gave it to me to look at, I don’t remember the circumstances.

CBC: I think he recalls you two as sitting out in the parked car, when you guys were at a house party, and he was depressed about breaking up with the girlfriend.

Bernie: I have a vague, fuzzy memory of something like that, but it’s kind of unfocused, like maybe this is something we did more than once. But I remember sharing a lot of that stuff with Len at the time. You know, a lot of personal and emotional stuff, things we were going through at the time. I’m sure that it happened just that way.

CBC: It’s interesting, fateful maybe, that the story that introduced this character who has persisted for over 30 years was born out of an affair of the heart. I mean, it wasn’t just a knocked-off story but it had real meaning. It contained a true poignancy and was based on something real. And, it seems to me, it also referred explicitly — at least in visual terms — to this strong bond of friendship a group of young comic book artists shared in the early ’70s, right? Starting right off with HOS #92’s cover, you used Weezie Jones as the model for the girl…

Bernie: That’s right.

CBC: The real saga of Swamp Thing is one of romance, of love. Do you agree?

Bernie: Yes. I took “Swamp Thing” completely seriously as a horror story and as a romance. You know, it was my kind of story. The guy’s a monster and I love monsters — I always have — and he’s a human being wrapped inside a monster’s body. So what is that? It’s Frankenstein, it’s the Wolf Man. You know, it’s the same thing to me. He’s horrifically ugly and that’s cool because that makes him a lot of fun to draw. And also, yeah, I thought the story was very heartfelt. I read the script and it put tears in my eyes.

“Swamp Thing” started off as a tale of unrequited love, basically the story of a guy who is transformed into a monster. He returns to life because the swamp resurrects him, replacing his human form with moss, mud and grass.

The love of his life has been taken away from him by a bad guy, the same guy Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

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Above: La Créature des marais 2 [’79], a French reprinting of Wein & Wrightson’s Swamp Thing epic.

Below: Joe Orlando caricature of Carmine Infantino, DC boss, in the early ’70s, with whom Bernie developed an affectionate friendship.

CBC: You’ve got to live vicariously?

Bernie: Yes! CBC: Do it through your art.

Bernie: So it was basically a cast.

CBC: It was just you three?

Bernie: [Looking over the story] It was basically just the three of us, yeah, though [DC staffer] Mark Hanerfeld makes a brief cameo. (Mark, as you no doubt know, was Joe Orlando’s assistant and, visually, he was the basis for the House of Secrets’ host, Abel.) It’s hard to recognize me as Alex Olsen because the colorist made me blonde… I love Kaluta’s face!

I mean I played with his mustache and made it a little more handlebar than it actually was.

CBC: More Snydley Whiplash?

Bernie: Right!

CBC: Did Hanerfeld attend the photo shoot?

Bernie: I don’t think so. Mark was easy to draw. Yeah, I mean he really was Abel! And Len Wein would dress up as [House of Mystery host] Cain for Halloween, I seem to recall.

CBC: Page one is completely stylized, right?

Bernie: That page is all out of my head. I think the only things in there that’s done from photo reference are the figures, the characters. I remember taking pictures some of these panels are based on because I spent a lot of time trying to get the light right and everything.

[Indicating page five] This page was penciled by Jeff. You can tell immediately because of the composition and design of it. That’s not mine.

CBC: So you really were in a rush to get this done.

Bernie: My memory of it is that we did this over a weekend, although it had to have taken longer than that. Maybe we photographed and penciled it over a weekend, say between Friday through Monday.

CBC: How many bottles of wine is that? [laughs] Bernie: The inking took longer, but it was definitely done in a hurry… and Jeff drew the very last panel. On the last page, last panel, Jeff drew that and I inked it because I couldn’t get it right.

CBC: Isn’t that funny? It looks quintessential Wrightson.

Bernie: I said, “I want the guy walking away, disappearing into the swamp, but I can’t do it.” Of course, me, I’m trying to draw the whole swamp! [laughter] Then, when Jeff does it, he just throws those branches in the foreground and it’s like, “God, that’s perfect.” You know, he is such a great designer.

CBC: Did you guys do many stories like this? I have seen a story Jeff drew, but it was unfinished, for House of Mystery.

It took place in the medieval times and Alan Weiss was one of the models for it and obviously, that was another jam.

Bernie: Oh, the Frog Princess thing? Yes, I remember that very well.

CBC: Were you a cast member in that?

Bernie: We had a huge cast. We had a cast of thousands in that one, Jon. That was great because it was during one of the First Fridays, Jeff was doing this story, and he waited until we were all there, and he dressed everybody up like in sheets and things. He just tore all the sheets off the bed and every bath towel and everything in the house and brought this all out and made togas and robes and everything for people. Weezie was the princess in this thing and she needed a princess hat. We had nothing like that. We took a pillow, like a little throw pillow from the couch and tied it on top of her head with like a towel. The silliest damn photos you ever want to see and we’re all posing dramatically. Kaluta was playing a very gay portrait painter in the thing, so he’s doing all these great flamboyant gestures. (God, I wonder if Jeff still has this stuff because he used to keep all the photos and negatives.) What a riot we had! It was hysterical! I was a prince or something…

CBC: So you guys worked together and socialized together quite a bit, right?

Bernie: Oh, yeah! There was a period where I would go to the DC offices almost every day. Neal Adams had a little room up there, basically a closet where he worked with no

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Swamp Thing TM & © DC Comics. Illustration © the estate of Joe Orlando.

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who killed his human form, so he comes back and gets his revenge , only, in the end, now he’s a monster and he can’t ever get the girl. He’s lost the girl twice. It’s very sad. It’s a very unhappy ending.

CBC: The artwork in that story is atypical for you, I think. It’s mostly based on photographic reference, right?

Bernie: Yeah. Well, you know, the circumstances are probably a little more pedestrian than you would think.

CBC: It seems to be much more of a Jeff Jones approach.

Bernie: Well, the story needed to be done in a hurry. There was a tight deadline. I can’t remember how much time, but I really had to push this thing out, although looking back on it, I think I got the script late so there wasn’t a lot of time. They wanted to put it in this issue, right?

At the time, Jeff Jones photographed everything because he always worked from reference. He had a couple of really good b-&-w cameras and had an photo enlarger, all the equipment and everything. He had a darkroom set-up in a closet in his apartment downstairs. He did all his own developing. None of us had any money so we couldn’t hire models or anything, so we would model for Jeff.

CBC: So Jeff took all the pictures?

Bernie: Yes, and we knew Jeff had a darkroom and all this equipment, so a lot of us would used photos, too. Also, it was a lot of fun getting all these people together, coming up all kinds of make-shift costumes — or something approximating a costume, because even if it didn’t look authentic, it’s okay, because I could fix it in the actual drawing, so long as the shape was generally okay — and it was like a party. We’d all get together, set up the lights, everybody would take turns posing. Composing everything in the photo was a lot of fun.

We’d always have a couple bottles of wine and just a lot of laughs doing this, put it together this reference.

CBC: Who is in the cast of “Swamp Thing”?

Bernie: I was the hero, of course, because it was my story. Then I was the guy who got turned into a monster, so that was cool. Kaluta was the bad guy and he was great. At the time, he had kind of longish hair and this great mustache, a great bushy one, and if he wet his hair and slicked it back, and he would leer at you with this really oily kind of snake-ish expression, and he just looked delightfully sinister. I said, “Michael, you’re perfect. You be the bad guy.” And Weezie, of course, was the heroine of the story.

CBC: Now she had this cute, bobbed hair?

Bernie: I modified it a little bit.

CBC: With no offense to Walter Simonson [Weezie’s husband today], she is just flat-out adorable, isn’t she?

Bernie: She was just great and I had such a crush on her. I think all of us were in love with her. You couldn’t not fall head over heels with her!

CBC: Walter, you’re a lucky man!

Bernie: She was just so sweet. None of us, I think, had met anybody like her. She was just the best.

CBC: She appreciated the inner nerd in your crowd, right?

Bernie: She did, she really did, and I’d never met a woman who did that, who really appreciated the sincerity of what we did and how we were. It was great and, you’re right, she was almost unbearably cute.

CBC: Did she have red hair like her caricature on the [HOS #92] cover?

Bernie: No, she was blonde. Of course, since it was my story (at least, artwise), I wanted her to be my love interest and I’m the hero.

Swamp Thing TM & © DC Comics. Elric of Melnibone TM & © Michael Moorcock. Painting © the estate of Jeffrey Catherine Jones.

windows. It was just Neal with this big overhead projector, the Art-O-Graph, and a drawing table, and room enough just for him and one other chair for another person. Everyone would just crowd around the doorway and just hang out there. They had a coffee room at the old offices on Lexington Avenue, so we’d spend a lot of time in that room, as well.

There was Len, Marv, Kaluta, myself, and whoever else was there at the time. Sometimes, editors would come by, like Joe Orlando, and we’d sit there, have coffee, and joke around. A couple of times, after hours, somebody brought in a model and we’d have life drawing classes there in the coffee room, with a nude model standing on a table.

CBC: In the history of DC during these years, Carmine Infantino is a controversial character. I’ve heard from any number of freelancers and staffers who had their problems with his tenure as boss, but you’re someone who has always has praise for the man.

Bernie: Carmine and I, we’re friends to this day. Every time I see Carmine, I go over and give him a big hug. I say, “How ya been? You look great!” — and he is in terrific shape for his age! — and he always says, [imitates Carmine] “Oh Boinie, you haven’t changed a bit.” He would put his arm around me in the old days as I guess he thought of me as a protégé or as his discovery. With other people standing around, he’d punch me in the arm and say with pride, [imitates Carmine] “This f*ckin’ kid! This f*ckin’ kid!” [laughter] CBC: That was a pretty fair assessment, right? In a way, you were his discovery, right?

Bernie: Oh, yeah. I felt he was very paternal towards Michael [Kaluta] and me. He liked us and I don’t know why.

Maybe it’s because we were from somewhere else and we weren’t New Yorkers. Maybe he thought of us as a couple of green kids from the Willywags somewhere.

CBC: It’s rare for you to work from photographs, isn’t it?

Bernie: I probably haven’t used photo reference to that extent since that story, but I still occasionally work from photos, though it’s very seldom.

I did pose for a lot of stuff Jeff was doing at the time, like for paperback covers. You know, I was a barbarian— CBC: You posed as Elric, right? I recall a Star*Reach cover.

Bernie: That was me. You know, I was Jeff’s model for a while because I had a pretty good build on which he could expand. But I posed for a lot where he really changed me, turned me into Conan. In fact, I remember I grew my hair long at one point and he was doing all these sword-&-sorcery paintings, all these Conan knock-offs, right? Once in preparing to pose for Jeff, I actually cut my hair so it was like a Prince Valiant/page boy cut — you know, long in the back and bangs in the front — and it looked really silly. I was immediately sorry I did it But we took lots of pictures and yeah, he dressed me up.

He had these rabbit furs, sheep skins, and stuff, and we’d put these on and tie them around me to make some kind of barbarian outfit, and I would hold a broom for a sword, a garbage can lid for a shield and all this kind of thing.

CBC: “Bernie the Barbarian.” [laughter] In “Swamp Thing,” Jeff took the photos but you art-directed the shoot?

Bernie: Right. I set everything up and composed the pictures. Jeff took the actual photos.

CBC: Do you remember a period of time when DC’s mystery books, all of a sudden, went into a Gothic romance trend?

House of Mystery and Secrets had these damsel-in-distress covers, always with a scared lady running from a castle (that always had one lit window). It lasted for a few months and even HOS #92 seemed a part of the fad. This was during the time when the Harlequin romance novels had a Gothic line and the soap opera Dark Shadows was very popular….

Bernie: Right. It was all a takeoff of Dark Shadows, which was a big hit. Suddenly, racks were full of these paperback covers of women running away in nightgowns and it’s all very mysterious and she’s showing as much cleavage as possible. Yeah, DC picked up on that for a couple of issues.

CBC: Didn’t you notice it on a the DC lineup? Even Batman.

Bernie: Jeff did some of those covers. Remember his Wonder Woman covers? They wanted Jeff for the prestige because by this time he had been successful as a paperback cover painter.

He’d made quite a name for himself and they were absolutely thrilled he would stoop to do a comic book cover. And, of course, he was just like the rest of us: it’s a job.

CBC: How did you hear about the success of HOS #92? You had done the story, it was behind you, and you moved on, right?

Bernie: Right. I don’t know how much time went by but, looking back, it seems like a year passed, at least. But, when the news hit, I was out of town, back in Baltimore, for about a week.

When I got back to New York, Len called me and said, “Where the hell have you been? We’re ready to go with Swamp Thing!” I said, “What do you mean? What are you talking about, ‘Go with Swamp Thing’?” He said, “DC wants to do it as a series. They want to give him his own series! I want you to draw it.” And all this had been going on while I had been away and apparently they’d been trying to reach me. (These were the days before answering machines, kids!) So I went into the office and that’s when I heard that they had been getting tremendous response on this story, more fan mail for this eight-page story in House of Secrets than they got for Superman that month, and they said, “We think this is a commercial idea. We think this will fly as a series.” So Len, Joe and I — along with Carmine initially — got together and talked about it.

CBC: What is your memory of the meeting? Obviously, the short story is a one-off piece set in the 19 th century.

Bernie: Well, yeah, that was the biggest thing. We couldn’t keep it as a period piece so they wanted to update it, make it contemporary, which I wasn’t initially happy about. Y’see, that meant, “Oh, man! That means I’ve got to draw cars! And people in suits and sh*t! I hate doing that. I’ve gotta do all this stuff, it’s got to look right. I can’t just make it up.” But I thought, “Okay, that’s fine. That’s okay because it’s going to be a monster book. It’s going to be fun.” So I became really excited by the idea that we were going to be doing what was essentially a monster super-hero book.

CBC: Who came up with the idea of how Swamp Thing came into existence, the bio-regenerative formula?

Bernie: I don’t remember real clearly anymore. Maybe it was Len. I’m sure he remembers better whose decision it was to essentially retell the same story in the first issue. It’s basically an expansion on the short story. But Len was there at the beginning with a whole story arc. He basically said, “Okay, this is the first issue, this is what we do; we introduce the character, blah, blah, blah; this, that and the other thing. And then here’s my idea for the next one: We have Arcane with all the Un-Men and it’s a ‘Frankenstein’ kind of thing. You know, creation of life, and everything, and we expand on that in the next one.” Len had at least the bare bones in his head, where he wanted to go with the title.

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Inset left: Fellow Studio-mate Jeffrey Jones would, on occasion, use the handsome young artist as model. Here Bernie is model for Michael Moorcock’s Elric in a Jones painting used as the cover of Star*Reach #6 [Oct. ’76].

Below: Detail from Bernie Wrightson’s Swamp Thing #6 [Sept.–Oct. ’73] cover.

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Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

TM & © DC Comics.

was there as part of the process, for the most part not saying anything, but he would participate.

CBC: Do you recall at all the origin as far as the scientific aspect of Swamp Thing’s origin? That Joe contributed to that concept? About the bio-restorative research?

Bernie: I don’t recall. I don’t know if that was completely from Len or Joe had anything to do with that or even if I did.

CBC: Right. Were you just basically interested in visuals?

That was your thing?

Bernie: Well, I think we were all basically interested in the characters and in the story.

CBC: So you were.

Bernie: What happened to make him like this was secondary. That’s like the MacGuffin in a Hitchcock film [the pursuit of an object — actually a gimmick, a storytelling device Hitch dubbed a MacGuffin, which could be virtually anything — whose sole purpose was to propel a story’s plot]. It’s just got to be plausible enough for the reader to buy it because that’s all he needs. You don’t have to give them the actual science because they don’t care. You just want them to suspend their disbelief and just make the characters as believable as possible.

CBC: Was it an important aspect for you guys to maintain the romance at the core of the original short story? To then introduce Abigail and to have this unconsummated love, this tragic romance maybe, between a monster and a woman?

Bernie: You need that or something with the same emotional resonance to carry the story along. That was certainly not my idea and I have to give Len complete credit for bringing in Abigail and the romance angle.

CBC: Did you have a more adolescent sensibility of, “I want to do monsters! Let’s have him fighting monsters!”?

Bernie: Yeah, I was more concerned with what I wanted this book to look like. I wanted it to look dark and creepy.

CBC: Do what you do best?

Bernie: Right. I want it to be raining a lot with cloudy skies and really spooky Universal gray, dark kind of stuff. At that stage, I would have to say the stories themselves were not my concern. A story was just something I could hang my pictures on. In my opinion, I still hadn’t really “got it” about storytelling. It was more about a series of pretty pictures.

The story and what happens to these characters and everything — who comes in and what their relationship is and all that — that was Len’s department. Maybe I would throw in a suggestion or ask a question or make a comment from time to time, but for the most part, the writing was Len’s purview.

CBC: Was it later on when you realized that perhaps this was a love story told in the trappings of horror?

Bernie: As it went on, yeah, I began to realize that. And, as it went on, I began to “get it” about storytelling and just the whole idea of, “Jeez, what we’re making here is actually like Above: Examining this House of So then we just got started, you know? We would have a making a movie.”

Secrets #92 “Swamp Thing” page plotting session. We’d come into Joe’s office, close the door, CBC: As far as you recall, Len had the bare bones of the (in printed form) during the inter- and Len would start talking. He didn’t have any notes or any- first two stories, right? Did you interject and say, “Hey, man, I view, Bernie assessed that Jeffrey thing. I don’t think he had anything written down, it was all in want to draw aliens!” or, “I want to draw a werewolf!”?

Jones penciled the entire page. his head. And he would just start going from page one, even Bernie: I remember there was some of that, yes. I was Below: The distinctive logo mark reciting bits of dialogue and things as he’s riffing. I mean it pretty clear from the beginning that what I was interested of the late Jeffrey Catherine Jones. literally seemed like Len was making it up on the spot. As in was to draw monsters. “It’s a monster comic book and I he talked, I sat with a pad of paper and, really fast, I was want to put monsters in it. I really liked drawing monsters sketching these things out and breaking down the pages. and these are the one I want to draw.” [laughs] You know, These were really, really loose thumbnails. We’d spend a day that kind of thing. The fourth issue, for all I know, might have doing this and Joe was there, stopping Len at different points come from just me saying, “Hey, next time, I want to do a with a question. You know, “Where is this going? What werewolf.” Maybe Len just took it from there, but, as I recall, happens here? Refresh me on what led up to this,” and that Len did not have like the entire first year’s story arc in his kind of thing. And Joe would throw in suggestions and ideas, head when we started. I think he was pretty sure about what in spite of what Len says, and my memory was that it was a he wanted to do with the first one and some ideas about collaborative effort. where to go after that for an issue or two. But, beyond that, CBC: Involving all three of you? we were pretty much winging it. I can’t remember when, Bernie: Involving all three of us. Mostly it was just Len further down the line, the idea of guest-starring Batman and I, but Joe was certainly a part of it. Joe was there while came from, the whole idea putting Swamp Thing in Gotham we were plotting and it wasn’t a situation where Len would City came from. come up with something, or Len and I would come up with CBC: But you obviously enjoyed drawing the character. something and we’d just give it to Joe for his approval. He Bernie: Oh, yes. I had done a couple of Batman covers at

Bedazzled TM & © DC Comics. Jeffrey Jones portrait © the respective copyright holder.

that point and liked the character [inks over Neal Adams pencils, Batman #241, May ’72; full art on Detective Comics #425, July ’72]. Whoever came up with the idea — it could have been me — I was certainly agreeable to it.

CBC: [Chuckles] And you certainly went to town with it.

Bernie: It was like, “Yeah, let’s do Batman!” I mean if we have to put Swamp Thing with any super-hero, put him with Batman. It was natural.

CBC: Did you insist on a bi-monthly schedule? Was that the plan from the start?

Bernie: Yeah, that was always the plan, but I don’t think that was done to accommodate me. But I knew that, okay, I’ve got to turn in 22 or 23 pages every two months and I can handle that. I was okay with that.

CBC: [Indicating the lead villain in ST #1, page 6] Is this Jack Adler?

Bernie: Yes, that’s based on Jack Adler. The big, heavy, bad guy with the mustache, that’s Jack.

Page 15 is where we ran into some problems. It’s a fullpage picture of just Swamp Thing’s face. Carmine objected to having splash pages like this in the middle of the comic, right? Because you’ve got this one and then this one on page 21, a “STOP!” page, right? He objected to having two splash pages, in addition to the first. He said, “It’s cheating. You’re not working, you’re just doing a one-page picture. You’re not doing multiple panels, you’re not doing a breakdown.”

CBC: But they were cool! Jack Kirby and Joe Kubert were doing double-page spreads in their own books, at the time.

Bernie: Yeah, so I don’t know where this objection was coming from, but I do remember Carmine having a problem with the additional splash pages and he said, “Don’t you think you guys are going overboard with this stuff?” But we thought it was a great idea because we hadn’t seen it that often. Yes, Kirby and Kubert were doing it, but they were the only guys. I liked the dramatic impact of going from six or eight panels to some climactic full-page, single-panel scene.

Bang! Suddenly the music gets really loud. Carmine really got on Len’s case about this.

CBC: Was this after the fact?

Bernie: After the fact, yes. Carmine said to Len, “Do you realize we paid you a full rate for one word on a page?” It was penny-ante stuff. But I’m sure that never occurred to Len while he was writing it. I doubt he thought, “Oh, boy! Page 21 and ‘STOP!’ There’s another $15 for me!”

CBC: Was this done completely full-script, in what was called the traditional DC style? Or was it Marvel style [where the script writer submits a plot outline to the artist and later dialogues over the finished artwork]?

Bernie: No, this was done in the so-called Marvel style. It started in Joe’s office. Len would talk out the story page by page. Sometimes, I had to ask him to slow down because I couldn’t keep up with him, doing my little thumbnails, right?

I’d be drawing quickie thumbnails and making notations on there, and sometimes, there wasn’t enough time to draw something so I’d just write a brief description, what’s supposed to be in this scene, what’s happening, where the story is going. I would take these thumbnails home and draw the pages in pencil and then give them to Len and Len would fill on the dialogue and captions. This is where it got really collaborative because here was the story that Len told, like several weeks ago. Here it was, fleshed out and drawn and actually realized in pictures so now he could go back and, remembering what he said, talking about it, and then go back, expand on that and build on it. Sometimes I’d write little notes in the borders of the penciled pages, more as a reminder to Len of where we are and what he’s supposed to be saying, or what I interpreted. Len would either go along with my interpretation or change it. I never knew what he was going to do until I got the pages back from the letterer.

He would run it by Joe, then pass it on to [letterer] Gaspar Saladino, and it would come back lettered and I’d be ready to ink it. So that was really the first time I saw the finished story. So that would get me all excited again.

CBC: And then you’d ink?

Bernie: Yeah, then I’d ink.

CBC: Did Joe embrace this book?

Bernie: Oh, absolutely.

CBC: There was a really polished “look and feel” to your run, where each issue seemed to be a chapter of a larger epic, with a wonderful consistency. You had the same creative team — Len, Gaspar, [colorist] Tatjana Wood, Joe, and yourself — and every issue had wordless, uncluttered covers. The book exuded a strong sense of pride.

Bernie: That’s right. That was very much that feeling.

Everybody who worked on the title was hand-picked because they were each excellent at what they did.

CBC: Were you happy with the run, except for the line work reproduction in the last issue?

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Above: Jeffrey Jones shared pages of his unfinished “Bedazzled” story in Comic Book Artist Collection Vol. 1 [’00], and they were originally intended for an Orlando mystery book, which used extensive photo reference and was cast with the same “Swamp Thing” crew.

Below: Jones in an undated pic.

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Above: Magnificent splash page with a smashing Gaspar Saladino story logo perfectly complementing Bernie Wrightson’s superb artwork.

Swamp Thing #5 [July–Aug. ’73].

INSET RIGHT: Detail from the splash of ST #2 [Dec. ’72–Jan. ’73], with our muck-monster and his only friend, the “old hound dog” introduced in #1. Bernie reveals he based the dog’s look on pal Michael Wm. Kaluta’s luxuriant mustache of those years.

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

TM & © DC Comics.

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Bernie: For the most part, yes.

For the first year or so, I was very happy with the book. I think the only comment I made was, well, let me explain something first: I had the color chart, right? It was a guide with all these little circles with all the colors they used? I found the green that I liked for Swamp Thing and that was the only comment I made about the color was that I wanted it to be this color with the brown roots and everything.

CBC: What is your assessment of what Gaspar brought to the equation?

Bernie: Gaspar was great! I thought he was absolutely perfect for this book. He worked his ass off on this. I don’t remember whose idea it was for Swamp Thing’s thought balloons to be individualized, stylized like they were, that double outline, drippy thing. I can’t tell you if Len was specific and said, “Make it look like this,” or, “Do something distinctive,” but I do remember when that first issue came and I saw the thought balloons, I thought, “Wow, this is so f*cking great!”

And his logo for the book was just superb, too!

CBC: Did you do the coloring on the covers?

Bernie: I don’t recall. You know, that was probably [DC assistant production manager] Jack Adler. They were getting very fond of doing that knock-out approach on the cover of that first issue. All the trees in the background were black, but they knocked it all out and made it that kind of brown to push it further back. I’m happy with all of the covers.

CBC: There’s not a word on the covers, not “Batman” on #7. The Shadow #1 still had a big “1st DC Issue” blurb, but Swamp Thing #1 get this subtle “First Startling Issue” on top.

You were really on top of the game at DC. You were getting special treatment, don’t you think?

Bernie: I was at that time, yes. I had somehow risen through the ranks.

CBC: [Pointing out a henchman in #1, page three] Is that Michael Kaluta?

Bernie: Not literally, but I had him in mind when I drew that, but I’ll tell you who Michael is in the first couple of issues: [indicating page eight] He’s the dog. [laughter] I gave the orange mutt Michael’s mustache.

CBC: Did you draw every panel of the entire run or did you have help?

Bernie: I had help on… where was it? [searches through issues, stops at #9] Yeah, I had help on this one. Jeff Jones came in and did some inking. This is all his inking on the last part of the book.

CBC: Yeah, I can see it.

Bernie: Yeah, yeah. It’s one, two, three… okay, the first part of the book is mine. Yeah, this is all mine. Jeff did, if I remember correctly, the last part of the book. This is mine.

CBC: So what did Jeff do?

Bernie: [Indicates page 15] I remember being kind of upset about this because I thought Jeff got a little bit sloppy on this page. I wanted to do this myself because I wanted to be very careful with all these characters and be very specific because they’re all splitting up into two different camps here and I wanted it to be very clear who’s going where. I thought Jeff got kind of sloppy because I couldn’t tell who was who. Then I realized after it was printed you couldn’t tell who was who anyway! [laughter] Because they’re so small and they’re all in uniform, they all look the same anyway. So I apologized to Jeff. But yeah, [indicates pages 11, 12, 13, and 14] he inked these, as well. Jeff did those pages and parts of other pages because I took a break from Swamp Thing to help Kaluta with The Shadow #3 because he had fallen way behind.

CBC: What comes around, goes around, eh?

Bernie: So I went to New York City to help Michael on The Shadow for a couple of weeks. I had moved up to Saugerties and Jeff lived right around the corner from me at the time. I lived up there for about two years, for most of Swamp Thing.

CBC: “The Patchwork Man” [ST #3] was obviously based on Mary Shelley’s novel. When did you first read Frankenstein?

Bernie: I must have been 12 or 13.

CBC: Was that your favorite book?

Bernie: No, no. In fact, the first time I picked it up, I couldn’t even get through it. It was not what I expected at all. It wasn’t Boris Karloff and the language was just so, so… convoluted and dense. I just couldn’t follow it. I found myself like getting to the end of a paragraph and having to go back and re-read it because, yeah, I didn’t know what the hell she said. I was very disappointed because I thought, “My God, this is Frankenstein! This is where all this stuff I loved supposedly came from. What was Mary Shelley thinking?” So I

TM & © DC Comics.

put it down but went back a couple of years later and finally got through it. And I was so intrigued that I went back and immediately re-read it again, because I realized the novel was something much larger, much deeper and more complex than the movie. You know, there was something else going on here which I hadn’t realized until I was a certain age.

CBC: What was that?

Bernie: You know, this is the story about an abused child.

This is a story about a father and son, and the parent not taking responsibility for and not loving his son. That’s what I came away from. It’s also much more than that, but that’s the primary aspect I took from it.

CBC: Was it early on when Len and you decided you two were going to do “Monster of the Month” issues. That is, you were going to take archetypal horror situations and adapt them to ST? Bernie: Pretty much.

CBC: Was ST #2 inspired by [director] Tod Browning’s [1932 movie] Freaks?

Bernie: Yeah, that was part of it.

CBC: And #4 is obviously a take on either Werewolf of London or is it The Wolfman? Is it a combination of the two?

Bernie: It’s my werewolf story, just something I had in mind for a long time. I thought, “Okay, I know when you do it in the movies, you gotta put a guy in make-up, so it’s obviously a man underneath the costume and make-up — this was way before [1981 movies] An American Werewolf in London and The Howling — and I just thought, “Okay, I’m drawing this creature, so I can do anything I want. Why not give him a real wolf’s face and legs?” Just basically do something nobody’s ever seen before. I had a lot of fun coming up with the werewolf in this. Like I said, it was ideas that had been circling my head for a while, but it all came together in ST, and it was fun.

CBC: This is “Witches,” ST # 5. Was this both a take on the stereotypical Universal monster movie mob of irate townspeople, burning torches and all, and the Salem Witch trials?

Bernie: Of course. Here’s something I want to show you: I distinctly remember this being Joe’s idea, okay? This badass guy comes in on page eight, and on page nine, he cuts off Swamp Thing’s arm (though the dismemberment takes place off-panel).Then you see part of the stump, and Swamp Thing falls into the ocean and is gone for a while so we can follow the other characters. Then he shows up again on page 14 and his arm is regenerating, right? You see his arm grow from a little stick, all the way back to full form. That was Joe’s idea. I know Len is going to disagree with me, because we’ve had this argument before, but I distinctly remember this being Joe’s idea.

CBC: This is the kernel of the idea of Swamp Thing as a plant, right? Or was he always a plant in your minds?

Bernie: We didn’t know, see, because we had limitations, okay? In the first issue, as planned, Alec Holland gets set on fire with chemicals, runs into the swamp and dies, right?

Somewhere between the burning and the drowning, he dies and comes back to life as the Swamp Thing. We were told by the Comics Code that we couldn’t do that because that technically makes him the walking dead, and zombies are expressly forbidden by the Code? So he’s got a little bit of life left, and the chemicals combine with the swamp’s

organic matter to rebuild and heal him, bringing him back as something other than human. Okay, we’re fine with that. Did you know that we couldn’t even have Alec Holland on fire in the first issue?

CBC: [Looking at ST #1] The caption says “fume-enveloped flesh.”

Bernie: “Fume-enveloped flesh”! There it is. If you saw the original page of art, you would see that under the word “fume,” it’s been whited-over pretty thick, right? Originally, before the Code insisted on the change, it said “flame-en-

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Above: Swamp Thing letter column header drawn by Bernie Wrightson. Noted writer of speculative fiction Harlan Ellison was among the epistolarians who shared enthusiasm about the DC horror title. Below: The origin of the name of M’Nagalah in Swamp Thing #8 [Jan.–Feb. ’74] — was actually from an old Muppets musical routine!

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Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

The Shadow TM & © Condé Nast.

veloped flesh.” We were told we couldn’t show him burning.

Hence, the coloring is green, not yellow and red. Those are not flames, they’re fumes because we can’t show someone on fire, right?

Now look at this: ST #3, page 13, first and second panels. In the first panel you see Arcane coming up behind Patchwork Man, okay? He’s got a hypodermic needle in his hand, right? You see him coming up behind with an empty fist. The next panel, you see something happening to Patchwork Man’s back, and Arcane says, “This injection will only make you sleep.” The readers go, “What injection?” In the first panel, you see he’s holding a hypodermic needle. Here in the second, you see the hand coming down but no needle. You just see his fist there, right? But you saw the needle there and we did initially have the guy injected with a full-view of the needle.

The Comics Code said no, we couldn’t show a needle injecting the guy, so the art was changed to a fist.

Maybe the funniest story involving the Code and our run of Swamp Thing is #6, better than halfway through our

ten-issue run. The Code is reviewing this issue and Joe suddenly gets a frantic call from them. They’re looking over this cover and they’re saying to Joe, “You can’t do this! This figure is undraped.” Joe says, “’Undraped’? Meaning Swamp Thing no clothes on?” They say, “Yes, undraped. He’s not dressed. He’s naked. You can’t have him naked!” Joe says, “He’s a monster.” They say, “It doesn’t matter! He’s got legs, he’s got arms… he looks like a human. You’ve got to cover him up!” Joe says, “Should we put little purple pants on him like The Hulk?” These guys were having a fit! And this is six issues into the run, a full year! Joe had to go to the Comics Code offices, and he brought along the first five issues and all of the pages from #6. He’s got to bring over all these past issues, all of them which had been previously approved by the Code, and go through all these comics, panel by panel, to show them that Swamp Thing has, yes, been undraped from the very beginning, right? [laughter] But his pelvis has always been seen as in the shadows so you’ve never been able to see anything. He has no discernible genitalia, there are no “roots” down there, you know? [laughter] Joe makes the case that, “Listen, we’re a year into this already, and you want me to suddenly put pants on the guy? How realistic is it, all of a sudden, for no logical reason, he’s got to wear pants when he’s gotten along fine without them for all this time?”

Thank God, Joe talked them out of it.

For a while, during Len and my run, there was some talk about DC maybe releasing this as an unapproved comic, without the Comics Code Authority stamp of approval (as what did eventually happen in the ’80s). But Carmine felt this was way too early to take on the Code again — remember, only months prior, DC and Marvel had lobbied, and won, the Code to liberalize its list of objectionable material — so they dropped that idea real fast.

CBC: [Indicating the logo on ST #4, page one] Did you do a rough layout of that for Gaspar to follow?

Bernie: Not that I recall. I think I just turned it in and may have wrote “title” or “Monster on the Moor.”

CBC: Gaspar really went the extra mile! It’s beautiful work.

Bernie: Gaspar designed all of the typographical work.

There were some places where I would get specific about a sound effect and draw it out and put a little notation in the margins. On page two, # 4, the second panel — “Klop” or “Klopkl” — I would just indicate where it should go.

CBC: You started using Zip-A-Tone. Was that your choice?

You were stretching your wings?

Bernie: Yes. I found this gradated Zip-A-Tone that goes from light at the top to darker at the bottom. I got a couple of sheets and used it up on this. I was experimenting, trying new things. You know, there was a lot of pen work in #4. I was pretty happy with how it turned out. In fact, I might — again, I can’t remember for sure — I might have spoken to the colorist about this. I believe I talked to Glynis Wein about the color on this and asked that whenever they were on the moors to keep everything just kind of a light blue and let the line work do the work of establishing planes and giving the feeling of things disappearing into the mist, to not do it with color because you get this hard line and these little bands of color through there and everything.

CBC: It was inspired to leave the werewolf in white because it really makes him pop.

Bernie: Exactly. I don’t think I talked to the colorist about that, but I think she got the idea. The only way you could get gray in a comic book in those days was to use three colors — yellow, red and blue — at different tints, but every layer of color you put on obscures the line work that much more.

So I remember being pretty happy with this. It’s one of the best-colored issues CBC: Looking at the splash on page 18, that’s great stuff.

Bernie: I think everybody laughs at that, but nobody really objects to it.

CBC: No, it works. Dramatically, it works. Also, there’s a Jack Davis flavor to some of this, a throwback to your earlier work.

TM & © DC Comics.

Bernie: Yeah, I was looking at a lot of the E.C. work: Jack Davis, Graham Ingels, Reed Crandall.

CBC: Were the half-pages annoying for you?

Bernie: Not really. From my standpoint, it was half the work.

CBC: Yeah, but it’s also half the pay, wasn’t it?

Bernie: Oh, no.

CBC: But it wasn’t your choice?

Bernie: It wasn’t my choice, no.

CBC: What was the basis for ST #6, “A Clockwork Horror”?

[The movie] Westworld [1973]?

Bernie: I guess. The quintessential Universal Pictures village, very Bullsh*t Bavarian.

CBC: Did you like drawing women? Did you ease into it?

Bernie: You know, I was never comfortable drawing women. It was always difficult.

CBC: Obviously, right around this time, The Shadow #1 arrives. One of your best buddies finally comes into his own.

Bernie: Yeah, the first issue of The Shadow was coming along about halfway through Swamp Thing.

CBC: Did you have any exposure to The Heap at all?

Bernie: A little. What I remember about The Heap, I remember from the MAD comic-book parody by Harvey Kurtzman and Bill Elder, [“Outer Sanctum,” MAD #5, June– July ’53]. That’s about it CBC: What were your feelings about Savage Tales #1 with the introduction of Man-Thing? It came out, virtually simultaneously as “Swamp Thing” in HOS #92. Did you think it was a cheesy rip-off?

Bernie: Well, I’ll tell you what was happening at the time; Gerry Conway, who came up with “Man-Thing,” was Len’s roommate at the time Len wrote the first script, okay?

Marvel’s schedule was faster, their turnaround was quicker, where they could get a book out, much quicker than DC. So figure it out. “Man-Thing” came out before “Swamp Thing,” okay? My opinion is “Man-Thing” is a complete rip-off of “Swamp Thing,” but it came out first so that Marvel could say that DC was copying their idea.

CBC: In execution, did you see any similarities between the characters?

Bernie: I just said it was a rip-off, you know? I think that speaks for itself. I ignored Man-Thing because I thought that what we were doing was better, so I never read their series.

The first “Man-Thing” story was drawn by Neal Adams, wasn’t it?

CBC: No, the very first one was Gray Morrow. But Neal drew the story originally intended for Savage Tales #2, but that magazine was cancelled. The story, shot from Neal’s pencils, was eventually published in Astonishing Tales #12 [June ’72]. Do you know who wrote that story?

Bernie: No. CBC: Len! He came up with the phrase, “Whoever knows fear burns at the Man-Thing’s touch.”

Bernie: I didn’t know that. God, what a double-crosser.

Boy, I’m going to ring his doorbell and run. [laughter] CBC: You obviously became a very highly regarded artist with Swamp Thing. What was it like to win the Shazam Award?

Bernie: It was a thrill. It’s an award, and what’s not to like?

Everybody loves to receive recognition, you know? At the time, it was a pretty big deal for me.

CBC: Swamp Thing was a hit across the board, right? Len also won for “Best Writer,” right?

Bernie: I think he did, yes. As I recall, the attention came as a surprise. I don’t think any of us were expecting it. You know, Swamp Thing was a hit from the very beginning. I

think by the middle of the run, those first 10 issues, Swamp Thing was outselling everything else at DC, even Superman. And the mail we received was great.

The response was extraordinary.

Everybody seemed to love the book.

I look back at those times and I think we were really sincere about the work we did on Swamp Thing. Len and me both, it’s not like we were grinding something out here to make a buck (which isn’t to say we weren’t aware we were also doing something commercially successful), but it was foremost in our heads when we started to approach it by saying, “Let’s

Previous page: For a brief spell, Bernie entertained the idea to illustrate a new DC title, The Shadow, and he used the page at top to audition… but, alas, the rigors of his active assignments prevented that dream team. The page was used as a house ad trumpeting the coming of Dennis O’Neil and Michael Wm. Kaluta’s version. Bernie did, though, help out on the title, with penciling and inking on The Shadow #3 and 4.

Flopped panel detail from #3 [Feb.–Mar. ’74] at bottom. This page: Apparently the Frankenstein monster-like Patchwork Man was to be spunoff into his own title, at least according to this discovered unpublished page, at top, drawn by Nestor Redondo. Looks like #1 appeared in an issue of House of Secrets, #140 [Feb.–Mar. ’76]. At right is a vignette from Swamp Thing #4 [Apr.–May ’73]. Art by Bernie Wrightson.

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

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Déjà Vu: The Lost Swamp Thing In the mid-1980s, Len Wein and Bernie Wrightson reunited to produce a brand new Swamp Thing saga, this one in the wake of the revolutionary stories by writer Alan Moore and his artist collaborators. As Bernie tells it, after completing rough pencils on the first 48-page episode of Déjà Vu — a story where Swamp Thing travels in time, first to the prehistoric age and forward

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straddling two buildings and his cape is blowing out, and it’s at least 20 feet long. I remember Neal teasing me about that and saying, “Yeah, I loved the idea of the shrinking cape.” It’s like he’s standing up here, it’s 20 feet long, and he jumps to the ground and it somehow shrinks in mid-flight to a five-foot cape. He won’t trip over it.

CBC: Oh, you’re being too literal here, Bernie. Artistic license! You gotta let it go. [laughs] Did you have a ball doing this?

Bernie: I had a great time, yeah. It was really the first time I did Batman, other than a couple of covers. You know, actually doing a Batman story.

CBC: Though I had to have seen your work earlier, the first time your work made an impact on me was a Detective Comics cover in which Batman was on top of a stagecoach. For some reason, I thought you were an old guy, a longtime veteran, probably a 65-year old artist who’d been at it since the Golden Age. There just seemed a level of accomplishment and an “oldschool” feel about your art.

Bernie: I heard that a lot from people, so you’re not alone in that, Jon. My stuff is old-fashioned and it was that way on purpose. I was trying to make it look like Graham Ingels or Frazetta, and in my opinion, I fell way short. It was like neither one of those guys, but something else. But yeah, I’d run into Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Art © Bernie Wrightson. Swamp Thing TM & © DC Comics.

have a lot of fun with this and let’s do the stuff we really want to do, but let’s also do something that’s going to be popular and make some money.” Here’s something that, to my knowledge, has never really been done before: The monster as a super-hero, or the super-hero as monster.

CBC: No, “Frankenstein” by Dick Briefer was comedic, right? Certainly the romantic angle was unprecedented. It was an adult, mature approach to monsters with a touch of Wuthering Heights.

Bernie: The Hulk was a monster, but not quite a hero. You couldn’t quite figure out who the Hulk was, right? Ours was a conscious effort to do a monster hero. He is a good guy.

CBC: In spite of his circumstances. Why does he want to be good?

Bernie: It’s in his nature. He’s a leopard who can’t change his spots. He was a good guy when he was human and so he’s going to be a good guy when he’s a monster. He’s not like Jekyll and Hyde.

CBC: [Indicates ST #7] For a kid to see this, this kicked ass. I mean this truly was a fanboy’s dream: Bernie Wrightson does Batman. You gave the cape a character of its own.

Bernie: This was a lot of fun. Yeah, I remember getting teased by Neal. [indicates page 12] Batman’s standing on a building, the big middle panel,

until when Alec Holland plunges to his death in the bayou — the artist suffered an existential crisis about his most famous creation and realized, much to his creative partners detriment, you can’t go home again, and abandoned the project. Courtesy of Bernie, here (and on the pages following) are select pages from that lost story.

Art © Bernie Wrightson. Swamp Thing TM & © DC Comics.

Graphic Novel by Wein & Wrightson

a lot of people who’d say, “I’m really surprised you’re as young as you are because you have the style of a real old guy.”

CBC: Are you old inside, like Crumb always was?

Bernie: No! I mean, I don’t feel my age! I don’t feel 55. I feel like a 12-yearold kid who’s got something wrong with him.

CBC: ST #8, “The Lurker in Tunnel 13.” This is certainly based on H.P. Lovecraft’s work. Had you read Lovecraft?

Bernie: Oh, yes, but that stuff was too dense for me at the time. Len was into HPL, and I liked Len’s version of the Cthulhu Mythos better. I said, “Boy, it sounds great when you say it, Len.” What’s the name in that? “M’Nagalah” or something? It’s towards the end… Len told me that came to him when he heard on TV (maybe it was on Sesame Street) this Jim Henson Muppet skit, one Henson a couple of years later did on The Muppet Show. The Muppets sing this song: [sings] “Manama-nah, doot-doo-do-doo-doot, manama-nah, doot-doo-dah-doot…” And Len hears it while he’s trying to come up with a Lovecraftian name, right? So he just makes it “M’Nagalah”! [laughter] CBC: Such is the background stuff I live to learn! Your memory is pretty sharp regarding Swamp Thing. This was an important time for you?

Bernie: Oh, yes, very much so. Swamp Thing was everything to me at the time. There was nothing else in my life. I mean this was it.

CBC: Are you often asked about those days?

Bernie: No, but whenever Len and I get together, I look through the comics and it all starts coming back.

CBC: [Indicates ST #9] Is there a new inking approach for you on this one?

There’s a softness to the work that seems unusual.

Bernie: I was getting better with a brush.

CBC: What’s the thought behind the alien creature? Was it just totally out of your head or was there any antecedent?

Bernie: No, the design was completely out of my head. I look at it now and it vaguely reminds me of some creatures Al Williamson did in one of the E.C. science-fiction comics. I think there might be a subconscious connection there, but it wasn’t intended.

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

CBC: So this issue is an homage, of sorts, to those 1950s movies about aliens coming to Earth?

Bernie: Right.

CBC: Was this the intended cover? This is a rare representation in your run of an iconic cover (other than #1), as all the others depict some action that takes place inside the story.

Bernie: Yes, that was planned. I thought the alien looked kind of silly, not so scary. I very specifically did not want to put him on the cover. I thought, “How about a nice hero shot of Swamp Thing?”

CBC: ST #10 specifically credits you as “Plotter.” I believe this is the only time I saw you credited like that in the title. Is this the only time you did plot a ST story?

Bernie: Yes. CBC: Does this follow the “Monster of the Month” format?

Bernie: Not really. This is more a ghost story. It’s the return of Arcane and some of these guys. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I ripped-off Ray Bradbury for this story. He did a short story called “The Handlers” and that’s basically where the plot came from, or the ending anyway. So I should apologize to Ray, you know? When I came up with my story, I thought it was an original idea, but it wasn’t.

CBC: This issue is your first foray into pen work or mixed inking?

Bernie: Yeah. I was disappointed with this issue.

CBC: But you must have decided to quit before this saw print, right?

Bernie: Right. I was getting tired of the bi-monthly grind before this came along. Still, yeah, this is what finally did it. What’s really funny is I was complaining earlier about the coloring on this and how muddy it all got. But I now remember that I colored this. I made all these choices and, looking at it now, it’s not that bad, you know?

CBC: Were you exhausted?

Bernie: I don’t know if that’s the right way to put it. Not exhausted, really, but I was starting to get tired of doing the same thing.

CBC: In between the ST issues, for Joe Orlando you would do the frontispieces in House of Mystery and House of Secrets. You didn’t get paid a 107

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page, pretty good money. That was at Carmine’s top rate. I quit Swamp Thing just because I was just getting tired of doing it, partly because it just seemed to be the same thing, issue after issue. You know, it was, “What new monster can we come up with for Swamp Thing to fight?” And I don’t know, I just felt like it was going nowhere. We were like repeating ourselves. Plus I was becoming disenchanted doing color comics. If you look at the last issue I did, issue #10, that was done with a pen. Up until then, I’d been working with a brush, and I worked really hard on that one because I was using a pen for the whole book for the first time.

CBC: This is just before the Warren work.

Bernie: Yeah, yeah. That’s the point I’m getting to is when you draw with a pen, it takes longer than drawing with a brush. You know, you can’t cover as much area. You’re only going like one line at a time, the ink stays wet longer so you have to be careful not to put your hand in it and smudge it all over the place. So you do a little bit on this page and then go to another page and just kind of jump around. And for me, anyway, maybe it’s different for other guys.

It’s just working with a pen is a lot more of a pain in the ass than working with a brush. But for some reason, I wanted to do it all in pen. So long story short, when the book finally came out, covered with all this dark color. Everything is a night scene and all that beautiful line work just disappeared and I just got really disenchanted with the whole thing and I think what the hell is the point of working this hard and putting this much into it if you’re not even going to see it?

I was just very unhappy with how it turned out. I also noticed that Warren had gotten out of his slump and the books started looking better. He was using Rich Corben, whose work I loved. So anyway, I went over to Warren.

Maybe I’m wrong about this, but I don’t think [Warren editor] Weezie was working there yet.

It started when Jim Warren sent me a telegram. I’d never gotten a telegram before. It was from Jim, asking me to come work for him. So finally, it’s, “Eh, what’s going to hurt? I’ll go over and talk to him.” So I went over and, like I said, I was making $65 a page at DC. Pretty good money and the money was really not an issue for me going to Warren. Jim asked me, “What Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Art © Bernie Wrightson. Swamp Thing TM & © DC Comics.

typical page rate for that, did you. Did you get a special rate?

Bernie: No, it was just the regular page rate. They were a lot of fun. The assignment was my idea, actually. One of my favorite things doing comics was the splash page. I loved doing splash pages, just having all that room to work. After page after page after page of all these little teeny drawings, you can finally spread out, you know? So I loved doing covers, splashes, just do one big picture, being able to do virtually a splash page to lead off the issue.

CBC: Were all the gag ideas your own?

Bernie: Yes and no. I did with a lot of them was I would draw the picture, right? Some we’d come up with something and just have Cain like standing with a monster or something, and leave space for a balloon, right? Then Joe Orlando would give it to a writer. I remember Len did a couple and he would say, “Okay, just do an intro piece that goes with this picture.” I remember doing a couple, one specifically. It had Cain standing next to this big glass vat and Abel is inside the vat, you know, all chained up and everything, with bubbles coming out of his mouth and stuff, and bananas floating in the water.

CBC: “Bananas floating”?

Bernie: Bananas floating in the water. And I remember doing that on purpose to throw Len a curve and give it to him with absolutely no comment at all and just challenge him, “Okay, come up with something.” And he did! I remember it being really funny and both of us just having a really good time.

CBC: Was it as seamless collaboration or did you two have moments?

Bernie: You know, I remember it as being pretty seamless and I guess we had the normal amount of disagreements, but we never butted heads. You know, I can’t remember any time it ever came to blows or really anything major. Maybe we’d disagree about some small point or another.

CBC: But you were an affable fellow, right?

Bernie: Well, yes, and for the most part, Len didn’t tell me how to draw, and I didn’t tell him how to write. I had complete faith in him as a writer. I believed that he had faith of the same completion in me as an artist and just trusted me to do well by him.

CBC: Did you earn DC’s top page-rate by the time you left?

Bernie: When I was doing the Swamp Thing series, I was making $65 a

Art © Bernie Wrightson. Swamp Thing TM & © DC Comics.

are you making at DC?” I said, “So, well, it’s not too bad: $65 a page.” He just made a dismissive sound and said, “How’s a $110 a page sound to you?”

And I said, [imitating Mortimer Snerd] “Well, that sounds really good, Mr. Warren.” [laughs] $110 dollars a page, print in black-&-white so you see every line, and you get to keep your originals! How could I pass it up? It’s the ultimate offer you can’t refuse in the mid-’70s!

At the time, no publisher was returning artwork to the artists. I wasn’t getting originals back from DC. You know all the Swamp Thing stuff? They kept that and to be honest, yeah, that rankled me. Because, for me, it really was all about the art and, no, they shouldn’t be giving this stuff away. I want those originals. Not that I thought they were worth anything, but because they were mine, I did them. They belong to me.

CBC: After you left, Nestor Redondo came in as artist on Swamp Thing. Did you like Nestor’s work?

Bernie: I liked Nestor Redondo’s work a lot. I thought it was uncanny that he drew all those characters I was doing and being so much better than I at drawing it, you know? And his getting them dead-on, the likenesses and everything. Nestor was a very realistic artist, I thought, like Alex Raymond, and I was a bit more cartoony. Such as when I drew Matt Cable, he’s got that huge chin, right? That’s just how I thought he looked. But when a realistic artist like Nestor draws him exactly the same way, only in his style, it’s kind of alarming to see. When Nestor did it, the guy really looked funny. It was, no, his chin shouldn’t be that big. And he kept my proportions!

CBC: It was hyper-realistic.

Bernie: Yeah, yeah, like that’s how the guy actually looked. He got the really long waist and these short little stumpy legs, right? And it’s like, “No, I drew it that way because I didn’t know any better!” I drew everyone with their waist too long and their legs too short, you know? I’ve always had a problem with that, but Nestor picked that up. Still, I thought he did a great job. It was brilliant work and I was delighted he followed me on the book. I loved his stuff.

CBC: Did you get a lot of flak from your fans about leaving Swamp Thing?

Bernie: No, I didn’t really hear much, which isn’t to say they didn’t comComic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

plain. I just wasn’t paying attention to it, so I don’t remember anything.

CBC: Obviously you went on to do spectacular work in the Warren books.

Did you have people wanting you to come back to color comics?

Bernie: No, not particularly. If there was any of that criticism, I just really wasn’t paying any attention. I just wanted to go my own way and do what I wanted to do, and it wouldn’t have mattered if I did hear it. It’s like, “Well, you can bellyache about it all you want, but I don’t want to do that.”

CBC: When Carmine Infantino left DC in 1976, you weren’t working for the company anymore. Still, when Jenette Kahn came on board as publisher, she seemed to have a fondness for Swamp Thing. How did she contact you?

Bernie: One of the first things that she did was call me about her new line of Dollar Comics. I was still in The Studio at the time, still sharing space with Jeff Jones, Barry Windsor-Smith, and Michael Kaluta. She phoned and offered a proposal for the Dollar Comics, right? She laid the whole thing out and it sounded reasonable enough; and she wanted to talk to all of us and I had the impression it wasn’t just me she wanted, but all of us. She wanted full-color, painted covers for these books and really do something different.

But none of us were interested. We had already left comics, at this point. We were moving on and, at that moment, none of us were particularly interested in getting back into comics. We wanted to produce prints, posters, and other things… art for art’s sake! [laughter] CBC: So you could not be swayed?

Bernie: No, but I did do a few things for DC during the time Jenette was there because I liked her very much. I thought she brought vitality and a new perspective to the industry, and while I wasn’t terribly interested in being a part of it in any major way — like taking on a series or anything — I still thought she was good for mainstream comics and particularly for DC. So it was nice to see her come in, take charge in the way she did it, in a very nice way, you know, but with a lot of very specific ideas, and she was very open to the idea of change and experimentation.

CBC: Was she explicit with you about high regard for your Swamp Thing?

Bernie: Oh, she loved Swamp Thing, yes. It was one of her favorite titles, and I took that as a high compliment because, you see, she didn’t come from 109

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me nervous anyway.

CBC: You were married and had children at this point, right?

Bernie: Right. So I thought, “Maybe my time is better spent just working, doing what I know how to do, and just let this go.”

CBC: Were you afraid to create hostility with DC? Bernie: I don’t like confrontation. Part of it was the attorney said if we did anything at all, we would have to do it with Len or it would be virtually impossible for me to go it alone. Len was working at DC at the time, I think, as an editor. When I approached Len about it, he wanted nothing to do with it, and I think that was the deciding factor, so I just dropped it. In the meantime, the lawyer had sent a couple of letters to DC’s legal department, and the result was that Len’s and my name were taken off the movie as co-creators.

If you see the original movie, our names aren’t there. It says something to the effect, “Swamp Thing is a property of DC Comics.”

CBC: Are your names on the sequel?

Bernie: Yes, both our names were on the second movie. Curious thing about all this: at the same time that they took our names off the first movie, they started putting our names in the comic books, right? “Created by Len Wein & Berni Wrightson.” You know, I never quite understood that and, like I say, I just backed away from the whole thing and just put it out of my mind.

CBC: Not too many people have gotten creator credit for characters at DC. Nowadays, it’s much more common. Certainly, there was Siegel & Shuster [Superman], Bob Kane [Batman], and William Moulton Marston [Wonder Woman]. In the 1980s, you guys and Jack Kirby started getting credit, as well.

Was there any implication to that? Did you make a nickel from every Swamp Thing book that was published?

Bernie: You mean the Swamp Thing stories the other guys did? No. CBC: They just had your names on the books?

Bernie: Right. We would occasionally get checks from DC, usually at Christmas. The implication was that the checks were supposedly our cut from any merchandising, but that wasn’t so because they never came with any statements, and the amounts were always round numbers like $2,000 or $3,000, and we didn’t get checks every year. We’d get it one year, but not the next… It was as if I was getting this money from DC out of the kindness Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Art © Bernie Wrightson. Swamp Thing TM & © DC Comics.

a comic-book background, she came out of children’s magazine publishing.

But she told me many times that Swamp Thing was a particular favorite, which is always nice to hear.

Jenette really wanted to do something with Len and I. I can’t speak for Len because at the time, we’d fallen out of touch, so I’m not really sure what he was doing, but I do know she wanted to work with Len and me.

CBC: Did she want Swamp Thing revived?

Bernie: Maybe she did. If she brought that up, I don’t remember. It was so far away from anything I wanted to do at the time.

CBC: Were you gratified that Swamp Thing was reprinted within a mere five years it had been in print, not long after Jenette joined the company?

Bernie: You know, I didn’t think about it. I did the covers and made a little bit of money for the reprints. I was more concerned with just making a living, at the time.

CBC: In the early 1980s, the first Swamp Thing movie was produced. How did you hear about the movie development plans?

Bernie: I read about it in a fan magazine like Fangoria. I got my nose way out of joint because they were making a movie of this character I co-created and nobody had bothered to tell me. What further pissed me off was to read that Len Wein was on the set as an advisor. It’s like, what am I? Chopped liver? They hire Len as advisor and nobody even tells me they’re making the goddamn thing? So I call up a lawyer and we got into the whole copyright issue thing. He said, “Okay, bring me a copy of the contract. We’ll look into it.” I said, “There was no contract.” He said, “What do you mean, ‘There’s no contract’?” I said, “We never had a contract, we never had anything on paper. This was comic books. The only thing approximating a contract is whenever I got a check for doing my pages, and there was a rubber stamp thing on the back of the check, at the part where it says, ‘endorse here,’ where it said something to the effect, ‘By endorsing this check, I hereby now and forever relinquish all rights,’ blah-blah-blah.” The lawyer said, “Wha—!?

That’s not a contract. That’s not even legal!”

So, with this lawyer, I was going to start proceedings against DC, but ultimately I got cold feet and just thought, “Yeah, I can see the next 10 years of my life embroiled in all this. I don’t think I want to do that.” Legal stuff makes

Bernie Wrightson portrait © the respective copyright holder.

of their hearts and whenever they felt like giving it to me. It didn’t mean anything, it didn’t have to do with any acknowledgment that Len and I created the character, and it really pissed me off. I was especially annoyed to find out I that the “new guys” — Alan Moore. Steve Bissette, John Totleben, and Rick Veitch — weren’t getting any of this money, because I realized, okay, this check is from merchandising, most of which is based on their ideas. You know, it’s based on stuff that Alan Moore did with these guys. Isn’t it fair that they should be getting the money? That’s why I sent them their fair share.

CBC: Just because you felt it was the right thing to do?

Bernie: Yes. I felt the success of Swamp Thing in the ’80s and ’90s was based on their ideas. I know Len won’t agree with me on this but, in my mind, Alan came along and reinvented the character. The character was dead, as dead as a turd. Alan came along and made up a new character out of whole cloth, gave him sensibilities, powers and a life Len and I just hadn’t imagined.

CBC: Swamp Thing was a man inside a monster to you two?

Bernie: Exactly, but Alan took the character and made him into a force of nature.

CBC: So did you get turned on by what Alan was doing?

Bernie: What Alan did with the character was brilliant. I thought it was absolutely brilliant and the way he set it up, he could use the Swamp Thing comic as a vehicle to tell any story he wanted… and he did! There were issues where Swamp Thing barely appeared, a minor character in book that carried his name, which I thought was great.

CBC: What was the genesis of this planned “grand return” to the character

by Len Wein and Bernie Wrightson? You two were going to do a mini-series in the 1980s?

Bernie: Yes, it was going to be a two- or three-issue mini-series. . . .

CBC: Was this before “Anatomy Lesson”?

Bernie: No, this was after that issue, after Alan had rejuvenated the character. It might have been after Bissette left. It might have been during the time that Rick Veitch was doing it, but I can’t be sure.

Len and I were going to do a retelling of the origin story. But with a twist.

Swamp Thing knows he is a plant — not Alec Holland, but something entirely new — and he can travel through the Green and he discovers that by going into the roots of a mighty oak tree that is maybe 1,000 years old, by traveling through this tree’s inner system, he can go back to the time when the oak was just an acorn, before it had even broken through the earth, right?

He realizes, “I can time travel. This is great!” So he has a good time going through the Green and meeting dinosaurs, popping up in Roman times and, in the middle of all this, he thinks, “If I can move through time, I can change history. I don’t have to be this creature. I can go back and stop myself from ever becoming Swamp Thing. I can be Alec Holland again.” So he does. He travels back to the events in first issue, okay? As the villains are planting the bomb, and he stops the bad guys and has the bomb blow up in their faces instead. Alec Holland is saved and he does not become the Swamp Thing. right? Then he never tells Linda, his wife, about this, but in the meantime, his wife is going crazy and she… well, I can’t remember particulars, but she does something bad with the bio-restorative and basically endangers the world. I think what she does is she sells it, but it hasn’t been properly tested, and when they start using it, they find that it’s not a restorative as much as it is a global parasite, right? So instead of making gardens out of deserts and things like that, it just sucks the life out of everything it touches. So the Earth is in danger of dying and the only way that the planet can be saved is by Swamp Thing, and Alec Holland has to return being Swamp Thing somehow.

He is forced to give up on any idea that he can save Linda from being killed.

It was just a great story, one with heartbreaking stuff. I almost got all the way through penciling the first issue when I realized that I just can’t do it anymore. I just couldn’t go back again, tell the same story, and I just couldn’t do this character anymore. I just don’t have it in me. It is like traveling back in time for me.

CBC: You realized that your time with Swamp Thing was over? That you couldn’t go back home, so to speak?

Bernie: I felt that I was going backwards, and I just couldn’t make myself do it. And, you know, God, it was the hardest thing for me to do, to have to tell Len that I couldn’t do it.

CBC: What was Len’s response?

Bernie: Unfortunately, we didn’t speak to each other for a couple of years.

I was afraid we weren’t ever going to be friends again. It was really, really hard. This was one of the best things he’d ever written, one of the best ideas he’d ever had, and the bitch of it was that it wouldn’t work if you just gave it to Bissette or Rick Veitch to draw. This whole thing wouldn’t resonate unless it was Len Wein and Bernie Wrightson doing it because we were the original guys and we were going back to change the original story, turning the whole Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

thing around and bring it back to where it started.

CBC: You certainly wanted Frankenstein to be your own way.

You certainly were about ready to tear up a contract when Shooter was talking about putting color into Marvel’s edition of Frankenstein.

While certainly you’re a guy who doesn’t like confrontation and not prone to hissy fits, you do get angry, but it subsides and you back down. Why this? Is it you couldn’t talk yourself into it? You just knew it felt wrong?

Bernie: I just reached a point I put the pencil down and just said, “I can’t draw another line. I just can’t do this.”

CBC: Wasn’t there Above: The veteran artist was, a few years back, celebratany other people at DC besides Len wanting you ed in his hometown newspaper, The Baltimore Sun. to do it? Wasn’t there an editor — ?

Bernie: Karen Berger was the editor. Jenette really wanted us to do it.

Everybody got on my case about it. Len and I had a few… skirmishes about it. I just said, “I can’t do this. I can’t even think about it.”

CBC: Did you try and make them understand?

Bernie: Well, yes, I tried to make them understand, but apparently, I couldn’t and I still can’t quite understand it myself.

CBC: You already had closure with the character?

Bernie: I guess so. It’s just something that I know I’m never going to do again.

CBC: But you’ve certainly just drawn him on occasion?

Bernie: Yes, once in a while, a single picture here and there, but as far as telling his story again… ain’t gonna happen.

CBC: Do you feel overshadowed by Moore’s work?

Bernie: No, I was happy for them without reservation, and I was happy for the character. I was happy they were able to take this entirely new direction where I think the character transcended super-heroes. He became almost god-like or a force of nature. Such a concept never crossed my mind.

CBC: Do you like the character?

Bernie: Oh, sure. Yes. CBC: Is Swamp Thing the most resonant character you believe you’ve had a hand in creating?

Bernie: I guess so. How many characters have I created? Not that many, but Swamp Thing is certainly the most well-known.

CBC: Two motion pictures, a cartoon series, TV series, toys, toys, toys…

Bernie: Yeah, he has had some legs. He’s no Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but he hung around.

CBC: After you came out like gang busters with Swamp Thing #1, you quickly rose to be one of the most highly-regarded artists in the industry, and certainly one of its most recognizable names…

Bernie: Well, that might be so. I might have been a big fish in a little pond for a time. But there are many people who know me only through my illustrations in Stephen King’s books. I mean a lot of people — a lot of people — they’ll see my name, when I’m writing a check or handing them my credit card, where it says, “Bernard A. Wrightson,” they will ask, “Are you Bernie Wrightson? The guy who illustrated The Stand and Creepshow?” That’s me!

CBC: So you don’t get recognized for Swamp Thing as much?

Bernie: They’ve never heard of Swamp Thing! [laughter] And they wouldn’t care if they did! But, if they’re Stephen King fans, they everything that Stephen ever did, and anybody who’s associated with him. So that’s my measure of fame, for better or for worse.

MORE BERNIE WRIGHTSON IN THE NEXT CBC! COMING THIS WINTER! 111

A Man, a Duck, and a Monster Writer Steve Gerber on the grand absurdity of his beloved Marvel comics stories Conducted by JON B. COOKE Inset right: Vignetted detail of Mike Ploog Man-Thing #7 [July ’74] art, with the creature formerly-known-as Ted Sallis turning a little human in the ish’s final cliffhanging panel in that issue.

Below: Dressed-for-business comics writer Steve Gerber in a photo lensed by former Comics Buyer’s Guide publisher Alan Light at the 1982 San Diego Comic Convention.

Comic Book Creator: You missed the E.C. Comics?

Steve Gerber: Pretty much. I may have seen a couple of them, but I don’t have any clear memories.

CBC: Did you have any interest in horror at all?

Steve: I had very little interest in horror, because I always found horror movies kind of corny and silly, and monster movies and stuff.

The monsters always looked like guys in rubber suits. I had never really paid much attention to that genre at all, before I had to write it.

CBC: Did you see possibilities within the medium itself that went beyond kind of juvenile super-heroes?

Did you have any perception of comics as a valid form of communication?

Steve: I never understood why other people didn't have that perception. It never occurred to me that they weren't that. I could see, I think, some of the silliness about comics, in certain ways. But, to me, the comic strips in the newspaper, the comic books I was reading, and the editorial cartoons by Herblock and Oliphant, were all part of the same thing, as

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Photo © Alan Light. Man-Thing TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

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[Stephen Ross Gerber, who arrived at Marvel just in time to receive his first professional script assignment — “Night of the Nether-Spawn!” starring ManThing, in Fear #11, Dec. ’72 — quickly rose to become one of the most daring and innovative writers in American comics, injecting his tales with edgy humor, pathos, and remarkable introspection. It was in the pages of his “Man-Thing” where fans first took notice of the Missouri-born scribe, especially when arrived a cigar-smoking, hat-wearing, and cracking-wise duck named Howard, the fowl trapped in a world he never made. Steve was interviewed on Nov. 26, 2002, and this piece was transcribed by Steven Tice and copy-edited by Aaron Kashtan. The writer passed away in 2008, at the age of 60. — Y.E.]

was Disney animation and all of that stuff.

CBC: Did you see that there were cool things at Marvel and that something new was happening there?

Steve: Oh, no question of that. I missed the first issue of the Fantastic Four; the second one I actually bought at the drug store. There was absolutely no question that something really strange was going on.

CBC: Now, with the rise of the counter-culture and the questioning of authority that took place in the ’60s, were you of a like mind as it was progressing?

Steve: Yeah. I was always a little bit on the fringes of that, but yeah. I was a hippie/Commie/weirdo/ Pinko [laughter], but not a big drug user, actually.

CBC: Did comics fit into that?

Steve: They did to me. I don’t think most of the people creating the stuff at that time were really thinking about it, but the imagery of the comics and the imagery of a lot of ’60s rock-&-roll and psychedelia and all that, all seemed of a piece to me.

CBC: Did you get any exposure to the underground comics once they started coming out?

Steve: Yeah, yeah.

CBC: Was that a startling discovery?

Steve: I wouldn’t call it startling, exactly, but it was — again, I never really was drawn to the undergrounds either, because there wasn’t much story material there. I would pick them up occasionally, find them, and then not think about them again for six months. It’s always been stories and the characters that have drawn me in, and ideas.

CBC: After college, you went into advertising?

Steve: Actually I spent about six months at a radio station, prior to that, writing advertising copy, and then got a job offer from an advertising agency in St. Louis and went over there.

CBC: How big was the agency?

Steve: It was a small agency, a local agency in town. Well, a medium-sized local agency. Not one of the big nationwides.

CBC: And how was your experience there?

Steve: Tremendously boring. I just didn’t have a whole lot to say about savings-&-loan institutions [laughs] or much of an interesting way to say it, that kind of thing. It was fun for a little while, and it was interesting. I learned an awful lot about design techniques and typefaces, and working for timing and radio, and stuff like that, but it was not very interesting. About eight months into it, I wrote a letter to Roy [Thomas, who Steve knew from fandom], asking if there was anything open at Marvel, and as it turned out, there was.

CBC: This was when they were really starting to expand?

Steve: Exactly. It was 1972. They had just been purchased

by Cadence Industries, and had just hooked up with a new

Man-Thing, Howard the Duck TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

The Muck-Monster Makers distributor, I think. They were about to literally double the amount of comics they were publishing.

CBC: Did you just say “the hell with it” and just go?

Steve: Pretty much. Roy had me take a writer’s test. They sent me six pages of this Gerry Conway Daredevil story, drawn by Gene Colan, to dialogue, just to see what I would do with it. I wrote those, sent them off, and waited in terror to find out whether or not they were going to be taken seriously. Roy wound up calling and offering me a job.

CBC: Were you writing to ape Stan Lee’s or Roy’s or Gerry’s style at the time? Or were you writing to impress?

Steve: Well, I was writing to impress, certainly, but I’m sure I must have been hugely influenced by what Stan, Roy, and Gerry were doing at that time. So, trying to “ape” them, not exactly, but trying to sound like a Marvel comic, yes.

CBC: Did you infuse humor into it, or did you play it pretty straight?

Steve: Well, in that particular sequence, I couldn’t. There was not a lot of room for humor. In fact, I didn’t know at the time, but it was a very, very difficult sequence to write. The whole thing was a car chase, mainly with the exterior of the car. I don’t think you even saw who was in the car until the end of the six pages, and Daredevil was swinging over the buildings in San Francisco trying to follow and ultimately catch whoever was driving. So there were not a whole lot of possibilities for humor in that particular sequence.

CBC: So Roy got back to you pretty quick.

Steve: Within a couple of weeks, it seems to me.

CBC: So Roy called and offered you a job?

Steve: At a pay cut from what I was getting. [laughter] CBC: How’d you sell this to your wife?

Steve: Well, she knew I was very unhappy in the advertising business. There was also the promise of what Marvel called, and still does call, “freelance work,” meaning work you took home from the office and were paid separately for.

So it looked like we would be able to do it, like we would be able to pull it off.

CBC: When you went there, Roy obviously was taking on a lot more responsibility, right? Stan was out of the office a lot?

Steve: Roy had already become editor-in-chief.

CBC: Did you see that you could ascend through the ranks at Marvel? Was a staff position a possibility, or was freelance work really the goal?

Steve: I started working on staff and I had assumed that I would just continue working on staff. It didn’t work out, for a number of reasons, but yeah, I had actually thought I would remain on staff up there. It was only after I got there that I found out that most people didn’t stay on staff. They came in, worked on staff for a short time, and then wanted to go freelance.

CBC: So why didn’t you stay on staff?

Steve: Actually, I think it’s what [Jim] Starlin mentioned [in a CBA interview]: I kept falling asleep at work.

CBC: Because you were doing freelance at night?

Steve: It was because I was doing freelance at night, but also because I suffer from sleep apnea, and the sleep I was getting wasn’t doing me any good. I didn’t know that for another 15 years. [laughs] Really not until about five years ago.

CBC: So were you looked upon as a slacker who was just catching Z’s?

Steve: Yeah, and as a little weird. People did, even as Starlin did in that article in your magazine, think of it as narcolepsy or some strange disease or something. It certainly wasn’t that, but it was something almost as dangerous.

CBC: Obviously this ailment invaded all aspects of your life?

Steve: It introduced an element of chaos into my life that was so enormous that I can’t even begin to describe it. I still

suffer from it today to some degree. I have never been able to sleep on a regular schedule, and still can’t, even now, with the machine I use to regulate it. It went on for so many years, basically for the first 45 years of my life, 40 years, whatever it was, from the time I was 15 and onward, roughly. It was an ailment that doctors didn’t even know existed until sometime in the early ’80s. I was actually tested for it once in the mid’80s. The tests came back negative or the doctors screwed up and lost the tests. I’ve never had a reasonable explanation of that. When I tested for it a number of years later, they came back and said, “Yes, you’ve got a really serious case of this.”

CBC: So you had to go freelance?

Steve: Pretty much. I was asked to go freelance, really.

CBC: Were you still on staff when offered your first gig?

Steve: No, actually, I was offered my first gig before I start-

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Above: Wauuggghhh! What a find! Contributor Mike Blanchard shared this rarity, the original, unobscured cover art for Giant-Size Man-Thing #4 [May ’75], which featured a head shot of Howard the Duck, rather than the printed “Gorko, the Man-Frog” blurb.

Magnificent art by Frank Brunner.

This issue of the awkwardly named comic, of course, featured the first solo story of the fowl trapped in a world he never made. Gerber reveals that Neal Adams was intended to be the illustrator of that tale, not Brunner!

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Below: We’re still scratching our noggin why the then-Marvel art director flopped Neal Adams’ cover art for Fear #11 [Dec. ’72], which contained “Night of the Nether-Spawn,” scripter Steve Gerber’s first professional comics work.

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Steve: Okay. I wonder if Len will even remember this.

Swamp Thing, of course, had come out at about the same time, and I hadn’t seen that book… I probably had by the time I got to New York, but I hadn’t seen the first issues of it or whatever. We knew we were going to have this ridiculous situation of these two swamp monsters running around at the same time. Len was also doing some work for Marvel, and he and I sat down one afternoon in the Marvel offices.

He had been introduced to me as “Oh, you’re the guy who’s doing ‘Man-Thing,’ I’m doing Swamp Thing.” We made a decision that the two books were going to be nothing alike. I just asked him, “Well, do you have anything planned for the next X-number of issues of Swamp Thing?” He said, “Yeah.”

I said, “Well, I don’t. Why don’t you tell me what you’re doing, and I will do something completely different.” [laughter] And he did, and that’s why the two books bore almost no resemblance to each other.

CBC: In what you might remember that Len said, was it pretty explicit that Swamp Thing was like a monster-of-themonth kind of thing?

Steve: I don’t remember the conversation that well, but I know I must have jotted down some notes on what he had in mind. Len is one of those writers who does work very, very methodically, and plots things out a year in advance. He was able to give me a pretty good overview of where he was going. I just looked at it and said, “Okay, something completely different.” I wasn’t sure what, but I wound up taking the book in a direction — not the opposite, exactly, but completely afield from what he was planning to do.

CBC: Well, how would you characterize where you took it?

Steve: [Pause] Wow. CBC: There seemed to be certainly a lot of fantasy. I mean, you had a wizard and a sorcerer show up.

Steve: Yeah. Yeah. Um… I honestly think I kind of let the series lead me around by the nose, to be honest with you.

Those characters would pop up. Jennifer Kale was in the very first story that I did. The sorcerer turned up a couple of issues later, I believe. As they began to interest me, I just let them sort of run the stories for me. I know that sounds crazy, but...

CBC: That’s very true of your work, right?

Steve: It is, yeah, in a lot of cases.

CBC: Nevada has a life of her own, so to speak.

Steve: Yeah, yeah. And the ducks are ostriches], yeah.

CBC: I think that was one of the overwhelming appeals of Howard. It felt like you were just another character, in a sense.

Steve: Yeah, I was standing back and watching all this stuff happen. [laughter] CBC: Howard was such a force of personality that he just overtook it.

Steve: Exactly. That happened with “Man-Thing,” and certainly with Howard. There were things you could not force those characters to do, or I certainly couldn’t. They wouldn’t listen to me. [laughter] If they were determined to go in a specific direction, they went, and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it because the story became unwritable any other way.

CBC: Writing, from the start, was an intimidating discipline, or was it suddenly freeing? How would you characterize it?

Steve: It was, particularly in the beginning, very, very exhilarating. First of all, you have to understand, this was the beginning of my career as a professional writer, and I was unaware of how much I had to learn. I had no idea “Man-Thing” was as difficult to write as it is. As time went on I found out how difficult that character and that setting and that mood and dealing with the nature of that character really were.

CBC: What was that difficulty?

Steve: Well, all of the normal motivations that any other character would have do not apply to this character. He doesn’t even particularly have a survival instinct. He’s a creature purely of empathy, and he has this one insanity

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Man-Thing TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

Next page: For a spell in the early ’70s, Marvel instructed artists to compose and delineate a two-page spread on a single drawing sheet (perhaps to cut down per-page costs…?). The visual results were uniformly substandard, as the art looked disproportionately enlarged and often more crude than the regular pages. The experiment did not last long. Top is a sample of such a spread, art by Val Mayerik (pencils) and Jack Abel (inks).

Man-Thing #4 [Apr. ’74]. Lower right is a vignetted detail of penciler Mike Ploog and inker Frank Chiaramonte’s superb splash in Giant-Size Man-Thing #1 [Aug. ’74]

ed on staff. The very first stuff I wrote for Marvel I wrote from St. Louis.

Actually it was the plot for the very first “Man-Thing” story that I did.

CBC: The second issue of Fear that “Man-Thing” was in?

Steve: Right.

CBC: Had you seen Savage Tales #1?

Steve: No, I hadn’t seen that. I believe I had seen the Man-Thing character in a “Ka-Zar” story.

CBC: Was there anything to the character that you found compelling?

Steve: It struck me as kind of interesting, and Marvel hadn’t done a character quite like that before. It hadn’t made a major impression on me, or anything, but it struck me as kind of an interesting new direction they were playing with.

CBC: Had you known of the Heap?

Steve: Only from maybe a fanzine article or something. I do remember having heard of him before. I had never actually seen a Heap story.

CBC: Had you read Ted Sturgeon’s “It”?

Steve: No. CBC: Was there something about the Man-Thing, such a nondescript character, that you had a sort of freedom; you weren’t locked into a set formula, so to speak?

Steve: Well, in the beginning, one of the very attractive things about it was that there were no supporting characters established. The only other character in the series was his former human self, and they had dumped him in a swamp in Florida. Basically I was free to make up whatever I needed to make up. I didn’t realize at the time what a terrific opportunity that was [laughs], but it certainly made it easier for a writer who was beginning to work on his first assignment for Marvel.

CBC: A lot of people would have looked at the character himself as being severely limiting, right? Non-talking, imbecilic… I don’t know how to describe him. How would you describe him, Steve?

Steve: Well, the lights aren’t even on, let alone anybody’s home. [laughter] He’s not imbecilic. Bizarro is imbecilic.

Man-Thing is just kind of a force of nature. He’s buffeted about by circumstance and outside forces.

CBC: Now, a number of writers would be given a title and would map it out, especially with it being a first assignment.

Were you wandering aimlessly, or did you really have a plan?

Steve: I was wandering aimlessly. [laughter] Well, with one exception, which I’ll tell you about in a minute. It was aimless in the sense that when I was given the first assignment, I didn’t know whether I was ever going to be writing a second “Man-Thing” story. That wasn’t decided until after I got to New York. The first one I just did as a self-contained story, without even thinking about the future of the character or the book or anything, because I didn’t know whether I was going to have anything more to do with it. Later, after I had gotten to New York and was working on the book, I had done two, three, four issues of it, whatever — Did Len Wein ever tell you about the conversation he and I had about the two swamp monsters?

CBC: Nope, I don’t think so.

Man-Thing TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

trigger of the emotion fear.

So every story had to be constructed about the characters around him, not about him. In virtually 95% of the stories that’s true.

CBC: But that has its own virtue, right?

Steve: It is liberating in itself, in its own way, yes, but also much more difficult, and it can lead — [laughs] I remember you and I talked about the story about the bus that crashes in the swamp.

I know you liked that story.

I found it a real embarrassment at the time. [laughter] CBC: It was the earnestness I liked. [laughs] Steve: It can lead you in some very strange and pretentious directions, too, if you’re not very damn careful about what you’re doing with that character and with those stories.

CBC: Did you have an admiration for what Denny O’Neil and Neal were doing with Green Lantern/Green Arrow?

Steve: Oh, yeah, very much so.

CBC: So did you see that you could write comic book stories with a purpose?

Steve: I think that would have been my inclination anyway: not so much a purpose, but just to write stories that were about something. That’s usually the way that I express it: stories that were about something besides other comics.

CBC: So did you admire The Twilight Zone when they would infuse elements like the issue of racism or any number of social issues?

Steve: Oh, certainly, yeah.

CBC: How do you feel about it today? Do you still think the infusion of relevancy within comics is valid?

Steve: I don’t think about it in those terms. I know that everything was so political at the time; that’s the way things were expressed. But writing stories about things that matter to human beings in the course of their lives is something that’s equally as valid in comic books as it is in any other medium. That’s just the way I saw it.

CBC: So obviously, your second story was about racism?

Steve: Right. I was a little more heavy-handed in those days. [laughs] Certainly more than I am now, I hope. [laughter] Those were the days when you sort of tackled this or that issue in a given story. Now I would be more inclined to let those elements incorporate themselves as they see fit, just in the natural behavior of people. But yeah, there were a lot of “theme” stories.

CBC: Do you ever go back and read your old work?

Steve: Very rarely. Not the Man-Thing stuff, generally. The Duck stuff, when the Essential collection came out, I sat down and read some of that again. But, no, I don’t go back and look at it too much.

CBC: What was the genesis of Wundarr?

Steve: Well, you know, there was always this little obsession with Superman. [laughs] That was a case of outright parody. I wanted to do the character without doing the character.

CBC: And you did a switch on that, a twist?

Steve: In the initial story, the kid is rocketed away from the doomed planet, the rocket lands in the middle of this Florida swamp, and nobody ever finds it. The kid grows up in the rocket [laughs] and comes out of

it as this 25-year-old baby, essentially, with these enormous powers, that Man-Thing has to deal with.

CBC: Now, did you hear a response from DC immediately?

Steve: Not immediately. [laughs] They didn’t find it funny. I thought it was parody; they thought of it as plagiarism. [laughs] Ultimately, we did the story later where we changed the costume and revealed that the planet never exploded. So Wundarr’s father was, in fact insane. [laughter] CBC: A little mistake. [laughs] Didn’t the character jump around to other books a little bit?

Steve: Yeah, I believe his second story was in Marvel Two-in-One, the Thing teamup book. He never appeared in Man-Thing again.

CBC: I remembered really enjoying his return and going, “Wow.” He was just an innocent in the wilds of the world.

Did you do a Molecule Man story, too?

Steve: Yeah. That was in an Iron Man Annual, I think, set in the swamp, with Man-Thing. I don’t remember the full story, but it seems to me that the Molecule

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

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Above: Mike Blanchard shared an entire Steve Gerber script, this for Fear #16 [Sept. ’73], which was interpreted by artist Val Mayerik.

Below: Frank Brunner’s cover of the same issue.

to the rest of the universe, that there were things you could not do in Daredevil that were possible to do in Man-Thing.

CBC: You were a writer who really seemed to blossom despite the constraints that this continuity placed on you. You’d look at the Marvel continuity in the ’60s and say, “Well, this is really neat! They know each other and they interact with each other...” Then by the mid-’70s it became a trap.

Steve: It could. Certainly by the late ’70s it had. At the time I came in, the continuity was still… it wasn’t the load of baggage that it is today, or even that it was ten years after I started writing. The stuff was still fresh enough and there was still room to maneuver in those days. Now the continuity has become so constricting that they’ve begun to ignore it when necessary.

CBC: You wrote pretty much DC-type of scripts, right?

Steve: Oh no, no. For the most part, I worked Marvel style on virtually everything.

CBC: Were they pretty detailed plots?

Steve: Yeah, they tended to be detailed for the time. There were people who did more detail than I did, and there were a lot of people who did quite a bit less detail than I did. Doug Moench’s stuff tended to be even more detailed than mine.

A plot for a 20-page story for me would run about five or six single-spaced, typed pages, which would break it down pretty tightly, actually. It was pretty much all there except the dialogue, and was generally broken down into groups of pages. But there were a few people who would do plots that ran almost as long as the stories themselves.

CBC: Now, the first artist that you got teamed with, with any longevity, at least on “Man-Thing,” was Val Mayerik. Did you collaborate with him at all?

Steve: Very little. We spoke on the phone occasionally, but mostly I would just mail the plots to him, or bring them in to the office, and the office would mail them to Val, and then I’d get the story back.

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Script © the estate of Steve Gerber. Man-Thing TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

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Man’s consciousness was left in his wand or something and possessed another person or something through the wand.

CBC: I don’t know why it suddenly came back to me, but I just remember being really impressed, as a kid, with that story.

Steve: I liked that story. Gil Kane drew it, I believe.

[EDITOR’S NOTE: Two stories are being confused here.

The Molecule Man was the central villain in Marvel Two-inOne #1, the Thing/Man-Thing team-up, drawn by Gil Kane and Joe Sinnott. Gerber later revived the Molecule Man in Iron Man Annual #3, which did indeed involve the ManThing, but was drawn by Sal Buscema and Jack Abel.]

CBC: Yeah, what a face! That face on the Molecule Man was, like, oh man. So was it fortuitous for you to have this strip that kind of seemed like no holds barred?

Steve: Yes, it was. It was a terrific assignment for a new writer, because it was not dependent on the rest of the Marvel continuity, for the most part. It had kind of vague ties to the other books, and I could bring in characters from the other books or guest-star Man-Thing. I think he was in Daredevil. He appeared in just about everything I was writing for a while. I was pretty much free to move about this kind of isolated corner of the Marvel universe and do anything that I wanted to in it, without impinging on anybody else’s stuff.

There was a tremendous amount of freedom involved in that.

CBC: Could you see in Daredevil that there was a different game in play?

Steve: Oh, absolutely, yeah. Daredevil was, in its own way, a much harder book to write.

CBC: Why? Was it politics with other editors?

Steve: No, not so much politics, because in those days Daredevil was one of those books that wasn’t taken very seriously by anybody. It never sold well until Frank [Miller] got hold of it. It was used as a training ground a lot. But it wasn’t that; it was just that the book was so much more connected

Man-Thing TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

CBC: Did you become acquainted with him?

Steve: Not really, not until years later.

CBC: You guys obviously teamed up again to do Void Indigo?

Steve: Right. By that time we had actually met in person, but prior to that, I don’t think we met in person until sometime in the early ’80s.

CBC: And did you hit it off?

Steve: Yeah, Val and I get along quite well.

CBC: Did you sense his frustrations with Marvel at all?

Steve: I knew he was not happy with the inking he was getting. I don’t know the details of it, but the work was not coming back from the inker in the way Val had intended it to, and that was a huge problem for him.

CBC: Certainly it was a musical chairs of perhaps not the most complementary kind of inkers on his work, and he explicitly feels that he and Roy just basically did not mesh with personalities; they were just diverse personalities.

Steve: Roy and Val did not mesh?

CBC: Yeah.

Steve: That could very well be.

CBC: Did you have any input on that? For one thing, you’re saying that one of the downsides of being off in your own little corner of the universe was that the art, perhaps, wasn’t as up-to-par as it could have been.

Steve: Right. The book was never taken as seriously as the top-of-the-line books.

CBC: Certainly not compared to a real superstar like Swamp Thing, that was going on at the same time, right?

Steve: Right, right.

CBC: Did you complain about that or did you hope…?

Steve: I wish I could say that I did, but I really didn’t. You have to remember that I was brand-new there. I didn’t really feel that I had the clout to request another inker. I know Roy was also not happy about some of the inking on the book, but my inexperience… All of the stuff that Val and I did on “Man-Thing” was done during my first year in comics. I was in the process, too, of learning what worked and what didn’t, and why this inker didn’t work with that artist. Heck, I was the new kid in the place.

CBC: Did you have a frustration about it?

Steve: Probably not to the degree that Val did, no.

CBC: The field was extremely art-driven at the time, I guess. Marvel was such a writer-driven place.

Steve: It was, yeah. Within Marvel that really wasn’t true that it was art-driven. It was much more writer-driven.

CBC: But you’d have those occasions, like “The Song of Red Sonja,” for instance, by Barry Smith, when the world bowed, so to speak. But did you see that Val was supremely appropriate for the subject matter?

Steve: Oh yeah, I loved Val’s stuff. I loved what he did on that book. Had the final artwork come back looking like what Val had penciled, I think people’s impression of Val’s tenure on that book, artistically, would be drastically different from what it is now. I know that Roy was frustrated, too, with some of the stuff. There was a pool of inkers available, and of the available inkers — I know Roy certainly didn’t want the book to look bad. He would have much preferred that we had found an inker who could complement Val’s style. But of the people who were available at that time, I don’t think there was one. Even now, looking back, I don’t know who I would have put on Val’s stuff at that point, except Val himself. But, again, think about how new Val was at that time. They were not really sure he could be entrusted with inking the book as well as penciling it.

CBC: But certainly you get inkers like Frank McLaughlin, Frank Bolle, Sal Trapani, very… just, like what I was talking to Val about, not organic. There was no meshing there. It was a thick, bold line. The inking really wasn’t atmospheric and obviously didn’t seem to capture Val’s pencils.

Steve: I couldn’t agree with you more. It was a huge frustration, I think, for everyone. Most of the inkers that Marvel had cultivated at that time were people who did the

superhero stuff, not horror stuff. All of the inkers Val got… it’s terrible, but it really is true: there was not one of them who could enhance what he was doing. If we could have put, say, Craig Russell on the inks on that book, but of course Craig was penciling at that time, himself. Or maybe Dan Adkins, someone like that, but Dan was probably considered too expensive for that book.

CBC: Jack Abel came up...

Steve: None of those guys were exactly right. There were some people who did moderately interesting things with the stuff. I seem to remember Jack Abel was not bad on the stuff, but it didn’t look like Val. It looked like the product of someone else entirely, not Jack or Val. CBC: By his own admission, Val felt that the only one who captured anything that he was trying to achieve was Chic Stone, which was, I think, in the third issue. Not a name I would normally think of, but then I look back at the job and, y’know, Chic really did get the faces, those Val Mayerik faces and stuff like that. But what I thought was astonishing was Mike Ploog coming on the strip. Did Val quit?

Steve: I don’t know the circumstances of that. What may have happened — and this is the real irony of all of this — Man-Thing at one point actually became Marvel’s percent-

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Top: Courtesy of the inker, the cover for Giant-Size Man-Thing #1 [Aug. ’74] was initially to be this Frank Brunner (pencils) and Alan Weiss (ink) piece.

Above: The cover as published, by Mike Ploog.

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Above: Artist Jim Mooney, a veteran whose first work appeared in the mid-’40s, shined on the material written by Steve Gerber, who Jim cited as a favorite collaborator.

The most satisfying work of his entire career? Man-Thing and Omega the Unknown, both Gerber titles!

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Man-Thing TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

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age-wise best-selling book.

CBC: Really?

Steve: Yeah. Percentage-wise is selling more of its run than anything else for a couple of months. So what they did in response to that was put a more expensive artist on it.

I’m really lucky they didn’t put a more expensive writer on it. [laughter] Which could easily have happened! But they decided that they wanted to put, at that point, a more polished artist than Val was on the book. Ploog had just left Werewolf

by Night, had gotten tired of it or something, and wanted to move on to something else, and liked the idea of doing ManThing, and that’s how he wound up on this book.

CBC: Wow. Beautiful stuff.

Steve: Yeah. Oh, it was, it was gorgeous.

CBC: Did you get a sense of approval from Marvel of what you were doing?

Steve: Well, they looked at the sales figures and they were happy with them, so yes, they approved. [laughs] It was all pretty cut and dried. [laughs] CBC: Certainly as compared to DC, the higher-ups at DC would never let the creatives know what the sales were and stuff like that. It was pretty much de rigeur for you guys to know?

Steve: Roy would tell us occasionally. I don’t think they ever showed us sales figures.

CBC: It was a percentage that they would tell you?

Steve: Yeah, exactly, because that was how they figured the sales in those days. What was important to them was how much of the print run sold through and how much was returned.

CBC: Do you remember what that number was? Any rough idea?

Steve: You know, I don’t remember exactly. I do know that anything that basically sold over a third of its print run was doing extremely well, and Man-Thing was at one point doing 35%, 36%, which was phenomenal.

CBC: There was an element of fantasy and absurdity that was starting to enter the strip. You were having fun.

Steve: Oh, yeah, sure.

CBC: Where did that come from? Did you enjoy the Carl Barks comics when you were a kid or something?

Steve: Well, I did, but the duck thing came out of nowhere, really. We were doing a story about a collision of realities, and in one of the early panels of that story, the wizard is explaining all these different planes of reality, and is saying essentially that in some reality or another all things are possible. One of those panels was the funny animal world.

Later I must have picked up on that and dragged it in, the character that ultimately became Howard the Duck.

CBC: Where did the name Howard come from?

Steve: [Laughs] Howard was a friend of mine in high school who used to go around imitating Donald Duck. [laughter] CBC: Really? That’s something I didn’t know! We were just touching upon Howard and whether he was a blessing or a curse. Did you want to deal with that?

Steve: We could, I guess. We were talking a little about my youth and my childhood, and you had asked the question, because I had mentioned that I was not really a voracious reader as a child, you wondered where my vocabulary came from. I was thinking about that, and what occurred to me was that a lot of it came from… I listened to adults a lot, and paid a lot of attention to television, at a time when television was quite a bit different from what it is today.

CBC: [Laughs] It had some intelligence to it?

Steve: Yeah, yeah. One of the biggest influences on me, on the whole way I look at the world, the way I write, my sense of humor, everything, is — you’ve probably heard of Steve Allen, the comedian?

CBC: Yeah, sure.

Steve: Who was not just a comedian. He was also a musician, an intellectual; he wrote books… There are not very many people like that around today.

CBC: He was highbrow and lowbrow almost at the same time.

Steve: Yeah, he could do real vaudeville/burlesque-type shticks as far as the comedy stuff was concerned, but at the same time, he was capable of holding a conversation with a theoretical physicist, which they actually used to do on talk shows in those days, with no trouble at all. He was somebody I tremendously admired and paid a lot of attention to. I paid a lot of attention to the way he spoke to people, to the kinds of questions would ask, to the kind of vocabulary he would use. People like that, like Steve Allen and Jack Parr, the kind of personalities you don’t see on television anymore except maybe on Charlie Rose’s show, were a tremendous influence on me, growing up.

CBC: Was this when Steve had the Tonight Show?

Steve: I remember seeing him on the Tonight Show a couple of times, but it was really when he had the Sunday Night Show, and then later a syndicated show that he did from the West Coast for the Westinghouse Broadcasting Company, that I really became hooked on him. That was when I was in high school.

CBC: Right. He had that ensemble cast, Tom Poston and — Steve: That was from the Sunday night show. Yeah, Tom

Man-Thing TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

Post and Don Knotts, Louis Nye, Bill Dana, Dayton Allen. I can remember all of them. He was and is still a tremendously fascinating personality to me, and somebody I just thought was the funniest human being on earth. An amazingly smart man, and an amazingly funny man.

CBC: I think perhaps one of his best qualities was his appreciation of humor. He probably had one of the best laughs in TV. He would really laugh….

Steve: [Laughs] That strange, high-pitched laugh.

CBC: You know, I sat down and I reread most of the ManThing material again, and I really walked away profoundly affected by “The Kid’s Night Out.” [Giant-Size Man-Thing #4] Is there a strong-order biographical element in there?

Steve: Oh, sure. Yeah.

CBC: Were you an overweight kid?

Steve: Oh, yes. It’s still a battle. It’s something I fight on a daily basis, on an hourly basis. [laughs] I was never grossly obese, but I was always overweight. Sometimes I wonder if it wouldn’t have been better if I had just been some roly-poly kid who could resign himself to that, but I was always right over the line. I was the last one picked with the soccer team or the baseball team or anything else, because my eyes were so bad. It took me years to figure this out. I was always very bad at any kind of game involving a ball, and I think it’s because my eyes were so terrible. I didn’t really have much depth perception, so I would get hit in the head a lot by softballs and footballs. [laughs] I was never terribly coordinated. Yeah, that story came, very much so, from personal experience.

CBC: I wasn’t a very coordinated kid. I wasn’t overweight, but I just had no coordination, so I was always the last one to be picked for the games and stuff. You write in there that, if you haven’t experienced that, you just don’t know what it’s like. And it is a profoundly painful thing to have to go through as a kid, because you’re, y’know, a loser.

Steve: I’m about to start a new series for DC that has to do with some of the high school shootings and things, Hard Time. I understand those kids. I understand exactly what drives them to commit those crimes, and I think it’s probably a very fortunate thing that guns were not as accessible in the 1950s as they are today [laughs] and that parents exercised a bit more control over their children in those days, took a bit more responsibility in those days, or I think this would have been going on for the last forty years.

CBC: So was humor a way for you to manifest your anger?

Steve: Yeah, of course that was part of it. It was also because I just liked being funny, and I liked making people laugh on my terms, rather than on theirs.

CBC: It was control.

Steve: Sure.

CBC: Yeah, this is just a wonderful essay that you had in the middle of it.

Steve: The specific events are not autobiographical, but the characters are— CBC: Did you have somebody like the girl in the story, Alice Rimes, in your life?

Steve: Refresh me a little bit about.

CBC: At the very end of the story, and I’d love for you to be able to clarify it exactly, she’s the one who’s picked on in school, too. She’s the great defender of the dead kid, she’s the one who possesses his diary, and she’s the one who suffers all the beatings, and she just really stands up for him to the very end. And at the end of the story, you see… At the beginning of the story, there’s a reflection in the water and it’s the boy, and at the end of the story, there’s a reflection in the water and it’s the girl, and she’s not dead.

Steve: Remembering that I haven’t read this story in a lot of years: First of all, no, there was no character like that for me in real life. I wish. But it sounds as if the reflection was just a really simple symbolism of Man-Thing being this character completely outcast even from himself, as well as from the rest of the world. Everyone either feared him, or hated him, or something. Later in the story, he almost takes on the role

of the girl, as I recall; he winds up killing the gym teacher.

CBC: Right. Very symbolically.

Steve: I think that’s again what the reflection means at that point. I’m guessing. Again, not having read the story in maybe 20 years, it sounds like that part of the girl was a reflection of himself. Of course the creature himself, being empathic, is always a reflection of somebody around him, one way or another.

CBC: In the letter column to this Giant-Size Man-Thing, you credit Annette Kawecki. Was she a person of like mind?

Steve: No, Annette was a letterer. She’s now a psychologist, by the way, in Massachusetts. We just recently exchanged e-mails after years of not having heard from her for about 25 years. Annette was encouraging me to kind of explore some of the other areas in the stories. We were close friends, but it was never more than that. But I think she saw the potential both in the stuff I was writing and maybe in me, to some extent, as a human being, and did a lot to draw that out. I credit her, I think, for inspiring the story in a lot of ways, because she kind of forced me to write something that was very, very difficult and uncomfortable to write.

CBC: So this kind of foreshadowed what her vocation today is, right?

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Top: Steve Gerber appeared as a character in his own story in this, the last issue of the Gerber-run (and first volume of the title), Man-Thing #22 [Oct. ’75].

Exuberant art by Jim Mooney.

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Above: Lovely Frank Brunner recreation of the sellout Howard the Duck #1’s [Jan. ’76] cover. We had hoped to include an interview with Frank about his Man-Thing covers and the related Howard the Duck but, alas, it was not meant to be. Please visit the artist via his website at www.frankbrunner.net.

Below: Howard the Duck Marvel Treasury [’76]. Cover by Gene Colan.

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Howard the Duck, Spider-Man TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

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Steve: In a way, yeah, it did. In fact, she intended at that time to go into psychiatry, but… She wanted to be a medical doctor of some kind. I know she was planning to go to medical school. But I don’t know if she had even intended to be a psychiatrist.

CBC: Was she somewhat of a loner in high school, too? Did you get that feeling?

Steve: I really don’t know. I don’t know Annette’s background that well.

CBC: Because it says, “That’s what happens when the funniest boy of 1965 and most intelligent girl of 1969, according to our respective high school polls, combine efforts.”

Steve: Oh, yeah, then it must have been, yeah.

CBC: You know, it’s interesting... I don’t really know all you writers. I know a lot of you guys casually, but you seem to have had good relationships with women as friends. You specifically spoke with fondness of Mary Skrenes last time.

Steve: Well, I guess it kind of depends how you look at that. [laughs] I have one marriage that’s failed, a couple of 11-year relationships that wound up going nuclear, but I’m still talking to both women. Mary and I went together at the time that we were also writing together. She’s now currently married to someone else and lives here in Las Vegas and we’re still friends. I’m not sure whether I just get along really well with women or whether I’m just a colossal idiot. [laugh-

ter] I have no way of knowing.

CBC: But it must be a testament to your sensitivity to be able to have a good relationship, right?

Steve: I don’t know. Honest to God, I don’t know.

CBC: I mean, the representation of females within your comics, too, does not seem to be exploitive. I like Nevada.

There’s no element of misogyny in your work as there is for the vast majority of comic book work. But Nevada is…

Steve: If I ever get around to writing a story about the women that I don’t like… [laughs] and there are such creatures… I would probably be drummed out of the comic book writing fraternity and the human race. There are some pretty strong feelings in there, also, about women on the other side. But in general, yes, I do like women and get along with them pretty well.

CBC: Do you think it would benefit the industry if more people did appreciate women? Do you perceive in the industry a strong…I dunno, anti-woman slantSteve: It’s not really that. There is a kind of… let’s put it in the gentlest terms possible, a kind of masculine bias both in terms of the content and, to some degree still, in terms of the hiring practices, the gender of the creative people working on the books. That may have something to do again with the fact that most comics are still mainly super-hero or adventure comics. There’s not a whole lot of humor stuff being done today; there’s virtually no romance stuff. I don’t want to necessarily typecast those writers and those genres either, by the way. There are certainly enough women horror writers and adventure writers and dramatic writers in general. But, yeah, there is still some kind of masculine bias in comics. Exactly what the nature of it is, I’m not even sure.

CBC: Another moving story that I read was “Song-Cry of the Living Dead Man.” Do you remember that story?

Steve: I do remember. Not, again, in great detail. It’s a story about somebody’s life being picked apart, about somebody whose mind is falling apart. It was written under conditions of extreme stress in my own life at that time.

CBC: So it was a transitional time for you?

Steve: Yes, very much so.

CBC: Is this also a statement about you working in advertising?

Steve: To some degree it is, but I think the role that advertising played in that story and the role that advertising played in my life were really very small. It was a case of spending a lot of my time doing something that I thought had very little to do with my life. It’s a common enough problem in people’s lives.

CBC: It’s natural to compare Man-Thing to Swamp Thing.

Swamp Thing was really dealing with externals all the time, and there was a werewolf, and there were aliens from outer space, and really typical comic-book trappings that were going on, and those were done wonderfully by Wein and Wrightson. But your stories were profoundly personal, internal. Obviously “Song-Cry” is not so much a story about Man-Thing as it is about the ensemble around Man-Thing.

I just find it really interesting: I can’t think of another writer who had that approach at the time, especially in mainstream comics, who would be looking at the foibles of a loser, for instance.

Steve: I think that’s probably true. I also think that this particular series and that particular character — just because of the way the character was structured, being bound to that swamp and having no personality, really, no emotions and motivations of his own — kind of uniquely lent itself to that kind of story.

CBC: Did you go through a transition? In the beginning you had a lot of fantasy stories, a lot of this other dimension…

I think it must have gone, on and off, for four or five issues.

Then your series really just stuck to the swamp for an extended period of time, which included when Ploog was doing it. Did you say, “I’ve had enough of fantasy”?

Steve: I don’t know that it was particularly that. It was

Howard the Duck, Man-Thing TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

This page: Campaign button art by Bernie Wrightson and Omnibus cover by Frank Brunner.

Howard the Duck was featured in the teaser ending of likely the biggest movie of the year, Guardians of the Galaxy. What a crazy, mixed-up world… waugh!

more — As I told you, this was a series that I sort of discovered, as I was working on it, how difficult it really was to write.

Along with finding out how taxing it actually was, part of it was that I was discovering the possibilities inherent in it, and as you discover those possibilities, you see the challenges that come with them. When you’re dealing with a character who is all about other characters’ emotions, ultimately you’ve got to get to the conclusion that the series is about the other characters, about everything else that’s going on. And then who are those other characters? And are we going to be satisfied with just bringing in demons, or can we start dealing with some more complex things? I mean, emotions, after all, are more complex than just the Nether-Spawn wanting to take over the earth.

The character lent itself to, and kind of forced me into the direction of, exploring other human beings. Looking back on it now, it seems inevitable that it had to go in that direction, just because of the nature of the character. I don’t know that it was so inevitable at the time, or felt that way at the time, but it certainly kept yanking me in that direction.

CBC: Did you just not want to do it anymore, so they stopped the book?

Steve: No, they decided to cancel the book. Sales had dropped on it and they decided to cancel it. But we knew when the last issue would be, so we did an issue to close out the series.

CBC: Was it self-indulgent to put yourself in that last issue, or was it that you really felt this personally, that this series meant that much to you that you really wanted to be a part of it?

Steve: Oh, I guess it was both. [laughter] How could you call it not self-indulgent? [laughs] It was that. I mean, I think we also… The book by then was not selling quite as well, and there was no inherent risk in doing something that strange in the story, so why not? I did feel very personally about that book. I had written about 40 different stories with that character at that time, and it was by far the most difficult thing I had ever worked on, and I wanted to make some kind of little statement before I left it.

CBC: When Ploog was on board, was that really the one

instance of an artist plotting a story… you know, with the dog?

Steve: I really don’t remember the specifics of that. I know the credits read that Mike co-plotted it, is that correct?

CBC: No, plotted. It was plotted and drawn by Mike Ploog and written by you. That was only the second part.

Steve: The second part?

CBC: Which is kind of weird. I mean, it does seem to be part of one story.

Steve: Right. I honestly don’t remember the circumstances of that. I do know roughly when it was done. That was done right at the point where my marriage was breaking up, actually. It may have been that I had some trouble getting the second part of that story plotted, as a result of everything that was going on in my life and outside at the time. It may have been that Mike and I discussed the plot. I honestly don’t remember.

CBC: Inevitably, if I’m talking to Neal Adams about deadline situations that he got in, he always switches it over to, “Was it worth the wait?” It seems to me the periodic nature of comic books must have been eminently frustrating for creative people… There were just these crushing deadlines.

Especially when you were a monthly, you just had to get it done.

Steve: Yeah. Well, you did and you do; the books are still like that. It’s a double-edged sword. It forces you to turn out a lot of material very quickly and spontaneously, and there can be a lot of energy derived from something like that. But on the other hand, yeah, it really drains you of material very quickly — particularly if you’re writing two, three, four, five titles a month, which some people were doing at that time, just to stay alive.

CBC: On average, were you doing two titles a month?

Steve: In those days, I was doing three or four.

CBC: Plus probably black-&-white stories, too, right?

Steve: Right. Well, that may have included some of the black-&-white series; like, the “Zombie,” and so on, would have been one of those series. It was not unusual for me to write 80, 90 pages of comics a month at that time.

CBC: And this was all done Marvel style?

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Above: The talking duck from another dimension would prove to be Steve Gerber’s crowning achievement in American culture, as Howard the Duck was parlayed into a solo comic book series (with an annual and treasury, to boot), syndicated newspaper comic strip, 1976 Presidential campaign, and eventually a major motion picture.

The entire comics run has been preprinted in an Omnibus edition.

Below: Val Mayerik and Sal Trapani’s panel of the first Howard appearance, Fear #19 [Dec. ’73].

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Above: In tribute to the passing of a comic book legend, artist Dave Simons created this poignant tribute to the late, great Steve Gerber. Sadly the artist himself passed on a year later.

Below: Kevin Nowlan did indeed finish the art chores on the ManThing graphic novel writer Steve Gerber mentions in the interview.

The Infernal Man-Thing was published in the summer of 2012, featuring outstanding painted art by the great artist and CBC friend.

Steve: Thirteen chapters, one of the longer serials that they ran in MCP. CBC: Of what, seven pages apiece?

Steve: I thought they were longer than that. I’m not sure.

CBC: I just have a few of the issues; I have not pulled them out for this. But I’m just wondering, that sounds like it would be a great graphic novel collection.

Steve: Yes, it would! It’s a self-contained story, yeah. It would make a nice 130, 140-page graphic novel.

CBC: Did you deal with issues or events in the earlier series, or anything like that?

Steve: I don’t think it had much reference to the earlier stuff. This was, I recall, more of a political thriller based around the Iran-Contra mess that was going on.

CBC: [Laughs] Now, that’s stretching it. Would you feel comfortable returning to the character? Did you have any stories you’d like to do?

Steve: You know, I haven’t thought about writing a ManThing story in ages. If somebody said, “We’d really like you to do something with the character,” I probably could come up with something, yeah.

CBC: Did you ever float the idea to do a cross-company Swamp Thing/Man-Thing-Steve: [Laughs] Oh, no, no. I would have been dead-set against it if they had, actually. I’ve never understood this desire of comic fans to want to see all these characters who are exactly alike in the same story. “Let’s put Flash and Quicksilver together, that’d be really nice.” [laughter] CBC: It was such a forbidden thing back then, when Superman and Spider-Man were together; it was such an impossibility that— Steve: Well, it was, but Superman and Spider-Man are not identical characters. A team-up like that I can see. Characters who can play off each other and contrast with each other are interesting. Two guys who both look like walking mud, what is the point of that? [laughter] CBC: Did you read Alan Moore’s interpretation of Swamp Thing when it was released?

Steve: I read some of them and enjoyed them quite a bit.

CBC: Did somebody bring your attention to them, or did you discover them on your own?

Steve: Somebody must have told me about them. I was working in animation primarily at the time.

CBC: What did you think of his take?

Steve: I think he managed to do something completely different from what I did and completely different from what Len did, which I thought was just great. It’s yet another entirely different interpretation of that kind of character.

CBC: And how would you characterize that? What makes it different— just the mechanics of it?

Steve: Certainly the writing style, yeah. It’s been so long since I’ve read those stories. I did also like the way he got into the physics of Swamp Thing, the biology of that character. Again, it’s been probably twenty years since I’ve read them, so I can’t be more specific than that, but I do recall that it was something completely different from what either Len or I had done, and liking it for that reason.

CBC: Obviously they were playing with things there, Alec Holland being redefined as a plant. I think for your second or third issue of “Man-Thing” in Fear, you did return the character to his human self. Did you ever want to do that?

Did you ever want to bring Ted Sallis back— was that a temptation for you?

Steve: The temptation was always there, but I always tried to resist it, because…

CBC: It brought too much focus on Man-Thing?

Steve: Partly because it brought too much focus on Man-Thing; partly because it would have turned him into just the Hulk or Ben Grimm. If the character could turn back and forth at will, or even not at will, even just occasionally, it would have made him far too similar to too many other characters.

CBC: Was it in fact your intention to have a constant

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Howard the Duck, Man-Thing TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. Illustration © the estate of Dave Simons.

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Steve: Mm-hm.

CBC: Do you still do things Marvel style?

Steve: Lately I’ve been doing things full-script.

CBC: And how do you like it?

Steve: All of the new Duck stuff was done full-script, and Nevada was written fullscript. For some reason that now seems more natural to me than working Marvel style. I’m not sure why.

CBC: It was your choice?

Steve: It was my choice.

CBC: Weirdly enough, that seems to be the way things are done at Marvel: they don’t do things Marvel style anymore.

Steve: Very, very little.

CBC: DC is actually doing more Marvel style these days.

Steve: Yeah, that’s what I’ve heard.

CBC: You returned to Man-Thing, I believe…was Marvel Comics Presents the one time you returned to him?

Steve: Well, actually, there’s a Man-Thing graphic novel that I wrote that was supposed to be painted by Kevin Nowlan.

CBC: Oh, yeah, that’s right.

Steve: That’s still never seen print.

CBC: He swears he’s going to get it done. I talked to him about three weeks ago. [laughter] Steve: It was written 15 years ago. It has still yet to see…

CBC: Have you seen pages from it?

Steve: I’m told there are pages from it. [laughs] I don’t know.

CBC: He says it’s mostly done. I did an extensive interview with him a couple of weeks ago and he did touch upon that. Did you work with Tom Sutton for the Marvel Comics Presents serial?

Steve: Those were done full-script also, because of the weekly nature of the thing. It was difficult to do them with a plot.

CBC: What, the back-&-forth?

Steve: Well, also because you had to be able to plot where exactly the cliffhanger was coming and what it was going to be. They were shorter chapters; 12, maybe 13 pages, I don’t know, something like that. So that was all written full-script, I believe, but Tom and I did discuss it as we were working, and he was a wonderful guy to work with and I think he did just a gorgeous job on that story.

CBC: He seems like the quintessential Man-Thing artist, in a way.

Steve: He could have been, yeah. He could have been.

CBC: I would have very long hours with him on the phone talking about anything under the sun.

Steve: [Laughs] Right, right.

CBC: Were your conversations with him like that?

Steve: Very much, yes. Again, we didn’t know each other well and we had never met in person, but we would get on the phone and sometimes spend… I’d call him to let him know about some little detail in a story that I wanted to make sure he got, and we wound up talking about something else, horror movies or something, for two and a half hours.

CBC: Did he enjoy working on “Man-Thing”?

Steve: Yeah, he liked that stuff and I think it showed.

CBC: It ended up being what, about ten chapters or something?

Photo © Jackie Estrada. Howard the Duck TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

rotating group of supporting characters: that people would come and people would go and you wouldn’t be stuck on…

I mean, there must be that temptation to create this gang or this group that would be able to verbalize anything…

Steve: Okay, you’re talking about two different things now.

I never wanted to tie him to a specific cast of characters.

The idea of having three or four different supporting casts, that could weave in and out and occasionally touch each other, was what I was going for with that series. The Richard Rory character, I think, wound up ultimately — well, I don’t know, I’m not sure about that. I really should have sat down and read all these.

CBC: Well, I’d have to pay you for that. [laughs] Steve: Oh, come on, they weren’t that bad. [laughs] CBC: [Laughs] No, I didn’t mean it like that! That’s a lot of comics!

Steve: [Laughs] I did not want to tie him to a specific continuing set of characters, because I remember even thinking at the time that there was something unrealistic about that.

It was one thing for a basically human, communicative character to have a regular supporting cast with whom he associated all the time. But how many times does one human being actually run into a monster [laughs] in any universe, let alone the same monster over and over again? The idea of some characters who lived in the vicinity, other characters who passed through, and then mixing and matching those in various different ways, that was something I did very consciously, yes.

CBC: In one of the letter pages you said that more or less all the characters are based on real people. Is that true?

Steve: To one extent or another, a lot of the characters were based on real people or elements of real people. Composites of real people, yeah.

CBC: Now, was that just a storytelling device for you mentally, or was that an homage to them to say, “Hey, this is you?”

Steve: Oh, no, no. I was trying to tell stories about people.

People that I had encountered in my life wound up making appearances in those stories, because that was the material I had to draw upon.

CBC: Richard Rory was probably the most frequent character. Was he based on a real person?

Steve: Yeah, me. [laughter] CBC: You didn’t walk around calling yourself a loser all the time, didja?

Steve: He’s kind of the prototype for Howard the Duck, actually. [laughs] CBC: But Howard has a lot more force of personality, shall we say?

Steve: Yeah. [laughs] CBC: I just didn’t notice how many times the guy walks around saying, “I’m such a loser.”

Steve: That’s right. But Howard’s also a lot more sympathetic because he’s not human. Those same characteristics transplanted to a human being are not nearly as attractive. [laughs] CBC: Do you think “Night of the Laughing Dead” was one of your most successful stories?

Steve: I do. I think all the stuff with Ploog was the best Man-Thing stuff I did, actually. Even though I had not worked with Mike before, I was familiar with his work. I’m not even sure I knew Mike was going to draw “Night of the Laughing Dead” at the time the story was plotted, but there was something that just… The combination of what I was doing with the story and the way he interpreted that character in the swamp and the other characters, just clicked in a way that it hasn’t on that book with anybody else.

CBC: Before or since?

Steve: Before or since.

CBC: The period with Ploog is when Man-Thing really seemed to be the headlining character for a period of time.

For instance, when he goes to that Ponce de Leon place, La Hacienda, and starts turning into a human…

Steve: That was an odd story, yeah. Man-Thing was more the focus of that story than most of the other characters. That’s not really true of most of the Ploog stuff. We only did, what, like six or seven issues altogether?

CBC: Yeah. Maybe it’s the way that Ploog drew him or something, but the character had great presence.

Steve: Yes, he did.

CBC: And I guess he was drawn with such panache that he was just so much fun to look at.

Steve: Well, Mike also managed to turn the swamp itself into a character in those stories.

It becomes not only a setting and not only atmospheric: the character of the swamp and the character of the Man-Thing are almost inseparable. It’s a very interesting artistic treatment of that stuff.

CBC: It was especially nice to see Mike inking his own pencils; he really looked superb. Were you satisfied when you left, or did you have more stories to tell?

Steve: I think by the time we finished with Man-Thing, I was actually kind of glad it was over.

I probably could have continued with it, and I did, later, with that graphic novel and then the story for Marvel Comics Presents. But boy, did I need a break from it. The break lasted almost ten years, but if it had been several years, I wouldn’t have minded. It was the kind of strip that I always felt I could return to at any time, but doing it that intensely over a period of a few years was very difficult and really exhausting.

CBC: Did you do research on Louisiana culture?

Steve: It was Florida, actually. Sure, yeah. Really basic research about what kind of flora and fauna would be found in the swamp, and the Indians in Florida. We had one story that dealt with the Indians in Florida and general cultural things going on in that state at that time. So sure, yeah, a little bit of research; not a lot, because the stories were mostly fantasy, but some.

CBC: There must have been a period of time when you were doing Man-Thing and Giant-Size Man-Thing and also some “Man-Thing” stories in Monsters Unleashed, right?

Steve: I think it was a prose story, or something, in Monsters Unleashed. There was a time when I was doing the regular Man-Thing book, the Giant-Size Man-Thing [laughs] book, and the Zombie, who was essentially the Man-Thing without the slime, [laughter] all at the same time.

CBC: That’s a hell of a load!

Steve: It was, it was, and particularly with such similar characters.

CBC: I guess the horror craze was over by the time of the demise of Man-Thing. Did you have any interest in the horror genre per se?

Steve: No, I had to kind of find an interest in it. This was at a time when the whole horror genre was just being turned upside down, with The Exorcist and Stephen King’s first book and Anne Rice’s first vampire book. That stuff interested me, because it was not the standard horror motifs — old gloomy castles and villagers with pitchforks. The idea of doing a horror story set entirely in a contemporary setting was very interesting to me.

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Above: Courtesy of Jackie Estrada, a 1980s photograph of Steve Gerber taken at a San Diego Comic Con. The writer is much missed, passing too young, and we regret he never lived to see this book, but are grateful that the man’s words can be shared.

Below: The world’s greatest duck artist, Carl Barks, guffaws looking at a copy of Steve Gerber’s Howard the Duck. The comic book zeitgeist comes full circle! Photo taken at the 1976 Newcon, Boston.

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Mayerik on Marvel’s Man-Thing The pleasure of working with Gerber and pain of suffering mismatched inkers Conducted by JON B. COOKE

Inset right: Recent photo of Val Mayerik, one-time Man-Thing artist and a man of multiple talents.

Below: Portrait of the most famous character to first come from the pencil of Val Mayerik, Howard the Duck. Painting by Mr. Mayerik.

[Youngstown, Ohio, native Val Mayerik entered the comics field in 1971 as an assistant of renowned inker Dan Adkins, and thereafter he had an auspicious debut finishing (along with fellow former Adkins’ assistant P. Craig Russell) Barry Smith’s layouts for an issue of Conan the Barbarian. From there the young artist was given the “Man-Thing” assignment in Fear, scripted by another nascent talent, writer Steve Gerber. Val continued on the series — albeit plagued by inkers who obliterated his fine pencil work — in the move to the solo Man-Thing title, along the way being the first delineator of Howard the Duck (a character the artist would draw in the syndicated newspaper comic strip in years that follow). Val has since been in and out of mainstream comics, and has had careers in theatre, advertising, the gaming industry, and even television. Notably, Val contributed to Harvey Pekar’s American Splendor. The following, a severely truncated excerpt from a telephone interview conducted in 2003, was transcribed by Steven Tice. — Y.E.]

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Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Painting © Val Mayerik, Howard the Duck TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

Comic Book Creator: When you two assisted Dan Adkins, did he give you and Craig the skinny on what the industry was like?

Val Mayerik: At the time, I was young and, number one, I liked comics. I needed something to put my energies into to get me out of Youngstown. I needed something to make a living at, and I wanted to be an artist in doing that. So if it wasn’t comics, if it would have been drawing greeting cards, that would have been fine with me. But it just turned out that I also really liked comics, so I wanted to do something in the field. Dan was cynical, because he’d been through so a lot already, and his cynicism would come out many times. And I kind of just didn’t pay any attention to that, because, like I said,

I was at a point where I didn’t want any of those negative sentiments inhibiting me in any way.

So Dan would try to tell Craig and I about this and that… bad inkers. And it didn’t take long before I had my own stories about how bad the business was.

Having said all that, when I look at the way the business is today, I think those were the heyday. At least there was work, at least there was a lot of work available. You might get Vince Colletta inking it, and the stuff was printed on toilet paper, and there were limitations from the business end, but at least there was work. Now, the business has taken on a particular face that I don’t recognize at all.

CBC: Do you have any feelings at all about Man-Thing? You did a nice run in his early days.

Val: That was frustrating, because at the same time, Bernie Wrightson was doing Swamp Thing, and he got to ink that himself. And the colorist at DC — DC was obviously putting a lot of attention on that book, and they were getting him great colorists, and he had a great writer.

Gerber was writing “Man-Thing,” and Gerber’s a good writer. I like Steve personally, I like his writing. But it’s obvious Marvel just wasn’t… I didn’t think Marvel was exhibiting any real concern for the character, for the book. Like you said, the inking jobs, the way they butchered some of that stuff.

I spent all this time trying to make it look real Frazetta-like, with all these great renderings of the Man-Thing and the textures and the reflection in the water. And then, holy God in Heaven, they just butchered it. Besides the inking being horrible, they threw all these bright colors on it. They made the swamp look like a gymnasium. It was just terrible.

CBC: Was that Frank Chiaramonte on your stuff?

Val: They gave me a different inker every issue. The only guy that I was satisfied with, a guy named Chic Stone inked one job. And he wasn’t a great inker, but at least he was the closest to what I had drawn of any of these guys. Another one was Sal Trapani…

CBC: Oh, gosh.

Val: There were other disasters on that run. It just went down the line, they were all… They might have been good inkers on certain things, but — CBC: But not complementary to your organic style.

Val: Not at all. They were so completely incompatible with my style.

CBC: And there were guys out there who could… Did you ever have Pablo Marcos on your stuff?

Val: No. No, they never gave — I would ask Roy. I didn’t want this to boil over, I didn’t want to get Roy so mad he wouldn’t give me any work or anything. Because I could sense Roy had a temperament where he could get vindictive, and I just….

CBC: Didn’t want that.

Val: No. And so the only really good inkers that they had

TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

The Muck-Monster Makers at Marvel in those days were Pablo Marcos, Tom Palmer, I think Sal Buscema, a few other guys. And those guys were booked, man. They were not going to give them to me.

CBC: Was it a collaborative effort with Steve?

Val: Yeah, more or less. Steve pretty much presented a script. I can recall times of Steve being more collaborative, like on Void Indigo. But at this particular time, I wasn’t… I didn’t have any particular feelings where I wanted the character to go; I just liked the visuals of the characters and was perfectly willing to draw what Steve had written.

CBC: You liked the swamp milieu and that organic thing?

Val: Yeah, yeah, exactly.

CBC: And the character’s design, himself?

Val: Yes. I liked that horror stuff. I can’t remember all the stories we did now. I think I suggested to Steve we do something about him running into a bunch of people who lived in the middle of the swamps, who were isolated from the rest of civilization. I can recall making that suggestion, I don’t know that we ever did a story with characters like that, I’m not sure. Other than that, I just went along with what Steve… I always thought Steve had entertaining ideas.

CBC: They would get wacky sometimes, right? I mean, obviously, there was a certain character that you were the first person to draw, that went on to some fame.

Val: Right, Howard the Duck.

CBC: What did you think when you got that, this is going to be a talking duck in this horror comic book.

Val: Well, I have to admit, I have no prescient or precognitive powers about pretty much anything in my life, and I certainly didn’t about comics. I had no idea that duck was going to become popular. Because in his premiere, there, there were other weird characters from other weird dimensions that showed up at the same time. So I thought, if anything, it would all happen as a group, these characters would emerge as a group. But they didn’t.

CBC: You eventually did draw a couple of, you did the Star Wars parody for Howard. Do you have any affinity for the character?

Val: Yeah, I do! Now that a lot of time has passed, the character, to me, is very interesting. You can do anything with a character like that.

There’s two elements. There’s a couple of things operating with a character like Howard. There’s the fact that if you’re talking about he is a talking animal character that looks somewhat more like a cartoon character. He’s not a naturalistic-looking duck; he’s not like a farmyard duck.

He’s an anthropomorphized, duck-like creature that would obviously freak people out in a world that’s supposed to be this world. There’s that element, which I really found the least interesting of it, because I thought what was interesting about this, it’s just like Bugs Bunny. In the Disney world of talking animals, all the characters were talking animals.

Goofy is a dog and Donald is a duck and Mickey is a mouse.

In the Warner cartoons, which I thought were really much funnier, there was Bugs. And Bugs would annoy and just try to piss around with people. And what was funny about that, what made that able to get away with that, and with Chuck Jones’ genius, is it was a rabbit. If you assigned a human body to that character, then you’d have to think about what he’d look like. Would he look like a wise guy, short fat, one of the Bowery Boys? But when you personify an animal, you have suddenly given yourself license to do so many different things that you couldn’t do if you limited it to being a human being. And that’s what I think was great about the Duck. He could be that Greek chorus, he could be that little irritating guy that you just, what the hell, who is he, where’s he from, what’s he talking about? That, to me, is what made the char-

acter interesting, and that’s the real success of it, I think.

CBC: What was your familial situation in the early ’70s?

Did you have a family of your own? Did you have economic pressures on yourself to get a continuing gig, to pump out the pages and stuff? You were very prolific, obviously.

Val: In the early ’70s I was prolific because I just was. The work was coming my way and I did it. Then, like I said, I kind of took this hiatus, got into martial arts a lot. Then I realize if I was going to keep my career alive, I had to get back into it with some earnestness, and I moved to New York City.

At that time, what kept me going was that New York, even then, was so much more expensive than any other place in America, and you just had to keep working hard or you were going to get swallowed up. And that’s when [in the latter ’70s] I went to work at Continuity Associates for a while, with Neal Adams, and learned an immense amount about just everything about being a graphic artist.

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Above: Opening page of Fear #18 [Nov. ’73], courtesy of Michael Blanchard. Pencils by Val Mayerik and inks by Sal Trapani.

Below: Val also contributed to Harvey Pekar’s American Splendor.

Here’s a panel detail from #10 [’85].

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Mike’s Magical Time at Marvel Artist Mike Ploog recalls his Man-Thing masterpieces and collaborating with Gerber Conducted by JON B. COOKE

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Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Mike Ploog photo © the respective copyright holder.

remember right, there was a period of time where Werewolf

by Night was outselling Spider-Man. It was one of their best sellers. And I didn’t even know it. This was something that [Michael George Ploog came into the comics game by Holly told me later on, and she was amazed that I never reway of the U.S. Marine Corps, television animation, and a alized it. Well, I didn’t realize it because of the fact that I just two-year hitch as assistant to the great Will Eisner, who went in there, delivered my work, and snuck back out again. produced P*S magazine at the time for the U.S. Army. At CBC: Wow. Because I thought your work was just a bolt the suggestion of letterer of Ben Oda and artist Wallace from the blue. I had actually not been familiar with Eisner’s Wood, Mike freelanced for Warren Publication’s black-&work, so I didn’t see it as a lovely homage, like a lot of other white horror line, and his work there caught the attention of Marvel, where he was given the “Werewolf by Night” series. fans did, but it was just striking, because it was so moody and full of character.

After co-creating the modern Ghost Rider and rendering a masterful version of The Monster of Frankenstein, Mike was Mike: I think it came from some of the stuff that Will implanted in me. Y’know, don’t just draw a picture, do someoffered the Man-Thing assignment. After leaving comics thing with it. Anybody can draw a picture. in the late ’70s, he would go on to a successful career as a motion picture storyboard artist and visual designer. The fol- CBC: There was a Marvel method there. Did you work from plots?

Below: A 2008 pic of the wonder- lowing interview was conducted by phone on Nov. 26, 2002, Mike: Yeah, I worked mostly from plots. Then, during later ful comic book artist and designer and was transcribed by Steven Tice and later copyedited by times, it would be just telephone conversations. Like on for the movie industry, Mike Ploog. Aaron Kashtan. — Y.E.] Man-Thing — [laughs] What was the writer’s name?

Comic Book Creator: Who’d CBC: Steve Gerber. you meet with you when at Marvel? Mike: Steve! I love Steve, he’s a sweetheart, but Steve Mike Ploog: I met with Roy used to drive me nuts. I mean, either his wife was sick, or Thomas and a couple of other guys. she was leaving him, or he was sick and he was leaving her, I think Verpoorten was in there and so every month it was like, [imitates Gerber’s voice:] “Ohhh, a couple of other people. And they Mike, it’s terrible, I don’t know what we’re going to do.” I said, “No, no, sorry, we can’t do said, “Well, Steve. Let me see what I can come up with and any business with you. You’re too I’ll run it across ya and you can give me a plot.” I’d call him cartoony.” But about two or three up. “Oh, Mike, that sounds great!” [laughter] Then it would days later I get a call, and it’s Roy get in there, then somebody would start editing it. And I Thomas. And he’s saying, “How would get so pissed off that I didn’t get paid for the writing, would you like to do a monster but now they’re starting to edit it anyway. [laughs] Those magazine?” Because he had seen were good old days. Yeah, it was always from a plot. I always my stuff from Warren. And I said, had the luxury of just more or less getting a beginning, mid“Sure, I’d love it!” And that was dle, and an end, and just stringing it all together.

“Werewolf by Night.” And so off I CBC: There was an explosion of monster books at Marvel. went.

Mike: Yeah.

CBC: Were you still single when CBC: That really got you in a good position immediately? working for Marvel?

Mike: Well, it did. Because it was the first monster book, Mike: Yeah, I was single then. and it took off. They took off with gangbusters. Then all of CBC: Did you meet Holly [Resa sudden they wanted you to do everything. As a matter of nicoff, one-time secretary to Stan fact, I was doing Frankenstein and Werewolf, I was penciling Lee, whom Mike married] on your one, and penciling and inking the other. It was goofy, it was first visit to the office? crazy time.

Mike: Yeah. Well, I used to sneak CBC: You know, another big character in the history of in there and sneak out. comics, almost of the same stature as Will Eisner, certainly, CBC: Why? was Stan Lee. What was he like?

Mike: Because I was embarMike: [Laughs] Stan was great! I loved Stan. Another story rassed. Going back to being a farm of going in to ask for more money. While I’m waiting for him boy, I guess. Y’know, all these to get off the phone, I’m walking around his office looking at fantastic artists. I mean, that’s when all the pictures of Rolls Royces on his wall. He’s got every Barry Windsor-Smith was working Rolls Royce he’s ever owned hanging up on his wall, y’know? there. All of those guys, and they He gets off the phone, and I said, “God, you know, I could were brilliant. And I kept thinking, really use some more money.” And he’s giving me this hard “Oh God, and here I am wandering luck story and everything like that. And then he looks out in with this crap.” So I’d just sneak the window, he looks down and he says, “Oh, look there! in, deliver, and sneak out.

That’s my wife! And that’s my new Rolls Royce!” [laughter] I CBC: Did you get any critical thought, “You sh*t! Show me your goddamned Rolls Royce notice early on? and I’m asking for another $5 a page,” or something. [laughs] Mike: No, no. They loved it. If I But I like Stan. I liked him a lot, he was a man with an enor-

TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

The Muck-Monster Makers mous amount of energy. He was a man who never grew up, y’know? You liked being around him because of the fact that he was just this big kid.

CBC: Was it a magical time at Marvel?

Mike: It was. It started to turn sour. But it really was, it was a very magical time.

And every now and then, I’ll be sitting here inking or something, and a certain smell will come across me, and it’s the smell of the old pulp, of comic books. And all of a sudden you’ll remember things and it just flashes across you. And it was, it was a good period of time.

CBC: Now, the most organic strip of them all, with the monsters, has got to be Man-Thing.

Mike: Oh, I loved ManThing. Man-Thing was great because he was in a swamp and you didn’t have to draw feet, he was always kneedeep in water. [laughs] I liked Man-Thing. The only problem with Man-Thing is that everything happened to him.

He never initiated anything.

And that’s hard to write.

That’s why we were having so much trouble with the stories, the fact that things had to happen around him, because he never initiated anything.

CBC: He was a passive...

Mike: Yeah, he was just there.

CBC: How did you get that assignment? Did Gerber ask for you?

Mike: I can’t remember. What it was is they wanted something to combat Swamp Thing, because Swamp Thing was doing so good on the newsstands. They wanted to come up with some swamp creature. I think Gray Morrow did the first one. And they liked him except for the fact that it was kind of on the stiff side. They wanted more drippy stuff, and I guess they figured I was a drippy artist, so… [laughs] Give it to Ploog, he’ll make it drip!

CBC: Did you do any reference? Did you look up books on swamps or anything like that?

Mike: I don’t think so, to be honest.

CBC: Did it just come natural from you?

Mike: I can’t remember looking up any. But, yeah, the trees and things like that are natural for me. I love doing trees and things.

CBC: Now, Frank Chiaramonte, was he the main inker on your stuff for that?

Mike: Yeah, because Frank was out of work, actually. I can’t remember the exact situation. What happened is that when Frank first inked the stuff, they didn’t like it. So I spoke

to Frank and we worked out, I would do bits and pieces and then Frank would fill in, and things like that, until Frank loosened up. And they didn’t mind his stuff after that.

CBC: Yeah, I do recall seeing a vast improvement in his work. He started off light with the blacks, right?

Mike: Yeah.

CBC: So you instructed him somewhat to…?

Mike: Yeah. As a matter of fact, some pages I would even go over and just put in some real rough brushstrokes. Because he was really slick because he was used to drawing machinery. He was a damned good artist in his own right, but years of doing mechanical work, it took its toll on him. But he did loosen up. I liked him, and I felt compelled to help him out.

CBC: You know, Steve seemed to be invigorated by your work on his scripts. Did that feel such? Did you feel that the stories were suddenly getting better?

Mike: They were getting better. It was sporadic. I mean, the clown story was a jewel. And that was Steve’s idea, the whole thing was. When Steve gets into it, he’s one hell of a good writer. But if he’s not inspired, he could drive ya nuts.

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Above: Mike Ploog contributed this illustration to the Mighty Marvel Calendar for 1975. Below: An enduring Mike Ploog co-creation, Ghost Rider in a sketch by Ploog.

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[Gerber voice again:] “Can’t we do something better with this?” And you’d think, “If I could do something better, I’d have done it already!” [laughter] “You’re not the only one that knows crap! I’ve been here before, y’know!” [laughter] CBC: There was always drama with Steve?

Mike: Yeah. I mean, humorous life drama. I loved him, because every time I would hear his voice on the phone, I’d be waiting for the next shoe to drop, y’know? [laughter] CBC: Did you always look at life with amusement? Are you hard to get angry, so to speak?

Mike: It’s almost impossible to get me angry. There are just a handful of things that can probably push me over the top.

I’ve never taken life very seriously.

CBC: Where do you think you got that from?

Mike: I don’t know. I think it came from...

CBC: Being self-sufficient?

Mike: I think so. That and being just a bit of a wanderlust.

Those years of just beating around and never staying in one place too long. And thinking, “Christ, if I see 30, I’ll really be lucky, so I’m gonna enjoy myself.”

CBC: You did a story about a dog named Dawg…

Mike: Oh, yeah! The old gal, the swamp lady.

CBC: You wrote that, right?

Mike: Yeah. [laughs] That was the old ’coon dog.

CBC: Was that your affinity for animals coming through?

Mike: It’s very possible, yeah. I always had this feeling like

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Illustration © Mike Ploog. Man-Thing, Werewolf by Night TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

Above: Stupendous commission piece by Macabre Mike Ploog featuring two of his trademark monsters, Man-Thing and Werewolf

by Night. We would have loved to use this as a CBA cover image for an ish back then, but the Rascally One beat us to the punch, with Roy Thomas’ Alter Ego #62 [Oct. ’06].

This ish also featured what was intended for this book, Roy’s Swampmen interview, conducted by George Khoury.

there’s a life beyond animals, that without the animals, that wouldn’t have happened. Like, there’s this story in the back of my head, and everybody I talked to, they say, “Well, no, that story doesn’t exist.” I think it’s called Tumbleweed. It’s a story about a horse. And I swear to God, I’ve seen the movie.

This horse that just passes from the outlaw to an Indian and then it ends up with this prospector. And then the horse ends up saving this prospector’s life. And they find gold and everything and they living happily ever after. But I always felt that animals had a thing for doing that, for changing person’s lives.

CBC: With Man-Thing, was the clown story your favorite?

Mike: Yeah, that’s my favorite story. One, I think it’s a brilliant story; and two, I like stories that work on different levels. There’s more to the story than meets the eye. I always felt that that story was a great story, about a clown with this kind of dysfunctional family and this terrible life. It begins with him killing himself. It’s a great story.

CBC: You also seem to have an affinity for lost childhood.

There’s a real mood, there’s this wonderful sense— You know, there are kids in that story, and he had a sister. Do you shine to that work? Do you like work that may be sentimental and may be nostalgic?

Mike: I like stories that are about kids. I like a kid’s story that everything isn’t just roses. They have to function, and they have to function cleverly. And they have to get on with things. Life isn’t just video games and trips to the corner market for candy. There’s real danger out there. I like that kind of a story.

CBC: Is there a forlornness, do you think, that perhaps you didn’t have enough of a childhood?

Mike: I look back, I don’t even remember my childhood.

It’s one of those things. Every now and then I’ll remember something and my mother and I will talk about something.

But to be honest, there’s just moments of it. You just pick up visuals. It’s not like you even quite remember it. So what it is, I might be just creating one for myself.

CBC: Did you make up for lost time with your own kids? Did you spend a lot of time with them?

Mike: Actually, with my first family I was very good. I wasn’t a very good father, I’m afraid. But it wasn’t for the lack of love, because I adored the kids. It’s just that my life was in such turmoil at that time. I was doing comic books and I was moving all over the place, didn’t have any money, blahblah-blah, every excuse under the sun. But now I’ve got an 11-year-old that I’m spoiling rotten.

CBC: So did things start coming apart at the seams? With [Jim] Shooter coming in?

Mike: Oh, God! I don’t think there was a seam left in the damned place. When Jim Shooter came in there, nobody kept their word, people were changing schedules on you, they would say they wanted you to do a 32-pager and then it ended up, “Now we’re gonna cut it.” You’d say, “Well, wait a minute, I’ve just done twenty pages.” [laughs] So I just got tired of it. Jim Shooter was probably the initiator of most of this.

CBC: You had a real strong work ethic, right?

Mike: Yes. I don’t think I ever missed a deadline.

CBC: And you were in the midst of a lot of, shall we say, [oddly pronounced:] “sensitive” artists, right? Was it just bemusing for you to see their prima donna-ness, maybe, comparatively to your…?

Mike: Well, I just thought they took themselves very seriously. There were some of them I thought were absolutely brilliant, the Kalutas, and the Jeff Joneses, and the Barry Windsor-Smiths, and things. But I kept thinking, “Come on, you guys. You’re just a bunch of cartoonists. You take yourselves so seriously!” It’s almost like they read all of their reviews, and they believed them. They believed they had these mountains of fans out there. I couldn’t take it that seriously, and I felt that they took it way too seriously.

CBC: Was it a smooth transition over to working for film, from doing the comic book work?

Man-Thing TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. Sludge TM & © the respective copyright holder.

Mike: Actually, it was. I went into animation first. I worked on Wizards and Lord of the Rings with Bakshi, doing storyboards and a lot of character designs. And I did backgrounds for Lord of the Rings.

CBC: How did your return to comics happen? You would just periodically come back in?

Mike: I’ll tell you what it was. I got just tired of— It wasn’t tired so much as the fact that I got very disillusioned with film. Because movies changed a great deal in the last ten years. That, and being part of the machine, you got further and further away from the actual product, as a storyboard artist. Because before, like on the Superman movies, I was very close to the product. They used your material on a regular basis. Like on Young Sherlock Holmes, for instance. I was storyboarding in front of Barry Levinson. He’d be shooting one set, and I’d be on the next set, storyboarding. And it was great, because you were very much part of the machine.

Now you’re so far away from the actual product, and it’s not the same. I don’t enjoy it as much as I used to.

CBC: Do you have a movie in you you’d love to do?

Mike: I used to. And if I thought real hard, I’d probably remember it. I can’t think of what it is right now.

CBC: You just don’t want to go into that snake pit?

Mike: I had an opportunity and I turned it down. Because directing a movie nowadays has nothing to do with the art of moviemaking. Or very little of it does, anyway. The rest of it is dealing with the politics of filmmaking, which have gotten huge. And you’re dealing with people that aren’t filmmakers, you’re dealing with people who are accountants and lawyers. It’s just not the same animal anymore.

CBC: The joy is out of it?

Mike: Yeah, the joy has left. It really has.

CBC: Now, how did Sludge come about?

Mike: I was working up in Seattle, I was doing the trading card series with Mike Friedlander. And I was just finishing off— CBC: What was the trading card thing?

Mike: Well, I don’t know how Mike even got my number or anything, but he just, one day he called me up. And he said, “Hey, Ploog, you don’t know me or anything, but I do trading cards. I’d like you to do 90 original paintings.” And I said, “Sure! Why not?” [laughter] “I haven’t got anything better to do.” So I just took that year off and knocked out, it turned out to be over a hundred paintings. Just cranked ‘em out. And Mike loved them. Every time I sent one in, he’d get on the phone, “Oh God, Ploog, this is it! I love this!” And I just kept goin’! [laughs] CBC: What was the subject?

Mike: All kinds of weird things. Fantasy, horror. A lot of fantasy, a lot of monster stuff. But he gave me carté blanche.

He just said, “Do whatever turns you on. Except that I do want some monster stuff. I want some Frankenstein stuff, I want some werewolf stuff. Whatever you like.”

CBC: Mike’s gotta be your biggest fan, right?

Mike: Mike is, I’m afraid. [laughs] He has got tons of my stuff. As a matter of fact, I keep sending him stuff. We trade off things. He’ll send me something, and I’ll send him a Werewolf page. I’m out of them now, so he stopped sending me anything. [laughter] Mike is great. He’s a sweetheart of a guy. We’re very good friends, and I speak to him on a regular basis.

CBC: How did the trading card series go into Sludge?

Mike: Oh, I just came to the end of it. I forget who in the hell it was who called me up. Somebody just called me up and said, “Would you be interested in doing a comic?” And he sent me a bunch of the Sludge stuff, and I thought, “This is awful. But I had a kid working for me when I was doing the paintings. I would do a pencil rough, and he’d transfer the rough off with an overhead projector, he’d transfer it off onto canvas for me. So he wanted to do a comic book, so I said, “Okay, we’ll do the Sludge. You can help me out on it.” So we penciled it up together. That’s the story on that.

CBC: Steve wrote that, didn’t he?

Mike: Yeah, Steve wrote it.

CBC: Did you get in contact with him again?

Mike: Yeah, we did. We just had a couple of chats on the phone, that’s about all. And then I ran into him, I think I went to a convention to sign some trading cards, and Steve was there. And he hadn’t changed an iota. It was again, “Oh, God, Mike, we’ve got to do a book together!” And I say, “We will, we will!” And then we don’t talk for another three or four years. [laughs] CBC: So you’d work with him again?

Mike: Oh yeah, I’d work with Steve again. He is a good writer, a damn good writer. He’s got a great imagination.

CBC: What’s your favorite comic book work that you ever did?

Mike: I think Weirdworld was fun, but it wasn’t my greatest thing. I really enjoyed working on Kull, because he was a character you could relate to. But I think my overall was Frankenstein, because he had this kind of multifaceted personality. He was this giant with the mind of a child. That I really enjoyed doing because of the fact that it was great to do a book where this monster discovers flowers, smell, music, and things like that. It’s a great character.

CBC: The innocent within?

Mike: Yeah. And uncontrollable rage. Which is always fun to do. [laughter]

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Above: The classic Man-Thing #5 [May ’74] story was used as a Power Records set, such was its impact. Below: Gerber and Ploog reunited for this Malibu muckmonster comic book [#1, Dec. ’94].

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Mooney’s Macabre Preference Jim Mooney shares that it was the monsters at Marvel he preferred over Supergirl Conducted by JON B. COOKE Inset right: Jim and Anne Mooney at a convention appearance back in the day. In yesteryear, the Mooneys were social with Stan and Joanie Lee, as Jim also did work for The Man over the decades, striking up a friendship along the way.

Below: What a lovely time Ye Ed had while conducting his lively interview with veteran artist Jim Mooney back in ’03! Not only was the “Supergirl” delineator eager to talk about one of his most fondly-recalled collaborations — with Stylin’ Steve Gerber (who else?) — but he offered… nay, insisted!… he contribute an illustration for Swampmen. Yup, here it is!

Gentleman Jim, who died six years ago, also generously gifted the piece to us. Rest well, friend.

[Entering the comics field through early science-fiction fandom, James Noel Mooney started as an artist in 1940, toiling at Fox, Fiction House, and Timely. By 1946, Jim became a mainstay at DC Comics, drawing “Tommy Tomorrow,” among many other features and anthology stories. It was at the end of the ’50s when he began a nearly 10-year stint on “Supergirl,” a character he would thereafter be linked with. In the late ’60s, the longtime friend of Stan Lee, returned to Marvel as an inker on Amazing Spider-Man and Thor. The following decade found Jim working with the writer who would become a favorite collaborator, Steve Gerber, on the titles Man-Thing and Omega the Unknown. Although he would continue to work for myriad publishers, the mid- to late ’70s would be his professed favorite period as artist. This interview took place by phone in 2003 and was transcribed by Steven Tice. Jim passed away in 2008. — Y.E.]

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Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Photo © the respective copyright holder. Illustration © the estate of Jim Mooney. Man-Thing TM & © the respective copyright holder

Comic Book Creator: Did you draw horror comics prior to working in the ’70s at Marvel?

Jim Mooney: Yeah, I did. Well, for none of the well-known books, like the E.C. titles or anything like that. But I did some stories for Marvel for a while. They were the lesser titles. I can’t even remember

the names of them now. That would have been in the ’50s.

CBC: The Atlas stuff?

Jim: Right. I did a few of those. I wrote a few, actually. I’ve lost track of them, though. I never kept my comics, I just remember that I had done a few.

CBC: Did you have any affinity for the genre material?

Jim: Oh, I loved it. I always like it. I really never enjoyed doing the series, like Superman, Batman, “Supergirl.” I enjoyed Son of Satan, Ghost Rider, Man-Thing. That kind of thing. I really enjoyed that very much. Before I was assigned the “Supergirl” title from DC, before the series started for Action Comics, I was doing a lot of House of Mystery and House of Secrets, and I enjoyed that a heck of a lot CBC: You had a relationship with Stan Lee, right?

Jim: Yeah.

CBC: So with Man-Thing, how did you get on that book?

Jim: That was assigned to me, I think, after John Buscema did some issues of it. At first Mike Ploog was on it, or somebody else. Quite a few other guys. Anyway, it didn’t last very long. I was very disappointed it was cancelled, because I loved that strip.

CBC: Now, what was it you loved?

Jim: The whole thing. I liked the way Steve Gerber wrote it. I liked Steve’s writing, anyway. And it intrigued me. It was something that I put more time than I would have on any other strip, to lavish more care and attention on it, because I did enjoy it that much.

CBC: Do you prefer to ink your own work?

Jim: Yes. Oh, yes, always. I didn’t like penciling very tightly, because, although in that way the inker knew pretty much what I had in mind, but when I could pencil and ink it myself, I could ad lib a little bit, and sometimes it came across to be a little bit more interesting.

CBC: Now, can you pinpoint what it was about Steve Gerber’s writing that was so enjoyable?

Jim: I guess because it wasn’t run-of-the-mill, it wasn’t stereotyped, it wasn’t what you expected. It was unexpected.

Some of the things he wrote I found that were… well, they were just off-beat enough to be interesting.

CBC: Plain and simple, you were entertained by his writing?

Jim: Yes, I guess it was. You know, it’s funny. Steve and I would almost never talk on the phone. He was based in New York at the time, and I was living in Connecticut, and we really had very little communication at all. And the same thing when I was down here in Florida, when he was writing Omega the Unknown. The first time I met Steve was at one of the conventions in San Diego in, I think, ’96 or ’97.

CBC: Really? Did you get a chance to talk?

Jim: Yeah. Steve was not exactly somebody… We got along, it wasn’t that, but there wasn’t a hell of a lot we had to say. [laughs] “I like your work.” “I like your work.” And that was about it. [laughter] CBC: I guess it’s really interesting that, obviously you’re

Man-Thing, Omega the Unknown TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

The Muck-Monster Makers recognized overwhelmingly for the “Supergirl” work, which was very sweet, very innocent. I guess it’s a surprise that you really were so successful in being able to transfer over to the horror stuff and do such an enthusiastic job on ManThing and Son of Satan.

Jim: Well, I think probably if I had had my chance early on and I was able to make a choice, I probably would have gone in that direction instead of doing “Supergirl” or Batman.

Well, Batman was kind of fun at times. I just really had to take what came down the pike, to make a living.

CBC: So did you get really tight plots from Steve Gerber, that you recall, or were they pretty loose?

Jim: There’s an amusing thing. Steve did not have plots. He wrote a full script, and when I first saw that script, I thought, “Oh, God, back to DC.” I made up my mind that I wasn’t going to like it. And I read it, and I thought, “Hey, this works.

That panel should be there. This should be this way!” And consequently, most of the stuff that he wrote after that — Not most of it, all of it was the same way. But to me it was kind of a surprise that it was going to be an absolute full script, no outlines or anything like that for me to break down.

CBC: Were they really specific?

Jim: The were very specific, but occasionally, I might have said, “Well, gee, I would have preferred to do this another way.” And if I wanted to, I could have conferred with Steve, and sometimes I did. But I would say 98%, 99% of the time, those scripts worked perfectly. For me, anyway.

CBC: Did you guys look to work together? You were teamed pretty often, right?

Jim: Yeah, that’s right. I worked with him — That was Sal Buscema on The Defenders; I did the inking on that. I thought that the writing on that was interesting, too. Occasionally, I’d get calls when I still had the pages, I’d get calls from people that remembered certain characters. The ones with the heads from The Defenders? Those Headmen? Some guy in New Zealand was absolutely crazy about them, and he wanted everything that I had along that line. I had a few left at that time. I’ve reached down to the bottom of the barrel on my original art, now. I’ve been selling it at conventions and selling it through eBay, so I really don’t have an awful lot left. I’d say probably by February of this year they’re going to be gone, gone, gone.

CBC: Really?

Jim: Well, I’m keeping some for myself. I wish I’d kept more, now that I look back.

CBC: What are you keeping?

Jim: Some of the Man-Thing, some of the Omega. Ms. Marvel, which I thought was one of the best strips I did, because I had such a great inker on it, Joe Sinnott. I saved quite a bit of that, although I sold a lot of it. I have only a couple of “Supergirls,” because those things are scarce, they’re very hard to come by. I never got them, and most of them, there are not many out there on the market.

CBC: Did you get any feedback during your time at Marvel in the ’70s, from readers?

Jim: Not a great deal, no. And another thing, too: so many people feel that working for Marvel was just one great big party, and everybody knew each other. Half the artists I worked with I never met. I never met John Buscema, though I admired him greatly… Sal Buscema, Gene Colan.

Occasionally I met some of these people at conventions, but I never met them at Marvel.

CBC: Can you pinpoint what it was about Man-Thing that was so cool to work on? Was it just the cleverness of Steve’s scripts, or did you actually enjoy the character, just drawing a monster?

Jim: It’s really hard to say, it’s so subtle. I’m trying to pin

it down, find the right description for it. I think, to a great extent, it was that I really never knew from month to month, what Steve was going to come up with. [laughs] Which made it a little more interesting. It was like a surprise package. “What’s going to happen next month?”

CBC: So you were like a reader, then?

Jim: Yeah, right, right. I was quite enthused in that respect.

And most of the time I was pleasantly surprised, or at least intrigued.

CBC: Were you disappointed when the horror genre pretty much calmed down at Marvel?

Jim: Well, yes and no. I enjoyed doing Ghost Rider. I was taken off that because, I forget what I had to do at the time.

And I liked Son of Satan. I wasn’t terribly disappointed; it was just a type of approach that I enjoyed. I mean, I could live without it, it wasn’t that. But I certainly much preferred it to doing some of the super-hero-type strips, where everything was cut and dried; you knew pretty much what their powers were and what they were going to do. Once in a while, I mean, even with Spider-Man, which I thought was pretty well-done, I pretty much knew what was going to go on from month to month. Except when they killed Gwen.

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Above: Man-Thing commission by Jim Mooney. Below: Another fave assignment was drawing the Gerber/Skrenes Omega the Unknown.

Splash from #1 [Mar. ’76].

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The Saga of the Swamp God The tender, unsettling horrors of Alan Moore’s epic tale of Swamp Thing and Abby Conducted by JON B. COOKE & GEORGE KHOURY Next page: Portrait of “The Original Writer,” Alan Moore, photographed by dear CBC friend and advisor José Villarrubia.

Below: This exquisite painting

by Stephen R. Bissette and John Totleben, which appeared as the cover of The Comics Journal #93 [Sept. ’84], so impressed DC editorial that it led to painted covers on the Swamp Thing title.

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Painting © Stephen R. Bissette & John Totleben. Swamp Thing TM & © DC Comics.

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[Alan Moore, one of the finest writers — if not the finest writer — to ever emerge from the realm of the comic book, single-handedly revolutionized the mainstream medium, introducing real-world sensitivities and a bold, captivating style that continues to be attempted by lesser talents. His tenure in the field has been tumultuous and sporadic, peppered with disaffections with both the top U.S. publishers, yet still a great supporter of much smaller imprints. George Khoury and Ye Ed visited the British scribe in his Northampton, U.K., row house (where he does his writing) on a bright Saturday afternoon and evening in May 2002. — Y.E.]

Jon B. Cooke: When did you start writing comics?

Alan Moore: Doctor Who was the start of my writing career, though I was still drawing at that time. The writing started out as a way to supplement my drawing career, and then the drawing career [on his comic strips, Maxwell the Cat, and Roscoe Moscow] became too time-consuming to supplement my writing career.

I started working at Marvel and then they sacked [writer and Alan’s mentor] Steve Moore on the main strip. This was after I’d done two or three of the back-up strips for Doctor Who. I think I was next in line to take over the lead strip and I’d gotten a very precarious hold on a comic writing career.

But, on the other hand, this was Steve Moore they’d sacked, so I said I couldn’t work on Doctor anymore. The assignment was important to me money-wise, but this was Steve Moore.

He was my best mate. So I said that I didn’t want to do anymore work for Doctor Who, but I was still okay working at Marvel.

When I stopped working on Doctor Who, it was a big decision, but also Warrior was starting at the same time. This was Dez Skinn’s attempt to perhaps get revenge on Marvel.

(He actually used Paul Neary as an artist on Warrior.) At the beginning, there was Dez starting up Warrior and he asked his original crowd — Steve Parkhouse, Steve Moore, Dave Lloyd, Steve Dillon, all the people that he’d been working with on The Mighty World of Marvel — to work on the new magazine. I think Steve Moore recommended me and Dez had seen the article where I was interviewed about what it was like to be a fledgling writer. They asked me if there was any project I would like to do in the future, and I said, just off the top of my head, that it would be great if someone revived Marvelman. I had a really brilliant idea as to how to do that character in the 1980s. Dez had seen that so he got in touch and said that he was going to get the rights to Marvelman for his new comic and would I like to write it? I said, “Sure.”

Jon: What is your writing process? Do you write on a computer?

Alan: I do it on a notepad.

Jon: In longhand? Doesn’t that hurt?

Alan: Yes, but one of the better British TV comedies, Father Ted, is about a group of Catholic priests in Ireland, and there’s a bit where there’s an old lady who looks after them, Mrs. Doyle, and makes them tea every five or six minutes.

Somebody gets her a new tea-making machine, and says, “You’ll love this, Mrs. Doyle! It will take the misery out of making tea.” She looks at him with contempt and says, “Perhaps some of us like the misery.” [laughter] That’s my attitude.

When I was starting out and not handling so many books, it would normally take me three days. On Swamp Thing, I did eight pages a day, handwritten and then typed.

Jon: How long does it really take? For this one you said 15 hours, but did you include pondering and mentally conceptualizing in that time frame?

Alan: There was really wasn’t any pondering at all.

Jon: Do the stories take a life of their own and you’re just the conduit?

Alan: Sometimes they take a lot of thinking about.

Jon: Do they take over?

Alan: Sometimes they take over, but it varies.

Photo © Jose Villarrubia. Used with permission.

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

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This page: There’s the influence of Rembrandt’s famous 1632 painting, The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp (inset right), in the name and Saul Bass’s poster design for Anatomy of a Murder in the story logo… but, whoa. Few readers expected one comic book to have virtually no antecedents and to so influence an entire industry. Ye Ed’s signed copy of Swamp Thing #21 [Feb. ’84]. Yeates’ cover is below.

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Swamp Thing TM & © DC Comics.

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Jon: How much time did you have upon getting the first Swamp Thing story assignment until its deadline?

Alan: It was pretty quick.

Before I got the phone call from [Swamp Thing editor] Len Wein, I had been questioning what was it that made me a good writer. I believed I was good at distilling something good out of a Captain Britain or a Marvelman, bringing something new to the characters that I had previously found boring. I thought it was useful to consider because it means, if there’s anything I can contribute, maybe it’s the ability to find something — anything — interesting about even the worst character. So I challenged myself: What if an American comic book company were to ring me up (not that it was going to happen) and they offered me my first U.S. assignment, only it was the most obscure, uninteresting character I could imagine? So let’s, out of the blue, pick the most obscure American comics character I could think of and just see if I could reinterpret him and make him interesting; let’s see how much I can accomplish in ten minutes.

Jon: Who was that character?

Alan: The Heap. I thought: The Heap, he’s obscure and made out of mainly plant material, which could be useful in a

visual sense because of the camouflage aspect. You could be looking at him for a few hours and not realize it was him until he moved. So I wrote that down. You could add stuff about the environment and plant intelligence, plant consciousness. Swamp landscapes could be used, so I should research swamps.

I also pondered some things that at the time would only be pertinent to the Heap character. What if he rooted and just had the little plastic airplane. In the original story, there was a little boy with a toy airplane who prompted the Heap to recall vague memories of when he was a fighter pilot that had been shot down in battle. (I eventually used that sequence in the Parliament of Trees episode of Swamp Thing.

I have a character obviously supposed to be the Heap and he has a little plastic airplane in the branches of his rooted form.)

So I thought about all this as an exercise and, within two weeks, the phone rang and it was Len Wein. He says, “Hello, this is Len Wein. I’ve admired your work on Warrior and we wondered if you’d like to write for DC and if you would take over the writing on Swamp Thing?” I said, “Sure, yes.” At that minute, I’d forgotten the exercise, but the timing was neat and fortuitous. I asked Len, “What should I do?” He said, “We’ll send you every issue of the latest run of Swamp Thing and then you write a proposal as to what you would do with the series.” I said, “Okay,” and I wrote this proposal within four or five days. I got the proposal back to Len within a week and I later heard it was quite talked about at DC. At the time, [DC executive editor] Dick Giordano said it was the most complete proposal on a character he had ever seen. But that was deceiving, because I was asking, “Why doesn’t Swamp Thing work as a character?” I wrote that there was a reason there was nothing to distinguish him: He has no abilities. Yes, he’s strong, but in the DC Universe, this is forgettable. Also you could do a lot more with the visuals. There are lots of things you can let him do other than stand in the mud and roots. Also the premise of the series is flawed, and the reason is because even the dimmest reader is aware of the premise of a monster trying to regain his humanity and the moment, if that were to happen, the series is over. The dimmest reader realizes that isn’t going to happen, meaning the character is going to spend the remainder of the series on the run, moping about what was not happening. So Swamp Thing ends like Hamlet or just a Silver Surfer covered in snot. [laughter] So I said what I would like to do is turn all this around without changing anything that had already happened by making it that he was never human.

Jon: So you knew, from the very first issue, that you were going to give him the ability to travel through the Green?

Alan: That was an idea, but I thought that was going to be somewhere down the line. One of Swamp Thing’s biggest problems was with freight cars and trucks. Not only is he miserable, depressing and not very interesting to look at, with only strength as an asset, but he’s also slow. He can’t talk, so to get from one side of the country to the other, he has to hitch rides in freight cars or trucks. I realized there’s got to be some way we can speed this up, so I thought we’d take the first few issues to re-establish the character and then begin to explore along the way what the character can do. Get the readers used to the fact he’s a plant first, give them the idea of a plant elemental as symbol of the environment. Get these concepts embedded in the minds of the readers.

Jon: So you sat there, read through 19 issues or so of Marty Pasko’s Swamp Thing, and the most you could distill from

Illustrations © Stephen R. Bissette. Swamp Thing and related characters TM & © DC Comics.

them is to have Dennis and Liz come in? Is that the only thing that survived?

Alan: And I wrote them out straight away. I knew what I wanted to do, so my first job was the clear the deck. With this issue here [#20], I wanted to get rid of the characters left over from Marty’s run. Now, they were perfectly fine characters, but they were Marty’s and they were created for specific purposes, so I said we can keep Matt Cable and Abby Cable, because they went back to the original series (and they only just returned to the series anyway), so I said, “Let’s keep them.” I also thought Abby Cable looked interesting with her white hair with the black streak. Plus her husband at the time believed he had psychic powers, so I thought I could do something to make sense of that.

I think everybody other than Dennis and Liz had been gotten rid of by Marty just prior to his leaving, so I came up with this thing where in a couple of pages I disposed of the couple. They think the Swamp Thing is dead. They think Abby and Matt are dead, so they go on the run. Dennis is not unhappy by this because this means, as long as Liz is terrified, she needs him. I wrote them out of the series at this point, but there was always the possibility they could be used something further down the line. But first I needed to concentrate purely upon the Swamp Thing. I also realized these because the first issues were going to have a lot of deck clearing, I needed to give it some punch. So right at of the end of that [#20], let’s have Swamp Thing trapped in a forest under a barrage of gunfire.

George Khoury: John Totleben told me that when Steve and he were doing that issue, they were really late, and the title was about to be almost cancelled. Did you also hear that?

Alan: I heard it was on the verge of cancellation.

Jon: In Swamp Thing #21, you literally dissected the character. People must have written letters saying, “You absolutely blew my f*cking mind!” You turned the character around 180 degrees. Nobody considered a plant as a character before (except for Flaming Carrot maybe).

Alan: That second issue caused quite stir. I got everything cleared by DC as to what I wanted to do, because I wanted to do something impressive because I remember somebody in The Comics Journal described me as a likable, clever little monkey. With this one, I wanted to physically dissect the character and let people see what we find. I’ll try to understand what the character is and let the reader find out along with me.

For the title, I remembered “The Anatomy Lesson” painting by Rembrandt, which depicted Flemish artists who used human cadavers to learn about anatomy. I then sorted the story out and worked it out as to what was going to happen and I wrote the first page.

Jon: You were mostly acquainted with writing short stories, or chapters of larger stories. So DC trusted you could do a regular, full-length book?

Alan: Trusted in that I had learned enough of writing two-, four-, six-, and eight-page stories, so it was just a matter of expanding it. This 24-page comic book has to have a tell a comic book story itself and also function as a unit in the ongoing run of the title I am writing. “The Anatomy Lesson,” I was very close to. It was the best comic I had written up until that time. It was also the first time I had color to play with.

Jon: So you included color direction in your script?

Alan: Yes, I was making those as suggestions. The fact was that in a color comic book, there was a whole other dimension to the pages where I cold actually breathe a little bit, develop great characterizations, and these things that I didn’t previously quite have the space for.

Jon: Do you typically write a lot for 22-page script?

Alan: Probably not as much back then as I do now. I know that I’ve been notorious or famous for doing these very long scripts. When I went back to look at the first “Marvelman” script, I was shocked. How did I ever get away with this skimpy script? These descriptions are barely a paragraph

long! Some of the panel descriptions are a few lines. These days, say Promethea, that’s going to be about 48 pages of type for a 24-page comic, and there have been some like the Moebius strip page in Promethea #15 where the script was 10 pages of manuscript describing it, because it was very complex. I can imagine that my scripts were a lot longer than what DC was used to.

Jon: Can you give us an idea of your descriptions?

Alan: Let’s take this first page, it would have said. Panel one would be a shot looking out over Washington in the rain.

In panel two, we would have pulled back to see that we at the window. I would have described a little bit about how Washington looked in the rain, getting a bit poetic just for the artist because I want to inspire him. Then, the second panel, we pull back and now realize that we are looking at Washington through a window, and in the foreground, we can see a figure in shadow standing there, just looking out the window. I would have talked about his build, his bearing, and whether we can see all of his face — or just a little bit of it — and then a long shot. In the foreground, we’ve got some piece of strange equipment that looks out of place in the apartment. In the background, he’s standing, looking out the window, and then cut away panels with the increasing view.

That would take me about two or three pages of manuscript, but I also wrote it very fast. There was a deadline crunch for these first issues and I sent it all to DC very quickly.

Jon: Was Swamp Thing always androgynous? Abby was the first romantic interest?

Alan: He’s still retains memories of his dead wife, but I don’t think he ever expressed any romantic or sexual interest in any women in any of the previous stories, obviously, because conventional thinking has it that that would be grotesque.

George: But you made it beautiful.

Alan: The thing is that any romantic attraction between a human and the Swamp Thing would conventionally lead to into some sort of sex act, which is not pleasant to imagine. I wanted him to be a whole character, with a sexual dimension, so I did start to build up the thing with Abby quite early on. The fact the relationship with

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Above: This gag featuring Uncle Arcane, niece Abby Cable, and adversary Swamp Thing playing cards, drawn by Stephen R. Bissette, was featured in the thick, handsome British ’zine Arken Sword [#17–18, ’86?], edited by Paul Duncan. SRB’s cover of same is below. Bottom is a SRB commish.

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All art and characters TM & © DC Comics.

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Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

All art and characters TM & © DC Comics. Illustration © John Totleben.

Previous page, this page & next page: A better example of the Alan Moore-Steve Bissette-John Totleben collaboration on Swamp Thing would be damned difficult to find. Here is Steve’s favorite sequence from Swamp Thing #23 [Apr. ’84] shown in three stages involving the creators. Alan Moore’s script, Steve Bissette’s pencils, and John Totleben’s inks. Enormous gratitude to SRB for his copious, annotated photocopies and for his shared love of comics history. Steve’s packages containing stacks and stacks of photocopies held us is in rapt awe at such an intimate, insider look at the creation of one of the most important comic book series of all time.

(At right, a John Totleben illustration of our main swampman.)

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

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Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

All art and characters TM & © DC Comics.

Left: Gorgeous John Totleben illustration of Swamp Thing, drawn during the best year in comics, 1986. Much of what made that time so great was the Alan Moore-scripted Swamp Thing.

All art and characters TM & © DC Comics.

Matt was disintegrating, and the fact that, emotionally, she finds Alec the stable thing in her life, made it natural. We worked out how we could have a union between then that was less than perfect. It was a kind of sexual exercise done by intellect.

George: But he was a god, right?

Alan: But he loved Abby.

George: And Swamp Thing didn’t let being a god stand in the way?

Alan: She’s a bright living soul and he’s also a living soul, one who loved her. When I finished Swamp Thing that’s where I left them. They went off to live in the middle of the swamp and lived happily ever after.

Jon: My wife generally has no interest in comics, but the two titles she did get into were Swamp Thing and, more recently, Promethea.

Alan: I like human beings. I think they’re interesting creatures. I like women, though it’s not that I like them better than men. Women are great. Men are great.

Jon: Do you like Ramsey Campbell?

Alan: I love Ramsey. I like him as a bloke and as a writer. It was great that Ramsey was taking Lovecraft riffs and turning them into stories based in a very recognizable, very creepy modern England. That’s is why his stuff works for me. His stories could be happening in Birmingham or Liverpool. Also, though many of his stories are terrifying and creepy, he is one of the most lovely and charming men you could ever meet. He’s really very friendly, with two wonderful kids (who must now be in their 20s because I haven’t seen Ramsey for years).

Jon: Generally speaking horror writers are some of the nicest people you’d ever want to meet. They get their issues out on paper and are then able to be nice, gentle, and well-tempered.

Alan: I was talking to Alexei Sayle, the comedian, a lovely bloke who is very funny and very down to earth. I mentioned to him about the difference between a comedian and a horror writer. The two genres are very similar because they both rely upon shock effects. They surprise you. Comedians surprise you for humorous effect. I was saying, “The thing is, Alexei, all the horror writers I know they are really happy, contented blokes. Most of the comedians I know, yourself excepted, are terribly and famously depressed. Lenny Bruce, John Belushi… they suffered from depression. But if anything bad happens to a horror writer then that’s great because that event can be turned into a story. If anything bad happens to a comedian then, what does one do?” If you are a horror writer and then you go into a depression, so what? It’s not going to affect your work. You’ll probably get a good book out of it. If you are a comedian and you go into a depression, then it’s the end.” I need to try to find a balance between the two.

Writing a horror story is exquisite, precise torture. I want to torture readers in an interesting way, one they like.

The main difference about what I did with Swamp Thing and what happened with the later books that owed a debt to Swamp Thing, the Vertigo titles, is that in Swamp Thing, I’d have a story with horrific stuff happening, but then I would do an issue like the “Rite of Spring.” The audience needs the variety, which hopefully makes the quieter issues more beautiful, and the horror issues even more terrifying because of the contrast.

Jon: That’s one of the gentlest stories I’ve ever read.

Alan: You have to have moments of beauty. You’ll have things like the “Pog” issue which was sad, cute, funny, and environmentally informed. It not about endlessly banging

out on these deep Gothic notes. That’s not music. You have to play the lighter notes at the other end of the piano, as well as the deeper ones, and then you get some sort of melody going. If you are torturing somebody and you keep going at the same spot, it will eventually numb and they will not be able to feel anything there. Don’t just keep at it with a blowtorch and pliers. Vary it. Horror is meaningless unless life is meaningful.

If I can actually make it seem that the world is meaningful and it does have beauty and human lives are beautiful, then when something horrible happens to that world or those humans, it’s genuinely horrible.

Dave Gibbons and I were talking and trying to work out what our position was about explicitly showing horror, and Dave said, “I don’t think that I really like to see bad things happen to good people.” I said, “Nobody likes to see that, but that is reality. Bad things happen to good people. Bad things happen to bad people. Good things happen to bad people, and good things happen to good people. That’s how it is. What I don’t like to see is meaningless

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

This page: Leave it to innovative writer Alan Moore to be faced with producing a framing sequence for an emergency fill-in reprint and, as they say in American parlance, knocking it out of the park. In one bold stroke, with Swamp Thing #33 [Feb. ’85], the author integrated the stand-alone House of Secrets #92’s “Swamp Thing” tale into the modern character’s mythos — albeit as a dream, but revealing (as we see in the panel detail inset at left) that “Alec Holland was not the first to walk the swamps!,” in essence hinting at the Parliament of Trees and the notion that all muck-monsters are related. Plus Moore virtually reinvents the DC mystery comics hosts, brothers Cain and Abel, taking them to mankind’s primal, Biblical “origins;” not just as namesakes but as humanity’s first murderer and its first victim.

British writer Neil Gaiman would later go to town with such daring conceits. John Totleben’s HOS #92 cover pastiche is at top.

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Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

All art and characters TM & © DC Comics.

things happen to meaningless people.”

Jon: So you decided they could have “sex” by Abby eating a tuber off of Swamp Thing’s body? And then she has an acid trip, of sorts?

Alan: More like a dream. I enjoyed writing dream sequences because I was writing dialogue that was like dialogue is in dreams, where the words don’t quite make sense. There are puns and things running through it so I was able to give a summary in dream form of Swamp Thing’s entire psychological résumé. At the same time, this is counter pointed with the disintegration of Abby and Matt’s relationship and her withdrawal. This is where she eats a bit of the Swamp Thing at the time. I thought, “He’s a vegetable, so why can’t people eat part of him?”

I thought that would freak people out because they are still thinking of Swamp Thing as a human. I know the readers, no matter many times I say he’s a plant, there will be those that still think of him as a human, so I can exploit that bit of them, the bit that still thinking of him as a human, the bit that will be revolted when you see a character sitting down and actually eating a piece of him. It another way you can play with the readers’ expectations.

As a writer, you have to be aware that you are on one end of the equation.

The reader is just as important and you can’t know who the reader is going to be, but you should have some concept of them in your mind to work out how they will interpret these sorts of things. I remember at the end of the Woodrue story arc, I was very pleased with Woodrue going nuts where I was actually trying to comprehend what was going through his head, as he became more and more aware of plant life. It’s sort of glorious when he starts to feel the Green, and then starts to feel redwoods, and then starts to feel seaweed off the coast of Japan, and then doesn’t want to feel the entire vegetable consciousness of the planet. That was good because I got the chance to explore a truly alien state of consciousness, which is something I always enjoyed doing as we all need to expand our own consciousness at times. Writing Swamp Thing, writing Doctor Manhattan [in Watchmen], writing William Gull [in From Hell], these are all me building extensions onto my head. I’ve invented a character whose perceptions are nothing like mine, but I can inhabit as a mental construct. I can inhabit the character and imagine what the world would be like through his eyes. In these issues of the Swamp Thing, that was when I was just finding out about the possibilities of all that.

Jon: How old were you when you first got high?

Alan: Fifteen. I was 15 in the end of 1968. Sixty-nine was the year when it all started happening for me. There was just all this incredible material around and stuff that was happening. I was 15. I was adolescent and had discovered psychedelic drugs.

Jon: When did you first talk to Bissette and Totleben?

Alan: As soon as I was told that Steve and John were to be working on Swamp Thing, as far as I can remember. I wrote Steve or them both a letter saying, “I’m really pleased that I’m going to be working with you.” They sent me a load of their stuff, some of which I’d seen before and hadn’t realized was by them. I wrote a letter just asking if they had any ideas and what sort of thing would they like to do with Swamp Thing — “What sort of input do you want to have? What are your favorite things?” — because I just wanted to feel out what they are like and what they liked to draw because I figured, if I was giving them something that they would like to draw, then they would do a better job. It turned out that my idea of making Swamp Thing more textured and more vegetable looking wasn’t extremely radical to them. They were completely in congress. That’s what they wanted to do with the character and that’s what I wanted to do with the character. They were also excited about some of the other ideas and were saying that they’d like to do a vampire story, and do this and do that. They wanted to have a character that looked like Sting… Just all these little ideas, and I tried to use as many as possible. Their suggestions was partly why “American Gothic” was conceived to include stories about vampires, werewolves, etc. I thought I could do a series with a zombie story, a vampire story, werewolves, and Steve and John will get to draw all these things that they love to draw.

Jon: And to get ideas out of your system, too?

Alan: That’s it. Basically to do these sort of Universal film conventions — werewolves, vampires, haunted house — which were really very interesting to me, but were very played out by that point. I was thinking the fact that they were considered cliché as a challenge, so if I am going to do a haunted house story, what am I going to do with it to make it different and unconventional? If I am going to do a werewolf story, what am I going to do with it, but in an unexpected way? How can I construct a vampire story that was more interesting?

Jon: Was it, “Let’s scare the sh*t out of them by turning conventions on their ear?”

Alan: It was, “Let’s scare the sh*t of them, but let’s scare the sh*t out them by things that are really scary. Let’s tie these classic movie-monster concepts with things that are everyday. The werewolf story we connect with the menstrual cycle of women, tying in the lunar cycle of werewolves and make the were-

All art and characters TM & © DC Comics.

wolf into a symbol of repressed anger in women, anger at the way that they are treated. (This was done at around the same time as Angela Carter was touching on things in what would become Company of Wolves.) Also, there will be other layers to the story, unexpected aspects, which might prompt the reader to think a little bit about.

Jon: Why did the woman in the werewolf story commit suicide?

Alan: Because she couldn’t stand her life anymore. She’s got this anger and when she can’t kill her husband — he’s wet himself, and is pleading and crying — though she should just smash his head in and be done with it, she can’t do it.

“What can I do now? Can’t live with him, can’t kill him. What other alternative do I have?” It all comes down to Mindy’s point. But my rebuttal to that point is true, as well. I wasn’t trying to give girl readers a horrific idea as much as I was trying to give boys a horrific idea. Put yourself in that situation, lads, and you might get a little bit cross, as well.

Jon: Besides “Marvelman,” one of your most interesting early depictions of super-heroes was your almost-sinister use of the Justice League early on in Swamp Thing.

Alan: I didn’t mean for them to be so much sinister as distant. All I did was put them in shadow so you’re only seeing these iconic silhouettes and, when they talk to one another, they don’t use their super-hero names. They only use their Christian names, because the readers are all going to know who they are anyway. I didn’t have to spell-out Superman, Hawkman, Flash. If I used their hero names that immediately makes them familiar which was not my intention. We are in Swamp Thing now and this is a different place. I wanted readers to see these characters through my eyes.

So I didn’t mean for the heroes to be presented as sinister or scary. There’s descriptions in the beginning of a man who can see through the planet and wring diamonds from anthracite, and another who moves so fast that his entire life is an endless gallery of statues. I didn’t want to say “Superman” and “Flash,” so I came up with poetic images that will actually say something about what it was like to be these guys, up in orbit in this incredible Justice League satellite station manned with these incredible beings who have this incredible responsibility to protect the world. Here they’ve got this problem they can’t work out: The trees on Earth have suddenly decided to get rid of all humans.

Understand that familiarity breeds contempt. When you become familiar with these characters, they cease to be awesome. You become bogged down in the soap-opera details of their lives and their continuity, and they become uninteresting. What I was trying to do with that Justice League scene is to take a step back so all of a sudden the readers would have to look at these characters through fresh eyes. Not to make them more sinister or scarier than they are meant to be or in any way more threatening, but just to make it as if you have never seen these characters before. Just step back and look at these extraordinary beings you thought you were so familiar with.

Jon: For me, one of the most successful aspects of that story is I did feel terrified that these cold, godlike people were (usually) in control of everything. They were gods standing on this balcony overlooking the globe, pondering the events of humankind.

Alan: It seemed to me that if this was a real universe, if this was a real world, if the Justice League of America actually existed, then what kind of vibe would they have about them? This was also my first chance to use any of DC’s super-heroes. I’d been given Swamp Thing, a series with a prestigious history, but off in the margins of DC’s then-current continuity.

Jon: Was the only horror comic with continuity at DC, [House of Mystery’s] “I… Vampire”? You seemed to have the whole genre to yourself.

Alan: Swamp Thing was certainly the right title for the book because it was out there in the boondocks.

I quite liked super-heroes and I certainly liked some of the DC characters, Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

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so perhaps, if I could have a Justice League guest spot in Swamp Thing, I could take a couple pages and show how I’d write super-heroes and then, who knows? People may start thinking of me as something other than just a horror writer.

I remember when I was on holiday in Southwold, on the east coast of Britain, I picked up the latest issue of Justice League. I was just reading through and, in the letters page there was this letter saying, “What a spectacular comic.

Rarely have I ever seen such a wonderful depiction of the Justice League. Rarely has Superman seemed so heroic. Wonder Woman seemed more beautiful.”

It was saying that it was the best depiction of the Justice League that they’d ever read, too bad it was in Swamp Thing! The answer from the editor was, “Not much we can say, really.” I realized that it would be to my advantage — and to Swamp Thing’s advantage — if we diversified the series as much as possible. If I tried to do as many things as I could, not only stories of pure horror.

From very early on I was thinking about doing “Pog,” the Pogo issue because I thought, “Who else lives in a swamp?” and realized that Pogo could team-up with Swamp Thing. I thought, “Now, wouldn’t that be fun?”

Jon: How did you come up with the language?

Alan: That was fun. I wanted to come up with something

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Original art page and characters TM & © DC Comics. Pogo TM & © the estate of Walt Kelly.

Previous two pages: The mind-blowing “Rites of Spring” sequence that (ahem) changed the way we looked at the title, with the pages placed as one giant panel [ST #34, Mar. ’85]. Page from same is above. Art by Bissette & Totleben.

that sounded like an alien language that was kind of understandable for the reader and which also sounded like the marvelous kinds of dialect Walt Kelly was so wonderful at writing. I wanted to write it as a tribute, but also to sound a bit more like a science-fiction language, so I came up with this weird compound word language that was very difficult to write at first. Then, when I finished with that issue, I found it very difficult to write in English! [laughter] By the time I finished the issue I was writing it very quickly. The last eight pages went by really fast, whereas the first couple crawled because I was actually inventing the language as I went on and getting into its thought processes. By the end of the issue, I was completely immersed in its thought processes and was thinking in that language, coming out with words that didn’t exist but should have.

I’ve always had an interest in the actual molecular structure of my job. My job is writing and the molecular structure of that job is language. Language in itself is fascinating. It’s like what I was saying earlier about having read the original Spanish version of this Dracula comic and how great I thought it was. I thought it was great because I couldn’t understand any of the balloons and I found that with a lot of foreign comics when you can’t understand the language, you are making the language. Your immersion in the comic is different than if you do understand it. That’s why I’ve delighted in Tom Strong, where I’ve made up the Ozu language and various other languages. In League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, we actually have material translated into authentic Arabic or Chinese because I think that’s cool. I think it’s great to actually have balloons that people can’t understand, unless they happen to understand those languages. All of those balloons from the Ozus, or the volcano people in Tom Strong, are from a made-up language, but I think they would actually work because I know what they are saying. I know that weh-wa is their word for baby. This was something I didn’t understand until I got into magic: Language is magic and language is consciousness.

Jon: When you’re writing a horror story, for instance, do you try to reach a point where you actually are terrified yourself to properly express the feeling?

Alan: You have to.

Jon: To get a better appreciation?

Alan: You have to make yourself almost skinless or very tough. Of course, I’m talking about myself here because I don’t know how other writers work, but I will frequently sit here, working on some particular scene from Promethea or any other book, and I’ll get to some little detail of the story and there will be tears starting to run down my cheek, and I’ll be thinking, “This is great. Go with this.” I’ll write something else and I’ll be smiling and weeping. It’s schizophrenic because I am smiling because I’m writing some killer sh*t here and I’m weeping because it’s sad because I’ve done something that has touched me. My own feelings set my criteria, and tell me that the readers are going to choke up when they get to that page and they are not even going to know why. If I’m writing comedy like “Jack B. Quick,” I have to sit there until I imagine Kansas and then I start laughing. [laughter] I’m thinking about [fictional Kansas towns] getting out of Trouble, entering Matrimony, going into Debt, avoiding Denial, and driving straight into Ruin, and I’m laughing and starting to put it all together and I get into the character and write about Jack B. Quick, who is fiendish. He’s one of the most monstrous characters I’ve ever written. He’s terrifying.

He’s a little child and he really doesn’t care. This is science.

So the characters have to be real to me and I have to be emotionally right in there with them. If I’m not excited then the reader won’t be. If I’m not laughing then the reader won’t laugh. If I’m not crying then the reader won’t cry. If I’m not scared the reader won’t be scared. I have to go into places sometimes, places I don’t want to go.

Jon: It took me some time to finally read your work. I would go into comic stores, and people were always saying, “Alan Moore this, Alan Moore that,” and the talk made it sound like

All art and characters TM & © DC Comics.

you were trendy and I had usually been disappointed buying into trendy stuff. But when I finally read “The Anatomy Lesson” [Swamp Thing #21], I thought, “No f*cking way!

This guy’s putting hallucinogenics into mainstream comics!” [laughs] Alan: But it wouldn’t have worked if I wasn’t a traditionalist.

None of this radical work would occur to anyone who wasn’t a traditionalist. Unless I understood the tradition of Swamp Thing, how could I ever come up with exactly the right sort of twist to put in them?

I am interested in the essence of the characters. I don’t think it does them a service to change them into transvestite serial killers or whatever, re-imagining them as something deep, dark and horrible.

Jon: You mean what you brought into comics with Watchmen?

Alan: But those were characters that didn’t exist before, so I wasn’t violating anything, except with Marvelman. But, even with that character, I wasn’t violating Captain Marvel; I was taking an unused British character, a knock-off of Captain Marvel, and I took off in my own direction.

Jon: You also infused comics with a healthy sexuality, I think, especially looking at Abby and Swamp Thing’s sexual head trip….

Alan: Their relationship was sexual/spiritual, psychedelic/ spiritual.

Jon: Tantric?

Alan: Yes, but very sexy. What we would say over here is that, “She was dripping like a f*cked fridge.” We’ve got a lovely way with language over here. [laughter] Jon: You seem to be saying language becomes life and life is language. Is that the essence of magic?

Alan: I think that’s it. The words that pour out our mouths are always magic.

Jon: You can never take them back?

Alan: You can never take them back and they make a difference to the world.

Jon: When you reconsider comic-book characters, it’s not so much revisionist as it is reinventing. You never seem to pander.

Alan: Back in the ’80s, it seemed like a good thing to give characters more texture and more interesting moral or emotional angles, to set them in a more realistic world seemed right. The stuff that followed, when it became a trend rather than an intriguing one-off — and I don’t mean to dump on Vertigo because Karen Berger is a lovely woman and an old friend of mine, and I’m sure she must get completely sick of me putting down Vertigo (which has done some great comic books)….

Jon: Didn’t you, in essence, start Vertigo?

Alan: I didn’t start Vertigo. I did Swamp Thing and I think Vertigo was an attempt to build off that. When I wrote Swamp Thing, I was just approaching a DC horror book in a certain way because I thought that would be interesting.

It was just me and my pre-occupations about sex, politics, environmentalism, and all the rest. There’s no reason why they should take my pre-occupations and make them into a line of books written by other people. Barring the good Vertigo books, they were taking my ongoing, developmental, and experimental process and turning them into a style, a dogma.

Jon: It’s now a genre?

Alan: Now, when they write all the DC characters nobody cares about, they become horrible people, wearing leather jackets and some hair gel, turning these characters into punks.

Jon: Did you have a good time when you visited the States?

Did you meet a lot of people who were sincere?

Alan: People were very sincere, but the thing was it was a bit overwhelming. I came over to the States two or three times, and those experiences were pretty bad. Once was to San Diego.

Jon: How long did you stay?

Alan: Only about a week or ten days on each occasion.

The first time I went on my own. The second time I went and Phyllis joined me in San Diego. The third time me and Debbie Delano went to Washington, and [Alan’s first wife] Phyllis stayed home that time. Seeing America through the eyes of the comics industry… for one thing, everyone was being very nice and telling me how much they liked my work.

Jon: Were they also being transparent?

Alan: No, and it’s nothing against those people, but there were people that just wanted to glom on to me, and I felt alienated. Everybody was gushing over me too much. As writers, we live very solitary lives. I don’t go out very much.

It’s just so hard to deal with that many people loving you and wanting to have some contact with you. I remember at San Diego there were two particularly bad moments neither of which I completely understand. One of them was a dream I had where I dreamed that I was back in the convention hall and there were all these people gathered around me and they all started to touch me. They were all just touching me.

No hitting me, just wanting to touch me, and I remember just feeling this hand between my legs and it wasn’t even sexual, it was just that they would like to touch me there as well. I remember waking up in a cold sweat and in a state of absolute horror. I thought that this is getting to me.

Jon: You perform as a musician, right?

Alan: Yes, but that’s different.

Jon: But you’re physically there in front of an audience, right?

Alan: I know I’m physically there, but if I’m going on as a musician or a performer then I’m going on the stage and doing a performance and, if the audience likes that performance, then they will applaud; if they don’t like the performance, they won’t. It is a straightforward relationship: Performer and audience. It’s not celebrity and audience.

When I was traveling through America, it wasn’t as if I was typing an issue of Swamp Thing before an audience, and people would say, “Oh, look at that metaphor!” They were there because I was Alan Moore. When I’m Alan Moore on stage performing then I’m a performer. They are seeing what I am doing and if they want to applaud then that’s great. It’s honest. I’ve done something and they’ve seen me do it and they liked the performance. When I’m being a celebrity, I’m not doing my work, I’m just appearing as me. That is what I don’t feel comfortable with. So I also don’t do television. Back in the ’80s, I decided I didn’t want to do talk shows. I’ll only do serious programs and art programs and programs on magic these days, documentaries that are going to be shown late at night on Channel Four when nobody is watching, and that is fine. I’m not interested in publicizing myself.

I don’t need to. If the work is good, people will seek it out.

Jon: A lot of people embrace celebrity as

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Previous page bottom, this page below: Walt Kelly’s Pogo and Pog, latter by Shawn McManus [ST #32, Jan. ’85]. Bottom is SRB/JTT’s Monkey King [ST #27, Aug. ’84].

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Above: Besides, maybe, the underwater vampires, the most frightful sequence for Yours Truly in the run of Team Swamp Thing was the moment when Arcane found out he had spent a mere 24 hours in Hell.

[Swamp Thing Annual #2, ’85].

Below: Arcane from ST #19 [Dec. ’83]. Art by Bissette/Totleben.

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

All art and characters TM & © DC Comics.

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getting that immediate gratification of feeling loved. I would think if some would have the same nightmare as you, it wouldn’t be a nightmare because to be touched by strangers is what they want.

Alan: If you are a celebrity then you’re going to be getting a lot of anonymous sex, I guess, and that’s the idea behind it.

Celebrity, sex, money, fame. I am quite intelligent and have a very strong sense of survival, and I think I’ve got a clear and lucid idea of the dangers in some of these things that others launch themselves into blindly without considering. I looked at fame when it was offered to me and I thought, “What is this stuff? What does it do to people? Do I want it? How would it benefit me? What are the reasons for wanting it? What are the reasons for not wanting it? Is there any way to get the good stuff without having to accept the bad?” I made all of these decisions and don’t want anything to do with the sides of fame that I consider negative or injurious. I don’t want to put myself on a different level than other people because then communication stops. Communication is only possible between equals. Life is a battle for meaning. The enemy is meaninglessness.

In our Western culture, meaning has got a very brief halflife. The radioactivity of meaning just bleeds out of things until they mean nothing, and meaninglessness permeates the places where people live, and consequently the people that live in them become meaningless. [gestures around his living room] This is what it is all about. This place is a modest attempt to create some sort of strange occult temple somewhere in the middle of the street where I live, in Northampton, England. There are stars painted on the ceiling, magic wands, the Kabbala… all this stuff that I’m looking at and absorbing all the time, and [pointing to a tall pile of books next to his reading chair] I also look at all this rubbish and piles of books and everything else and it makes me feel good.

Jon: Are comic-book writers are more similar to comedians than horror writers in view of what we discussed earlier?

Alan: Well, many live vicariously through the characters, and let’s say a writer wants to kill a person in real life. He might realize that he couldn’t get away with it, but he could put his feelings into a fantasy. “What if I was Wolverine?

What if I was this perfect killer?” That’s an awful sort of masturbation.

Jon: Did that attitude make you run screaming from comics for a time?

Alan: It wasn’t that it made me run screaming from comics.

Comics were pretty unappealing when I got into them, and it’s always been fairly unappealing in terms of how it treats various characters.

After I had done Watchmen and finished V for Vendetta, there had been a lot of stuff in my relationship with DC which made me feel bad about working for them and bad about working for comics in general. These things weigh on your heart a bit when you first realize that you don’t own this book that you created, and you never will. It was making my heart heavy working in the mainstream business and toiling for these people. I was feeling angry and depressed, not a way I wanted to feel.

I don’t want to work for Marvel because of the “Marvelman” business. I don’t want to work for DC. Let’s strike into the wilderness where there are no footprints. I’m talking after Watchmen, when I did Lost Girls, Big Numbers, and From Hell, where there were no comics being done in those areas.

There was Eros Comix, but that was nothing like Lost Girls.

Jon: If I can do a quick aside on The Demon: When you took hold of the character, you seized on him with reverence and you also reinterpreted him, too. Did you start the Demon talking in rhyme?

Alan: Working with a publisher like DC, which has this huge, sprawling continuity, you are very often hampered by what the writer before you may have introduced regarding the character, and has become part of that character’s continuity altogether. Steve and John wanted to do the Demon and I said, “Sure.” I looked at the Demon and, at that time, Len Wein had done a Superman/Demon crossover for DC Comics Presents, and Len had taken from the fact that Kirby’s Etrigan occasionally spoke in rhymes when casting his spells.

Jon: Did Kirby do that, as well?

Alan: He had. “Gone, gone the son of man. Rise, rise the demon, Etrigan.” All of that stuff. I think Len Wein decided to take it a little further, but it was just blank verse, a doggerel verse that the Demon had spoken. I’ve always like the look of the Demon and, if you were to imagine him in less of a Jack Kirby style and more in a John Totleben approach, then, “Hey! This guy might exist in a world of shadows, and the character could be scary.” So I had him talk in a wonderful rhyme-like iambic pentameter, and had him say some really deep dark things. I realize that you can only get so much information in rhyme, so it could be difficult to move the story along, but poetry is a very concentrated form of language.

You can get over quite complex ideas very, very briefly and succinctly.

Jon: But I would imagine that’s exceptionally hard work as a writer.

All art and characters TM & © DC Comics.

Alan: Yes, but, with the Demon issues, I got really into such an oblique way of introducing the character because you’ve got this guy with red hair just turning up in New Orleans, and some of the readers are going to think he looks familiar, but the Demon wasn’t the most respected of Jack Kirby’s characters and have didn’t have his own strip, so he wasn’t regularly appearing in DC Comics. Most of the guest-stars we brought into Swamp Thing were cult characters that currently were in limbo.

Jon: Do you look at other people’s creations and see how you can mix them up? Isn’t that what you’ve always done?

Alan: With Swamp Thing, I didn’t receive any wasn’t specific instructions from DC, and I quickly realized what else could be done with the title. I thought, “Why not do a romance issue of Swamp Thing? Why not do a Pogo issue?

Why not do a whole run of science-fiction issues, with Swamp Thing in space? Why not do a run of straight horror stories and call it “American Gothic”? Why not do super-hero crossovers and have him go to Gotham and meet Batman?” What I wanted to do is make the character as flexible as possible and try all sorts of stories, ones that nobody had thought of before. The whole haunted house one about the Winchester rifles began because I was thinking that I would like to do a Swamp Thing with a cowboy in it. There is a lot of imagery from the Old West that is actually sort of creepy and I thought that maybe I could do that. It was an attempt to keep Swamp Thing from being a one-note character. To say that this character is flexible and adaptable means you couldn’t, as the writer, keep thinking in these straight lines of a different monster each month. That’s not healthy.

Jon: You still settled back into at least the bare bones of formula when you conceived “American Gothic,” doing your version of vampires, of vampires, of haunted houses… There are some vignettes you gave that were not as enthusiastic about as others.

Alan: One of the cool things about that variety was to maintain that horror is torture on your readership and, if you keep torturing them, they will black out or shut up. Steve drew all of these — the Demon series — when his then-wife, Nancy, was working at a school for autistic kids. Now, I knew nothing about the school, but Nancy told me as much as she could, so we decided to set this storyline a such a school, and it just seemed you fit to have place a chimera that feeds upon fear and childhood trauma in such a setting.

Jon: What was the story behind of the serial killer chapter?

Alan: Steve Bissette sent me an article about Henry Lee Lucas. Lucas was bragging that he had killed about 650 people, though they soon reckoned he was exaggerated and had only done 200.

Most people who have murdered people — and this doesn’t in any way to dismiss the suffering of their victims or the fact that it is wrong to kill people — but the main thing about them is that they were simply ordinary people, ordinary people who, in some point in life, got

involved in a bad situation and did something stupid.

Jon: I really dig Rick Veitch’s approach in drawing the Adam Strange sequences in Swamp Thing. He really got into to that and you know he told Alcala to ink like Murphy Anderson. Did you have to get the okay from DC for having Alana be pregnant?

Alan: I can’t remember, but I think I just did it.

Jon: You killed Zatara. John Constantine is walking down and he’s talking to [Zatara’s daughter] Zatanna in San Francisco, about having tantric sex together, and he says, “Did your dad ever find out?” She says, “I think so.” Tantric sex with Zatanna! “I like your earlier costume with the fishnets,” he said, “and the top hat. You were hotter.” [laughter] Alan: This is obvious. Everyone loved the costume with the fishnet tights and the top hat, but you can see how the character herself would have found it a little exploitive.

Jon: That’s what we loved about it. [laughter] Alan: John Constantine would have loved it. Most of that stuff was obvious. It just seemed like the stuff that would really happen.

Jon: But they made you suffer through this Crisis stuff. You must have had to be somewhat frustrated as you had to

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

This page: Suffice to say, John Constantine = Sting. Above, SRB pencils, ST #39 [Aug. ’85]; inset left, SRB/JTT, ST #46 [Mar. ’86]; below, rocker Gordon Sumner, a.k.a. Sting.

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Below: Swamp Thing is not so happy. From Swamp Thing #44 [Jan. ’86]. Art chores on this issue are credited to Stephen R. Bissette, pencils; John Totleben and Ron Randall, inks. Next page: Top is a panel of John Totleben’s rendition of Batman (at a crucial moment), from ST #53 [Oct. ’86]. A panel detail symbolizing the multi-issue events of the “American Gothic” storyline. ST #46 [Mar.’86], with art by Bissette & Totleben.

haunted houses, so I figured maybe I could link zombies and voodoo to the treatment of blacks in America. I reckoned that zombies are generally black, so maybe I can make a statement about prejudice as a living dead thing, an attitude that should be dead, but has risen from the grave. But that approach, that concept proved too much to take on to be effective.

Jon: Wasn’t there some episode that was called “Southern Change,” with a direct allusion to Neil Young’s song? I found that to feel disingenuous, as if you didn’t really understand what the plantation situation might have been.

Alan: I wrote from the point of view about hearing that there was to be a planned soap opera, a TV show, for something called Beulahland that was going to be like Dynasty-on-a-plantation. The germ for that story came from a report that they tried to audition black actors from New York, California, from all over the country, to be slaves, but “they didn’t look right.” The only ones who did look “right” were the ones whose grandparents had been slaves and who still lived in the area. They were employing local people, the descendants of slaves, to play slaves because they “looked right.” I thought that that was so f*cked up. If your grandparents or great grandparents were slaves, and then someone from Hollywood comes and says that you have exactly the right look to play the role of slaves, there is something so ironic and horrible in that situation for people to earn money. You can work on the plantation, in the cotton fields, just like your great grandparents did, but you’re doing it for Hollywood, so it dignified. There was something about that situation that disturbed me. But I agree that story was a muddled affair, something I acknowledged shortly after it was published.

Jon: You had this great build-up for “American Gothic” where you’re saying that this great blackness is not even evil; it’s just immense and it changes things forever, and then you end with a Taoist yin/yang thing, the god and the darkness coming together to make shades of light which, in the end, amounted to nothing, just that everything is a little bit different now.

Alan: Things are the same but we see them differently.

Jon: You are such a considerate human being, delving into such minute detail so affectionately. One of the most appealing aspects to your work is the humanity you instill in your characters. Even the Southern redneck with the shotgun in the back of his truck is going to get a nice twist from your storytelling.

Alan: When I wrote those awful — well, what I thought were not very good — two Swamp Thing zombie issues, I remember I was in San Diego and this guy approached me and said, “Mr. Moore, I really like these issues of Swamp Thing.” I said, “Is that a Southern accent I detect there?” He said, “Yeah, I’m a Southern Baptist and I’m about the most Right-wing person I know, but I really liked your comic.” I thought, “Well, that’s big of you. That’s good.”

Jon: [Points to a Swamp Thing spread] Is this the biggest panel you’ve ever done?

Alan: No, the biggest panel I’ve ever done was Promethea #12, where it’s a 24-page long panel. That was one of the cleverest comics I have ever done.

Jon: One of the greatest scenes I’ve ever read in comics was in the second Swamp Thing Annual where Swampy comes upon Arcane in Hell, who is under such terrible torment, and who asks, “How long have I been here?” as it seems like a million years. Swamp Thing replies that it’s only been something like 24 hours, and Arcane screams with agony at learning the answer. Now, that’s Hell! That’s one of the most chilling things I’ve ever read. You also scared the beejezuz out of me with the underwater vampires in Swamp Thing. You took leeches and took vampires and put them together into something new. What do you know of American swimming holes and that creepy feeling everybody gets when they jump in and wonder, “Are there any leeches in here?”

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

All art and characters TM & © DC Comics.

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introduce the Monitor.

Alan: Company crossovers, I have never yet seen a good one.

George: Super-heroes and crossovers… that’s when John [Totleben] decided to leave.

Alan: I don’t remember if that’s when they decided to leave because I was halfway through “American Gothic,” where I was trying to build up something that was quite complex and intriguing, and I’ve suddenly got to introduce all of this lame crossover sh*t which I tried to get over as best as I could. I tried to make a decent attempt of it.

Jon: Was it kind of revenge that you blew up super-heroes?

Wasn’t it Mentallo would have his head fried at the end? [laughter] Alan: When they were doing the Crisis and there was a list of characters that were on the potential kill list, and I said if we have to do this thing with the Crisis, how about I get to snuff some of these spare awful characters that you were going to get rid of anyway? I got the magicians.

Jon: The whole séance-table sequence was really cool. Even though someone gets his head blown off, the others scream, “Don’t break the bond! Don’t break the bond!” [laughter] Alan: That was fun.

Jon: What you did with the compromise is twist it and make it as entertaining as possible, which is a good thing to do because you could have been more cynical about it as other writers might have been. Gerber might have thrown a fit.

Alan: I try to do my best with whatever I’m asked to do even if what I’m asked to do is ridiculous. Working in comics, there are a lot of things you are asked to do that are ridiculous.

Jon: It seems to me that your characters aren’t born with original sin, but more like “original innocence.” It seems like often your lead characters become godlike, the ultimate achievement of what they can become or a perfect version of whatever they are.

Alan: There is a line in a “Marvelman” story. I think it’s a line about [Marvelman nemesis] Gargunza and it says, “Of course, he went too far. Of course, where else could he have gone?” A lot of this is from the heart… “Where else is there to go but too far?” I think of an idea and think, “How can I take this further? What would be the limit to this idea?”

Jon: A powerful aspect of your writing is that — like any good writer worth his salt, I suppose — you explore the human condition and society in your work. Yes, I have rolled my eyes at some of what you’ve written when you’re especially preachy, but it’s always worth reading, always with a strong point of view, sometimes even a little dense. And sometimes it feels that a story might’ve gotten away from you, when a story doesn’t come together as it should, perhaps. What might start as a good concept maybe didn’t quite make it in execution. Was there any Swamp Thing stories that didn’t go quite as well as you initially envisioned?

Alan: I didn’t like the zombie stories.

Those two don’t work. I was trying to link the walking undead to commentary about racism. I had previously linked the feminism to werewolves, gun control to

All art and characters TM & © DC Comics.

Alan: We get leeches over here, too, but it wasn’t leeches that gave me the idea. They were just a nice embellishment afterwards. I was thinking vampires are pretty boring because so much vampire stuff has been done and it bored me because the imagery is all so predictable. But what if an entire town of vampires is flooded, making a new lake? Running water kills vampires, but does stagnant water kill vampires?

If not, why not? What’s the difference between running water and standing water? Running water is oxygenated and standing water is not. Do vampires need oxygen? They live in coffins and you wouldn’t think so, as they’re not alive in any normal sense. If vampires didn’t need oxygen, they could live underwater if it’s stagnant. We do have drowned towns over here, and I’ve often thought about them and what strange places they must be. [points to panels of a swimmer standing still getting whiter and whiter] That was a colorist’s technique. He gets paler with each panel and doesn’t move.

Even the reader doesn’t have the attention pulled to what’s happening to this kid until the sixth panel when they think, “Why hasn’t that kid moved and why has he suddenly gone white?” It’s just taking an idea and giving it a little twist.

Jon: It’s important, isn’t it, to use your mind to be subversive?

Alan: It’s shock. A well-told joke is a form of shock. You set up a series of expectations and then you completely derail them. Even on a simple level, “Why did the chicken cross the road?” The set-up is that the chicken must have crossed the road for some specific reason. So when you answer, “To get to the other side,” that switches reference to what you were thinking and a tickle happens in your head and that makes you laugh. Most humor sets up a set of expectations and completely defuses them and goes for a different ending entirely.

Jon: Like irony?

Alan: It’s a type of shock. Like horror, it sets up expectations and in the last line it changes them. For example, “Roses are red and violets are blue, I’m a schizophrenic and so am I.” [laughter] That’s one I heard on television the other night and thought, “That’s quite good!” That’s how it works.

Jon: Switching subjects again, you’ve repeatedly mentioned that you’ve become a magician. Do people take you seriously?

Alan: When I took the risk of announcing that I’d become a magician, I didn’t do that to get more attention. I didn’t do it to impress people because I’m aware of what that sounds like to most people. What that was liable to do was completely lose me my reputation as people think I’d gone nuts.

I’ve had some interesting experiences. I speak to snakes.

I worship demons. I’ve had the experience of meeting at least two gods. You can’t truly say that stuff and not have someone say, “No, you haven’t. You’re mad. You’re making it all up.” (Actually, I haven’t had anybody really ridicule me or suggest that I’m mad or lying.) With Promethea, things that I’m saying in there are fairly straightforward and amusing stuff. It’s talking about demons or angels, but I’m explaining what demons are and how demons are a part of us. Everyone knows that, surely. Once you’ve accepted that demons are the part of you that gets out of control, in order to get your demons working for you, you have to understand them and accept them and not fight them, because they are stronger than you. You’ll use all your energy in fighting them and you won’t win anyway. Understand them. Most of the people that I know who fight their demons, the fight becomes the most important thing. The fight takes over their entire lives and so the demons have won. The demons are just there to stop you from doing what you might be capable of. They are little checks that we put on ourselves, the little part of us that we let run amok to f*ck-up the plans of our higher selves.

Jon: They are the foibles that make us human?

Alan: Sometimes they are the foibles that destroy us or make us less than human. If you understand them and know that they are there… Sometimes you do have serial killers who have a particular obsession, a fixation, a fetish. They do

actually like to be the last thing that that their victim sees. It didn’t seem unrealistic. The laughable Hannibal Lecter, that’s not a serial killer. A serial killer does not sit there and talk about the taste of particularly fine rare truffles and how he used to eat them while listening to quite an emotional piece of music (which a serial killer would not have the equipment to appreciate because they don’t have normal emotions, so to them it would be meaningless).

I read [Thomas Harris’ first novel with Hannibal Lecter] Red Dragon and thought it was great. A brilliant use of the Hannibal Lecter character because he’s in jail the whole time. It works. The second book [Silence of the Lambs] was not so good and the third book [Hannibal] was an insult to the readers. Thomas Harris was writing the third one with the knowledge that it was to be made into a film. He was writing it for a film and had become completely besotted by his rather unpleasant central character. It was masturbatory and that awful bit where they explain the reason Hannibal Lecter becomes a psychopath? In the first one, we don’t even know. “We don’t have a word for what he is.” By the third one, we’ve found out why he’s a cannibal because his beloved little sister got eaten by cannibals during a hard Russian winter. The poor man! Now we understand, no wonder. He was a troubled individual like us all. That’s trying to excuse him. He’s a cannibal but he’s got his reasons. All the serial killers that I’ve read about are not more than us. They are less than us. They are missing something that the rest of us have got. They do not have extra superhuman powers.

Jon: They don’t have the capacity for mercy.

Alan: That’s it. They can’t tell what bath soap someone has been using by flaring their nostrils. They are inadequate. They are not worthy of being called human. They are not functioning.

Jon: There are a lot of them out there.

Alan: Probably a lot more than we know.

Jon: Everyone puts on fronts, so you never know.

Alan: That’s a main message of Promethea, the glue that holds the universe together is love.

It’s not going to work unless you’ve got that. That one that I showed up the notes for and the little drawings, we’ve got this double-page spread that is a classical scene from mythology.

It’s the rape of Selene by Pan, but it fills the whole spread with the two little figures looking up at it. They explain what it means at that symbolic level and it’s the Big Bang. It’s the male force and the female force and the Big Bang is the orgasm and that’s how the entire universe is created. It’s all the same thing, sex, magic, religion, normal human life.

Jon: Your work can very often be a revelation.

Whenever I read it, I often experience a flood of recognition that has me realize, “This guy thinks like I do. I

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

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Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Alan Moore portrait © José Villarrubia. Jonni Future © America’s Best Comics.

that a writer is required to accomplish every day has got to be as commanding and rigorous as these mystic states.

I think that writing is a yogic trance. You’re in a different state of consciousness and that’s been useful to learn. I can do magic just by writing about it because I was getting all kind of insight during the act of writing itself.

Jon: You’re one of the very few writers I think of as an artist.

That’s not to say that writing isn’t an art, but in comics, writers and artists tend to have different sensibilities.

Alan: I must admit there are some post-Me writers that I really like and there are some that I feel embarrassed for because I can see that they are trying to do me and it’s like looking at a bad funhouse mirror and seeing nasty, posturing attitude and smug superiority. They look at me in contempt for me and my old-fashioned storytelling.

That said, there are some brilliant writers. I was over at the prison the other day talking and they have some of my books in the prison library. The other writer who is down with the murderers is Brian Azzarello. Brian and I seem to be the comic writers of choice amongst murderers.

Jon: Did you conceive of John Constantine as someone who could serve as a cynical counterpoint to Swamp Thing’s tolerant point of view?

Alan: I invented John Constantine purely because Steve and John said they wanted to have a character who looked exactly like Sting. I thought, in the context of Swamp Thing, what kind of character would he be, and started thinking that maybe he’s involved in fire-and-brimstone and plays a charismatic, almost occult figure. I thought he should maybe be a magician or something like that, but I thought for a comic-book magician, let’s make this one English because I would like to finally have an English character in my American book.

Jon: Constantine is not so much a magician as he is a persuader who brings magic his way. He’s a phony, right?

Alan: Yes, he’s a phony, but then again it has to be said that there is a lot of sham in shamanism. [laughter] That’s part and parcel of what it is. But that doesn’t mean it’s not real magic, just because there is trickery involved. So I came up with this ambiguous character named Constantine, though I don’t recall where I got the name from and I don’t know from where his personality arose… he was just there.

Jon: Is he you, in a way? know exactly what this guy is all about… he’s about me.”

Alan: No, but he is working class, like I was.

The impact of “The Anatomy Lesson,” was less about reBut when I was his age, I wasn’t interested in figuring a beloved comic book character as it was about the occult back then. I had little more than a simply revealing the obvious. I never saw that coming passing interest in the forces of magic and while reading it, but as I made the realization, I gasped. all, and was certainly not the real thing.

How many times does anyone gasp at a comic?

Jon: I thought you read a lot of Aleister Crowley.

Alan: Art, any sort of art, when it works, we suddenly Alan: No, that wasn’t until I was already 40, and had feel less alone. This is the problem with pornography. already become a magician.

It makes us feel more alone. This is why trying to make Jon: It’s interesting that you just popped out a art and pornography into the same thing is tricky. character who has become an icon, who still Jon: Do you see your career as a hobby giving you exists in comics, has still a running series, great pleasure in life and one you’re able to give back to? has a movie based on him, and he was Alan: It was a hobby but it has become a craft. It’s something almost an afterthought for you, created just largely between God and me. If the reader likes it, then that’s great, but because your collaborators asked you to there came a point where I got good reviews for things I didn’t think were introduce someone who looked like a rock star. Do you receive a royalty for very good, and I’d get bad reviews for things I thought were very good, so Hellblazer? worrying about that got in the way of craft. Just because someone is saying Alan: I get a piddly little. something I find flattering and is similar to my opinion doesn’t make him a Jon: Every issue you get a piece? better critic. It’s great that people can enjoy my work, but I’m not going to Alan: Apparently so, and from reprints, and things like that. I get a 1% feel really inflated if everyone loves my work and I’m not going to feel bad if royalty. everyone hates it. I’m in this for me.

Jon: Do you read Hellblazer?

Jon: [Points to smoking joint] So are you always doing that as you go along? Alan: No, I never read it. I like Brian Azzarello’s Hard Times, the thing that Alan: I’m not doing it all with drugs. Some of the writing of the comic was Brian did with Richard Corben. I thought that was terrific, but I’ve just not done during magical meditation. What you were seeing in the comic is not seen many of the issues since then. Brian seems to have a good take on the the report of the magical experience; it was the magical experience. The character, but I haven’t seen a lot of the other versions. trance I go into as a comic book writer has to be as deep and profound as Jon: How do you feel as a parent of this creation? any I’ve been in. The level of concentration and the focusing upon concepts Alan: Constantine is a strange one. He’s not my character. Yes, I intro-

All art and characters TM & © DC Comics.

duced him, but he’s since taken on his own life. The more I find out about John Constantine, the more I realize he’s living his own life. Let me explain: I didn’t write the character John Constantine because I was a magician. One of the reasons I became a magician was because of the spooky sh*t that kept happening to me in my life as a writer. This is best exemplified by what happened between me and John Constantine: I was going down to one of the comic marts by Westminster Hall and I hadn’t eaten, so I was going to stop in at the Sara Lee Sandwich Bar, just over the road from Westminster and I was going to have a sandwich.

I got my sandwiches and a cup of tea, sat down at this table, and I look up and see a man. It was John Constantine. He’s wearing the trench coat. He’s got the face that looks like Sting. He’s got the short blonde hair, the suit, the tie, the hair, and the cigarette, and the only detail that was different than the comic-book version was that he had a rucksack on his back. (I’ve never thought of Constantine carrying a rucksack, but it makes sense because he’s always turning up in different parts of the world.) I’m thinking there, as I sat with my sandwich and tea, that this must be a coincidence… it’s just somebody who looks like John Constantine, right? Then he turns around, looks straight at me and he smiles. All the hair stands up on the back of me neck and I am terrified. Then he winks, walks around the corner to the next café, and I couldn’t see him anymore. I sat at the table crestfallen, as if the entire bottom had just dropped out of my universe.

I sat there and thought, “I can walk around the corner to that café, and I can sit down next to him and say, ‘Who are you?’ He might tell me that he’s just some student. So I can do that or I can finish my cup of tea and sandwich…” And I opted for the latter, because I was terrified. It was just what I saw in his eyes. Now, what would that mean about reality?

Jon: That you could make your own? Couldn’t you have winked back at him? “Without me you wouldn’t be there”?

Alan: I did think of that and, if I hadn’t been terrified, then maybe I would have done something like that. But the thing was: How great to see one of your characters that you have written standing there in real life, but what if you were someone like me who had written quite a lot of characters, and what if some of those characters were absolutely terrifying constructs, and what if the actual idea of even the nice ones suddenly being able to come up to you in a campus coffee bar comes to pass.

Jon: Good thing it wasn’t Johnny Bates!

Alan: And this was not the only instance of this sort of thing happening. In Snakes and Ladders, which I did with Ed Priestly, a magical performance I did at Red Lion Square in Holborn [a section in North London], I’m mainly talking about Arthur Machen, who was the big influence on [American fantasy/horror writer] H. P. Lovecraft, and a very good writer.

He had lived at Red Lion Square in the 1800s, right where I was giving the performance, so I worked in this stuff about Machen. Apparently, when his wife died, he sank into this terrible depression and had a breakdown. Out of depression, he flung into these very distinct and separate mental states that he described in his autobiography. One was this heavenly state that he call “Asylum,” where everything in London was exalted and wonderful, and everything was sacred and holy. After a while it changed, and the next stage he call

Baghdad. This was where London became this twilight city full of things from the Arabian Nights.

Fantastic scenes were glimpsed in every courtyard and Machen said that characters from his novel, The Three Imposters, actually came up to and spoke to him.

There was also a story I quoted about [pulp writer] Walter Gibson. He had a house that was in Connecticut, and it had been associated with this ghost story, and the place was said to be haunted by the ghost of a Civil War spy. The ghost could be seen moving around this house in a long cloak and spy-type slouch hat. So people figured it must be the ghost of some Civil War spy who must have been hanged in the area. Then someone looked into it and discovered, “Actually, this wasn’t built until 1870 or so, and there has never been any Civil War spies hanged around here.” That story didn’t work, so whatever people were seeing moving from room to room was not a Civil War spy. Then they found out that it had been the house of a stage magician, Walter Gibson — who, under the pen name of Maxwell Grant, had written millions and millions of words about pulp mystery man The Shadow — so the only other thing remarkable was this ghostly figure haunting this house, one with a black slouch hat and black cloak, moving from room to room.

Jon: I guess he knows what evil lurks in the heart of Connecticut! [laughter] So you believe your literary constructs become real? Do you try to send good guys out and about?

Alan: I didn’t try to make John Constantine real, but I did see him in the flesh, in broad daylight, on that one occasion. On the second occasion, it was during a magical experience and it was a hallucination….

Jon: Do you think that imagination is a river to another dimension we’re able to dip into?

Alan: I’ve got different way of looking at it: One theory is that the world of ideas is not a physical world but a world of the mind.

George: What happened near the end of the Swamp Thing where you didn’t write two issues?

Alan: I forget. Maybe I had gotten behind?

Or was it that Steve wanted to write that issue?

They did fillers in case I fell behind.

George: You never got tired of writing Swamp Thing?

Alan: No, I never got tired of writing it, but I realized that I was going to get tired of writing it.

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Previous page: Before Ye Ed and G.K. left Moore’s abode, the writer revealed that his America’s Best Comics character Jonni Future is actually the child of Adam Strange and Alanna! This inset is from the cover of CBA #17, the Arthur Adams issue. Portrait by and courtesy of José Villarrubia. This page: Inset left is John Totleben’s illo of Abby Cable [ST #33, Feb. ’85]; above is the cover of the final Alan Moore issue [#64, Sept. ’87], art by Totleben; below, also by John, is an illustration for the first Swamp Thing trade paperback collection.

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Steve Bissette’s Bayou Days A remarkably candid interview with “bad boy” SRB on turbulent and joyful days on ST Conducted by JON B. COOKE

A NOTE ON THE PRESENTATION Faced with limited space and likely the most informative interview in this entire book — a blow-by-blow, behind the scenes account of the early issues of the Alan Moore-scripted Swamp Thing run — we made the difficult decision to keep the excising of text to a minimum and hence sacrificing a proper graphic presentation for this section. My regrets to Steve but, upon reading, those fascinated with the “Sophisticated Suspense” comics that redefined the field’s horror genre, will likely be grateful for this decision.

Below: Steve Bissette (penciler) and John Totleben (inker) caricature themselves in this panel from Swamp Thing #31 [Dec. ’84]. That’s SRB on the left and JTT on right.

[Stephen Russell Bissette, raised on a steady diet of mystery comics, horror movies, and macabre fiction, was the artist who most visually redefined Swamp Thing during the legendary Alan Moore-scripted run — with substantial help from friends (and former fellow alumni of the Joe Kubert School), Rick Veitch and John Totleben. Here, in an interview conducted in early Nov. 2003 in his Vermont home, Steve reveals how he and his art cohorts were also intimately involved in the plotting aspects of the early run of that legendary series.

Transcribed by Brian K. Morris, this talk is an edited version of a much longer, career-spanning discussion we hope to present in the near future. — Y.E.] Comic Book Creator: Obviously, you clued into monsters early on, right?

Stephen R. Bissette: Oh, big time. Bear in mind that, from my earliest years, another key part of my life growing up in Vermont was spending time in the woods, spending time around the ponds, catching salamanders and frogs.

I recognized, from a very young age, that animal reality is quite different from human reality. We’re never going to grasp it, but I have empathy there. They’re living, we’re alive; to me, it all just part of the world, and it’s very primal. With [Steve’s self-published comic] Tyrant, I really wanted to get the reader to empathize with these creatures without anthropomorphizing. It’s part of what drove my work on Swamp Thing, part of what drives everything I draw. What is it that’s alive that pulls at us?

To me, the trees, rocks, all of nature is alive and it’s not some Native American thing. It’s just something I felt from the time I was very little. I never saw the world as a dead place and I try to communicate that in my drawing. I think that’s part of why when Joe Kubert showed me how to use a brush, it clicked because it was the first tool I’d ever had in my hand in my life that the line was alive. That was just a wicked catalyst for me because I had drawn with ballpoint pens all through high school, which drove my art teacher nuts!

CBC: Did you have any exposure to E.C. Comics when you were young?

Steve: You know, I think I only ever saw one or two coverless ones when I was little. I remember lucking into a box of junk comics that were a nickel each, and I snapped them up. I didn’t care what they were. There were a couple of Charlton Hot Rod comics in there, but also were a couple coverless horror comics and one of them was an E.C. because I recognized Reed Crandall’s work from Creepy.

CBC: These were the first horror comics you’d seen?

Steve: No, my first horror comics were the pre-Marvel Atlas comics, the ones with those weird Ditko stories and Kirby’s “Fin Fang Foom,” and all that stuff. There were also two Dell comics that John Stanley wrote, which I loved and still do. They scared the sh*t out of me! Ghost Stories #1 and Tales From the Tomb, a 25¢ annual that was really thick. I wore them out. John Stanley had his finger on the pulse of what was scary to kids, and also on this very childish side of us that’s necessary in a certain kind of horror storytelling where dream illogic made sense, where there’s an internal rationale at work that makes no rational sense whatsoever.

But if it’s established and followed through, it works. And those two comics, I still consider key horror comics, and not just because of the impression it made on me, but I’ve met other artists through the years, like the Hernandez Brothers, who remembered those two comics.

CBC: How old were you when you first encountered Warren?

Steve: Well, I bought Creepy #1 off the newsstand, and I vividly remember buying Eerie #2. That one I loved even more than Creepy because of the cover, and the stories were stronger, and it drove me f*cking nuts when I couldn’t find Eerie #1, [laughs] which later, we got to the bottom of. But at the time, there was no way around it. You know, the key pre-comic in my life was Famous Monsters of Filmland.

CBC: It’s interesting that we’ve talked comics for a while now and you haven’t mentioned super-heroes at all.

Steve: Super-heroes didn’t matter to me at all. My brother collected super-hero comics when I was little, and friends would always have them, and they were at the barbershop.

But I was bored sh*tless by Bouncing Boy and all that horsesh*t. Super-heroes just didn’t interest me, and they never have. It really rattled me at first when Alan started bringing the DC super-heroes into Swamp Thing, because they had

TM & © DC Comics.

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Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Photo © Joseph A. Citro. Swamp Thing TM & © DC Comics.

The Muck-Monster Makers nothing to do with it, as far as I was concerned. In fact, I was so adamant and outspoken about it that Alan and [editor] Len Wein agreed that they would say that Len was the one that made them do it. Later on, Alan said, [imitates Alan] “No, I really wanted to do it, Steve” [laughs] I felt what we were doing on Swamp Thing was the equivalent of [horror writers] Ramsey Campbell, Peter Straub. Some significant horror movies came out in the early ’80s, from directors like Joe Dante and David Cronenberg, and I felt that we were working on that same level, doing work that good.

To look back at those issues, where I drew everything, there was only an occasional panel of Hawkman that John and would enjoy doing… You know, John’s funny. He’s a guy with a real pragmatic view of the world, in many ways.

We had to draw these two or three panels with Firestorm, with those flames coming off the top of his head, and John says, “Where’s his f*cking brain?” So dealing with the DC characters felt stupid, including characters that we loved, like the Demon, who’s the combined color of a yield sign and stop sign, and all their supernatural characters have no eyeballs and all wear little booties. I mean, really. All of those super-hero trappings are just absurd to me. (The only time in my entire career I ever connected with characters like that was when we had fun with the 1963 series.)

CBC: Did you have exposure to Swamp Thing when it first came out?

Steve: Yes, but I’ll be blunt, and hope this doesn’t get me in trouble. I bought the first three issues of Swamp Thing (though I hadn’t seen House of Secrets #92 until a little later), but by the third issue, I could see it was “Monster of the Month.” It was the comic-book version of The Night Stalker, only, instead of Kolchak, it was Swamp Thing. Much as I loved Bernie’s art and Len’s scripts, I was so familiar with each Gothic archetype they were working with, it didn’t resonate for me the way Kirby’s Fourth World did. The New Gods was fresh and a real invigoration of some very ancient archetypes, which were given entirely new blood, and that as exciting for me as it was to discover the undergrounds.

Swamp Thing I enjoyed, but it was like watching Chiller Theater, tapping into a parade of Universal monsters. As a result, I certainly didn’t hang with it after #12. I gave Nestor Redondo two issues grace, and then walked away.

Without Bernie, there was no horrific flavor to Swamp Thing. I also had steeped myself in enough E.C. Comics to see that Bernie was an extension of what Graham Ingels and, in part, what Frank Frazetta, had done in comics in the early ’50s. And it was clear to me that early ’50s comics were more transgressive than Swamp Thing had been. (Also bear in mind that, for me, a real horror comic book was Skull Comix, and Swamp Thing was very weak teat by comparison!) [chuckles] As I became more adult in my perceptions, I realized that monsters gave physical form to emotions that I can’t otherwise express, or feelings that have no physical shape in the world. Suddenly, if I draw a monster, I can embody those feelings and explore them. Swamp Thing was an embodiment for Len and Bernie, of a sorrow. That first Swamp Thing short story is this amazingly sorrowful little story that’s all it’s about complete loss… the loss of your love, loss of your life, loss of your physical body, and still being alive, but trapped in the body of a monster after having lost everything. That final panel that Bernie drew of just the eye… that’s what Swamp Thing was an expression of, at first. Then, during the first regular series, it just became an extension of a creature shambling from set piece to set piece, becoming less about loss and more about Len and Bernie’s love of old monster

movies, and it became diminished because of that.

By the time Len worked with Redondo, there was almost nothing left of the original premise. And, by the time Len finally left, there really was nothing left. So when Alan, John and I got the book, we found the original intent viable — examining complete loss — and we were ready to explore emotional things we felt strongly about. And reinventing the character as an elemental allowed us to tap into some really primal stuff for ourselves, and it obviously hit a receptive nerve. With the right approach and fidelity to the premise, we could write about anything basically within the framework of a horror/monster book, where anything is possible.

When we got the book, we started looking not at the trappings of genre — in this case, the parade of supernatural clichés that dominated the original run of Swamp Thing — but at the very nature of horror itself. Horror is supposed to be something you’re not comfortable with.

And as soon as horror, as a genre, becomes something an audience is comfortable with, it ceases to be horrific.

Alan, John and I did what we did in Swamp Thing because we didn’t have up these blinders, going, “Okay, Swamp Thing can only be this.” No, we were like, [excited] “No, we’ve got a horror comic, and we’re doing it every month, and we can go nuts! So what do we really want to do?” Not just, “Do we want to draw weird sh*t?” That wasn’t what it was about. It was, “What stories can we tell now? How are the characters in this title viable as a vehicle for these things we want to examine?” And that included doing a whole issue with two characters expressing their love to each other in a way where their bodies can’t allow them. It’s like, “Let’s run with this stuff and use it as a vehicle of expression.” So my point is that genre is just language, not conventions. It’s just language, and some artists, some craftsmen (if you insist on the division between art and entertainment) are better versed in one language than another.

Really brilliant artists who embrace a certain genre can take it in directions that they would go with no other body of work, none. And it is Art. Alfred Hitchcock is an artist, for instance.

CBC: How was you experience at the Kubert School?

Steve: It was simply amazing. There was the incredible high, a very real high, of being just saturated in an environment where every person there was tuned into the same wavelength as I was. Sure, there were different levels of seriousness, dedication, and what have you, but we lived, breathed, ate and sh*t comics, 24 hours a day, and it was heaven. I never imagined there could be a place like that, you know? That was incredible.

And who do I meet, right on Day One? Rick Veitch! [laughs] I’m screaming, [shouts] “Oh, my God! You’re Rick Veitch!!!” Here was the same guy who drew Two-Fisted Zombies and we bonded right away, in part because of

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Above: Longtime Bissette chum and fellow aficionado of the macabre, horror writer and Vermont folklorist Joseph A. Citro snapped this pic of Steve and shared it with us. Joe and Ye Ed. go back to the days of my horror ’zine, Tekeli-li!

Journal of Terror.

Below: Bissette’s pencils from Swamp Thing #34 [Mar. ’85].

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shared interests, in part because we’re two guys from Vermont stuck in New Jersey. You know, there was a comradeship around that and I’m sure Rick appreciated that somebody there had read his underground. And that first class was a great group, of about 22 or 23, when it started, a real small class.

It was very intimate.

CBC: Rick Veitch vividly remembered you mastering the brush almost immediately.

Steve: I may have. I really felt it. It was the first time that the line felt alive and that communicated something so primal to me that it made sense at that point in my life. The artists in comics, the ones I’d always loved and gravitated to Landsman, Kubert, Greg Irons, Crumb, Sam Glanzman… for me, their school of illustration and cartooning, the line is alive. And that’s what the brush gave me.

The epiphany came in September, 1976, my first month at the Kubert School.

CBC: You just made a progression talking about being a naturalist and talking about art. There’s a real connection?

Steve: There’s a real connection and, for me, that’s what drove the work on Swamp Thing. You look at all my work prior to Swamp Thing — and I did a lot, because for Tom Yeates, Rick, and I, anywhere we could find a toehold, we took it! — it was all chaotic. There wasn’t a lot of rhyme or reason to it.

You can go back and trace some thematic links, but the first cohesive vehicle I had was Swamp Thing, even before Alan was on the book. You know, there was a real chemistry between John Totleben and I, and it had to do with that expression of life in anything that we drew. I have no empathy for — or love for — drawing houses, cars, and all the stuff Rick is really good at. [laughter] CBC: The Kirby machines?

Steve: Right! That’s never worked for me. So Swamp Thing was perfect.

The setting of the character, that he was this earth-vegetable being/man, it just rang all the right bells. In hindsight, I can really clearly see, but was unaware at the time, just how much work and passion and energy that went into it. It was the perfect vehicle.

CBC: Swamp Thing, to me, is quintessentially organic, and I would characterize your style with exactly the same word.

Steve: But the book hadn’t, since Bernie and Len’s tenure, been organic.

As soon as they were gone, it wandered off course. I think Tom had the correct artistic chops, but (and this is to not badmouth Marty) the first thing Marty did was to take Swamp Thing out of the swamp, removing the character from the very ambiance that made the character so compelling.

I couldn’t have made it through the oceanliner stories and all that sh*t that Marty came up with! And we tried! Marty Pasko was featured in Comics Interview magazine and he expressed some resentment he was feeling at that time, that the way John and I drew was contrary to the direction he had been taking the series since Day One. That was because we wanted to get back to that swamp, where it belonged. I’m not just talking in terms of the trappings, but that’s really what the character was about was where we went with it, the elemental, that whole thing.

CBC: There’s a sense of urgency in your work, a visceral quality, a frenzy.

I don’t mean this as a slight at all but, to me, there’s an amateurish, primitive aspect, that the story was coming out of your brush so fast, you didn’t have time for technique. You just had to express your primal urge, I guess. And it works.

Steve: Part of the reason I worked with Totleben is because he had the technique. When we were really cooking, my pencils were often incredibly raw because John and I figured out that, between each other, it burst through by a careful give-and-take. After about three issues, we knew how the other was going to respond. I could get really raw with my pencils, but I could draw with the side of a pencil. I couldn’t do that with a guest inker like Alfredo Alcala. The two issues I did with Alfredo, I had to delineate every line and it was hard to rethink my approach that way. It was this artifice that I had to suddenly live up to.

For John, one of the struggles was erasing the pages after he’d inked them because I was working with an HB lead a lot of the times, soft leads, and I’d make a mess of the boards. [laughs] But it was, like you said, that urgency, that immediacy, this frenzy to get it out. Even if I was drawing pastoral scenes, like the “Rites of Spring” issue [ST #34], it was still important to me to get across the tactile feeling of being in the swamp, with dragonflies flitting about, brackish water, and all that, and it gets messy on the page.

I think that’s one of my constant obstacles in dealing with deadlines, is that when the job is finished, the fun’s over.

You know, it’s very telling to me that the only editor who got a sizable body of work out of me was a female editor, Karen Berger. But I drove her f*cking nuts!

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CBC: But there were other issues going down at the time?

Steve: I can’t go into it in a public venue — go read Rick Veitch’s interview in The Comics Journal for insight — but suffice to say the friction that came to a head between DC and I had nothing to do with the deadlines, artwork, or my work. It a completely different thing, but it affected my ability to work with DC and my ability to work with Karen, and it was life-&-death stuff. It’s also interesting that I was the only member of the team, other than Alan, who had kids. Maia was born in 1983, the year I started work on Swamp Thing, and my son was born in ’85. Do the math. My first wife, Nancy (now Marlene), had a day job at a school for autistic children and, when she got home, dealing with kids was the last thing she wanted to do. So I was a single dad most of the time while working on Swamp Thing. I was the in-house parent and I met most of my deadlines. I drove Karen nuts, it was real tough, but I was the one at home with the kids. These were in their earliest years, before school started, and these were also the Swamp Thing years. So it was tough juggling all those family needs and still getting the pages in.

Here’s an example in terms of the process in doing Swamp Thing: It used to drive Karen nuts that I would do the pages of any given issue out of order.

But the beauty to me was that Alan’s scripts were such perfect blueprints, if I worked on the pages from the beginning and the end of a story, I could draw connective tissues and work my way to the middle. One of my favorite storytellers (also a favorite of Alan) was Nicolas Roeg, the filmmaker who did Performance, The Man Who Fell To Earth, Walkabout, and Don’t Look Now. His best body of work would tell you the beginning and end and arrive at the middle, and fireworks go off in your head when you start making the connections Roeg leads you to, and it’s a more involving way of being told a story. So Alan’s scripts were such perfect blueprints, and he made those connections quite explicitly in the scripts that made it a pleasure to draw from both ends to the center because I could built the visual compliments to the narrative tapestries that he had already seen to from beginning to end.

Now, for all sorts of production and editorial reasons, this is an incredible frustration for people on the other end, but John was fine with it, because he understood what I was doing and he could build those same kinds of links.

As a storyteller, I also passionately believe that you set things into motion and you bring closure to them. That’s part of what makes a story a satisfying experience.

For the reader, the process should almost be unconscious. If you look back on some of those key issues of Swamp Thing — “Love and Death” and “Rites of Spring” — there were a lot of those kind of connections made. But this approach did drive Karen nuts. I mean she wants pages one through five for the letterer and I’m working on pages 1, 3, 6, 18, 19, 20 through 23. [laughs] So, to people looking from the outside, or in the case of an editor like Karen, chaos would seem an apt word. But for me, it’s that I was working on different links that amounted to a linear progression. I was focusing on what was important, making sure all the connections were there, but to do it, that was my pattern. That process made a great deal of sense.

CBC: Was it an intellectual exercise to keep yourself engaged?

Steve: That was a part of it. But also, the links that really work in a visual narrative are unconscious in nature and the act of drawing them makes them conscious. So I had to structure my approach to the work in that way so that I was making room for both the conscious and the unconscious links that were going to be drawn through the story. And I’ve used part of what kept me engaged with the material. I had to find a way to keep myself open for the accidents. It’s like working in watercolor, where the pleasure is found in those accidents. But it’s hard to accommodate everyone else’s needs when you’re working in a production line, and one of the pleasures working with Alan and John was that they understood those elements. I don’t even think we ever articulated that process, we just understood each other and why the chemistry of that team worked so well for as long as it did. But it’s an aspect that always sort of jarred, at times, with other collaborators.

Rick was part of Swamp Thing from #21. You know, he helped me out on many issues. We can go back over the penciled pages and I can identify for you the panels and you’ll start to see because you’ll recognize Rick’s line work, exactly what we were doing together. Karen’s job was to somehow be the Glenn Miller of this insane orchestra. How is she going to make it all sound right and play right? But she was very good at it. So that was the process, one that, only in hindsight, I can now see was a struggle.

CBC: Was it frustrating not to have been able to articulate that, at the time?

Steve: Well, it wasn’t just a frustration. Through those years, I had a constant sense of failure, like I was the odd cog in the machine. But that was something I’d always felt all of my life, for whatever reason. And certainly, the constant struggle with deadlines, as Tom Yeates reminded me a number of times, Saga of the Swamp Thing started out behind the eight-ball. The very Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Swamp Thing TM & © DC Comics. Bog Swamp Demon © Ryan Brown.

first issue, with Marty Pasko writing, Tom Yeates drawing, was behind schedule. So when John and I entered the book with #16, we were already behind and it never got ahead, and so I took a lot of the heat for that, and I still take responsibility. But in hindsight, I can also see that there was a process about doing comics that I love that became a real point of friction in a collaborative venture. But the end result did work. The fact that our run of Swamp Thing is still in print is certainly testimonial to the success of that work, even if the process was very trying for everybody. And for me, it felt like I was at fault.

CBC: Were you struggling with having artistic aspirations in a commercial venue? That this was a business?

Steve: In a nutshell, it was an organic process. The best work that came out of Swamp Thing came from letting things grow, and the synthesis that John and Alan and I enjoyed fed on that. You know, we sent voluminous letters to each other and, looking back on those, in the first and second letters we exchanged with Alan, we were already working out between the three of us where we all wanted to go, what the common points were, and how we could get there. So it was an organic process that took a couple of years and, issue by issue, we could work our way through it and we could go with the flow.

One of the best examples is #29, the “Love and Death” issue. Alan wrote that in two days, because he had finished “The Nukeface Papers,” but Karen said it was downbeat with a funeral pace, but we were starting to pick up readership, so it was a key time for the series to be lively. And she was right, her call was correct. So Alan, in two days, threw together the script for “Love and Death,” which was brilliant. [laughs] I bring that up as an example of we could roll with the punches. John and I were ready to do Nukeface — Nukeface was John’s character, something he’d drawn two years before, before we even knew Alan — so there was an emotional attachment there. But none of us had a problem switching gears. So we were able to go with the flow as needed, and it was organic in that way. If we’d hit the wall, we’d bend or flow around it. But the difficulty was that organic process, issue to issue, was maddening to the production stuff, the editorial meetings, and so on. It was tough.

It was a real tough act for Karen to follow through.

There were also a lot of difficulties that popped up, such as the Comics Code thing. Karen was in the hot seat on that, she was the one in New York dealing with it, and we weren’t.

I had two children and a whole crisis with DC during that period. But the book was succeeding creatively, so we had our fingers on something that worked. It was the necessary process of creation that, by its nature, grated against the one-issue-every-four-weeks grind that came around like clockwork, and, as best we could, we worked within the constraints by coming up with fill-in issues.

Karen would call John and I to suggest fill-in artists. I remember discussions about Shawn McManus and others.

It was also natural to have Rick take the reins at a couple of points because he’d been part of it since #21. I only ever remember one issue where it was a punitive thing, where I was way behind and Karen decided to take this issue away from me. But my attitude was, “Okay, I’ll start working on the next one,” but by that time, I was on a slippery slope that was my pulling away from the series.

CBC: [Indicates ST #21] Let’s go over the artwork, okay?

Steve: Sure. I had worked out page designs, working from Alan’s script, and we wanted this opulent look to Sunderland Towers, so Rick came in and designed things like the freezer unit and he penciled right from page two. That’s Veitch 100%! [chuckles] The first panel on page five was his. I would focus on the characters, patterned Woodrue after Peter Cushing and Tom had already made sure that Sunderland was designed after our beloved Secretary of State at the time, [chuckles] the guy who announced he was in charge of the country when Reagan was shot, Alexander Haig. Rick came up with these cockamamie things, like this obsessive

operating room with a huge light. And then — I’m looking at page seven now — Rick had done the operating theater at the top with all these mechanical arms and I had worked through the rest of the page, so we were swapping panels over for probably a four-day period. I would say page eight was probably completely by Rick. I then went in, tightened up pencils, and then worked on character faces. After page eight, the pencil art was all mine, except for a few panels… well, maybe more than a few panels. [chuckles, indicates page 20] Man, that’s 100% Veitch. I worked out the framing panels but Rick did this whole backdrop behind the panels. [indicates page 21] That’s Veitch on the top row.

CBC: What was the impact of receiving Alan’s script for”The Anatomy Lesson”?

Steve: It was the best comic-book script I’d ever read in my life, bar none, and we’d seen some pretty good scripts.

We’d worked on Bob Kanigher’s stories, who was a master, and we’d worked with Archie Goodwin, at this point, so we’d seen a lot of good scripts over the years by other writers, but this script for #21 was the single best one I had ever seen. I had never read anything that came close to it. It was so lucid, so meticulously crafted, perfect from first panel to the last. It was perfectly structured, emotionally volatile, just a brilliantly crafted script. Page for page, I could just see it in my head so perfectly, and I could also see that adhering

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Above: Killer combination of Stephen R. Bissette pencils and John Totleben inks on this Swamp Thing cover, #29 [Oct. ’84]. Courtesy of Jonathan Ross. Below: SRB contributed covers to Bog Swamp Demon! Here’s his #1 [Aug. ’96].

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precisely to what Alan had come up with was the only way to go, and I could see where there was also room for play.

I called Rick the moment I got to the end of page 23, and said, “Rick, this is great. You have got to come and read this.” Much of the catalyst for the two of us to jump into this wasn’t just to meet the deadline, it was the excitement over trying to match the quality of the script. And, in some ways, it’s still the best script I’ve ever worked from.

There were other issues we did later that I think are as good — “Love and Death” and “Rites of Spring” push the envelope in directions that hadn’t been pushed before in mainstream comics — but #21 is still… it’s cherry, it really is. It’s one of the things I’m most proud of that I’ve ever done in comics.

CBC: What makes it so good?

Steve: It’s a brilliantly conceived story, in and of itself. You know, from page one to page 23, if you’ve never read another Swamp Thing in your life, it still works as a read. It’s a perfectly crafted two-character piece, as meticulously crafted as any one-act play or teleplay from the Golden Age of television drama. It’s just this beautiful character piece between Woodrue and Sunderland that culminates in the birth of this “new” character. Actually, it’s a rebirth, but in the context of this story, Swamp Thing is an inanimate character until that final few pages. And even if you’ve never read the book, you still have this wicked emotional connection to Swamp Thing after he’s reborn. You know this is a violation of what he was and the start of something new for the character. But even if you’re not aware of the character, you just know something transgressive has happened and it builds perfectly to its climax.

And the climax is both horrifying and satisfying. You want to see Sunderland get his comeuppance and you dread it when you get there. And Alan’s finale on page 23, the story is over, the moment’s over, the final grace note is struck, and it all sets up where the series is going from then on. He had tied up an enormous number of loose ends in #20. And to have such clarity in #21, to just jump into “The Anatomy Lesson” and there wasn’t even a vestige of what the series had been before, other than the story components he chose to weave into it. It was just a perfect starting point and it was just this crystalline script, just beautiful.

What’s also cool is the fact that the real monster in the story is Woodrue. Part of the reason I drew Woodrue based on Cushing is when I read the script and I realized, “It’s The Curse of Frankenstein!” Chris Lee was the monster in that movie, but he’s the implement of Dr. Frankenstein’s will.

People are killed by the monster because the Doctor locks them in the room, knowing what was going to happen with this idiot creature, and it just resonated for me. Swamp Thing might be a monster with this wicked ferocity of intent and focus, but Woodrue is the cold, calculating son-of-a-bitch that drives the whole story. The satisfaction of the issue’s climax is that it’s two cold, calculating sons-of-bitches against one another and one of them wins.

You know, the comeuppance of Sunderland was so satisfying to draw and there were all these underpinnings to it, including the fact that Tom had, because of his own political orientation, visually based Sunderland on Haig, and so we got to kill Haig! [laughs] Though we did know that we were doing it at the behest of this even-crueler creature. On every level, this really just worked for me 100%, and it still does. The constant reaction I get from people reading it for the first time is that it’s not just my myopic view of what we did, but it also had an impact on every reader out there.

CBC: It read like something totally new.

Steve: It was new, in part. It was also that the story’s clarity of purpose was new. Alan knew what he wanted to do and he did it in 23 pages. We — meaning John, Rick and myself — knew this is what we wanted to do and we got to do it in the 23 pages, thanks to Alan. Len knew, as co-creator of the character, that what Alan was doing was absolutely perfect. What Alan was also doing was to set up everything necessary to justify that drawing John had shown Len years before, when Len had said, “That’s too extreme.”

In one fell swoop, Alan reoriented the entire series and the whole character in precisely the direction the three of us had wanted to independently go.

It was amazing anachronistically. There we were, the three of us, finally getting the right character, at the right time, and Alan produces the script for exactly the right issue.

CBC: This brings us to the Floronic Man story arc, #22-24.

Steve: My memory’s pretty fresh on this because I’ve just reread all the scripts and letters with Alan from that period, in part to do that piece I did for Portrait of an Extraordinary Gentleman. This storyline was all Alan’s. He didn’t know John and I at this point, when he launched with #21, and we were just getting to know each other. We had, as I recall, very little phone contact at first, so our communication was mainly through letters. We exchanged long letters with each other, and I ended up with photocopies of some of the letters John got, as well.

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I caught him in one gaffe, thankfully before we got to #23, where Alan thought plants breathed oxygen and I pointed out that it was carbon dioxide.

He said, [imitates Alan] “Well, I didn’t finish high school.” [laughter] This was a brilliant story arc that he had put together, and Woodrue was an unknown character to me. So I went to a local flea market in Wilmington and fortunately, for about a two-year period, there was an old guy there with boxes and boxes and boxes of comics. He had bought up some collection and I was able to piece together almost a complete set of Floronic Man appearances, piecemeal, going back to The Atom #1. That became a pattern for me: Alan would let John and I know where he was going, or which of our ideas he was going to run with, and gave us some heads up beforehand, usually. We knew we were going to do the Etrigan story, which allowed me to go back and reread the Kirby run. I was intent on looking at all the old Woodrue stuff to see what the prior artists had done, not out of any anal-fan completeness. It was a search for pieces of the puzzle that would excite me in drawing the character. The original Jason Woodrue in The Atom was just this white-garbed scientist who had a collection of carnivorous plants — remember that cover with the Venus Flytrap eating The Atom? — and only later did he became this sort of wood god, a kind of vegetable villain. Mike Sekowsky’s version in Justice League of America rang a bell with me. There was this real grotesque take he had on Woodrue that I liked. Alan had also come up with a sort of dream structure where the parallel story that’s going on is Jason Woodrue studying Swamp Thing’s inert body, and the other was about the Green and the psychodrama going on in Alec Holland’s vestigial consciousness, the awakening of what he was, and John and I loved it. I’m looking at #22, page 16, where we worked in the Floronic Man and Sunderland, and almost all of the classic Wrightson monster villains. John played around with all sorts of different rendering techniques. It was a lot of fun to on this stuff. The sequence that begins #23 remains one of my favorites. In fact, I’ve kept the original art all these years. Pages four through six really worked as a perfect little suspense sequence. It was really at this point where we were coming into our own.

I had not drawn many female characters in comics, so it was a real struggle to work on Abby. The best advice I had about drawing women was from [Golden Age funny animal comic book artist] Vincent Fago, who lived here in Vermont and I had met during my Kubert School years. He put his finger on a real weakness of mine, that I wasn’t drawing consistent characterizations, and his suggestion was select a movie actor and run with it. So if you look at my earlier stories for DC, you’ll see that I cast [character actor] Strother Martin in a story I did for House of Mystery. So I based Abby on Sigourney Weaver. [Her breakthrough movie] Alien had come out in 1979 and Sigourney was an actress with a strong physical personality, and I pieced together a few photos for reference, which I tacked up on my wall, and that’s who I based Abby on.

John was masterful at drawing women, and they just pour out of his hand. [chuckles] I remember him doing sketches at a mid-’80s convention and a guy watching him just said, “God, if I could do that, I’d just stay home, draw, and then jerk off all day.” [laughs] John’s inks transformed Abby from Bissette’s version of Sigourney Weaver into Abby, the character we know and love today.

So, by #24, I was really starting to get a feel for all the characters. Swamp Thing I had down, and by #24, I was able to draw Abby freehand and she started cooking as a character for me, at that point, but it took a while to refine. Alan’s scripts were consistently top-drawer, and John and I were really falling into a groove by the conclusion of this first story arc, #24, and then the f*cking Justice League shows up. [laughs] As I already mentioned, I had little affinity for super-heroes, so I wasn’t thrilled with guest-starring the Justice League of America in Swamp Thing.

If you look back at those issues, I would only enjoy the occasional panel of Hawkman… You know, John’s funny. He’s got a real pragmatic view of the world in many ways, and when we had to draw two or three panels with Firestorm, John said, “Where’s his f*cking brain?” [laughs] CBC: But the Swamp Thing version of the JLA was a sinister take, foretelling the dark side of super-heroes which Alan later explored in Watchmen and Miracleman.

Steve: That was an interesting take that Alan brought to it. That’s why, in the opening of #24, when they’re up in that ridiculous satellite, we really tried to make them sinister characters. Our feeling was that if you were in a room with these people, you would be highly uncomfortable. [chuckles] This was at a time when Howard Chaykin was doing American Flagg, Frank Miller was done with Daredevil and his Ronin was in the works, so there was already an edge to super-heroes, and we also trusted Alan to make them interesting. I mean Marvelman was what it was — brilliant — and we had no idea at that Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Photo © Joseph A. Citro. Swamp Thing TM & © DC Comics.

after Swamp Thing, John would collaborate with Alan on these two huge story arcs in Marvelman/Miracleman. So we trusted Alan. We knew from the chapters of “Marvelman” that had already appeared in Warrior, he had really taken the super-hero archetype to a whole new level, so we trusted that he had something new in mind.

CBC: When you talked to Alan, did you tell him you wanted to include the Demon?

Steve: Yes. Actually, in our first exchanges of letters with Alan, I photocopied and sent him all the plot ideas John and I had written up for Marty Pasko. (John and I took a long road trip together and we brainstormed a lot of story ideas.)

We had blocked out the Etrigan idea, Nukeface, and some ideas that never saw light of day, but Alan worked with a surprising quantity of them. But be clear that it was his decision. We didn’t push Alan one way or another. It was his decision to run with the Demon, and we had no idea how his approach and execution far outstripped anything John and I had imagined. His take on Jason Blood is still the correct one, in my mind. He’s also the only writer I’ve ever read who can write Etrigan’s dialogue — the couplets, the rhyming archaic poetry — which flows naturally when it comes from Alan, but always clunky when Len did it. (Still, that story in DC Comics Presents had beautiful Joe Kubert art, though the Etrigan dialogue was ridiculous!) Alan had the knowledge, finesse, and sophistication to make it work, constructing that mock Shakespearian dialogue, and I don’t think anybody has done it as well since.

There were elements of the Demon storyline that were fairly autobiographical. My wife at the time, Nancy — now Marlene — O’Connor, was working at Green Meadows School, a school for autistic children in Wilmington, Vermont.

So a lot of characters in that storyline are people who Marlene worked with and people that were friends of ours, and I can point them out to you. The woman who runs the school, Karen Lennon, is still a very close friend of Marlene. Our friend — a real sweet guy — Michael Anderson had drawn some of the child art that we used in the book. Michael Anderson was our age, real sweet guy. Unfortunately, he’s not with us any longer. He died a number of years ago of a heart attack. Michael was a real sweetheart and he figures in this book. Let me give you a page number. Karen Lennon’s on pages 6 and 7 of #25, the woman with long hair. Fans say, “Oh, you drew Karen Berger in the book.” But I reply, “No, that’s Karen Lennon, not Karen Berger.” This is Michael Anderson on pages 7 and 8 of #26, the blond fellow with a beard.

The kid drawings of the Monkey King, appearing on page 9 of #26, were done by Michael Anderson and Ezra Veitch (who was a little guy at that time). On the splash page of #27, “By Demons Driven,” The childlike drawings are by Michael Anderson, a hell of an artist who would create walking sticks and stuff, but had a very crude drawing style, but crude in a way that was quite earnest and honest. I asked him to do the drawings because when artists try to draw like kids, it’s just too obvious.

From #25 to 27, the whole Demon storyline was set in a Louisiana version of the school that my then-wife worked in, day in, day out, so that really came out of my life at the time.

I loved Kirby’s The Demon and, fortunately, John and Alan shared that affection. It was John and my suggestion to use Etrigan and the Monkey King, which was in The Demon #2 or 3.

In this Demon storyline, specifically page 18 of #26, one of the children in the school is confronted by this demonic father who says, “Mommy needn’t know,” with the clear implication being this kid was a victim of incest, a potent sequence to draw. For me, on a personal level, it was a weird foreshadowing of what was going to happen to my first marriage. My then-wife was dealing with her having been abused as a child, something that really turned our lives upside down by 1989–90, long after I was done with Swamp Thing. So it was interesting that it manifested itself in a

storyline inspired by what my wife was doing for work. I look back and still get a chill because of the irony.

CBC: Did Alan want to bring your individual lives into this?

Steve: Well, Alan came out to visit around this time. It wasn’t so much that he wanted to bring our individual lives in, as really respond to what he learned more about us. That story idea was one that struck the strongest chord with him, evidently, and one he jumped right into. Alan did want our involvement, and there was never any friction over that, it was a constant. The only point of friction was from DC, who didn’t want to grant or pay for any plotting John and I had done. There was no credit, there was no pay, and we used that as leverage in their paying for phone bills, because the calls between England and America was a lot of money for us. We said, “Look, we’re co-plotting stories. We’re not asking for credit, and because we’re not getting paid, you cover the phone bills,” and they did, but that still was a point of contention. I think it was troubling on some level — not to Karen, I don’t think, but to DC — for there to be such tight communication and collaboration going on between these three freelancers and it really was problematic. And we would only get a sense of that concern and resentment (or whatever you want to call it) when it came down to the little battles over things like phone bills and the cost of shipping packages to England and vice versa, because we weren’t making enough money to just absorb those expenses. You know, it was a big chunk of our income when suddenly our phone bills tripled. [laughs] I bring that up because we hadn’t met Alan yet when we were working on this Demon story arc. Alan would call and talk to Marlene, ask her what it was like to work at the school because he really wanted to capture the atmosphere, the details of the workday. He wanted that to feel real, feel correct. So he and Marlene did have a very friendly relationship over the years when we worked together.

Alan did come out to America. On his first trip, he did spend a couple days with us in Vermont (which he subsequently wrote about in some of the pieces he had done for British fanzines). I remember him saying the only night he had slept while in America was at our place because we were out in the middle of the country, in Wilmington. [chuckles] John and his wife, Michelle, came up from Erie, Pennsylvania, and we all spent as much time as we could together. I remember John, Alan and myself walking through the woods with Maia, who was very little. She was so little that she could grab Alan’s hand and my hand, pick up her feet as we were walking, and swing through the air. [Imitates Maia] “Wheee!” Here we are, three guys talking about the speculative biology of underwater vampires, working out the biology and reproductive cycle while my little daughter is having fun, walking with Daddy and his weird friends. [laughs] So it wasn’t so much working our lives into it as just Alan seizing story ideas that struck chords for him. In this instance, it was tied in with what my wife did at the time.

He really went with that and, when the script was done, he asked me to make sure that Nancy read it, that everything was right.

Now, the other thing that’s curious about doing the Demon story arc was that during the drawing of the three issues, I took a trip with my family through the South. We visited Hulma, Louisiana, because we had gotten things wrong in the prior storyline (such as, on a wall map, calling areas counties instead of the proper term, parishes; and featuring wooden fences by mistake, because readers wrote that if they put up wood fences, those would rot away in a year). So I was drawing portions of this Demon storyline while I was down in Louisiana, in Hulma, where the book was set at that point, and my parents, my wife and I took photos of all the mundane sh*t around town for reference. What’s the police station look like? How about the hospital and fire station?

What are the road signs as you’re going into town? I’m sure we looking like insane f*cking Yankees to the people down

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Above: Panel detail from Swamp Thing #23 [Apr. ’84], featuring the pencils of Steve Bissette.

Below: In this pic snapped and shared by Joe Citro, it’s Steve Bissette posing with an example of one of his great passions: archosaurs! Remember SRB’s magnificent series Tyrant? The early ’90s series followed the early life of a young T. Rex, and the storytelling and art were superb.

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had taken a sabbatical from the book and to work on Miracleman, and I was getting $200 a cover. I said, “Let me at least get a shot at a painted cover.” I did up a number of painted samples, some of which I still have color copies of. But they just weren’t going to give me a shot. I’d had enough after I turned in the pencils on #63’s cover and Karen said, “Steve, we’re not going to give you a shot at the paintings.” I said, “Fine, I’m done with the covers.” She said, “What about inking the cover?” I said, “Good luck. I’m done.” [chuckles] It was taking me six months of covers to match what John was earning with a single one.

CBC: Why have fill-in issues by other artists?

Steve: To catch-up. They were necessary. Bear in mind, I started to fall behind right on the heels of the Demon storyline, which I did stay on top of, even while traveling in the South. Well, that shows you how things went. [laughs] CBC: On the cover of #28, credits Steve Bissette and John Totleben as being the interior artists, but you open it up and you see a brand new artist, right?

Steve: Shawn McManus. That was planned. Alan came up with the story concept. I remember Karen showing John and I samples from a number of artists and we both said, “Shawn’s good, so go with him.” Alan liked Shawn’s work and it was, in fact, later became the strategy with fill-in issues that Alan would tailor a particular issue to a particular artist’s strengths. Alan rightfully felt that Shawn’s style would lend itself to “Pog,” which was his Walt Kelly/ Pogo take, and Shaun was great. A real good guy, excellent artist, and that story was not of the style John and I worked, but it was organically close enough in the feel that it worked well. But we just needed a catch-up issue at this point. I had just finished #27, Karen needed us working on #29, and the other speed bump that hit, “The Nukeface Papers, Part One.” Karen rightfully made the call, “You guys are gaining momentum. We can’t go with this kind of funeral dirge for a story.” So Alan cooked up “Love and Death” and turned that script around in two days flat from scratch.

CBC: [Indicates climax of #29] Oh, that’s horrific!

Steve: That’s my favorite issue. [laughs] The double-page spread at the end of #29 — “Just say ‘uncle’” — which, by the way, when they reprinted it in the black-&-white Essential Vertigo version, they dropped the word balloon off, and the story’s punchline was gone. We were cooking big time by this time. When that script came in, that was the first one I’d ever read in my life that actually sent a chill up my back. I was like, [excited] “Oh, yes!

We’re game-on. This is it!”

CBC: What was startling about reading Alan’s work was that he could really scare me. I was an adult reading this but I still shivered, you know?

Stephen King had done it once, with ’Salem’s Lot. “Just say ‘uncle’” was so f*cking scary. I have to add that Alan’s Swamp Thing was the only comic book my wife ever regularly read.

Steve: Well, to us, they were real characters, too. You know, we really fell into it.

CBC: Swamp Thing and Abby were the most intense lovers in comics.

Steve: We were really into it. [indicates #29] This is the issue when we lost the Code’s stamp of approval. This was a key juncture. When I look back at my career of creating comics, this is my favorite memory because of that moment. We lost the Code and it ended up changing how DC did business.

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Swamp Thing © DC Comics.

there. [chuckles] But, in the matter of about a half-day, we really canvassed the town of Hulma and took tons of photos, which was reference not just for me, but all material I then handed to Rick, which he stupidly threw out because that’s what Rick does. [chuckles] (I wish he’d held on to a lot of that stuff. When he cleans out his trailer, the occasional purge happens. If it’s not relevant to the job at hand, it’s in the garbage.) I hit the local library and local fish-&-game office, and grabbed every copy of whatever free travel booklets they had. I just built this reference library for Hulma, Louisiana, and that was very useful, and I assembled this duplicate set and mailed it to Alan so he had material to work with. So that was really vital. Plus, I made the deadlines on those issues.

CBC: You also started doing the covers.

Steve: Yes, with #25, right when Karen took over, the editorial decision was made for the book to have a new look. So, if you look back, they even let us play with the logos on #25 and 26. I would send Karen probably five roughs for every cover. By #27, Ed Hannigan became the DC cover editor and that was the first cover we had to draw from a Hannigan rough. They didn’t like any of our ideas for #27, and they standardized the logo again, and any adventurousness for the covers went away for a while. The cover for #28 was my concept. We drew all of them but the cover we hate the most, which was an Ed Hannigan layout was #27. [indicates #29’s cover] We thought that was just a stupid idea, a bad idea for a cover, and it turned out to be such a crucial issue. I’ve still got the roughs for that, which had some good ideas.

The one I still like was of a figure composed of flies holding unconscious Abby with Swamp Thing in the background coming to punch, and that would have been a striking cover because of this figure composed of flying insects.

It was really a creepy image. The cover for the next issue, #30, was our concept that we ran with. I guess after that, we pretty much were measuring up.

The cover for #31 was from our own layout. During this whole period of Hannigan covers, the book had gained enough steam for us to be interviewed by The Comics Journal. TCJ asked if we wanted to do a cover and John was dying to do a painted cover, and John’s a hell of a painter. To me, he’s one of the best painters in our generation of creators. So we said to [Fantagraphics co-publishers] Gary Groth and Kim Thompson, “Yeah, we’ll do a cover, but we want to paint it.” They said, “Sure! That’s great.” So John and I went to town because, to us, that was our tryout, proving to DC that we could do painted covers. They were only doing line drawings at the time. This was when comics were still printed at World Color and Tatjana Wood was our colorist and she was fantastic, but it was still newsprint. We were still working the old style and there were a number of issues we should discuss about production matters. Once DC saw the TCJ cover, they went, “Oh, okay. You guys have to paint some covers for us!” [laughter] The synthesis was that I would design, work up roughs, send them to John, and then we’d decided on what we liked. Then I did a full set of oversized pencils on illustration board and John would do the rendering right onto that, the way we did on #34, the “Rites of Spring” issue, the first painted cover we did for DC. I stuck with doing covers even after John left the book and that later turned into a bone of contention. Around #63, I threw in the towel because what was happening. I stress that John and I never had points of friction. John would get the painted covers assignment, which by that time were paying about $1,200, and I was the guy staying on, doing covers even when John

Swamp Thing © DC Comics.

This issue is what led to Vertigo. They lost the Code, they had to put the issue out because there was no time to mess around. It was a whole explosion at the office for a number of days, and Karen was on the hot seat because the Code had turned down the issue. What to do, what to do! Dick Giordano was either on vacation or at a convention, out of the office. Dick was in a vulnerable position because not only was he head of editorial, but was the DC staffer who sat on the Code Board, which is my understanding. So it was a real controversy that went down after we’d completed work on the issue.

We were already working on “Down Amongst the Dead Men,” Swamp Thing Annual #2, because I remember when Karen was really on the griddle at DC, her calling and asking if I could tone down elements of the Annual that we were working on. The argument was over the sequence where they come across Arcane in Hell and he’s that mound of pustulous tumors with his little head on top, and it was building, building, building to racing out of Hell with Abby and the Demon punts Arcane’s head off, and Karen wanted me to downplay that, and I fought tooth-&-nail. “Karen, this is the punchline to a joke. You don’t pull your punches, you know? You’re not going to see his aorta spraying and his esophagus dangling out, but I’m not going to pull the punch of how I’m approaching the sequence. It’s the climax of our story and we’ve built up over four issues to this point. We can’t drop the ball.” And it went back and forth for a day or two because she was really in the hot seat and the pressure didn’t relax until DC decided that going without the Code on Swamp Thing was the way to go from then on. The pressure got so intense that, during that Annual, I remember Alan, John and I talking and one of us calling Karen, perhaps Alan, saying, “Okay, if this is how it’s going to go, we still want to work with you, but we don’t want to work on a newsstand comic any more. We want to work on one of the direct market comics.” Camelot 3000 and some of the other books, at that time, were out there and they didn’t have to deal with the Code.

So we made it clear that we weren’t taking our marbles and walking.

We’d stay working with Karen, with DC, as a team, but we didn’t want to mess with the Code. We weren’t going to have these endless fights. We weren’t going to go through pulling back on this head of steam we’d built up over the book. And it was after that that we got the word that they were just going to put out Swamp Thing without the Code. Now, sales were building during this time though we never saw accurate sales numbers. There were no royalties paid to us. With newsstand sales, you only got royalties if sales were over 100,000, so we never saw statements. I’ve been told over the years that by the time we got up to #34, we had gone up to 60,000 to 65,000 in sales. With Swamp Thing #19, there had been discussion of canceling the book, before they brought in Alan, and sales were at 19,000, which was in the toilet at that time for DC. CBC: Those are great sales figures in today’s market.

Steve: And that was when they got numbers very slowly, because with newsstand comics, it took six months to a year before DC knew how an issue had done. So #29 was the breakthrough in getting out from under the Code.

Part of the battle, I remember vividly, was over that double-page spread, which pissed off the Code. They read the comic and realized that incest was implied with Abby having sex with her dead husband who was possessed by her dead uncle, and they just said, “No way!” I remember an argument over taking out the flies on this double-page splash. But, one, it was a story point, Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

not just John and Steve being gruesome, because it’s clear in the story that the insects are reanimating corpses. In fact, that’s the chilling impact of the last page, when Swamp Thing finds this dead bird he thinks is alive, picks it up, and realizes it’s the maggots inside that are making it move. That’s the tipoff about how the bodies are being reanimated. I remember cutting out of the Springfield, Massachusetts, newspaper movie ads for Italian zombie movies then playing. One was Revenge of the Dead and the other one was Night of the Zombies. These ads in a family newspaper were as gruesome as what we’d drawn, and I said, “Come on, Karen. You’re going to tell me that what flies in a family newspaper in Springfield, Mass., is too strong for the Comics Code? Give me a break.” We won that argument.

CBC: But you did go back to the Code for the subsequent issue.

Steve: That issue had no problems with the Code. That simply passed. It was with Annual #2 that they made the decision. There’s one of the issues around there where it starts saying “Sophisticated Suspense.” That’s when the conscious decision had been made to drop the Code.

CBC: You worked with [inker] Alfredo Alcala on this. Was this so John could catch up?

Steve: No. Bear in mind we were still against the constant monthly pressure cooker of deadlines and we were also drawing an annual. So the solution, which we worked out with Karen while Shawn was working on #28, was to put together a whole game plan with Karen, Alan, John and myself and Rick how to make it work. We decided for me to be pencil #30, while Rick penciled #31, and we would find another inker for #30 so that John could ink Rick, so the look was consistent, book-to-book. It was John who suggested Alfredo. He said that out of all the artists working right now, Alfredo made the same use of line to delineate form as John, and it was the correct choice John made, he was right because Alfredo’s line goes back to the Franklin Booth approach to illustration. So it meant that as John was inking #31, I could be drawing Annual #2. So we were at a real key juncture in everything we were doing.

Aesthetically, we knew we were firing with all six cylinders. It was really cooking for us, creatively. For DC, the numbers were going up. They wanted to give it a push, the Annual was a way to do it. The fact that the annual wasn’t some external story, but the culmination of the whole storyline, made it a real sale point, but we had to work our way through the minefield of how were we going to meet the deadlines? You know, it took me five weeks to pencil a monthly book. Do the math. And I had maintained a very good head of steam up to this point and we didn’t want to lose ground because there was one fill-in in that whole run. Rick had helped me with #21 and the Woodrue issues, but the whole Demon storyline, I did myself. Number 29 was 100% my work.

For about a month, I hired an assistant, Gary Johnson from Greenfield, Mass. A real nice young guy, Gary was in his mid-20s at the time, eager to break into comics. He had done a story for New Talent Showcase for Karen.

But I lost more time coaching Gary. Gary worked on backgrounds for the sequence with the house, pages five and six in #29, the “Love and Death” story.

I had to go over Gary’s work enough that it just wasn’t cost-effective for me, but we tried it and the turning point was when Gary, on one of his drives up to work with me, got in a rear-end collision accident. He was okay, but was liable because he hit the car in front of him. At that point, I just went, “I can’t be responsible for this,” and dropped having an assistant.

The tough thing penciling for Alfredo was that I had to over-pencil. I couldn’t assume Alfredo was going to do what John did over my work. All the shortcuts John and I had evolved as a team meant there was no point to my delineating every vine on Swamp Thing. John was going to draw whatever the f*ck John wanted to draw on Swamp Thing. [laughs] So my concern was getting the forms and the characterization correct and the line direction because line direction is very important. I mean it’s part of what leads the reader’s eye and whether I was doing it with the side of my pencil, or by actually drawing the lines, John knew what I was doing and would follow through. I could never assume Alfredo would figure that out. So this was the tightest penciled issue I ever did. And Alfredo still deviated from the pencils at some points.

CBC: Rick mentioned the one book he regrets not pushing to get credit on was Annual #2.

Steve: You know, the credit issue is a strange thing because John and I wanted Rick to get credit and it was almost the equivalent of the plotting issue. DC didn’t want to concede that anyone but Alan was coming up with the story ideas and they didn’t want to concede on the Annual that anyone but John and I worked on the book. It was crazy and we don’t know what that was about. I think that reflects, in part, what you pointed out on that cover, the fill-in issues, they were still putting our names on the books. It’s like the 157

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there: “Let’s convince Karen we need to do a love story, one issue of just Abby and Swamp Thing.” Alan loved it and ran with it, and he’s the one who brought in the hallucinogenic tubers, which was an idea that John had just sort of put out there and suddenly, Alan went, [imitates Alan] “This is what they do.” It became a Carlos Castenada-like way of their consummating their relationship. So if they couldn’t consummate physically — you know, female human being and vegetable — they could enter the Green together and it would become this orgasmic collision of souls, and we would portray it as a sexual act without getting explicit. The imagery all through that issue is not just influenced by our own various experiences and experiments with drugs and altered perceptions; it also came out of the whole underground comix era. When we got into it, I said, “We gotta go to Greg Irons’ Full Light. I want to get that trippy with the visuals, where it almost becomes an abstraction.”

John was 100% there, and Alan went, “Great! Let’s run with it,” and he wrote that beautiful script.

It was the toughest thing to sell to Karen, and it’s still a pisser that the f*cking ad pages had to sit where they sat, [chuckles] because I wanted to come up with a way of altering the readers’ perceptions and we joked about impregnating the paper with LSD, or something. [chuckles] Coming up with that double-page spread on pages 13 and 14, and then coming up with the way back to the normal orientation of the issue with page 19, a single page of literally having the reader turn the book, was enough of a hook. The pisser was that we really fought with them — and this was a production problem throughout the years with DC — because there was no flexibility as to where the ads would go. John and I were talking with them at that time, not out of ego, but just saying, “You know, if you ever reprint this work, the pagination isn’t going to work. You know, you’re going to have these dead pages where there was an ad and there’s no way, with our double-page spreads, to re-orient the material. I was thinking ahead because I had done all those jobs at Kubert School where we were cutting up old comic pages to fit new formats.

The attitude at the time is the book came out and it sold, so great and that’s that. But we were really arguing about the ads breaking up the flow of graphics. “Is there any way to put the ads in the back of the book? Or can we come up with a pagination where if it’s reprinted without the ads, the flow of the double-spreads still works?” We were told that we were crazy, it was none of our business, and to back off. And of course, it’s a persistent problem in every one of the trades, when they hit those story points and they’ve got to stick a pin-up there. That’s too bad because we easily could have gone back, John and I, and put together fresh material to carry through those transitions, but DC just never wanted to pursue that, for whatever reason.

CBC: In a field that, generally, a lot of the fans and artists don’t really know women, don’t understand them, but there seems to be a real in-touch-withfeminine side coming from you guys. Do you think that was an important aspect of the book? Is it true?

Steve: Oh, yes. I remember conversations with Alan, vividly conversations with John, even before Alan was on the book, about Abby and that we weren’t going to do the typical comic-book female character. You know, we weren’t going to do the cheesecake and pin-up sh*t. We just weren’t going to go there. Abby, to be a believable woman, when she got frightened, she was going to be sweaty and not in a way that was titillating. It wasn’t wet T-shirt time the way the new Texas Chainsaw Massacre has it. It was going to be she’s a real woman. When she’s exhausted, she looks tired; when she’s fearful, she looks wretched, and it was out of love for the character. It wasn’t out of, you know, “Hey, I’m love drawing that broad, making her look awful.” It was a very conscious decision on our part. For me, drawing Abby was really how I learned to draw female characters, was through the doing of Abby, and there’s no better school into it. And it really meant a lot to me when I met Eddie Campbell for the first time and I think he and his wife, Ann, were living in Bristol, England, at that time. We went and stayed with them for an overnight visit. This was our first trip to England, and Nancy and I and Michelle and John went out, all stayed with the Campbells in their apartment. And Eddie brought out #40, the werewolf issue.

CBC: The menstrual issue?

Steve: Right. He opened up to the pages where Swamp Thing is carrying the body of the housewife out. He started grilling me in the way that only Eddie can grill you. It was the way he phrases his questions, where he’s kind of setting you up to say something stupid because he’s testing. He wants to see if you’re really going to stick to your guns.

CBC: I know the experience. I stand next to him in San Diego for four days straight every year. [laughs] Steve: Eddie’s a sweetheart. I love Eddie. It was this panel here. I’m looking at page 22 of Swamp Thing #40. He said, [imitates Eddie] “Did you do that on purpose?” I said, “What?” He says, [imitates Eddie] “Drawing her legs shortComic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

All art and characters TM & © DC Comics.

team was selling it.

Rick did sequences in the Annual, but he didn’t do as much as he did on #50. That was one where we did share credit because Rick did half of that book. I’d say two-thirds to three-quarters of the Annual was mine.

The Annual had put us behind, you know, and there were other issues. [indicates reprint issue #33] Karen could see that we were not going to maintain pace going into #33. I think it was John and I that suggested Ron Randall. He had been a classmate at the Kubert School. Ron penciled the framing sequence around the House of Secrets #92 reprint. Alan and Karen came up with the idea of reprinting the original “Swamp Thing” story. Alan came up with a very eloquent framing device that made that work. It’s a key moment in post-modern DC horror comics because Alan had a take with Cain and Abel he wanted to work with, and that issue really set the framework for Vertigo. Neil Gaiman subsequently built a lot of his orientation to the DC character universe around was what Alan had done with Cain and Abel in #33.

CBC: By much playing them straight and taking them into the horror element, right?

Steve: Right, but also building on the Biblical reference that Cain and Abel and working overtly with that. That ended up being a key thing that wouldn’t have existed without the need for the fill-in issue. It was also that Karen knew, Alan knew, John knew, I knew that we really wanted to put everything we had into #34. We were exhausted after that whole run of “Down Amongst the Dead Men.” It was, “Karen, there’s no f*cking way we’re going to make that.” So, yeah, #33 was strategized and that was Alan and Karen’s solution, to do a reprint of the original House of Secrets story.

CBC: Did you guys do acid?

Steve: [Long pause] Uh, yeah. [laughter] CBC: Swamp Thing #34 is drenched in LSD. Steve: I had been experimenting with drugs during my years at Johnson State College. When I first met my first wife, Nancy — now Marlene — out in New Mexico, she had friends who showed up with pickup trucks full of peyote buttons. It was part of the culture I grew up in, Rick grew up in, and so on. The Kubert School was really the beginning of the down-end, of getting away from that lifestyle. But doing #34 was very much steeped in the whole counterculture Rick was actively part of. He was more of that generation than I, in a way. I had been a pretty straight-looking guy all through those years. You know, I was the short-haired one in Dover, the one who paid the rent. You know, real straight-looking. The tubers was an idea John had come up with at a party at Tim Truman’s house years before any of us were doing Swamp Thing. In fact, it may have been being bounced around when Tim told us he was going to be working on the series. I’m pretty sure that it was that early in the run. Tim and Beth Truman were living on Lake Apatcom, and they were the first of the Kubert School collective to be out of Dover and they had a really nice place they were renting on Lake Apatcom, around the same neighborhood Tom Yeates ended up moving to. Tim and Beth were like a godsend to us because they were married, real down-to-earth people, and when they had a party, Tim would break out guitars and it pulled us out of that whole monk-like environment we had at the Kubert School. You know, the sequestered life, the Benedictines of comics. During one of those parties, John, Rick, Tim and I were sitting at the kitchen table and then we moved out onto the back porch, and John was just coming up with and expressing all these insane ideas he had for Swamp Thing. You know, [imitates John, excited] “They should be doing it like this!” One of his ideas were the potatoes. [imitates John, excited] “He could have these potatoes going off that you can eat.” Somewhere in that exchange with Rick and John was, [excited] “Yeah, they’re hallucinogenic!” [laughs] It was a joke amongst us. Then Tom got Swamp Thing, and Len shot down the idea of the real vegetative Swamp Thing that was embodied in John’s artwork.

Once we were working on the book, once Alan was involved, we could tell that Alan was… umm… an enlightened guy. I could tell from reading V and Marvelman that [chuckles] this guy had done his share of drugs, too, and the tubers story was on our list of ideas. John sent Alan a letter with some of his concepts and I’ve still got Alan’s letter somewhere, where he says, [imitates Alan] “Hallucinogenic tubers? Why, that’s positively diseased!” [laughter] But we weren’t going to let go of it. Somewhere along the line, it evolved into this would-be consummation between Abby and Swamp Thing. The concept for #34 originally came from me on a postcard where we were working on “Down Amongst the Dead Men.” I just wrote Alan and said, “You know, I’m not buying this, that these two people that are in love are constantly fighting monsters and going through all this sh*t. If we don’t give them one issue where we show the readers there’s a blissful aspect of their existence, we’re missing the boat.” I put the concept out

All art and characters TM & © DC Comics.

er and stubbier?” I said, “Yeah, that’s how most women are built, really. It’s not the fashion model that’s drawn in the ads for the paper where it’s these insane, elongated figures.” He went, [imitates Eddie] “I knew you meant to do it. That’s excellent.” [laughs] It was really, to us, a conscious decision that we were not going to use our female characters as a point of exploitation, but we were going to be explorative, really going to try to capture and express a complete world view through our characters, that the male and the female characters, were all of equal import, that they were all human beings, even in this insane, f*cked up monster film universe [laughs] that we were working with.

CBC: Was this story successful?

Steve: Well, it got us razzed publicly by Jim Shooter. Yes, that was a very successful… and that was probably the last good issue of Swamp Thing I ever worked on, honestly.

CBC: What was it with the knives?

Steve: Oh, that was f*cking stupid. Right from the point of the script, I said, “Alan, no supermarket display is going to have all the knives with the blades pointing out.” [laughter] CBC: He was a bit chagrined when I talked to him.

Steve: Yeah, that was deus ex machina. It’s like, come on! That was one of the concepts that came out of our exchange of ideas.

I had proposed to John Workman at Heavy Metal to do a faux article on a fake science-fiction writer called Curtis Slarch, a name I’d made up. My buddy, Rick Grimes, from Kubert School, and I had brainstormed this whole fake history of this writer, and I had done all these fake book covers, fake ads for the Pan Science Fiction Book Club (which was going to be our take on the Science Fiction Book Club). The idea was that Curtis Slarch was this unknown, unloved, forgotten science-fiction cult writer and one of his books was called Luneal Bridge, and I did a cover for it, which was a shot of a wolf running through a river of blood. In the foreground was this green alien with a black form-fitting costume on, and it was a woman, and her head was just like a green knob with a huge pair of red lips in the middle of it. And the concept of Luneal Bridge was that this female alien was in sync with a woman Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

on planet Earth in such a way that when she had her period on her planet, the Earth woman would turn into a werewolf. It was this linking of menstrual cycle with lycanthropy. There had never been a short story or a movie or a comic tying those two together. My inspiration was Some of Your Blood, a fantastic Theodore Sturgeon novel about the retarded guy in the military.

He’s a vampire, but he’s addicted to the menstrual blood of this woman he falls in love with. It’s a great novel and he wrote this in the ’50s. This was real taboo-busting stuff. So that was one idea I had suggested to Alan and he ran with it, and that’s what became “The Curse,” which he made it into a real feminist tract.

You and I were talking earlier, off the record, about how you see Alan in some ways as a very proper and conservative British gentleman. At the time, he was very much tied up with political activism, feminism, and that was his wife, Phyllis, in part, and their circle of friends. And that issue was really an expression of that. And it worked in my life because my wife at the time, Nancy, was a very passionate feminist. And I guess that was us doing our penances as slime-bucket male penis-carriers. [laughs] And it was a great issue except for that knife display. That was like incredibly stupid, deus ex machina in spades.

CBC: “The Nukeface Papers”?

Steve: Nukeface was a character John had come up with years before when Tom Yeates, Rick Veitch, John, and I were sharing that house in Dover, New Jersey. John had done this drawing of just like this guy whose eyes, nose and mouth looked like they’d been burned out with a cigarette and he labeled it “Nukeface.” We asked, “John, what’s this? This is great.” He said, “I think it’s just this wino who drinks toxic waste.” So we included that in our list of story ideas, and Alan loved it and ran with it. What ended up being the two-part “Nukeface Papers,” #35 and 36, in Alan’s original scheme would have been #29 and 30. He fully scripted #29 as “Nukeface Papers, Part One” so I’d have to go back and look at the scripts, which I have kept, but I’m curious now whether Alan retyped, rewrote, and refined it for what we drew for 35. An interesting thing was that I was using all these newspapers in the artwork, which was Alan’s conceit. It was called “The Nukeface Papers” for 159

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ing for this corporate entity of DC and that they, DC Comics, was the creator of the property. That’s the legal conceit of work-for-hire.

At the time — and it took a while to get my head around that — there were a number of factors and one of them was John and I were really getting to know Dave Sim over this period. Dave knew what the life of a freelancer was because of his friendship with Gene Day, and Gene was one of the great tragedies of comics. Gene wanted to work for Marvel with every fiber of his being, got to work for Marvel, and ended up dying as a result of just allowing himself to be siphoned away. You know, made all of his deadlines, got everything done, but lived on coffee and cigarettes until physically, he was incapable of living any more. One time in particular, when Rick Veitch and myself spent a number of hours with Dave at some convention we were at, Dave just spilled the whole story of Gene Day. What his friendship was with Gene, how important their friendship was, what Gene meant to Dave, and how, in Dave’s view, Marvel killed Gene Day; and that he, Dave, was living for the day that he could dance on the grave of Marvel. Dave really radicalized me over time. What DC did during this period, the event that I won’t discuss, definitely pushed me into the wake-up call of realizing that Dave Sim was right.

Dave has given some very eloquent testimonials, spoken at various gatherings, a lot of that material has been transcribed and written down and published in Cerebus, and that is a body of work that should be collected and studied, because he is right. By and large, the relationship between the creative people and the publishers can be a very dangerous one. Things changed a lot in the wake of what happened to us, and the fights that my generation fought at places like DC. The people who really scored were the bigger names, people like Frank Miller. Frank really broke ground with his Ronin and Dark Knight contracts. The fact is that when Alan walked away from DC, they lost him forever. I mean he really walked. He wasn’t coming back. (It’s very telling to me about what Machiavellian maneuvers had to go on for the ABC line to end up at DC, but I won’t even get into that, because that’s a separate conversation for a separate venue.)

Creators like Neil Gaiman and Grant Morrison and Garth Ennis benefited from the real hard-fought battles that were fought. And, in my small way, I was involved in a number of those battles. Around the time of Swamp Thing #35, as we’re getting up to #40, my personal conflicts with DC over a legal matter came to a head, and my political reorientation to the whole nature of making a living as a freelancer was affected a great deal by my friendship with Dave Sim. It wasn’t like was Dave was ranting at me. It was that DC would prove Dave’s points almost every time.

John Totleben went every year to Mid-Ohio Con, a fundraiser for the American Cancer Society. We would donate art to the auction, do sketches, and it was a great communal event. It was a lot of fun. Dave was at Mid-Ohio where we first met him, and Dave showed up one day at our hotel with a limo and said, “Boys, get in.” And I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t even know that you weren’t supposed to open the door yourself when you got to where you were going, that you’re supposed to wait until the guy comes around.

You know, Dave’s whole thing was, “Guys, this is how the executives at the company you work for travel. [Jon laughs] Get a taste of it.”

There’s something wrong when the pyramid is reversed.

There’s something wrong when you’re the guys shelling out for taxicab fare or hitchhiking to conventions and staying three and four in a room, all the while the publishers are coming here in the limos and getting Presidential suites.

Dave’s whole orientation was to open our eyes to what the power dynamic was, what the reverse pyramid was, as he put it, where the whole power structure was built on the back of the freelancers, and we got a real taste of that with the success of Swamp Thing, you know? We got a glimpse that suddenly made sense to us.

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

The Comics Journal © Fantagraphics, Inc.

Steve [Bissette] got caught up in tons of company bullsh*t which I think kind of colluded to keep him from working and concentrating on the book.

He was feeling really bad at the time… There was one incident… I don’t think he’s even allowed to speak of it because he had to sign some crazy non-disclosure form — but I can talk can talk about it. He worked for DC for a year and they were giving him miserable wages, like $63 a page for this incredibly beautiful book that was making a name for them, and he’s trying to get the measly insurance policy from DC that DC supposedly allows all the freelancers to buy into.

But they just keep putting it off, putting it off… Then his kid got spinal meningitis and it was devastating.

All of a sudden, there’s a humongous hospital bill and DC is disavowing all knowledge of it. It was just a huge mess. Finally, they settled and covered it but he had to sign some sort of form never to talk about it — your typical business move.

a reason. I was clipping all of these articles out of the local papers.

At one point, during working on part two of “Nukeface,” I was driving down the Mohawk Trail into Greenfield, Mass., coming from Jacksonville, Vermont, and Coltrane, Massachusetts, and as you come down the hill, you’re overlooking Greenfield. As I’m driving down — and I had some newspapers I’d bought that day on that trip to paste into the original art on “Nukeface” — as I’m coming down the hill, I see this haze over Greenfield, and can see that it looks like it’s moving over the town. I drive into Greenfield and I’ve got to stop and do some errands at different stores — getting groceries, hitting the comic shop, pick up art supplies — and as I go into each store, I’m piecing together with what nervous people are saying who work in the stores. By the third store, they’ve all got their radios on, which reports there’s been a train accident outside of Greenfield. The train has derailed, is on fire, and they don’t know what’s in the car, and the cloud of smoke is coming over Greenfield, and they’re starting to evacuate sections of town.

So I’m like working on “The Nukeface Papers” and ended up fleeing Greenfield. You know, I left my last errand undone, headed up the hill with the radio tuned to local news and, sure enough, I’m pulling over and looking back and can see this cloud moving over the town from where the fire is was… It turned out that the train car contained some sort of chemical they were transporting and had caught fire, so this toxic substance was burning. So that really drove the whole thing home for me. It was, “Holy sh*t!” It suddenly wasn’t this quaint horror story idea based on one of John’s wacky concepts. This was hitting pretty close to home. I also remember reading just some horrific news stories at that time, though the one that really sticks with me (and I think it’s part of the clippings on the cover or one of the pages) was out of The New York Times about a guy who had been given a job as a janitor to climb down into a tank and wash it out with water, to prepare it for something new. And he fell over, unconscious, and by the time they could get him out of there, his body had actually begun to dissolve and his organs had melted from the chemical reaction of the water with whatever the substance was that was left lining the sides of this tank, so there was wicked sh*t going on.

“Nukeface,” in a way, was the beginning of the end, because, suddenly, life was about what the stories were about, like it stopped being this horror comic that we were working on. It was starting to become an activist comic in a way. Do you know what I mean? I didn’t feel it at the time, but when I look back, that’s where we started to either take ourselves seriously or lose the real organic rush that had carried us up to that point in the mid–#30s. Once Alan plotted “American Gothic,” a brilliant idea at the time, where he used John Constantine, this new character, leading Swamp Thing from place to place, and it would give Alan and John and I a way to do all our favorite stories. It was really a contemporary spin on exactly what Len and Bernie had done back in the ’70s. You know, it suddenly turned into Kolchak, Environmentalist. [Jon laughs] And also, during this time, was my, around the time of #35 or 36, you can see I was leaving the issues but it wasn’t out of not being able to make deadlines, per se.

It was because I was in a real crisis point with DC over a family-related issue that really impacted on me and my kids, and I was really having qualms about even working with the company at that point. And that only got worse and you can see it in the spread of issues.

CBC: Can you discuss it?

Steve: No. Like I say, I signed a non-disclosure agreement, and I’ll leave it at that. But that was what had me ultimately walk away from the series. I just couldn’t stomach working with the company any longer. Part of it was the awakening to what “work-for-hire” really meant, what the real impact of that was… that all of the work the three of us had done meant, in legal terms, that Alan was not the writer, I was not the penciler, John was not the inker, but pairs of hands slav-

We all went to New York City to meet Alan and Phyllis for the first time.

There’s Dave Gibbons, delivering the first pages of Watchmen, Alan and Phyllis are put up in one of the best hotels in New York City, and Dave ends up in a dive on 42nd Street where his room is broken into because he’s the artist [laughs] and Watchmen is just in the early stages. It was hard to ignore the favoritism going on, and it was getting harder to ignore it any longer.

If I was called in to the Marvel office, Marvel footed the bill. If I brought in receipts for the train ticket and cab fare, I was reimbursed. But when DC called John and I in, we had to pay for travel. It took me longer to wake up to it because of the fun I was experiencing doing the work, the fun of doing the comics. So had it not been for people like Dave saying, “Listen, open up your eyes to what’s going on here!” I would have remained blissfully ignorant.

I bring all that up, Jon, because that’s part of what also soured my passion of staying with the book. By the time we got to “American Gothic,” where it was all schematically laid out for the next 10 issues where we were going and what was going to be in what issue, the ride was over. It was that I knew 12 months down the road where we were going so there was no fun to it any longer. I remember the metaphor John used, and John’s great with this stuff. He says, “You know, we put the car on the road and now they want us to ride in the backseat.” [laughs] And it was true. It wasn’t a power thing.

That wasn’t what it was about. It was that everything the book had become was through our energy and drive and concepts; and suddenly, there was this road map and we were part of the machine. It just wasn’t as fun any more, but the personal side cannot be downplayed and I take full responsibility, and always have, for my issues of deadlines, and so on, but it’s still tough to hear some of the stuff said at DC. It’s pretty easy to ignore their culpability in a lot of events that went on, but that’s what they did.

CBC: Is it that the Gene Days — the creators, artists and writers — who generally tend to love and be passionate about what they’re doing, are drained of life by the companies, so the publishers can ride around in limos?

Steve: Yes, if you let them. Wally Wood killed himself and I just made a decision that I’m not going to end up like that. I don’t want to end up being this lonely, embittered cartoonist with no family and no friends, who’s just going to blow his brains out. I won’t go there. By that time, I also had two kids — a family — and that was more important than any f*cking thing that was going to happen in this comic book.

When Rick went through his crisis at DC over #88, one of the things DC did was pull to his health insurance right at the point when Cindy was giving birth to Kirby. For whatever reason, DC wasn’t able to do it and that’s low… I mean that’s just low. That’s evil. That’s evil sh*t, vindictive, petty, nasty, I-willf*ck-with-your-life sh*t, and that’s how the publishers can be, you know?

That’s really how it gets.

During this entire time on Swamp Thing, doing all this work, so many times DC presented obstacles. Karen’s job as editor — our “paid friend” as she once called it — was to try to alleviate or lessen the obstacles that were being thrown in our path by the company, which is ridiculous, you know? It’s part of what I did with [self-published horror comics anthology] Taboo as an editor and publisher and then co-publisher. I saw it as my job to never place obstacles in the path of creators, and putting their needs even before my family at times to make sure, for instance, Eddie and Alan had the check they needed to keep working on From Hell. That was absolutely crucial to me, and it paid off in a lot of relationships. You know, Jeff Nicolson, to this day, is one of the creators that made Taboo what it was and was probably the most pleasurable relationship I had as an editor-publisher with a creator because Jeff, as a self-publisher, appreciated and understood the opportunity that was presented to him and ran with it. I mean he had completed the entire Through the Habitrails before everything fell apart at Tundra. And he benefited from that process because he was smart enough to just run with the ball. And I had no reason to hinder Jeff on what he was doing. He’s send me roughs, I’d go, “Jeff, this is great.” If he asked for input, I gave it. If he didn’t, I left him alone. And, at the end of the day, all that mattered to me was what was the page count so I could lay the issue out. And it wasn’t out of disinterest on my part, or dispassion, it was out of leave-them-the-f*ck-alone. Here’s a guy who knows what he’s doing, has a vision, and my only job is to make sure the $100 a page is in his hand when it’s supposed to be in his hand, and I should present no obstacles to Jeff completing the page, whereas companies like DC seem to take pleasure in presenting obstacles many times. I was enough of an obstacle myself. I didn’t need more people throwing obstacles in the way, you know?

CBC: [Indicates #38] This is one of the scariest comics I’ve ever read.

Steve: This was a direct sequel to one of Marty Pasko’s issues with the water vampires. This whole life cycle was something John, Alan, and I brainstormed. It was an adaptation of the physiology that Richard Matheson Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

for the vampires in I Am Legend. Alan seems to retain all these bizarre aspects of everything he’s ever read, this was the issue I got punished on, #38.

I started penciling, really starting to get dispirited about working with DC, and I had penciled the first three or four pages and Karen just took the issue away and said, “Steve, we’re going to have Stan Woch do it. You’re out. You start working on #39.”

CBC: So you still have the pages that didn’t see print?

Steve: I’ve got pencils, yes. No, it never saw print. Stan did a beautiful job and I just ran with it. I was just so dispirited at that point, I just went, “Okay, no problem.” I got to draw the second half of the issue, which was a lot of fun, and I did do the covers. I did not pull my marbles and run, but it was part of the process of this not working for me. But I loved doing #39, that was fun, and #40, the werewolf issue, and then we got into the voodoo story, which was my second gig with Alfredo Alcala. Alfredo actually did a better job than perhaps John would have done in that because he really shines doing architecture, and John was like me with architecture. He just wasn’t into it. So I boned up, got some great photo reference books I picked up in Louisiana, and just went right to town with the pencils, and Alfredo did a good job. By then, we had already done an issue together, so I knew how he would alter my Swamp Thing to fit his orientation, so I pushed my pencils even further. I did so because if he toned it down, it was still closer to what John and I were doing. Then came the serial killer story. I didn’t do that one and this is where I gave up, was this issue. Ron Randall ended up penciling about half of this book and this is just where it was just, “Karen, I’m done. I’m not going to do this any more.”

CBC: So was the plan to leave?

Steve: Yeah. This was my last solo issue.

CBC: You were a part of #50?

Steve: Yes, I was part of #50, and then I started writing issues. I did my first fill-in when Rick was on the book. I did the Patchwork Man story. I stayed on doing covers. That cover I didn’t do because I had scripted it and the idea was John did that cover with Bill Sienkiewicz. You know, this is the other thing that killed it for me, was this Crisis [of Infinite Earths] bullsh*t. [laughs] This was my last full issue as artist alone — #46 — and that was because of Crisis. I just went, “This is bullsh*t.” Alan was building up this great head of steam with “American Gothic,” and we suddenly had to integrate all this Crisis crap into it, and I thought, “Okay, this is so far afield from what we were doing and where I think I should be going.” So #64, I did a lot on this one. This was fun. It was fun going back. You can go home again sometimes and this was one instance. Alan was way behind at this point so a lot of this book was done by phone calls with Alan, getting the plot, sitting down and penciling, and then the script was done after, which is what accounts for some of the clumsy placement of captions, with page 18 being the real culprit. You don’t know where to read next on this page and I used to pride myself on placing panels, captions and balloons, so that there was one way to read a book, and this one, I didn’t have much control over that. But it was fun doing the whole sequence of prehistoric Swamp Thing and tracing the archetype back to the Age of Fishes and the Precambrian Era, and so on. And that, later, was a springboard for a Swamp Thing mini-series concept that I sent to DC/ Vertigo by invitation of [Vertigo editor] Alex Alonzo in 1998. I had come up with a whole mini-series of Swamp Thing, four issues that would be the elements; earth, wind, fire, and water, and it would be the prehistoric lifespan of Swamp Thing, and I was going to write and pencil it, but I never heard from them. That was a real rift. I finally posted it on my website on the comicon. com boards and only then did I get calls! They were pissed and I said, “I don’t hear from you guys for six, seven months, put it on my website and only then I hear from you? Come on!”

I almost lost the assignment to do a Neil Gaiman story, my last DC story, for the Midnight Days anthology because I posted on April Fool’s Day, 1999, this rant that I had sold Tyrant to DC Comics. I wrote that I’d cut this sweetheart deal with Paul Levitz and that we were making sure that only writers and artists with British accents were going to be doing the book, [laughs] and how it was a great deal, and that my buddy [Diamond Distribution mogul] Steve Geppi was taking great care of me now. And it was funny, but it was really venomous, but I only had it up for the day, 24 hours. DC read it and was pissed. So that held up negotiations on my little 10-page story for literally two months.

CBC: You are just a bad boy.

Steve: I’m just a bad boy.

Pages 156 & 157: Starting in 2009, DC began issuing the Alan Moore-written Swamp Thing run in a series of hardbound collections. The last (and sixth) volume saw print in 2011.

Page 159: The terrifying “Say Uncle” spread by SRB & JTT, Swamp Thing #29 [Oct. ’84].

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Roarin’ Rick’s Swamp Sojourn Rick Veitch recalls the times, often good, sometimes rough, while on Swamp Thing Conducted by JON B. COOKE [By the time he graduated the Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art in the late ’70s, Richard Veitch thought the future of comics lay outside the mainstream and thus forged ahead finding alternative venues, such as Heavy Metal. Rick had already produced outré work as a teenager, collaborating with his brother, writer Tom Veitch, on Two-Fisted Zombies, a horror underground that appeared in 1973. But through association with Kubert School alumni, the creator, later known for Brat Pack and Roarin’ Rick’s Rare Bit Fiends, and a string of Alan Moore collaborations, was pulled into DC’s orbit when a buddy scored the art gig on a resurrected comic series.

This interview was conducted on Nov. 8, 2003, in Rick’s Vermont studio, and was transcribed by Brian K. Morris. — Y.E.] Comic Book Creator: Did you ever read Theodore Sturgeon’s “It”?

Rick: I have read “It,” though I can’t say it made a huge impression on me. But Bernie and Len’s Swamp Thing definitely. I was probably 19 when that series first came out.

CBC: Do you remember the first short story in House of Secrets #92?

Rick: I missed it in House of Secrets, but I started buying Swamp Thing from issue #1, though I didn’t really collect comics. I just bought and read them to study them. But Swamp Thing was a totally important book, something worth talking about. As much as Alan, Steve and John’s version blew comics wide open, Bernie and Len’s Swamp Thing had a similar effect, especially in terms of DC Comics because most of us grew up digging what Marvel was doing, looking at DC as old-fashioned, with these older guys, just doing the same thing over and over and over again.

But Swamp Thing was a signal that the young guys were being allowed to come through to do things slightly different. So Swamp Thing comic affected

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me in that sense. I really wanted to read it as a 19-year-old, where I can’t say that about the other DC titles. You know, of all the DC line at the time, I was only keeping track of Jack Kirby’s Fourth World, The Shadow, and what Russ Heath was doing in Our Army at War (just for the art style). But both The Shadow and Swamp Thing were an indication that things were opening up at DC. Now, by the time we enrolled in the Kubert School, the word was, “It’s over in comics,” and we were getting this from all the teachers, including Joe. CBC: Were horror comics a special genre for you?

Rick: Not really. I like using horror in context of other things, but I’m not like Steve, who embraces horror as the genre. He studies it and wants to know all of its aspects, even going as far as to watch all of the horribly bad horror movies. You know, I avoid that stuff, but I like to use horror within a regular comic. There’s usually a horror element in just about any super-hero thing I do.

CBC: What was the first project you and Steve worked on that was seen by the public?

Rick: We were doing the back-up stories in Sgt. Rock. Prior to that, I probably did 20 short stories. I was just drawing like a maniac all the time. [laughs] CBC: Did you really hit it off with Steve from the beginning?

Rick: Yes! Bissette is a very friendly guy, as you know. He’s a complete gentleman, filled with charisma, courtliness, and everybody loves him. When I first met him, it was like, “Hey, I’ve finally found my long-lost friend, Bissette!” [laughter] It was as if I’d known him my entire life somehow.

Almost immediately, we went beyond this close friendship and took it beyond that into creativity. Bissette was the first person with whom I had a creative relationship where you… Jon, it’s just impossible to describe. It’s like two musicians in sync and we would just click on everything. We used to carry around paper in our pockets and, wherever we were, we’d pull ’em out and we’d be drawing, making gags and sketches, and just thinking up stupid things. There was this constant flow of creativity that was unstoppable and it was giddy and really cool; very, very cool, though that level became more difficult to maintain as we took on commercial work.

The demands of operating in a commercial environment, and our two different personalities, put pressure on our collaboration, something with which we struggle today. But some of the most fun I’ve ever had — outside of bed — was to be in a room with Bissette jamming on comics. But, y’see, the trick is to get him into the room and set his ass in a chair and force a pencil into his hand. [laughs] But once we get it going, it’s like making music, it’s as if the whole room starts to lift up, and we’re turning out pages, and it’s a terrific, terrific feeling, one I’ve never shared with anyone else in my life.

Not with my brother, Tom, with whom I collaborated with quite a bit, or the few other creative partnerships I’ve had in my life (such as Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman)… not with that same intensity.

Steve and I shared a house together when we were attending the Kubert School, and today he lives right down the road from me, here in Vermont, so we’re still very close.

CBC: Did you look at Steve like an equal?

Rick: Oh, he’s a better. Bissette is the most talented human being I have ever met. And this is no faint praise because

Rick Veitch portrait © Kendall Whitehouse. Swamp Thing TM & © DC Comics.

The Muck-Monster Makers I’ve worked with a number of extremely talented people, some who I would call geniuses, but Steve has got it all. He can write, he can draw, he can ink, he can research, he can do production… Bissette can do everything and do it to a degree most people don’t even think is humanly possible.

His drawing style is completely “user-friendly,” in the sense that when I watch people look at Bissette’s work for the first time, there’s always the same effect when they see it: They immediately put a knowing smile on their face and they’re just like “Yeah!

That’s cool!” There’s something so natural in the talent he possesses.

Even before he arrived at the Kubert School, he had it. Then, on top of that, he had researched film on a really deep level — this was before there were VCRs, mind you, when only 35 mm was available — and this guy researched every horror film there ever was, and watched The Good, The Bad and The Ugly 85 times… and I’m not exaggerating! So he understood how stories are structured in a way that I didn’t.

I was coming into comics, putting down on paper what I was feeling at the moment, while Steve understood about how to structure stories, how to go it from point A to point B to point C to point D, and then pull the rug out from under you at the end, in the same way many great filmmakers did. So I was learning a lot.

Steve is well-known for his horror, but he’s also a great funny cartoonist and a side to him that has never yet been shown to the public that I hope will be revealed to everyone. He’s as much Americana as is Mark Twain. He’s got this natural folksy touch and he’s a Samuel Clemens kind of author which I know he could bring to comics. I’d love a book of Bissette’s Americana stories, just making up stories about Mr. Frog meeting Old Man Fox. [Jon laughs] All that kind of stuff.

Listen, I was there the first time he ever picked up a brush — brush-&-ink is the hardest tool a cartoonist ever has to work with, but Bissette had it working in about 10 minutes! I swear to God! He picked it up, started doing it, and he created this slashing style right there in front of me, the beginnings of the “mad-slash” art he developed that we all know so well today. The work was much more labored than perfect in the beginning, but it was complete and it was ready to sell in New York if he’d wanted. Steve Bissette is that talented.

CBC: Joe Kubert was kind of a straight-laced guy. Did he seem bothered that you guys were hippies?

Rick: Yes, a little. Joe told us to straighten-out but recognized it as a phase we were going through, a phase every young person was going through in those years. His hope for us was that we would go straight and focus on the work.

Steve, John, Tom [Yeates] and I rented a house when we got out of Kubert School and somebody dubbed it “The Flying Dutch Masters Studios.” That was our base of operations. That’s where we really started all the stuff, going into New York, sharing jobs, and everything.

Around that time, I met Cindy, who worked at the local art store.

CBC: Was the Flying Dutch Masters Studios still going on when Tom got The Saga of Swamp Thing gig?

Rick: The Dover house had already decided to break up. Tom and I, along with our respective girlfriends, moved to a house up on Lake Hoppatcong.

You know, as we now had our girls with us, it was going to be different. [laughs] At that point, Tom got the Swamp Thing assignment. In fact, the way I heard it, [DC Comics executive] Paul Levitz had said the only way DC would start Swamp Thing up again was if Tom Yeates would draw it. Paul just saw something in Yeates’ style he thought perfect for Swamp Thing.

Tom was the first of us to become a professional cartoonist with a monthly grind and so he was chained to the board all day. He was really good at it — and very good about it — and did a great job. When he needed help, Bissette and I would show up, or Totleben would come in, and we’d make $50 assisting him by doing backgrounds, breakdown pages, and, you know, churn out a whole bunch of pages to give the guy a break, and get the book moving forward. So that was my first hands-on experience with Swamp Thing — doing backgrounds and secondary characters — for Tom. CBC: Did you get any credit?

Rick: No, we were just helping each other out. We had a good e’spirit de corps about working together: One for all, and all for one… that kind of thing.

CBC: Was it cool to work on Swamp Thing?

Rick: I can’t say I was really that attracted to the character, and I didn’t see much of a future in those kind of comics. You know, I was already working for Epic, doing fully-painted pages, with every page taking me a week to do, so I was being more inspired by what I had seen in European comics, at that time. I was hoping the future was in more high-end production, like painting and four-color process printing. But, as it turned out, there really wasn’t a discernible future in that type of work. I have to credit Alan Moore, Steve, and John’s Swamp Thing as being one of the things that kicked mainstream comics back into more high-end formats.

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Previous page: At top, in a panel detail from the penultimate Alan Moore-scripted issue of Swamp Thing, the Swamp God returns to his mate after an interstellar vacation. From the last page of #63 [Aug. ’87]. Pencils by Rick Veitch and inks by Alfredo Alcala. Bottom is the Kubie gang. From left, giving the salute is Rick Veitch, then Thomas Yeates, John Totleben, and Stephen R. Bissette. Undated photo courtesy of Thomas. This page: Inset left is a pic of Rick Veitch taken by Kendall Whitehouse at the 2014 Boston Comic Con. Below is a panel detail from the Metron issue of Swamp Thing, #62 [July ’87], guest-written by Rick. Art by R.V. and Alfredo Alcala.

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Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

The Wall Street Journal © News Corp. Swamp Thing TM & © DC Comics.

Above: Corporate intrigue was likely behind DC Comics’ decision to yank Rick Veitch’s time-traveling Swamp Thing tale, where our fave muck-monster meets Jesus of Nazareth; and what better place to stoke fires business-wise than on the front page of The Wall Street Journal [June 6, ’89], eh?

Disgusted and embittered over the wretched affair, Rick Veitch quit the House of Superman.

So Tom and I lived together on Lake Hoppatcong, and the call would just go out from Tom, every once in a while, that he was in a jam, and needed help. Because I was living there, I would usually be part of the “Come Help” guys and, you know, you might make $50 in an evening, which was great. We were young artists and would help the buddy out.

When Tom got ready to leave the book, Steve and John decided to pick up the reins and they got the assignment, but I thought it was a mistake. Much as I realized that John and Steve would be a great pairing of talent — John’s inks over Steve’s storytelling — I just didn’t see a future in regular mainstream comics, at that point. With the scripts they were receiving, it just seemed to be the same old same old.

But I was of an age when Swamp Thing wasn’t aimed at me; it was aimed at 16-year-olds.

CBC: You had seen Warrior magazine?

Rick: Yes, I did read Alan’s work in Warrior and I’d also seen what he’d done in 2000 A.D., as well, so Alan had already made an impact on me. I knew he was doing great stuff and when the word came that he was taking over Swamp Thing, I did get really excited. Then Steve brought Alan’s script for “The Anatomy Lesson,” and I got to read

it. The impact was just amazing. I realized, “Everything’s changed now. This is a whole new way of thinking about comic-book writing. The way he interacts with artists, you know, this is how he got the effect with “Miracleman.” You know, I thought it was like two guys in a room, [chuckles] perfectly in sync. But what it really was, was a masterful writer, even though he was a young guy, who has figured out how to motivate an artist, and to get into the artist’s head, and to elicit the artistry he wants on that page.

CBC: Before pen was put to paper, did Steve indicate that he felt this was a special script?

Rick: He did. Steve and I talked about that first one and his reaction was, “Whoa! This is incredible!” But Steve got creatively blocked by it too. He and I were on the phone daily and I could tell by the tone of his voice he was struggling with the job. The month was running out so I went over to give him a hand. He had the first page almost penciled, but that was pretty much it. That first day we completed seven more pages. I took a couple more pages home then Steve got rolling a bit and got a lot of the middle of the book in shape. I returned late in the month and we finished the last eight pages of “Anatomy Lesson” together. I didn’t receive payment or credit, although Steve cut me in on the royalties for that issue in the collected books. I played a similar anonymous role on a number of issues that credit Steve as penciler. Steve, obviously, very much loves the horror genre, and early on, he and John wanted to make horror more powerful than it was currently. They wanted to break it open like they had seen in the undergrounds, and here, in this script, Alan was doing just that. He was able to structure it in a way for it to pass muster at a place like DC, but still conveyed a visceral hit of horror.

CBC: What do you mean, “visceral hit of horror”?

Rick: Just to bring horror comics to a new visceral level of creepiness, which I think Stephen King had done in bits and pieces in prose fiction, but it was almost like King was holding back a little where Clive Barker, for instance, was going in there deeper and creepier than King. Alan, I think, was also capable of that. Steve and John had, from the very beginning, stated to me that their goal was to reinvigorate horror as a comic book genre. They wanted it to come back and that was why they were taking over Swamp Thing.

CBC: I’d argue that there have been very few truly good writers in mainstream American comic books, never mind great.

Rick: Well, you and I were discussing earlier about who really writes brilliant comics. Alan and Neil Gaiman, in terms of genre material, are as probably as good as its gets right now. I don’t mean to diss what Dan Clowes and those guys do, but they’re following a different track completely, which I totally love. But, in terms of the mainstream genre stuff, Alan and Neil probably did it better than anybody, and I think Alan has the very perceptive ability to understand what makes people tick and to apply that to his character creation. He can motivate the collaborative artist.

CBC: Would you say that he has heart?

Rick: I think it has to do with the feeling and the function, but I also think it’s just a great mind at work.

CBC: And perhaps by not being pretentious or limiting himself to higher art, but being open to all culture, high- and lowbrow?

Rick: You got it. Obviously, I can’t speak for him, but my sense is that Alan approaches the super-hero genre in the same way I did and Steve did, where we use the genre as a template to express the deepest levels of ourselves. And, yes, it can be read simply as genre entertainment. But, if one wants to, it can also be read as art, as artists expressing themselves about things that they don’t even have words for but a purity to their feeling at their deepest level in the same way that a man makes a painting and we make a comic with a swamp monster running around. [laughter] CBC: Simultaneous with your two Miracleman issues, were you also doing the Swamp Thing gig full-time?

Art © Rick Veitch. Swamp Thing TM & © DC Comics.

Rick: Yes. I started on #51 as a regular penciler and, yeah, it was a full-time job. Working with Alan was a gas, though I think he was running out of steam a little bit on Swamp Thing because they’d kicked ass so incredibly the first couple of years. The best part of that time, when he didn’t have fresh ideas, was when he would call and we would talk [chuckles], and that was just a blast. We’d just go on for hours about Mort Weisinger’s Superman! And from out of those conversations, he would still somehow pull these kernels of a story together.

There were very few stories that I actually suggested.

The one that sticks out in my mind was “My Blue Heaven” where Alan had Swamp Thing lost in space. I remember him calling me, “Rick, I don’t have a goddamned idea what to do.” I said, “Well, what if Swamp Thing lands on an empty planet and populates it?” Of course, from that, he just did this amazing meditation on self and loneliness and gloom.

(They recolored it for the collected edition, and it came out a million times better. Tatjana Wood redid the whole job. She’s a terrific colorist.)

CBC: What was Alan’s impact with Swamp Thing?

Rick: Alan’s re-invention of Swamp Thing came right out of the blue. It knocked everybody dead, kicked DC in the ass, and jump-started a whole new approach to writing comics.

You know, I betcha half those people working for DC today wouldn’t have jobs now if it wasn’t for “The Anatomy Lesson,” and I’m not talking about writers. It got the company realizing how important the direct sales market was. And, of course, it enabled Alan to reinvigorate their whole line as well as inspire a whole other group of people to do the same thing, so I think Swamp Thing is one of their key books of the ’80s.

CBC: After the second Swamp Thing Annual, you’re simultaneously doing The One mini-series.

Rick: I was penciling two books a month, at that point. I could pencil two pages a day. I just bought this house with the money I made from The One. [looking at ST #50] This is the one I actually got my name on. This is Steve and John’s last issue. I helped Steve through his… Steve would sort of disappear and send DC into conniptions… that’s actually how I met Karen Berger. [chuckles] She found my phone number and called me in Vermont, saying, “Rick, I’m Steve’s editor. Do you know where he is?” [laughs] So another way I got sucked into this book was because I became friends with Karen and I was naturally inclined to help out Karen. Just like Tar Baby, I was getting sucked into Swamp Thing. [laughter] CBC: Did you have the opportunity to meet Alan when he came to the states?

Rick: Yes. We all met and hung out in New York and also in Vermont.

CBC: What was it like meeting Alan?

Rick: It was great, even though he wasn’t famous yet. This was before he’d won the Eisner Awards. It was his first trip to New York, I think. There was a buzz about him and, of course, he’s an imposing, theatrical character. You know, he was dressed in black with all of his hair and everything, and he spoke like Shakespeare when he talked, but it wasn’t yet at the point where there was an ever-present crush of humans, like the Beatles. That wasn’t happening yet, so it was a much more laid back and fun.

I had that similar buzz as when I first met Steve and John.

“Wow, this guy’s really got it!” You know, we’re connecting on all these levels and when you talked to him, he knew every comic you’d ever drawn.

CBC: Did he know Two-Fisted Zombies?

Rick: I don’t think he knew that, but he knew just about everything else, and he knew it well. He’s the guy who could have done a sequel to Heartburst [chuckles] because he had read it enough to know all the characters. He really has an incredible memory. Then, of course, when you start peeling back into the nostalgia layers, like what we’d read as kids, he’s got all that stuff up here. And, you know, [snaps fingers] out it comes! He remembers everything about all this

obscure stuff, so it’s a real charge to talk to him.

CBC: So you’d have fannish talk with him?

Rick: It’s not fannish, though. It’s different. People have a hard time believing it, but it’s more in the sense that we, as a group of young kids and then as creative artists, integrated super-heroes as art, as a way of expressing our deepest self in the same way a guy makes a painting of who and what he is and what’s in his heart. I think there was some of us who approached super-heroes the same way. And yes, we ended up working for these horrible companies who had certain commercial requirements. But, at the same time, we brought a lot of who and what we were to these super-heroes.

CBC: What was it like working with Karen?

Rick: Karen is great. In fact, she should be given the Nobel Peace Prize for keeping the team together as long as she did. Even though Steve is super-talented and an extremely essential element to the group, he could cause us to veer off the road, like a bent axle. He would disappear and be unable to finish that month’s thing, so Alan would have to write a fill-in overnight and somebody else would have to be brought

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Below: This image, supplied by the artist, Rick Veitch, featured in a major print outlet (perhaps Time?), was reportedly the cover image of the controversial “Swampy meets Jesus” issue that was never meant to be. Folks this way thinks there’s something off about the dimensions and lack of trade dress, but hopefully we can get a full description from Roarin’ Rick in a future issue of Comic Book Creator.

Do note that Ye Ed, lo’ those years ago, conducted comprehensive interviews with Rick and with Steve Bissette during his Vermont visit, and we hope to see both transcripts in print with a year.

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‘Morning of the Magician’: The Lost national media and Rick Veitch’s interview about the story’s troubles would appear in Time, on MTV, and even on the front page of The Wall Street Journal in June of 1989. The real reason for the coverage turns out to be an apparent effort to embarrass DC’s parent company by rival corporate powers, an attempt to perhaps dampen Time/Warner’s stock value at the time.

in to draw the book. “Pog” was done overnight!

CBC: So was #51 the beginning of your run?

Rick: Well, it was, but I had done a number of fill-ins before that. I did “Brimstone Ballet,” “Growth Patterns,” Constantine’s first issue….

CBC: So were you trying to stay true to Steve’s kinetic style and approach?

Rick: Yes, absolutely. I thought I understood his style pretty well. Well, if you look at it, Steve shatters the page more than I do. I stay more geometrically simple but he takes this whole insane approach to the panels, like a pane of glass shattered on the ground, and he makes it work. Sometimes, I’ll play with that.

CBC: Did Totleben change your art frequently?

Rick: Yes. When I would help Steve, I might draw a Swamp Thing figure, but Steve would go over it with a 3H or 2H pencil and he would make it his Swamp Thing, giving the character that more jagged, sharp-edged look, because mine was a bit more lumpier. When I penciled Swamp Thing, John would do the same thing although it’s not quite the same. The beak isn’t quite as sharp as what Bissette would do, who would accentuate the beak and brow more than what I penciled. But with John, you wouldn’t have to draw all the stuff on Swamp Thing. You would just have to put in the shadows and rough textures of where the roots might be, and then he would create the

textures on Swamp Thing, which was great.

CBC: Was Totleben a life-saver quite often for Bissette?

Rick: In terms of the deadlines, I think so. He must have been. He could crank a page out in a phenomenally short period of time, especially considering this pain-staking pointillism approach he has. John has got this whole theory of the beauty of ugliness I think he got from Rodan, and I thought it worked perfectly with Steve.

CBC: Steve’s work has such an edge — maybe it’s anarchistic — wild and a little bit amateurish, but not in any untalented way. Raw and primitive maybe?

Rick: That’s a good way to put it.

CBC: What did you think of Alfredo Alcala’s inks over your pencils?

Rick: I liked it in the beginning. Later on — and I don’t know if I was crowding him in terms of time or he just had too much work — he would begin simplifying everything and his trademarked textures would, all of a sudden, not be there and backgrounds would disappear. Still, it could have been me just running late on the jobs.

CBC: How were you with deadlines ?

Rick: Usually, I’m pretty reliable. I’m a pretty good monthly-comic guy. I turn stuff out, but there are times when I get thrown a curve ball, when another

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Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Story © Rick Veitch. Art © Michael Zulli. Swamp Thing TM & © DC Comics.

Though it made it all the way to the inking and lettering stage, writer Rick Veitch’s intended story for Swamp Thing #88, “Morning of the Magician,” was suddenly squelched when higher-ups at DC learned a guest star in the comic book, along with The Demon and the Golden Gladiator, was Jesus of Nazareth. The industry reporting on the controversy was picked up by the

Story © Rick Veitch. Art © Michael Zulli. Swamp Thing TM & © DC Comics.

Rick Veitch/Michael Zulli Swamp Thing

job comes in that’s got to be done.

CBC: So you put the effort in, but the clock was just working against you?

Rick: Well, we were always on the clock. In fact, Alan was having problems with the calendar, at this point, so I would be given about 12 days to draw an issue, or I’d have to do it to get the pages laid out.

CBC: I recall and issue of Swamp Thing that touched upon Kirby’s Fourth World.

Rick: I wrote that. I always wondered what happened to Metron. Did he ever go into the Source? So I said, “Let’s take him in there.”

Also, by this time, DC had turned Darkseid into a joke, using him on Super Friends, so a once effective villain had become this lame character. So I wanted to get back on that primal, giant, rocky thing of whatever Darkseid was, that power at peace, you know?

CBC: Was this a fill-in?

Rick: Yes. Both Steve and I wrote fill-ins to give Alan breaks because he was beginning to have problems. I think he was also starting Watchmen.

CBC: Was it a fait accomplait for Steve to leave the series?

Rick: Yes, Steve was burned out. He was a wreck. He’d had all these battles with DC and it was getting to be a bit of a mess.

CBC: Does Steve create his own battles?

Rick: I wouldn’t say that. DC Comics is a different place today than it was and I think Steve, Alan, John, myself, and a few other people were the hammers on the anvil of DC, insisting that the company change. We fought a lot of battles with them over basic stupid sh*t like what could be in the comics and how the creators were being treated. This was all going on behind the scenes, but it reflected on why Alan left. There was a lot of bad will.

I know that when I left, I was just being hit with weird sh*t from a lot of things, just stupid stuff they threw at me, things that hobbled, rather than helped, and they never seemed to understand. DC, in this present day and age, seems more in tune with keeping creators moving forward and not keeping them under their thumb, allowing creators to express themselves.

Now I see it’s a much different place.

CBC: What was it that fostered such a culture in those days?

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Rick: It probably goes back to when DC ripped-off [Superman creators, Jerry] Siegel and [Joe] Shuster. The people at DC know that the whole company is built on ripping-off these two poor bastards, rather than on giving them a fair deal. And after the lawsuits [in the mid-’70s, when Siegel & Shuster basically shamed DC into giving them a pension], there was a lot of ugliness, and a corporate culture began to be emerge, solidified, one that insisted that the creators are to be kept down. If you talk about the era of [DC editors] Mort Weisinger and Robert Kanigher, these guys were tyrants and this kind of mentality was what Kubert was trying to prepare us for. Joe was convinced that we would suffer from this culture, too. But maybe we were naïve, maybe we were just stubborn, but we would face each one of these obstacles thrown at us and talk it out, fight it out, bring in other people, write things, give interviews, make publicity, and we would speak out in public about the problems… we just would not shut up. But the previous generation couldn’t speak up because they had everything to lose. If they even asked for health insurance, they were thrown out on their ears.

A lot of what was going on behind the scenes with Steve, Swamp Thing, me, John, and Alan, was sh*t people on the outside didn’t know about, but we were there battling over little, stupid stuff.

CBC: Are there any anecdotes worth sharing?

Rick: The one that was extremely nuts was when they brought me in as scripter/artist on Swamp Thing. Obviously, it was a terrible career move to follow The Alan Moore Show, but it was as if there wasn’t anybody else to do the book, no one else to carry this on, so I felt I was making a sacrifice. But at the same time, creatively, I was intrigued by the challenge, and I already enjoyed working with [editor] Karen Berger. Anyway, Abby and Alec were in my head, so I knew I could carry it forward. But I finish the first couple of issues and I’m not getting any checks. Here I am working like a maniac to get the monthly book out, writing and drawing it, and no money is coming in. I call and I call and I call. No answer. Then, all of a sudden, they tell me, “Well, we figured out that you either have to become incorporated or become an employee of Warner, [DC’s parent corporation] because work-for-hire won’t hold up if you’re both writing and drawing a comic.”

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Rick: Yes, but that all came a little later. At this time, Alan was writing tons of material. While he was still writing Swamp Thing, I worked up until the point where I had no script and would call Karen to call Alan. He then would write eight pages overnight and then phone the next morning to describe the layouts to me. Over breakfast, I’d be laying out while he FedExed the scripts so I could start that day and have ready a couple pages when the package arrived.

CBC: Were you involved in the origin of John Constantine?

Rick: Yes. This one’s a bit murky. I think it originally started with Totleben digging on Sting, the singer/songwriter of The Police. Sting has this really striking face and John started putting him in the background of crowd scenes as he was inking, just for a hoot. Then he and Steve started talking back and forth that this ought to be a character, so they created a scenario about who they thought the character was, like Abby’s old boyfriend or something. Then they presented their ideas to Alan and so he said, “What the hell,” and he created Constantine. Since Steve was having trouble finishing up the issue prior, I was assigned the art on the issue that introduced Constantine. So I drew the debut issue where Constantine is a character with a name and speaking part. But at the same time, those guys really developed the kernel of the idea.

CBC: How was it all sorted out in regards to the Hellblazer movie, Constantine?

Rick: Well, it’s a long and convoluted story, but one with a happy ending, thank God! [laughs] Back when they created the Hellblazer comic book, they had to decide who the creator of Constantine was. Alan just decided to give his portion of the ownership over to [writer] Jaime Delano and [artist] John Ridgway. Steve had just quit Swamp Thing. I probably could have said at the time, “Well, maybe I should share in this,” because the rules were that the scripter and penciler of the first issue were declared the creators. But, first of all, we always brought John Totleben in, and we did. John was a co-creator on anything we did. But I also felt that Steve deserved it so I just said, “Yes, put Steve in there.” So Steve, John Totleben, Jaime, and John Ridgway Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

All art and characters TM & © DC Comics.

So I’m broke, I have no money, I’m working like a maniac to meet the monthly deadline and they’re refusing to send the money they owe me. I can’t get paid, and I won’t get paid unless I sign some sort of paper… but it isn’t like they can just send me the document. No, they insist that I have to form a corporation at my expense or become an employee of Warner, meaning that everything I do will be owned by them.

CBC: Homey don’t play that? [laughs] Rick: So this becomes this huge battle that was just awful. But I kept it up and I still made my deadlines. It probably took about a month of push-me, pull-you. I finally chose the employee thing, but we had to rewrite it so that it didn’t involve everything I did. Because, if you’re an employee of the company, anything you create is theirs, right? Let’s say you’re an engineer for General Electric, and you go home and invent something. Well, then GE owns that invention, and it’s the same with this. If you’re an employee of Warner Communications, your concepts are theirs. So it had to be rewritten so that the contract just had to do with Swamp Thing. In the process, I said, “Well, if I’m going to do this, shouldn’t I get benefits, too?” So then there’s a big fight about that! Finally, Paul said, “Yes, okay,” although even after I signed the contract, there was another fight to get them to actually give benefits to me because Paul had said yes, but apparently, he didn’t have the right to say yes. It’s was too bad, but there was no more fighting after that, at least for awhile, at least until Swamp Thing #88.

CBC: Why did Alan leave Swamp Thing? Was he just burned out?

Rick: Well, he’s one of these guys who looks ahead to a certain issue number or date, and he goes, “Okay, I’m going to do it ’til that.” Sometime around #50, he said, “I’ll do it until #64.” And then that’s it. At that point, he was being strapped onto the Atlas rocket of stardom and taking off for the moon, so his life was becoming increasingly complicated by all of that. I’m sure the many business problems he had to deal with were a million times more than I had, because he was doing Watchmen and that was exploding. Everything was really hitting big in 1987.

CBC: Wasn’t there a debacle over Watchmen merchandising?

All art and characters TM & © DC Comics.

became the creators of record of Constantine. But these guys think that they’re entitled to the creators’ share of Constantine, the movie, and I asked Karen [Berger], “How are the credits going to be listed?” She said, “Well, it will say Alan, John, and Steve.” I said, “No, both Alan and I gave up our part.” Karen said, “No, Alan came back and got his portion back,” something I had not been aware. I learned that, years afterwards, Alan had gone back and actually been given a piece of Constantine, apparently to sign off so they could make the movie. Here’s how it was all finally sorted out: Alan is, all of the sudden, because of [motion picture adaptations of his comics] The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and From Hell, the hottest thing in Hollywood. Apparently Fox was sued by some producer, claiming that they’d hired Alan to create League from the producer’s original idea.

[Jon laughs] Alan hits the roof. He says, “F*ck Hollywood. I’m never taking another dime from them. I don’t want my name on anything that’s ever made into a movie again.” What’s the first property to come down the pike? The Constantine movie. So Alan says, “Give my share to Rick Veitch,” and — because there were other percentages involved — “Split that portion with the other guys, John Totleben, Steve, John Ridgway and Jaime.” So everyone ends up with a piece… except Alan. It was unbelievable.

CBC: Just prior to Alan leaving, Swamp Thing adapted a new format. That was the forerunner of the Vertigo imprint, right?

Rick: I think “The Anatomy Lesson” was the beginning of Vertigo. Even before that, when John and Steve came on board, was the start.

CBC: Were you privy to the dropping of the Comics Code?

Rick: Yep. There was a big fight! These are among the things that go on behind the scenes that drive freelancers mad. Steve, John and Alan just drew a line in the sand and went, “We’re not abiding by the Code. Fire us or get rid of the Code. We’re just not going to put this comic out unless you get them off our backs.” That’s the way I remember it.

CBC: Was bypassing the Code an important development for the book?

Rick: It brought it into an ultra-high horror level and also a level of sexuality that hadn’t been yet touched on. And it really put the book into high gear.

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

CBC: Were you the designated heir apparent to helm Swamp Thing. Did Alan advocate you to be writer/artist upon his departure?

Rick: Yes, Alan and Karen Berger had decided I was the guy to do it. I thought no one else wanted it.

CBC: Out of fear to be the follow-up act to Alan Moore?

Rick: Even though he was only at the beginning of his superstardom, Alan had already made quite an impact and people were afraid to follow him. He and I joked about it. Alan would say, “You’re committing career suicide this time, you know.” I’d say, “Yeah, yeah. I’ll be just fine.” [laughs] And it’s true.

Since I did follow him on Swamp Thing, people always see me in terms of a junior Alan Moore regarding my writing, and it’s been an impression that’s effected my career ever since.

CBC: How do you feel about that?

Rick: It’s kind of weird, but at the same time, I made that choice. I wanted to do it. I just wish it had ended better, that it hadn’t ended in all that weird sh*t.

CBC: Is it a coincidence that Alan’s last story arc was a journey through space and your first one became a journey through time?

Rick: Well, I was looking for unused DC characters to play with because that was the most fun of this whole template Alan had set down, taking these obscure characters, giving them a sense of reality and giving them dimension. Everybody in comics was doing it, seizing on Blackhawk, for instance, and giving him a realistic twist. So I was going, “Where can I find the really weird ones, like Golden Gladiator?” [laughter] It was obvious to me that to use the concept of traveling back through time and using the period characters in the DC universe as anchor points, that would give me a structure for a novel. The other reason I did it was to get Swamp Thing out of the then-current continuity, because DC was ramping up another one of those lunatic across-the-line, company crossovers, where they were using all the present-day characters to protect Earth from an invasion, and Swamp Thing had to be part of this somehow, to meet DC’s directive, and yet not be a part of it, for my own storytelling purposes.

CBC: This was Invasion?

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CBC: It all comes down to Kirby, doesn’t it? What is it for a woman to love a plant? Is it beautiful or is it f*cking weird?

Rick: I think as two things. One is on the deepest level of symbolism, it’s how the feminine embrace the Earth. You know, the Earth Mother, the Earth Goddess, the Great Mother; it’s the feminine aspect, where the Sky God is the male. Superman, you know? But the other aspect is just Abby and Alec, and like what she loves is the core of his being, his personality, and that’s really what she’s into. And the fact that he’s this big mossy dirt thing is cool, too.

Then we have him meet Superman and a couple other things, and then he goes back in time. The sequence started in World War II, with Sgt. Rock.

CBC: How were you integrating standard non-horror characters into a horror story?

Rick: Well, you try to give them a horror element of some kind or express the general weirdness of a being who walks around in a cape and tights and exerts total power. You know, rather than seeing it as a noble archetype, it’s like it would be scary to be in a room with Superman because all he has to do is look your way and tumors pop out of you. [snaps fingers] You’re dead, you know? [laughs] CBC: [Looking through ST #82, Jan. ’89] The look in this Sgt. Rock issue is just shamelessly Joe Kubert! Was it nice to come full circle?

Rick: Oh, absolutely, yes. I wish I could have gotten Kubert to ink it. That would have been the ultimate story to work on with Joe. I think we tried to get him… Along the way, we establish that Arcane was a Nazi. Then we go back to World War I where Arcane goes into a battlefield and puts together an Un-Man from the war dead. That’s where he learned his tricks. That guest-starred Enemy Ace. Then we did one with DC’s Western characters, such as Bat Lash and Firehair, only when they’re older, plus Jonah Hex and even Super Chief. Then Tomahawk.

CBC: Super Chief? I love that character!

Rick: Then we go to King Arthur with the Demon. Then the next one after that would be the “offending” issue. The lead-in is that King Arthur’s got the Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

All art and characters TM & © DC Comics.

Rick: Right, but I figured the way Swamp Thing could participate was for the aliens to send him back in time and then I’d was free of it. Y’see, the aliens had control of all plant life, and it made sense they would need to get rid of Swamp Thing. So this gimmick fit perfectly, freeing me of the whole stupid thing. I wouldn’t have to go crazy dealing with it all.

CBC: In what era did you start?

Rick: Well, I actually didn’t do the time-travel sequence until about a year into my run. I started with Constantine, began the storyline of the new sprout being born, then did a bunch of stuff. It’s the second year that I start the time travel thing.

CBC: What was the new sprout?

Rick: It was the successor to Swamp Thing trying to be born. All that Swamp Thing did in Alan’s run has disrupted the flow of the natural order of things and the forces of synchronicity are out of whack. So he’s told that his successor is being gestated and if Swamp Thing wants to live, he’s got to destroy the seedling. But he can’t destroy it.

CBC: Because it’s life?

Rick: Right. It’s like a little Swamp Thing. [chuckles] So he tells the Parliament of Trees to go to hell and says, “I’m going to go back and live in the swamp.” Of course, it turns out, as Constantine knows, that he can’t do that. You’ve got to destroy this thing or be destroyed yourself. So that’s the basic plot of the first year. Then the second year, he figures out he can get around the problem (and I got nominated for the “Best Single Issue” award, I believe, for that year), by growing a giant brain [laughs] at Abby’s suggestion to,”Think your way out.” Then, being super-smart, he realizes the solution is for Abby to have a baby that’s human, so that the next elemental will be human, rather than plant, and that’s why she gets pregnant. After bringing Constantine in, Swamp Thing takes over the guy’s consciousness and impregnates Abby.

CBC: So John Constantine gets to screw Abby, not Swamp Thing?

Rick: Well, no, he doesn’t. Constantine just gets a tattoo on his ass, that’s all he gets. [laughter] And he meets Funky Flashman on a plane! [laughter]

All art and characters TM & © DC Comics.

Holy Grail and Swamp Thing is trapped inside some sort of rock or something inside the Grail. And so I’ve established how he got into the Grail and — [snaps fingers] what genius! — we’ll go back to Palestine! [chuckles] So this is the beginning of where we had a real problem.

The spirit of Swamp Thing has always been about pushing the envelope of what a comic book could be. So I proposed that we have Swamp Thing meet Jesus, although not have a battle with Jesus. [laughter] No sacrilegious slugfest, as they say. I also wanted to use the Golden Gladiator, so Karen asked [DC Executive Editor] Dick Giordano, if I remember correctly. He said, “Well, I’m not sure. Write an outline, let me know what Rick is thinking.” So I had to sit down and write an outline, which proposed the whole story, and he okayed that, but adding, “I want to see the script as you do it.” So I wrote the script in three installments, eight pages apiece, sent them ahead to Karen, and I believe Dick saw them, though I’m not really sure.

The story opens up with Swamp Thing outside of time and space and he can see the whole lineage of Earth in time, right to the point of Crisis of Infinite Earths with all these Earths being crushed down, like it was an event, a physical event. [laughs] (I think that’s why they really didn’t want to publish it!)

CBC: Now, that’s sacrilege, pal! [laughter] Rick: Anyway, so then the story becomes pretty innocuous actually. It’s really about the Golden Gladiator and Mary Magdalene. Towards the end, we see the Crucifixion and we see Christ in the garden. Swamp Thing does something that leads to helping Christ make the choice of sacrifice He is fated to make.

CBC: What was offensive? Having a comic-book character engage in a dialogue with Jesus?

Rick: Well, I don’t even know if there’s even a dialogue. He does something that helps Christ make the final decision that leads to the Crucifixion. Christ says, “Tell me, Father, what do I do?” I don’t even know if I actually use His name, but it’s definitely Him and there’s definitely the Crucifixion at the end, which affects the Golden Gladiator. There’s another page where we do the Host, the Transubstantiation, and going into the Grail at the Last Supper So the whole book is penciled, lettered, beginning to be inked, and I get a phone call from Karen, out of the blue, who says, “I need a new script in three days.” [astonished] “What?!” But she doesn’t say who put the brakes on.” I say, “Well, if it needs changes, Karen, let me make the changes.”

CBC: It was a total broadside?

Rick: Yes, a total broadside, especially because I had already jumped through all the hoops and done exactly what they said.

CBC: What was it that was offensive? I don’t get it.

Rick: Well, I knew that I was pushing the envelope, but that was why I asked to do the story in the first place and why I did as directed by Karen and Dick. I provided them with exactly what they asked for, and had already been given the okay from them. I felt it must have been okay because my script went through Karen and was then sent to Michael Zulli, who had completely penciled the story. It was in the process of being lettered and Tom Sutton had inked three pages. Only then do I get the call from Karen.

Every time I’d get into a battle with DC, I stand my ground, so this wasn’t going to be any different. I said, “Well, what happened?” She wasn’t quite clear on who it was that had raised the issue. And it wasn’t until just this year I found out that it was Dick, who apparently had finally seen the art — or possibly the cover — and just went, “No way we’re doing this!” I had always assumed that it was Jenette and Paul, but I apparently was wrong. I haven’t spoken to him about it yet, but I’d love to sit down and discuss it someday.

So, at the time, I’m asking, “Okay, what do I have to do to change it? Can we fix this?” Karen says, “No.” Suddenly this was unlike anything I’d ever experienced with DC before, where it’s always, “We’ve got a problem, so let’s fix it.”

Naturally, of course, I’m ready to do just that, but for the first time it was, “No, Rick. We need a new script in two days.”

Finally, I just said, “Well, I can’t go on doing this. I’m going to resign.”

CBC: Did you quit in a fit of anger?

Rick: No, I was in this deep calm. It was like I went into this center of calmness and I just knew that I had to resign.

CBC: You were resolved right from that moment?

Rick: Well, first I tried to solve it. I say, “We can fix this, right?” They say, “No.” I say, “But all I’ve got to do is change the name, change the way he looks, fix the cover…” They say, “No, you have to start over from scratch.” At this point, I am in complete control, calm and centered, and I say, “Karen, I’m going to have to resign.” She just says, “Aww, come on, Rick! It’s just the comic-book kind of thing!” She just couldn’t believe it when I told her that was that.

To be honest, it wasn’t just Swamp Thing #88. It was the culminating weight of all of the battles I had fought and, of course, all the battles I’d been part of with Steve, Alan, and John, because I was almost a silent member of the team. So it all just came to a head right then. That was it. I said, “If you guys want to talk, can I restate my case?” She said, “I’ll let you know.”

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Above: One thing you can say about Richard Veitch is that the man is certifiable Jack Kirby fanatic, as much as we are over here at TwoMorrows. Rick is so much the appreciator of the King of Comics, he named his son Kirby! Here we have a page from the only non-Moore scripted tale during Alan’s run on Swamp Thing, “Wavelength,” written and drawn

by Roarin’ Rick himself, aided by the able inks of Alfredo Alcala.

Rick would go on to succeeding Alan when the British scribe would leave the book two issues later.

Here’s a full-page splash featuring the greatest Kirby villain of them all, Darkseid, ruler of Apokolips and seeker of the Anti-Life Equation. From that very same Veitch-written ish, #62 [July ’87].

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CBC: How far would you have fixed it?

Rick: Whatever they needed. You know, the immediate fix would have been, “Well, we don’t call Him ‘Jesus,’ we call Him “the carpenter.’ Or the story is ‘The Morning of the Magician.’ We call him ‘the magician,’ and we don’t show the Crucifixion, the Last Supper, and the Transubstantiation.

It’s just the Demon and the Golden Gladiator and there’s this guy, the magician, off to one side.” That’s the simple fix, but they wouldn’t go for any of it.

CBC: It was fundamentally not a censorship issue or a concern that DC was being hyper-sensitive and afraid of controversy, but rather a question of how you were treated?

Rick: To me, that was the real issue. It was my breaking point about how the company was treating me. It was another step where I knew I had to make a stand, like all these other stands we had to make. But DC were just adamant.

When I wrote to Jenette in that initial letter, I was probably too antagonistic. I was were drawing a line in the sand and had probably gotten angry.

CBC: What were you giving up by quitting? How much of a sacrifice was this? Were you going to lose royalties?

Rick: No, I don’t think Swamp Thing had been hitting the royalties threshold at that point. We had to have sales of 100,000 to get any royalties, but my issues were probably at about 65,000. (Alan’s run of Swamp Thing started out at about 19,000 with “The Anatomy Lesson.”)

CBC: Those numbers were really bad for the ’80s, right?

Rick: They were ready to cancel the book. That’s why they gave it to Alan and then those guys built it up. When I first took it over, it really dropped into the high 50’s. And those people who actually started to read it and the buzz got out that, “Oh yeah, it’s not that bad.” [laughs] I think being nominated for the Kirby Award helped a lot, too. It’s like, all of a sudden, people were following the book.

CBC: Were you making good money from the book?

Rick: Yes, I was. I was writing and penciling, so I made a great page rate, and I also received performance bonus because I actually had gotten the book in on time consistently over the span of a year.

CBC: Well, you obviously held up your end of the bargain.

Rick: Well, it’s sad, but that’s the way it turned out. I was on time and was set to do two more issues, and of course, I had these corporate benefits, which were great, including health insurance.

CBC: Were you unique in this arrangement?

Rick: In this, yes. There’s the DC insurance plan, which is something freelancers had to buy into, but I was an employee of the system. If I’d stayed on, in a couple of years, I would have been made eligible for stock options, a retirement plan and stuff.

CBC: But you were obviously fully cognizant of these future benefits, right?

Rick: Yes, but it didn’t matter.

CBC: What did Cindy say?

Rick: Well, this all developed in a bad way because she was pregnant with [son and only child] Kirby as this all went down. At first, it was okay. At first, it seemed like DC just wanted to let the controversy cool off, but then the story hit the papers. It started off in The Comics Buyer’s Guide, who got a hold of me, and I spoke clearly about my plight. I had talked to both Jaime and Neil, who were going to take over Swamp Thing after I was gone, as they were going to split a year’s worth of issues. Each writer was going to do six months but they decided not to because of my situation, in an act of solidarity with me.

It was a nice gesture, and while they weren’t like putting their lives on the line for me, they were saying, “We think Rick’s being screwed over here so we’re not going to take on Swamp Thing. We’re not the ones who’re going to pick it up after he drops it.” Then CBG played it up, and then The Comics Journal got on it and those guys did an incredible job of reporting. They took something like three months worth of DC’s comics and found about 27 instances of Jesus, [laughs]

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

All art and characters TM & © DC Comics.

After the next few days, Karen calls and tells me, “Well, go ahead and write what you feel to Jenette.” So I did, and I was probably a little too antagonistic in that letter, but at that point, I was fed up. Jenette and I then got on the phone at that point and I tried to reason with her — this was all on a very friendly, civil basis (although I was slightly frustrated) — but it basically was still no, no, no.

I think the thing that really bothered me the most in the whole process was that at no point did anyone say, “Rick, this is our fault. We’re sorry. We let this go too far. What can we do for you? Help us out here, Rick.” It was all put on my shoulders, as if I’d committed some sort of crime and that was something I really did not appreciate. At that point, I’d pretty much had it with DC, if that was the way they saw the situation.

CBC: Well, what was the fight over Swamp Thing #88?

Rick: Over three or four years, I’d been part of the Swamp Thing team. I’d been part of — or privy to — all of these little battles over stupid little things, and Team Swamp Thing just refused to accept these weird business things. We would just stand together and say no. We would fight, argue it and, yeah, sometimes we’d give in, but we wouldn’t just take it as a fait accomplait. We would question these things until the answers sounded reasonable. So this, for me, was my culmination.

CBC: Was it that they were squashing your self-expression or that they were being milquetoast about such an innocuous appearance of a religious figure?

Rick: It was that, but more than that.

CBC: Were you a troublemaker?

Rick: No, I wasn’t. I was the guy who turned in that comic every month on time, and someone who had kept sales up on Swamp Thing even after their star writer had left, and a person who had achieved a measure of critical acclaim in the work. I held the whole thing together, and it had been a terrific strain, writing and drawing a monthly book, never mind following in the footsteps of The Man Himself, Mr. Alan Moore. [chuckles] But the sustaining injury I suffered was that they were acting unprofessionally towards me and that they were jerking me around by saying, “Do this, this, this and this. You know, it’s okay,” and then turning around 180 degrees to say, “No, you can’t do it. No, you can’t do it. No, you can’t do it.” They waited until the whole thing was done.

So, if there was ever a recipe for disaster, this was it for me.

CBC: If DC had ’fessed up and said, “Hey, sorry, but we f*cked up,” you might have stayed on?

Rick: Yes, absolutely. If they’d said, “Rick, we’re really sorry. We’ll take care of you and pay you for the job. We’ll just figure something out,” and give me more time to do a new script… you couldn’t write a Swamp Thing script in three days. It’s just impossible.

CBC: Was Karen just blasé to hear that the story included Christ?

Rick: No, she knew we were pushing the envelope. I knew we were doing something that had never been done before and being edgy. But I had already asked and received permission. It was all up front. They were not broadsided; they dropped the bombshell on me. Look, the mandate in writing Swamp Thing is to push the envelope! DC owned the envelope and our job was to push it for them!

CBC: Who’s “we”?

Rick: Well, Karen and I. CBC: You see yourself as in collaboration with Karen?

Rick: Yes, in as much as my editor goes to bat for me.

When it was that late in the game, for them to change their mind is completely unprofessional. Yes, it’s their right. Legally, they’re the author of the stuff. It’s work-for-hire and I have no legal claim. But, I do think I have a moral claim, because my heart and soul went into this thing. But I think people tended to see this as a religious issue in that I had to have Jesus in the comic book; but that really wasn’t entering into the context of the situation. That wasn’t very important to me and I would have happily fixed it.

Illustration © John Totleben. Panel detail, Swamp Thing © DC Comics.

as well as the crucifixion motif, and they reported the results.

There was one comic where Christ is hanging on the cross and vampires are drinking the blood on his wrists! [laughter] So TCJ really made DC look bad.

Then DC started getting more bad press. Somehow (I guess it must have been from TCJ article), MTV picked up on the story and I got a MTV reporter calling me up and they had this comic book controversy on their news segment. All of a sudden, between the music videos: “Rick Veitch quits Swamp Thing!” [chuckles] CBC: “This is Kurt Loder reporting.”

Rick: It was Kurt Loder! [laughter] CBC: So you became a national cause celebré?

Rick: I guess I did. Then there was the front page article in The Wall Street Journal, as well as a bit in Time magazine (which used the intended cover image of Swamp Thing as the cross, the cover that probably sent Dick Giordano over the top; that was a bit sacrilegious, but it was just so perfect). Originally, the WSJ article wasn’t going to be on the front page. They used to have this little joke column, on the second section, called something like, “Ha-ha of the Week,” and they put a reporter onto me but after I explained the situation to him, he said, “You know, this is a story.”

Remember, Salmon Rushdie’s plight, the religious persecution he was suffering [condemned to death by Muslim clerics for sacrilege], was big news then. But I didn’t understand why it was a national story. It didn’t make sense to me. All I understood was here’s a cartoonist who was quitting a comic book because the publisher was not acting in good faith. But the media saw it as something different. So a real WSJ reporter interviewed me extensively, I sent her all the material, put it all in context, and they publish it on page one.

It must have been a bombshell at DC. I don’t know how they felt, but things really started to really fall apart between us at that point.

Immediately following the WSJ article, all these little outlets, like the Copley News Service, Knight-Ridder, and others, got a hold of me and they also ran stories as well.

Then Christian magazines were calling me! It worked its way down the food chain.

CBC: Did you get some negative press yourself?

Rick: Well, negative in the sense that the situation was being misinterpreted. They were making into something different than it was, like I was being fired for using Jesus in a comic book. It really was just a personal thing between me and DC. That was the core of it. But the media was implying that I was making a stand for fundamentalist Christians, which of course, wasn’t the case at all.

CBC: Oh, I thought they were looking at your approach as sacrilegious.

Rick: No, they knew the context because I was upfront about showing them the material. My version of Jesus could have been shown in Treasure Chest comics! It was a nice depiction, and it wasn’t as if I were perverting anything.

It was not the media, but the comic-book community who assumed I going to do something twisted, but it was quite the opposite. My approach was very gentle.

CBC: Well, Mr. Two-Fisted Zombies, wouldn’t it be natural to assume you would be twisted? [laughter] Rick: The capper was Time magazine and this proved to be an education for Rick Veitch. Time works on this unbelievable deadline. It’s Friday night and they have to have the book finished on Sunday. So they’ve got messengers coming from an airport an hour away, coming to my house, picking up stuff, putting it on a plane, and then coming back and picking up stuff, putting it on a plane, just for this little blurb that they’re going to do. They do an extensive, maybe two-hour interview. They ended up running a repro of the intended cover, along with this little snippet of their talk with me. But I got to talking with the reporter, asking why this situation was of any interest, and she said, “Well, Time-Life, Inc., is about to merge with Warner Communications, but our stock options are all going into the toilet, so we’re doing

everything we can to stop f*cking Warner!” So the motives weren’t about anything but corporate maneuvering!

CBC: Rick’s just a little cog in the big machine, baby! [laughter] Rick: Talk about being used! But Time was pretty much the end of it, except that the personal torment was just beginning. The baby was coming that week all of this stuff hit. But DC is rip-sh*t and they call to say, “We cancelled your health insurance.” In two days, Cindy is going into labor. So I call Warner’s human services department and ask, “Can they do this?” They had me explain the whole situation and they went, “There is no way they can do this. They can fire you and you can quit for idealistic reasons, but they can’t take your insurance away. The worst thing that could happen is for you have to make the insurance payment yourself, because you’re entitled to coverage as provided by the COBRA Act.” So I did just that.

CBC: This was just a petty, vindictive decision on DC’s part?

Rick: I don’t know exactly where it came from in the corporation, but I always felt that it was from DC. I was as vulnerable as you could get, at that point, when my baby was about to arrive.

CBC: How mad were you?

Rick: More than mad, I felt broken inside. It just felt awful.

It’s not the kind of thing you’re angry about so much as feeling defeated, to feel helpless in something that might affect the life of my unborn son. Fortunately, the baby arrived healthy and everything was fine. But there were a couple days when it was really bad. I tried to explain it to Cindy, but she just didn’t want to hear it. She had something even more serious to worry about. [laughs] But she was good about it and Warners, as a corporation, was great. They explained, “DC can’t do this to you, because you have rights,” and they told me exactly what my rights were and how to use them.

CBC: Did you hate DC for a time?

Rick: Yes, I did, and that hatred is really what fueled much of what I did in self-publishing. Brat Pack was not meant to be half as dark and vicious as it ended up being. I just took all the feeling I had and poured it into Brat Pack and it became probably the more vicious satire of Batman and Superman ever, at least up until that time.

CBC: What about the company itself? It wasn’t the characters treating you like that. Why take it out on Robin? [chuckles] Rick: No, but I’d already been working in this direction, where I wanted to peel back the dark side of super-heroes. Y’see, this had been another battle I had during my run on Swamp Thing, such as when I had Superman appear, I wanted to explore the scary side of the character.

If Superman walked through the door, would we be normal or would we be terrified? I wanted to explore this, but they didn’t like it. “Can’t touch that.” They wouldn’t even allow me to use characters like Green Lantern to twist and make them dark. This was just one low-level skirmish, because I was always fighting with them.

If I wanted to use a super-hero, they would say, “Give him Guy Gardner because he’s already an asshole!” [laughter] I wanted to define these guys as different than human, as above us, but they weren’t for it. So I felt my mission at that point was to take this archetype of superheroes and peel back the lid and let the id of it.

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Previous page: Rick Veitch Swamp Thing panel. This page: Above is a pic of Roarin’ Rick at a 1990s comic con, where he was hawking his line of King Hell Books. Below is Miracleman as drawn by R.V., mourning the death of his former second identity.

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Capturing the Monster’s Humanity George Khoury talks to John Totleben about the savage grace and beauty of his art Conducted by GEORGE KHOURY [John Totleben is one of the greatest unsung talents of the medium. Whether as penciler, inker, or painter, his distinctive gift brings forth the sublime and horrific. The skilled Pennsylvanian became renowned for delicate stippling, cross-hatching, and scratch board techniques in his illustrations. The art and commanding storytelling Totleben contributed to Swamp Thing and Miracleman, both scripted by Alan Moore, transcend these works to new heights.

Despite suffering from retinitis pigmentosa, the artist continues to draw and make convention appearances. Totleben, along with friends Steve Bissette, Rick Veitch, and Thomas Yeates, is a former Kubert School student.

— George Khoury.]

Above: Cover detail of Swamp Thing #60 [May ’87], John Totleben’s tour de force on the title, a issue entirely composed of collages, some consisting of chains and watch parts! John, for a spell post-Moore, would be the main ST cover artist. Below: Young John Totleben as a student at the Jo Kubert School of Cartoons and Graphics in the ’70s. Courtesy of former Kubie Tom Foxmarnick.

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

All art and characters TM & © DC Comics.

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Comic Book Creator: How did you discover Swamp Thing?

John Totleben: It would have been the very first issue. I remember seeing a DC house ad for it, and just picked up the book when it came out.

CBC: Did you follow the entire series even the Nestor Redondo ones?

John: Oh yes. I had them all, right to the very end. There might have been 24 issues or something like that, and I brought them all… even the ones that sucked. I thought that while Redondo was a great artist, better than Wrightson as far as drawing figures and women and such, but somehow he still was not quite a match for Bernie’s obviously definitive version of Swampy. While Redondo had some fairly obvious

technical advantages, he lacked the sheer vision and feel for the macabre that seemed to come so naturally to Bernie.

CBC: I thought you weren’t a big fan of the Wrightson work on the series?

John: That’s not true. I liked what Wrightson did on Swamp Thing, quite a bit. I was, at the time, more of a Neal Adams fan, that’s the only thing, and I had more of a taste for that “realistic” type art. What Wrightson was doing seemed more caricaturist to me, like Jack Davis’s art, but I quickly became a huge fan of Bernie’s work on Swamp Thing. It was pretty amazing stuff, there’s no question about it. He had really set some new standards, at that time.

CBC: When you began helping [artist] Tom Yeates on [the art chores on] Saga of the Swamp Thing, was it because it was a character you always wanted to depict? Or was it that Tom just needed your help?

John: Well, both. I had always wanted to do the character in some way or another, as it just seemed to me, if I were going to do comics — if I had to pick any character — it would have been Swamp Thing. It just so happened that Tom had gotten the art assignment on the revised series and was working on it, so we — the Joe Kubert School alumni — would always pitch in and help each other in any way, on whatever jobs we were respectively working on.

CBC: You were already helping Tom out as early as #2?

What kind of things were you doing?

John: Jeez, I don’t remember what issue it was. I may have penciled a couple of pages. I don’t think I did any inking on those early ones; just some penciling.

CBC: Was Tom falling behind or was it because you were the “monster” guy?

John: I think he was just a little behind.

CBC: Was he behind right from the beginning?

John: Well, it is kinda hard for one person to do a monthly book. At some point, you always end up slipping behind a little, because it’s a lot of work.

CBC: What did you think of the stories that Pasko and Yeates did together?

John: I remember thinking the writing was getting a little stuffy as issues went on. There was some good stuff in there… but I remember some sort of anti-Christ storyline going on, with some girl or something, and it seemed to me that it was getting a little convoluted… boring, actually. The drag for Tom was that, after the first issue, Swamp Thing was taken out of the swamps and put in a more urban environment.

Tom excels at drawing the natural world — jungles, swamps, woodlands, etc. — so for him to have to draw these boring urban backgrounds was a waste of his abilities.

CBC: Steve Bissette was also there lending a hand to those issues, right?

John: Steve did the layouts to #8, and I think he might have done the cover layout, too. I remember him having done a considerable amount of work on the book.

CBC: Was Tom becoming disenchanted with the book?

John: I think Tom was just probably getting tired of it, because he had been working on it for over a year, at that point, and I imagine he felt like he wanted to go on to other things.

CBC: Before getting the assignment from Tom, what were you doing in terms of work?

John: Before we got on that book, I was jumping around

Illustration © John Totleben. Panel detail, Swamp Thing © DC Comics.

The Muck-Monster Makers doing freelance stuff, only real sporadically.

CBC: Was the period between leaving the Kubert School and getting the Swamp Thing assignment a tough time?

John: After I got out of Kubert School, I was working with [Golden-Age comic book publisher, later instructor at the Kubert School] Harry “A” Chesler for a couple of years on The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam illustrations, so that kept me busy for awhile, and after I finished that, I had moved back to Erie from New Jersey. I picked up a few art jobs here and there, but mostly I was doing regular jobs. I had worked as a janitor, at one point, for some outfit.

I ended up working at a plastic factory for a couple of months — you know, the kind of crap we all have to do before we end up escaping and doing what we want. [laughs] CBC: Were you having doubts that you weren’t going to make it as a professional artist?

John: No, I never really thought that I’d fail. I just was convinced that sometimes you just have to wait until the right moment, I guess, and that moment came, of course, when Swamp Thing came up for grabs.

CBC: How did that happen? Did Tom let you know that he was leaving?

John: Tom did mention to both Bissette and I that he was going to be quitting the book, and that we should send some samples to [then-editor] Len Wein.

CBC: Was it Tom’s idea that Bissette and you work together?

John: I don’t remember if it was his idea, or what, but it might have been. I don’t really remember too clearly, other than I do recall that Tom had recommended us.

CBC: This was around the time of [Bissette & Totleben’s collaboration] the Dracula story [Bizarre Adventures #33]?

John: Yes, that was the thing where Bissette had fallen behind on a job and he had to get it done pretty quick. So I went up to Vermont, stayed there for a week or two, and we just sat down and completed this job. I did a lot of work on it, though I don’t know how much he had done on that by the time I got there, but it was a pretty big book. Steve may have finished 10 pages into it, or something, but there was still a lot left to be done, so we just sat down and did it.

CBC: Were you two the only artists to try out for that book?

Did you know if Len was thinking of anybody else?

John: Nah, we weren’t the only ones considered. I knew that there were a lot of people, apparently, because Len mentioned to me that, at one point, he had people lined up all the way to Idaho or something like that. [laughter] They probably figured that since we already had some experience on the book working with Tom, and our samples were good, we were the likeliest choices.

CBC: Was this the first time you tried out for a monthly?

John: Oh yes, that was my first time out.

CBC: Steve and you had prepared three pages for this tryout, right? He penciled two, which you inked, and you penciled one and he inked that?

John: Right. He may have inked one or two pages over my pencils, and then there were another couple pages where I inked over his pencils. We just assumed that it would

probably work out better with him penciling and me inking, because Steve really has a good storytelling sense and an eye for layout, both of which I didn’t possess at that time, at least not matching his abilities.

CBC: Steve had more experience?

John: Well, it just seemed that Steve had the better knack for that end of it, and I had a better knack for the inking end. It just seemed like the right thing to do.

CBC: Steve felt you had the Swamp Thing “look” down better than he did, in the beginning.

John: Don’t forget that I had been a Swamp Thing fan from the very beginning of the first series, George.

I think I turned him on to Len and Bernie’s work at the Kubert School. I don’t believe he had seen it, if I remember correctly. I had a better idea of what the character probably should look like, just based on the fact I had a longer history of appreciating it, I guess, but that was only a minor thing in the beginning.

CBC: Was the book already late when Steve and you joined the title with #16?

John: I don’t remember if it was or not, but it sure it seemed like it. [laughs] If it wasn’t late by our first issue, it was definitely by the second one we did!

CBC: Steve mentioned that, in his heart, he knew he couldn’t keep up with a monthly book.

John: He never mentioned that to me. I just figured that I could do a monthly book, no sweat.

CBC: I recall reading that you and he had made a pact that, no matter what, you would both leave the book after one year.

John: Well, Steve and I figured we’d only be doing it for about a year, anyway. It wasn’t a pact so much as how long we assumed the assignment would last. We just thought we’d get on the book and do it for a year and move on to other things, but things just seemed to pick up and take off — especially once we got Alan in there.

CBC: What kind of editor was Len?

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Inset left: Swamp Thing commission piece by John Totleben, painted in 2002.

Below: On his journey to take on the bad-guy Brujería in Patagonia, Swampy gets all tribal while traveling through Latin America.

Spectacular design and execution

by John Totleben in this panel detail from his first full Swamp Thing art job, #48 [May ’86].

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Above: Candid shot of a young John Totleben as a student at the Jo Kubert School of Cartoons and Graphics, in the ’70s. Courtesy of former Kubie Tom Foxmarnick.

Below: Exquisite Totleben portrait of our swamp hero, drawn in 1982.

John: Marty had apparently planned to have them return even before we got on the book, I would guess. I imagine it was something he had in mind.

CBC: Is it true that Len wasn’t too happy when you starting drawing Swampy because you started adding all the vegetation and detail?

John: To tell you the truth, I don’t remember that coming up; he may have said to keep it toned down a little bit. The thing is, on those first issues, we didn’t go that overboard with Swamp Thing. We added some stuff, but we hadn’t gotten to the point where we were putting tons of vegetation and all that yet.

CBC: In #19, you guys really left a mark on that issue. What was different about that one?

John: It was just part of the growing process of working on a book. When we first started, Len told me that they usually like to give new artists or new teams about three issues to really get their feel for a book, because it took about three to really get in there and be able to start hitting a stride. I think that somewhere in issue #17, Steve and I were already starting to pick up in terms of the art, though we also were starting to fall behind a bit, in terms of the schedule! Swamp Thing #18 was a fill-in issue, but by #19, Steve and I were pretty much on the ball. The work we did on issue #17 and #19 is probably as good as anything else we did in the series, as I’m sure you could pull out panels that are every bit as impressive as what came after.

CBC: Do you remember why Marty left the book?

John: Len told me that he was planning to take Marty off the book.

CBC: This was told to you before you started work on the series?

John: No, this was after a couple of issues, probably when I was working on #19, or had just started it. Len just felt that Marty was so overextended, and had so much going on, that he was risking his health doing so much stuff. Being friends with Marty, Len just basically wanted to do him a favor, I guess, to get Marty off the book to save his sanity.

CBC: Were you told by Len who the “new guy” was going to be?

John: Len did mention Alan Moore. He said that he wanted to get this new guy from England, who was writing stuff for Warrior magazine, named Alan Moore to do Swamp Thing.

That was the first I heard of it.

CBC: This was around that time you were working on #19, which was falling behind schedule?

John: Yes, I think I had gotten halfway through #19, when the first-half of Alan’s script for #20 came in.

CBC: Was the book pretty close to cancellation, at that point?

John: Sales were so low that, Len told me — at a certain point when I was working on both of those issues — that, if both books weren’t done in a week or so, the title would be cancelled. He was basically telling me that I had a weekand-a-half to finish both of these issues! It was a do-or-die proposition, and if I hadn’t gotten the books in on time, it most certainly would have been cancelled. Len was to go on vacation and, when he came back, the stuff absolutely had to be on his desk, or that was it. There was also the problem with the pencils to #20, which caused a bit of hair-pulling for Steve and I. This was Alan’s first issue and the script was perfectly fine as written, but the penciler, Dan Day, saw fit to make some changes that did not serve the story very well: He added a splash page that was not in the script, plus a lot of pointless symbolic stuff. Also, he did not have a handle on how to draw Swamp Thing, at all. (Dan later told me that he wasn’t really into drawing monsters and horror-type stuff.) When I got the first batch of those pages in the mail, I thought, “Yikes! What the hell am I supposed to do with this?” So I called Len, asked him what he wanted me to do with it, and he said, “Just make it look good!” He was really pissed about the art job, so I just took that as license to do whatever I thought needed to be done to keep true to Alan’s

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Photo © Tom Foxmarnick. Art © John Totleben. Swamp Thing TM & © DC Comics.

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John: Len was a pretty nice guy to work for. I got along with him pretty well, and things went fairly smooth all the while I was working with him during his time as editor. Len’s assistant, Nick Cuti, was also a great guy and quite easy to work with. I think Steve, Alan and I were all pretty lucky to have been able to start off working on Swamp Thing with these guys.

CBC: Were you able to contribute to Marty Pasko’s storylines?

John: Yeah, there were some ideas we’d sent along to Marty. Both Steve and I had ideas, but I don’t know if we ever got to the point where we started submitting a lot of them. I think we probably did send some in, and it was just that Marty wasn’t around long enough to have used any of them. So we ended up forwarding a lot of those ideas to Alan.

CBC: It seemed, when you two were doing the book with Marty, the direction of Swamp Thing was starting to change.

Arcane, Abby, and Matt returned as characters, for instance.

How did that happen?

All art and characters TM & © DC Comics.

script and the intent of his story. I tried to restore as much of the storytelling as I could, redrew practically all of the Swampy figures, reworked the splash… it was nuts! And all that under this nightmarish deadline-doom situation! That was a real trial-by-fire, let me tell ya! Luckily, Len and Alan were both quite pleased with the way that issue turned out.

CBC: Did you have any help to get those books done?

John: I did it all myself. This was back in the beginning, when I was young and stupid enough to be able to keep doing that sh*t non-stop, and stay up all day and all night without collapsing.

CBC: When Alan came in, did you guys have to pick up the pace? Was there a new direction he wanted to go?

John: Alan sent Len a pretty tight overview of at least the first couple of issues. He knew what he wanted to do with #21, and he had written both Steve and me letters outlining what he planned to do. It was detailed enough so we knew what was coming.

CBC: Alan was writing in a direction you wanted to see the book go, right? Such as getting the character back to the swamp. Do you remember reading “The Anatomy Lesson” script?

John: Yes. Because DC wasn’t in the habit of sending scripts to the inkers at that time, Steve sent me a copy. That script was something of a revelation to me! It was almost magical! I remember thinking that things were really going to start happening with this book, and we all knew that this was exactly the right direction it should be going.

CBC: Why did Tom Yeates stay as cover artist until #24?

John: To tell you the truth, I don’t know. I think Len wanted to keep him on the covers for a while to maintain some kind of continuity. When [new editor] Karen Berger got on, that’s when she had us doing the covers. I think it was #25 where Steve and me started doing the covers.

CBC: Around what issue did you really begin to feel comfortable working with Steve?

John: I was comfortable right from the start, but I think, we really started to hit our stride around #19 or 21. It was around that time when we started picking up, because after that we were already rolling.

CBC: When did Alan, Steve, and you begin to collaborate on the stories together?

John: Right from the start. Alan had the first storyline ready — that first story arc with Woodrue — which he had that pretty much worked out ahead of time. Steve and I were sending him ideas for all kinds of stuff, bits and pieces of this, story ideas for that. The second storyline he ended up doing was the one with the Demon, that one Steve and I had hit him with early on. He just liked the idea so much that he couldn’t resist so he had to do that next.

CBC: The early collaborations were done through the mail because you still hadn’t spoken to him at this point?

John: No, I hadn’t talked to him on the phone, not right off the bat. It might have been quite a few months before I actually connected with him by telephone, but we had been writing letters back and forth a lot.

CBC: Would you get letters and packages in return?

John: I received ideas, weird articles, all kinds of sh*t.

We’d send him copies of the artwork in progress, and there was lot of correspondence for at least the first year of pretty much the same type of material.

CBC: Alan welcomed your ideas?

John: Oh, yes. Alan is the sort of writer who actually solicits ideas from the people he’s working with, just to really get a feel for what it is his artist collaborators are interested in drawing, or what they want to do. It is a real collaborative process, in that respect; he never had problems with artists

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Above: Talk about “before and after”! Dan Day delivered what was called a rushed penciling job on the Saga of the Swamp Thing #20 [Jan. ’84] (left), and right is what inker John Totleben created for this splash page, from the first issue of Alan Moore’s ground-breaking run as writer. Wow! Below: Thomas Yeates’ cover to that very same issue.

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Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

All art and characters TM & © DC Comics.

making story suggestions.

CBC: How early in the game did Rick begin helping you guys?

John: Rick was always there from the start, even from before the start.

You’ve probably heard the stories about Rick and I joking about edible, hallucinogenic tubers, and all that stuff, way before we actually started the book.

His actual hand in the art probably didn’t start until #21, where I think he did do some stuff. In fact, there’s some machinery throughout that issue that looks awfully Veitch-like, so I think he probably did some of that work, kicking in a few things here and there. He may have very well have had a hand in almost every issue at some point, though I’m not sure, but it was probably minor background things, at the very least. Of course, when he started penciling, it was just a matter of him stepping to the fore when Steve couldn’t do an issue. Steve and Rick probably remember more clearly.

CBC: Was Karen Berger a stricter editor compared to Len? John: I wouldn’t say either of them was strict. Karen was basically our mother. [laughs] She kept us from going too far off the deep end. She really knew how to steer things when the pace was picking up. She would know when not to interrupt that and when it needed to slow down. She was really great to work with, and she brought that much needed woman’s touch to the book.

CBC: What was difference working on the book under the Comic Code restrictions and after?

John: Probably not a lot. We were doing crazy stuff even before the Code was dumped from Swamp Thing. They had this stupid, little list of what we

couldn’t do. There was the zombie thing: For some reason, we couldn’t show zombies or whatever, some kind of leftover remnant of the 1950s [Dr. Fredric] Wertham debacle [when the Code was thereafter established to enforce industry self-censorship] that was still part of the Code. Remember, this was in 1984, the year Michael Jackson’s Thriller video was on MTV, so society was kinda past having to worry about showing creeping dead zombies on television. (Not to mention that HBO was airing a lot of horror flicks at that time, and you could always see stuff that was a bit over the top.)

In comics, the Code was just a stupid thing, and everyone — the readers and those in the business — knew it was stupid. [laughs] The Code just didn’t seem to have much muscle, really, so it probably didn’t matter with Swamp Thing whether there was a Code stamp on the cover or not. It’s not like you ever remember your mother asking you if your comic book had the Comics Code Seal of Approval before you read it! [laughter] I don’t think you’ll find one kid in America who ever had to show that stamp to his parents before he read a comic. It was just some stupid little thing that meant nothing really.

CBC: The sales on the book didn’t really shoot up until the Code was dropped.

John: I don’t know at what point sales started picking up.

CBC: So when did you go to conventions and start getting recognition from folks?

John: I’d been doing cons for years before working on Swamp Thing, but I would say the recognition factor kicked in after a little less than a year into the book, when it started really, really picking up. And it was really, really, really picking up when Steve and I were getting ready to leave. [laughter] By 1985, we had won the Kirby Awards that year for “Best Art Team,” Alan won for “Best Writer,” we got the “Best Cover” award, and whatever else Swamp Thing received… I think we got away with a handful of awards just a few months before Steve and I bailed!

CBC: You guys left the book right around the time Watchmen came out?

John: We left a little before that, so they were probably starting to plan Watchmen. Steve and I quit in the fall of 1985, and that’s when we finally decided that we were gonna call it quits. We still ended up working on the book for a few months after that, and we tagged #50 as the last issue that we’d do together, and then that would be it. The funny thing is, at the precise point I arrived at the decision to quit, I was walking to a phone to call Steve and tell him this, when the phone rang. I answered and it was Steve calling me to say that he was quitting! He beat me to the punch! But that incident just seemed to be a confirmation that it was indeed time to call it a day, as far as being a team was concerned.

CBC: Were you a little burned-out at this point?

John: No, I wouldn’t say burned-out. I think over-all, it just seemed like the right time to back away from it. We’d hit our stride, hit a peak, and then, what was the point with things starting to wind down? The funny thing was that the issue we really both decided to leave was #46, which is that boneheaded Crisis [on Infinite Earths] issue. Alan probably didn’t want to write it, because it had nothing to do with anything, really. It just seemed to be the one issue of the entire run that should never have been, though there still was some good stuff in there. Art-wise, there’s probably some interesting work. Everybody I knew was reading it, only because they knew me and weren’t necessarily interested in comics, and they’d come up and say, “That’s the last issue of Swamp Thing for me, man! Like, what was that all about?” [laughs] No non-collector understood it, because no one gave a sh*t about Crisis on Infinite F*cking Earths! They just wanted to read Swamp Thing! And, having written it because DC made it a requirement, Alan had to work that stupid crossover in somehow, and none of us really wanted to do it. That was the point when Steve and I just said, “F*ck this!”

CBC: I read that one of the reasons Steve did that issue was for the potential royalties.

John: We didn’t get any royalties off of that issue. [laughs] The first time I ever got royalties off the book was for the last thing I did, which was #60, the first issue that went direct [sales distribution]-only. So that’s a bit of strange irony, I guess. We didn’t get royalties on any single issue of Swamp Thing,

All art and characters TM & © DC Comics.

ever. Royalties came when the trades were put out.

CBC: Was there a reason you and Steve didn’t do anything else besides Swamp Thing at DC? John: We couldn’t do any other work. [laughs] We couldn’t have done any other book really, because we couldn’t work fast enough. Besides that, everything else at DC was pretty much super-hero stuff, which didn’t necessarily interest us.

CBC: Did Steve do a Cloak & Dagger issue around that time?

John: I don’t know if that came before or after.

CBC: Did you guys give an ultimatum around #46 that, if the book was scheduled as a bi-monthly, you could still draw it?

John: No. By that point, we were pretty much through with it. We wouldn’t even have done it together if it came out once a year. There was some talk about it going bi-monthly earlier on… I think the book had a momentum that they wanted to maintain, in spite of the fact that we couldn’t be in every issue. Even the fact that we would do a couple of issues and then need a fill-in, then did another couple of issues, and then a fill-in, didn’t hurt the momentum. Fill-in artists didn’t stop the thing; it just kept going and that was largely due to the storylines Alan was writing, and people were starting to follow his work, so it probably was a smart move not to make it a bi-monthly book.

CBC: Were Steve and you able select fill-in artists, like Alfredo Alcala?

John: Alcala was my suggestion. I remember having a conversation with Karen, and she was basically asking, “Gee, if we got someone to do a fill-in issue inking over Steve, who would you recommend?” I thought, “Well, the only one I can think of working business right now is Alfredo Alcala,” probably because he could maintain the level of detail and the mood. Really, when you think about it, there weren’t a lot of artists who did that kind of line-work and level of intensive detail.

CBC: Alfredo was little heavy on Steve’s pencils at times, right?

John: Well, his stamp was noticeable, though I’m pretty heavy, too. It comes with the territory when you ink in a style like ours, which just tends to overwhelm the pencils a bit.

CBC: Did you also recommend Ron Randall, a Kubert School classmate of yours?

John: I don’t remember if I recommended him or not, because it could be that Karen may have called… I don’t recall.

Some of this stuff is just foggy after so many years, George.

CBC: Were there any fill-in issues that you guys regret not doing? Maybe the “Pog” story?

John: The “Pog” story is actually the one issue that I think Steve and I could not have done better than Shawn McManus. We could have done an okay job, but I just think that Shawn had a certain touch that made that issue work.

One fill-in issue that I think Steve and I definitely should have done was #28, “The Burial,” which Shawn had also drawn. A big part of that story rested on having Wrightson’s version of Swamp Thing and our version of Swamp Thing meet. It was a central idea in that story, but it ended up not looking like either of our Swamp Things! It just didn’t have that touch to it that would have made the presentation work, in that respect.

But I thought Shawn did some great work, with that “Pog” issue as a standout. That’s obviously, and rightly, considered a classic. Other than that, regarding the other fill-ins, it probably didn’t matter who drew them, I guess.

CBC: What was Alan’s strength on Swamp Thing? It seemed to me that he was more into the drama and science-fiction, while you and Steve brought out the horror in the title.

John: Well, aside from being a great writer, Alan’s a weird f*cker. I mean that in the most affectionate and endearing manner possible, with all due respect and reverence!

(After all, it does take one to know one!) He could do all the weird stuff, and that was the one thing, I think, we all had in common: This sort of penchant for bizarre strangeness. Alan obviously had a very strong sense of how to handle horror.

And, of course, Steve and I made the most of it with the art.

CBC: It seemed like the stories that dealt with basic horror came from ideas Steve and you planted in him.

John: That’s true to some extent, but not totally. There was just a greater willingness among the three of us to play around more outside the envelope. We weren’t afraid to do wacky sh*t. I think there are a lot of people who, if they even get decent ideas, don’t know how to use them. The trick is, if you get a pretty nuts idea, you gotta figure out what the hell to do with it, and that’s something we never had a problem with.

CBC: When you did Swampy, it was also pretty much the only horror comic around until Vertigo emerged.

John: I don’t know if Swamp Thing as the only horror comic, because I don’t know what Marvel was putting out, but I don’t think they were doing any horror at that time. Actually, there was Twisted Tales, which Bruce Jones was editing for Eclipse.

CBC: Maybe Epic magazine, but that tended to be more science-fiction.

John: Epic was science-fiction. Heavy Metal was science-fiction. I think, by that time, Bizarre Adventures had folded. I think House of Secrets and House of Mystery were pretty much gone by then. Marvel wasn’t doing any horror titles. Dracula wasn’t being done at that time, was it?

CBC: No, that was long over.

John: I guess we just about had the whole field to ourselves, in that respect.

CBC: What was your reaction to Vertigo, which seemingly started with Swamp Thing?

John: Vertigo started with Neil Gaiman’s Sandman and John Constantine, Hellblazer, standing on top of the shoulders of the Moore, Bissette, and Totleben Swamp Thing. That was essentially the Vertigo totem, pretty much the beginning of it. In the years since, it has obviously developed beyond that. Everything starts somewhere.

CBC: Sandman almost felt like it was a spin-off of Swamp Thing in the beginning.

John: It wasn’t a spin-off. Neil came up with that, free and clear of anything to do with Swamp Thing. It had nothing to do with Swamp Thing, because he just had a completely different idea. Neil had an obvious Alan Moore influence early on, but it certainly wasn’t a case of the character of Sandman being a spin-off. Now, John Constantine, Hellblazer, that was a spin-off of Swamp Thing.

CBC: But some of the elements done in the “Love and Death” storyline reappear in some early issues of Sandman.

John: Yeah, Neil had influences, I’m sure, but it wasn’t what I would consider a spin-off, not like Hellblazer was.

CBC: How did Houma become Swamp Thing’s hometown?

You didn’t go to the swamp to do research?

John: I never did, but Bissette did go down South, at one point. I think Alan must have sat down with a map and stuck his finger on a little town that looked good enough…

CBC: Steve went down there?

John: [Laughs] And he made it back, too!

CBC: In the beginning, could you ever imagine that, with this book, you could tell any type of story you wanted?

John: Well, I don’t know if it was even considered at first.

It was one step at a time. We just came up with whatever ideas we thought would work, and it was up to Alan to decide what would work and how to fit things in. He knew what kind of stories he wanted to tell, and he could figure out a way to make things work.

CBC: Were there any stories that were frustrating to draw?

John: There are always those pages that are like, “Aw sh*t!” But, no, I can’t think of any single issue off the top of my head that was one I would have disliked over any other, as far as drawing them. I think more of certain pages and sequences as being pains in the ass, as opposed to whole issues.

CBC: Was the book usually inked out of sequence? How exactly does Steve lay out a book?

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Previous page: A page from Totleben’s amazing collage issue, Swamp Thing #60 [May ’87].

Above: Page detail from the sublime Bissette/Totleben art job on Swamp Thing #34 [Mar. ’85].

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Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Illustration © John Totleben. The Demon TM & © DC Comics.

John: Whatever way he wants. [chuckles] Steve tends to jump around a bit, which works for him. It’s a real organic process, especially when working with Alan, where you have the entire script, from start to finish, in front of you. You could pretty much go through it and start seeing how you can handle things a little better. If you know that something is going to happen on page 22, then you can foreshadow it on page five, for example, making it that much easier to do with a full-script, and Steve really thinks like that. He thinks of the story in holistic terms, how he can wring the greatest emotional impact out of any given story or any given scene. He’ll jump all over the place. It always drives editors nuts, because they just want pages in order for the sake of making it a lot easier on them, but from a creative standpoint, the way Steve was doing it, it made sense to him. To a lot of other artists, they may not have been able to work that way either. I think some artists just like to sit down and do page one, page two, page three… until they get to the end. Steve is a bit of a grasshopper when it comes to doing that stuff. As far as the inking, it usually doesn’t matter whether it’s inked out of sequence or not.

CBC: Did you or Steve have any arguments working on the series? Any disagreements?

John: That’s kind of the unique thing about the way we all three worked on it: We all knew when something worked or didn’t work. There were no real arguments or anything. It was pretty much recognized that Alan was the one who was gonna steer the course, and any ideas we had we just threw to him and he’d pick and choose as he saw fit. We didn’t have big battles over what should happen with this or who should appear in this issue… there was none of that. We pretty much thought in parallel lines, more or less, on the overall direction.

CBC: Nukeface was one of your ideas?

John: He was just one of those weird characters I had drawn in a sketchbook.

CBC: Do you have an idea where that character came from?

John: The same place they all come from. I don’t remember coming up with a story idea for that, though I may have had a couple of little bits. I just had the character and a basic idea. Steve was the one who suggested using Nukeface after spotting the sketches. And Steve may have tossed in a few ideas, as well, but overall I think Alan’s story was something he’d already had in mind after seeing the sketches and general idea I submitted.

CBC: Did the idea of edible tubers came to you at a party you and Rick attended?

John: Rick Veitch came up with that idea back around the time Steve and I had first submitted samples to DC. We were all together at a hotel in Jersey, close to where we had lived in Dover. [Artist] Tim Truman got us together to do some sketches and ideas and stuff for [gaming company] TSR, which he was working for at the time. We did these monster designs that they were going to be making into Dungeons & Dragons toys. So we spent a week

sitting in this hotel room, drawing monsters and, at some point, we found ourselves at a party thrown by an ex-Kubie who was still living in the area.

Veitch and I were sitting there, talking about what we might do if we actually did Swamp Thing, and we threw about some ideas. He came up with the edible tubers. [laughs] Instantly, we started making all kinds of sick jokes and, of course, the idea of them being hallucinogenic was something that I tossed in. This is one of those things that you think up and it floats through the air, and you don’t think about it until later, when you need it.

CBC: Where did the hippie character Chester Williams come from?

John: Alan created Chester Williams, as far as I know. Stan Woch was penciler on that issue and I think he patterned the character, visually, after an old friend named Larry Loc, who was also a Kubie student.

CBC: Was your solo issue the first chance to show readers what you could do?

John: Issue #48 was the first issue of Swamp Thing that I penciled and inked on my own. So, in that respect, it was the first time most people had seen a complete job by me. I had done some other things solo before that, some short back-ups, and a few covers. There was a “Munden’s Bar” backup I did with Truman in Grimjack that turned out pretty nice.

CBC: At that point did you feel more comfortable working on your own, compared to working with Steve?

John: I was already comfortable working on my own, but it’s a completely different thing, obviously. By that point, Steve and I had pretty much exhausted whatever it was that we were gonna do together, so solo work felt fresher to me. For me, it was an entirely new way of working on the book. The time was right to do that, I guess, so that’s why it happened.

CBC: Wasn’t your Batman vs. Swamp Thing issue originally intended as to an annual?

John: I don’t know if it was supposed to be an annual, or what it was. I forget, but it was supposed to be this double-sized, special thing. I think this was the stand-in annual, or something like that. I don’t know why they did that, but that’s the way it turned out.

CBC: What kind of instruction did Alan give when the “vegetable sex” issue was done? Were you and Steve both left to your own devices on that sequence?

John: I don’t know if I ever saw the script for that issue, though I probably did, but I don’t have it around anymore. I imagine they contained the same types of detailed descriptions Alan typically did in every other script.

CBC: How hard was to draw something that’s beyond our physical realm?

John: I don’t know. Impossible, I would imagine, if it’s beyond the human ability to conceive. Fortunately, hallucinations aren’t impossible to conceive!

We just came up with the collage bit and some of the other weird stuff that we did in there. Steve came up with a device for turning the page on its side.

Actually, Steve and Alan wanted to do something to make the reader look at the book differently. They wanted the reader to turn the book and read it on its side, and Steve felt that to go from the perspective that you’re normally reading it to the point when you turn it sideways, he had to work into that somehow. You couldn’t just, all of a sudden, flip one page, and there it is sideways. There had to be a smooth, gradual transition. So Steve devised a layout that made that work. He really did a good job at that, because it had a real natural flow going from reading the normal comic book way and then having to rotate the book to read the panels.

CBC: When you did your collage issue, was that done as an experiment?

John: I had this idea to do a freestyle, improvisational approach to doing comics. Basically what I did was sit down and put together about half an issue’s worth of full-page collages without really having any idea what the hell we were gonna do with it. That was then sent to Alan, who took a look at it and he came up with the story to use as he saw fit. I really didn’t have anything specific in mind for a story with it; it was just me going out on a limb and seeing what we came up with. It’s nuts when I think about it, to do that on a monthly book. [laughs] It just happened to work.

CBC: That was done multi-media, more than just pencil and ink?

John: No, not really multi-media; it was mainly a photocopy collage. For Swamp Thing, I used a little head that was no bigger than an inch-and-a-half around, made of acrylic modeling paste and, basically, I had made it a few years earlier just to use as a reference. It’s not terribly impressive looking to look at, in actuality; it looks like a little lump of white sh*t. I took it and photographed it with a Polaroid camera, an SX-70.

Polaroid photos are weird because you can do this strange lighting thing with them: If you have a white object, like this head, you can double-light it with a fluorescent light on one side and incandescent on the other. The result is this weird color effect, with the incandescent side coming across as an orangish color and the fluorescent side will be this sick gray-greenish

Illustration © John Totleben. The Demon TM & © DC Comics. Miracleman TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

color. It looks kinda cool when you do it that way. So I had taken some photos like that and used one of them on the cover, for that weird collage painting. Then I just ran off some photocopies of the Polaroids until they were a real stark high-contrast, and just collaged them in with all kinds of other stuff. There were a lot of bits and pieces of watch parts, zippers, and sh*t like that. I just hunted around and whatever I found that seemed useful I just stuck in there somewhere. It was pretty loose, pretty much a freestyle approach to doing comics storytelling. The fact that Alan even got a story out of it is pretty amazing. He actually did a pretty great job with it.

CBC: How did you become the cover artist for the book after you left as inker?

John: I had done a couple of covers, some of them paintings, after I was done doing the interiors of the book altogether. Basically, I had always wanted to do a bunch of painted covers on the book, but the opportunity never really came up. Then, at a certain point, Karen approached me about doing painted covers for Swamp Thing, and it was around the time I was starting to wrap-up work on Miracleman, so, of course, I jumped at the chance.

CBC: You did covers until #100, and then you left. Was your contract up?

John: They were done on a freelance basis. I didn’t have a contract to do X-amount of covers, or anything like that.

It was just do ’em ’til you drop. [chuckles] I just figured that #100 sounded like a good number, and it also happened to be Karen’s last issue [as editor]. So, again, it just seemed like the right time to move on to something else.

CBC: How were you lured back to do covers?

John: The same way as always: With a phone call. [Editor] Stuart Moore called to see if I might consider doing another bunch of covers, and I was in the mood to do that sort of thing again, so I said yes.

CBC: Did they give you a reason why you were called back? Were sales dropping?

John: No, I don’t know anything about that. Maybe he had someone who was doing covers who had quit, and he had to start thinking of getting someone else, so he thought to find out if I’d be into doing them again.

CBC: Was it strange to see the series, one you helped to revitalize, being cancelled?

John: It just seemed like it was going to happen, at some point. It was no big deal for me, though I did enjoy doing covers, but I wouldn’t probably have drawn another issue anyway. It was just one of those things. It was over and done with… so what? [laughter] CBC: Did you have any favorite covers from the ones you did? Do any particularly stand out?

John: A number of them stand out. There was the cover to #34, one that always stands out. There was the cover that had Swamp Thing with the dragonfly on his hand [#93], one I thought turned out pretty well. The one with the zombies and the violin player [#92], that was pretty good. There were a lot of them that were quite interesting. There are a few towards the end which I had just done in black-&-white, with that heavily detail approach — the stipple and dense crosshatching — and some of those turned out pretty well..

CBC: Is Swamp Thing a character you ever get tired of drawing?

John: I wouldn’t say that I get tired of drawing him. It’s easy to draw the character now after having drawn him for so long, so I don’t get tired of drawing him, but I don’t have a real need to draw him. I don’t actually wake up in the morning and think, “I have to draw Swamp Thing!” [laughs] CBC: Do you enjoy drawing the character because he’s this vegetation who is constantly evolving? In that you don’t have to draw him exactly the same every time?

John: Yes. I’ve got the basic form of the character and I can do what I want with that. We had just done so much with Swamp Thing, all those ideas… so the things we wanted to do, we pretty much did..

CBC: Do you find it rewarding seeing kids who weren’t even born when you were doing the book enjoying the comic? How cool is that?

John: It’s a little weird, actually. [laughs] What’s even weirder is getting calls from editors saying, “Gee, I was in high school when I read Swamp Thing. I was a big fan and all of those books,” and now they’re working as editors who call me up to do work. But you get used to it after a while. It comes with the territory.

CBC: When you look back at this work, was this an important time in your life, working with your friends on this book?

John: It was a unique period, George, a pretty exciting time, especially from a creative viewpoint. We had generated such a tremendous amount of energy on the book that we were all feeding off of it. It’s a pretty big high to do that. Kind of after the fact, it would seem that anything else would be a letdown. You do it, you go through it, and when you’re done, you go on to whatever else you’re going to do next. It was definitely a pretty exciting time, especially being able to work with Steve and Alan like we did, doing the things we did.

Plus, the fact that we could do it pretty much unrestrained for a good period of time, because early on, DC’s attitude was it was just a nowhere book, “So who cares what they do with it?”

CBC: When did DC start caring and meddling with the book?

John: When it started getting attention and moving up in sales… in the life of a successful title, that always becomes the point when they want to start exercising more control… and that’s usually when things start to hopelessly disintegrate. [laughter]

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Above: With severely weakened eyesight, John Totleben is forced to take a great deal of time on any art job, so Marvel, to its credit, pays full cover rates to reproduce J.T.’s commission work created years ago for the ongoing Miracleman series. Way to go, Cory!

Previous page and below: Totleben’s stunning sketches of The Demon, Etrigan, drawn in 1983.

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RUSS HEATH career-spanning interview, essay on Heath’s work by S.C. RINGGENBERG (and Heath art gallery), MORT TODD on working with STEVE DITKO, a profile of alt cartoonist DAN GOLDMAN, part two of our MARK WAID interview, DENYS COWAN on his DJANGO series, VIC BLOOM and THE SECRET ORIGIN OF ARCHIE ANDREWS, HEMBECK, new KEVIN NOWLAN cover!

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Arthur Adams Neal Adams Gerry Alanguilan Lara Lee Allen Richard J. Arndt Mañuel Auad Michael Aushenker Karen Berger Marge Bissette Stephen R. Bissette Mike Blanchard Priscilla Blanchard Russ Braun Michael Browning John Castiglia Frank Cho Joe Citro Gene Colan Nancy A. Collins Gerry Conway Andrew D. Cooke Beth A. Cooke Joshua T. Cooke

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Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

David A. Roach Badía Romero Jonathan Ross Jeff Rovin Scott Saavedra Gaspar Saladino Jesse Santos Cory Sedlmeier J.P. Shannon Louise Simonson Rob Smentek J. David Spurlock Mike Stephenson James Steranko Andrew Stevens Noel Sturgeon Theodore Sturgeon Literary Trust Ronn Sutton Arthur Suydam Tom Taggart Mark Tomlinson Roy Thomas

Steve Thompson Steven Tice The Time Capsule John Totleben Herb Trimpe Timothy Truman Francis Tsai Michael Uslan Rick Veitch Tom Veitch George E. Warner Len Wein Alan Weiss Chris Weston Kendall Whitehouse Bob Wiacek Dylan Williams Bernie Wrightson Liz Wrightson Thomas Yeates Rob Yeremian Tom Ziuko Michael Zulli

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Pablo Marcos Herb Trimpe Jim Mooney Special Acknowledgment:

Hunter Shannon

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This page: Arthur Suydam, renowned as the “Marvel Zombie” artist whose work is coveted by the comics industry, shared some of his samples produced when he briefly considered the Swamp Thing gig.

Below is a job commissioned by DC job that got away: Return of Swamp Thing movie poster design, from 1985. Next page: Suydam was sketching Swampy scenarios as early as 1973, while freelancing for the DC anthology books.

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Swamp Thing TM & © DC Comics. Illustration © Arthur Suydam.

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heard that they had been getting tremendous response on this story, more fan mail for this eight-page story in House of Secrets than they got for Superman that month, and they said, ‘We think this is a commercial idea. We think this will fly as a series.’ So Len, Joe and I — along with Carmine initially — got together and talked about it.” continued from page 59 The artist was quickly assured it wasn’t exactly based have a story. When I was a kid, I read ‘The Heap’ in Airboy on the short story set in the 19th century, but he wasn’t too Comics and I always remembered him. It’s a cliché — a man thrilled. “We couldn’t keep it as a period piece so they wantexplodes and turns into something horrible.” ed to update it, make it contemporary, which I wasn’t initially (Wein says he was unfamiliar with the Hillman character happy about. Y’see, that meant, ‘Oh, man! That means I’ve at the time but soon became a fan. “Joe mentioned ‘The got to draw cars! And people in suits and sh*t! I hate doing Heap’ and I started looking up old Airboy Comics,” he said, that. I’ve gotta do all this stuff, it’s got to look right. I can’t “and I even started collecting them.”) just make it up.’ But I thought, ‘Okay, that’s fine. That’s okay When asked if Orlando contributed the bio-regenerative because it’s going to be a monster book. It’s going to be fun.’ aspect, Wein replies, “I don’t remember at all, honestly. I So I became really excited by the idea that we were going to don’t recall. It’s possible. I don’t think that is the contribution be doing what was essentially a monster super-hero book.” made the character what it is. It could have been called When asked about the initially planning sessions for the ‘bubble bath’ and still accomplish the same events. But, no, ongoing title and who came up with the bio-regenerative I will not denigrate his contribution and, as an editor, he was angle, Wrightson admits, “I don’t remember real clearly a terrific editor… but he was the editor. He was not one of anymore. Maybe it was Len. I’m sure he remembers better the writers. That said, for most of our issues, there’s equal whose decision it was to essentially retell the same story in billing with the credit line, ‘A Len Wein–Berni Wrightson–Joe the first issue. It’s basically an expansion on the short story.

Orlando Production.’”

But Len was there at the beginning with a whole story arc.

Wrightson opines, “I think we were all basically interest- He basically said, ‘Okay, this is the first issue, this is what we ed in the characters and in the story, [but] what happened do; we introduce the character, blah, blah, blah; this, that and to make [Swamp Thing] like this was secondary. That’s like the other thing. And then here’s my idea for the next one: We the MacGuffin in a Hitchcock film [the pursuit of an object have Arcane with all the Un-Men and it’s a “Frankenstein” — actually a gimmick, a storytelling device Hitch dubbed kind of thing. You know, creation of life, and everything, and a MacGuffin, which could be virtually anything — the sole we expand on that in the next one.’ Len had at least the bare purpose of which was to propel a story’s plot]. It’s just got to bones in his head, where he wanted to go with the title.” be plausible enough for the reader to buy it because that’s Wrightson continues, “So then we just got started, you all he needs. You don’t have to give them the actual science know? We would have a plotting session. We’d come into because they don’t care. You just want them to suspend Joe’s office, close the door, and Len would start talking. their disbelief and just make the characters as believable He didn’t have any notes or anything. I don’t think he had as possible.” anything written down, it was all in his head. And he would Len Wein does recognize his editor’s contributions, just start going from page one, even reciting bits of dialogue large and small. “Sometimes,” the writer says, “what Joe and things as he’s riffing. I mean it literally seemed like Len added was tremendous; sometimes he added nothing. Joe was making it up on the spot. As he talked, I sat with a pad of was there to guide us, to serve as sounding board, and so paper and, really fast, I was sketching these things out and basically, he would make suggestions. I can’t remember any breaking down the pages. These were really, really loose specific things he did for the regular series, but I do recall, in thumbnails. We’d spend a day doing this and Joe was there, the [HOS #92] short story, he suggested losing the bracelet stopping Len at different points with a question. You know, at the end, which was a very poignant touch, which I had ‘Where is this going? What happens here? Refresh me on not thought of. But he did make suggestions. He was there what led up to this,” and that kind of thing. And Joe would as editor, he was the coach… When Joe Orlando was good, throw in suggestions and ideas, in spite of what Len says, he was excellent. Joe did not think of himself as a terribly and my memory was that it was a collaborative effort.” educated person, so he took great pride in the fact that he In his 1998 interview, Orlando confessed, “I would read The New York Times from cover-to-cover every morning concentrate intensely on books like Bat Lash, Anthro, and on the way to the office and was a self-educated man. He Swamp Thing,” attention that would be recognized in the ofworked very hard at his job. I think he was very much an ficial DC Comics obituary of Christmas Eve of that same year, instinctual editor, working very much from the gut, and he after the editor’s sudden death, which stated, “His single had a good sense of what made a really emotional story.” most enduring contribution was Swamp Thing.” “[While] mostly it was just Len and I,” remembers The writer revealed the creative procedure. “Well, the Wrightson about plotting sessions, “Joe was certainly a part process was pretty much the same for every issue,” exof it. Joe was there while we were plotting and it wasn’t a plained Wein. “We’d make an appoint to see Joe, go into his situation where Len would come up with something, or Len office, block aside a date with a general, rough idea of what and I would come up with something and we’d just give it to we wanted to do, and we would plot the thing out in front of Joe for his approval. He was there as part of the process, for Joe with Joe kibitzing as an editor periodically. I mean that the most part not saying anything, but he would participate.” Joe would make suggestions.

Wrightson recalls hearing of the success of the initial “I wanted to work Marvel style, but Joe was not comshort story, if not exactly when. “I don’t know how much time fortable with that initially, but we talked him into it. We’d get went by but, looking back, it seems like a year passed, at a stack of typing paper and Bernie would basically break least,” he says. “But, when the news hit, I was out of town, down the issue right there during the story conference. back in Baltimore, for about a week. When I got back to New We’d plot it out page-by-page in front of Joe, so that made York, Len called me and said, ‘Where the hell have you been? him more comfortable. Then Bernie would go home with We’re ready to go with Swamp Thing!’ I said, ‘What do you that broken-down story, rough panel sketches along with mean? What are you talking about, “Go with Swamp Thing”?’ very rudimentary notes (sometimes with just a word or two He said, ‘DC wants to do it as a series. They want to give him of direction) and he would pencil the pages. When he was his own series! I want you to draw it.’ And all this had been finished, I would dialogue from the pencils, then it would going on while I had been away and apparently they’d been be reviewed by Joe and then lettered by Gaspar Saladino. trying to reach me. (These were the days before answering Then Bernie would ink it and my then-wife, Glynis, would do machines, kids!) So I went into the office and that’s when I the coloring.”

Swamp Thing TM & © DC Comics. Illustration © Arthur Suydam.

The stages after the plotting sessions would continue to invigorate the artist. “I would take these thumbnails home and draw the pages in pencil,” Wrightson explains, “then give them to Len and he would fill in the dialogue and captions.

This is where it got really collaborative because here was the story that Len told, like several weeks ago. Here it was, fleshed out and drawn and actually realized in pictures so now he could go back and, remembering what he said, talking about it, and then go back, expand on that and build on it.”

“Sometimes,” Wrightson continued, “I’d write little notes in the borders of the penciled pages, more as a reminder to Len of where we are and what he’s supposed to be saying, or what I interpreted. Len would either go along with my interpretation or change it. I never knew what he was going to do until I got the pages back from the letterer. He would run it by Joe, then pass it on to [letterer] Gaspar Saladino, and it would come back lettered and I’d be ready to ink it. So that was really the first time I saw the finished story. So that would get me all excited again.”

When asked by Paul Levitz for AWODCC #6 how Swamp Thing came to be produced “Marvel-style,” editor Orlando replied, “Frankly, I think it was because Len was so damn busy. And Bernie was amenable to it… in fact, that was the way he preferred to do it. We were all very enthusiastic about the idea, because this way we would all be able to contribute to it more fully.”

Enticed by the higher rates over at Warren Publishing, Wrightson would break up the band, leaving the team after Swamp Thing #10 [May–June ’74], though the writer would stay on for two more issues on the title, consoled by the remarkable work of Filipino artist Nestor Redondo, who was a perfect candidate to replace the departing superstar artist. Remarkably though Redondo was not the editor’s first — or second — choice as replacement.

In 1975, Paul Levitz asked the editor about the difficulty supplanting the renowned pair, and Orlando wasn’t worried about Wein leaving, as he was ramping up newbie writer David Michelinie. “After both departures,” he said, “there was talk of canceling the book, but I wanted it to continue. I looked at it as an editorial challenge.” Still, the daunting task of filling the artist slot, Orlando said, “Caused some strange thoughts to run through my head.”

Those weird ideas led to two very interesting names.

The editor admitted, “The first was Arthur Suydam, a young artist who had just started to contribute to our mystery books.” Joe had met the nascent comic book creator when the high-schooler was seeking work at another publisher. “On my way to work for Warren publishing,” Suydam says, “I stopped off at DC and Joe asked me not to go to Warren, but to work for DC instead. He hired me on the spot. There was a particular horror strip I brought in that he was very excited about. He said that my art reminded him of [E.C. artist] Graham Ingels.”

Suydam’s first published story was “A Carnival of Dwarves,” in House of Secrets #119 [May ’74], an exceptionally atmospheric and impressive tale, one that apparently took quite some time to be finished. Orlando told this writer in 1998, “I gave him a script out of my inventory that he kept for an entire year. He delivered three pages after one year. They weren’t bad, but they weren’t spectacular. Any other editor would have thrown him out of the office.” With a chuckle, the editor continued, “I just went along with it, saying, ‘Nice to see you,’ like I’d seen him just last week. ‘Are you ready for another script?’”

Suydam recalls, “For me, at age 17, it was both an honor and a challenge working for DC. I was very green and I had a lot to learn about working on deadline for the standard comic template with material targeted at eightyear-olds. Adjusting to the DC way presented a time-consuming learning curve for me. At the time, I had no formal art training and was very slow and, in essence, they were asking me to draw the same story two times: once for outline review, and then again redraw the whole thing in large finish pages, and from someone else’s script, all which was new to me.”

Still, deadlines on the mystery books were not pressing, Suydam says.

“Far as I could tell, Joe was always very excited to see me and to go over whatever work I had to bring in for review. He would review the art, provide a sentence or two on reference advice, and that was it. He never called me Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

to check on progress or ask me to step it up or impose a deadline. Work for those anthology comics was ‘evergreen,’ which means there are no deadlines and publishing was scheduled after the work came in. You could take your time to insure a good job. Some of the work I did for DC was printed years after it was delivered.”

(Checking the Grand Comics Database reveals that after the artist’s second story was printed in 1975, a rash of Suydam tales appeared in Orlando’s books three years later, in 1978, a time when the young man was preparing his painted comics for Heavy Metal.)

Yet, despite taking his time on the work, Suydam was considered to take over Bernie Wrightson’s job on the popular title. “Swamp Thing was Bernie’s gig,” Suydam says. “Our studies and interests, histories and influences were too similar for me to fall into one of his projects. I didn’t want to go in that direction and be regarded a Wrightson clone, have them tell me to draw like Bernie. I grew up on Graham Ingels, and Creepy and Eerie magazines, loved Frazetta’s work and Kley, and the E.C. guys. I studied the Famous Artist’s course, just like Bernie did, loved reptiles — all which already made our black-&-white drafting styles similar, to a degree. It was something I was conscious of — and precisely why DC wanted me for the series.”

And, when push came to shove, Suydam knew he wasn’t ready for a regular assignment. “Joe called me in. I said no. He called me back again. I said no. He asked me to come in when he and Carmine Infantino ganged up on me to try to get me to accept the Swamp Thing series. And I said no.”

When Orlando was asked how seriously he considered Suydam to take over Swamp Thing, the editor replied, “Very seriously. But it’s a whole book and, well, he did take a year for three pages (though he was still in high school). Those were the chances that I took. To me, I was in the great position of being able to say, ‘Well, so I’ll write the three pages off.’ So I could take those chances.”

Suydam himself knew he had a lot to learn. He says today, “I had other obligations, wanted to continue to study at school, learn classical art techniques of the masters. Also I was far too slow for a bi-monthly and would have only made a mess. Plus I saw some Swamp Thing samples by a Filipino artist up at DC. I thought they were much better than mine. I was too young to handle a regular assignment.”

That second candidate before Redondo was selected? None other than Alex Niño, because, as Orlando told Levitz, “At the time, I thought the book would die anyway without Bernie, so why not go out arty?” Just imagine the could-have-beens: Swamp Thing by Arthur Suydam or Alex Niño’s Swamp Thing… The mind boggles.

What readers did get was a spectacular run by legendary artist Nestor Redondo (a creator unfortunately not adequately covered in this all-too short book) and, though the title would fade by 1976, its legacy, one created by an amazingly creative team — editor Joe Orlando, writers Len Wein and David Michelinie, and artists Bernie Wrightson and Nestor Redondo — would contribute by its example to one of the greatest “second acts” in comic book history, one helmed by an astonishing new generation of creators in the decade to follow.

185

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#3: ADAMS AT MARVEL #4: WARREN PUBLISHING

#5: MORE DC 1967-74

#1: DC COMICS 1967-74

#2: MARVEL 1970-77

Era of “Artist as Editor” at National: New NEAL ADAMS cover, interviews, art, and articles with JOE KUBERT, JACK KIRBY, CARMINE INFANTINO, DICK GIORDANO, JOE ORLANDO, MIKE SEKOWSKY, ALEX TOTH, JULIE SCHWARTZ, and many more!

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NEAL ADAMS interview about his work at Marvel Comics in the 1960s from AVENGERS to X-MEN, unpublished Adams covers, thumbnail layouts for classic stories, published pages BEFORE they were inked, and unused pages from his NEVER-COMPLETED X-MEN GRAPHIC NOVEL! Plus TOM PALMER on the art of inking Neal Adams, ADAMS’ MARVEL WORK CHECKLIST, & ADAMS wraparound cover!

Definitive JIM WARREN interview about publishing EERIE, CREEPY, VAMPIRELLA, and other fan favorites, in-depth interview with BERNIE WRIGHTSON with unpublished Warren art, plus unseen art, features and interviews with FRANK FRAZETTA, RICHARD CORBEN, AL WILLIAMSON, JACK DAVIS, ARCHIE GOODWIN, HARVEY KURTZMAN, ALEX NINO, and more!

BERNIE WRIGHTSON cover!

More on DC COMICS 1967-74, with art by and interviews with NICK CARDY, JOE SIMON, NEAL ADAMS, BERNIE WRIGHTSON, MIKE KALUTA, SAM GLANZMAN, MARV WOLFMAN, IRWIN DONENFELD, SERGIO ARAGONÉS, GIL KANE, DENNY O’NEIL, HOWARD POST, ALEX TOTH on FRANK ROBBINS, DC Writer’s Purge of 1968 by MIKE BARR, JOHN BROOME’s final interview, and more! CARDY cover!

Unpublished and rarely-seen art by, features on, and interviews with 1970s Bullpenners PAUL GULACY, FRANK BRUNNER, P. CRAIG RUSSELL, MARIE and JOHN SEVERIN, JOHN ROMITA SR., DAVE COCKRUM, DON MCGREGOR, DOUG MOENCH, and others! Plus never-beforeseen pencil pages to an unpublished Master of Kung-Fu graphic novel by PAUL GULACY! Cover by FRANK BRUNNER!

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#10: WALTER SIMONSON

#11: ALEX TOTH AND SHELLY MAYER

#8: ’80s INDEPENDENTS

#9: CHARLTON PART 1

#12: CHARLTON PART 2

Major independent creators and their fabulous books from the early days of the Direct Sales Market! Featured interviews include STEVE RUDE, HOWARD CHAYKIN, DAVE STEVENS, JAIME HERNANDEZ, MICHAEL T. GILBERT, DON SIMPSON, SCOTT McCLOUD, MIKE BARON, MIKE GRELL, and more! Plus plenty of rare and unpublished art, and a new STEVE RUDE cover!

Interviews with Charlton alumni JOE GILL, DICK GIORDANO, STEVE SKEATES, DENNIS O’NEIL, ROY THOMAS, PETE MORISI, JIM APARO, PAT BOYETTE, FRANK MCLAUGHLIN, SAM GLANZMAN, plus ALAN MOORE on the Charlton/ Watchmen Connection, DC’s planned ALLCHARLTON WEEKLY, and more! DICK GIORDANO cover!

Career-spanning SIMONSON INTERVIEW, covering his work from “Manhunter” to Thor to Orion, JOHN WORKMAN interview, TRINA ROBBINS interview, also Trina, MARIE SEVERIN and RAMONA FRADON talk shop about their days in the comics business, MARIE SEVERIN interview, plus other great women cartoonists. New SIMONSON cover!

Interviews with ALEX TOTH, Toth tributes

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CHARLTON COMICS: 1972-1983!

Interviews with Charlton alumni GEORGE WILDMAN, NICOLA CUTI, JOE STATON, JOHN BYRNE, TOM SUTTON, MIKE ZECK, JACK KELLER, PETE MORISI, WARREN SATTLER, BOB LAYTON, ROGER STERN, and others, ALEX TOTH, a NEW E-MAN STRIP by CUTI AND STATON, and the art of DON NEWTON! STATON cover!

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#13: MARVEL HORROR

#14: TOWER COMICS & WALLY WOOD

#15: 1980s VANGUARD & DAVE STEVENS

#16: ATLAS/SEABOARD COMICS

#17: ARTHUR ADAMS

1970s Marvel Horror focus, from Son of Satan to Ghost Rider! Interviews with ROY THOMAS, MARV WOLFMAN, GENE COLAN, TOM PALMER, HERB TRIMPE, GARY FRIEDRICH, DON PERLIN, TONY ISABELLA, and PABLOS MARCOS, plus a Portfolio Section featuring RUSS HEATH, MIKE PLOOG, DON PERLIN, PABLO MARCOS, FRED HEMBECK’S DATELINE, and more! New GENE COLAN cover!

Interviews with Tower and THUNDER AGENTS alumni WALLACE WOOD, LOU MOUGIN, SAMM SCHWARTZ, DAN ADKINS, LEN BROWN, BILL PEARSON, LARRY IVIE, GEORGE TUSKA, STEVE SKEATES, and RUSS JONES, TOWER COMICS CHECKLIST, history of TIPPY TEEN, 1980s THUNDER AGENTS REVIVAL, and more! WOOD cover!

Interviews with ’80s independent creators DAVE STEVENS, JAIME, MARIO, AND GILBERT HERNANDEZ, MATT WAGNER, DEAN MOTTER, PAUL RIVOCHE, and SANDY PLUNKETT, plus lots of rare and unseen art from The Rocketeer, Love & Rockets, Mr. X, Grendel, other ’80s strips, and more! New cover by STEVENS and the HERNANDEZ BROS.!

’70s ATLAS COMICS HISTORY! Interviews with JEFF ROVIN, ROY THOMAS, ERNIE COLÓN, STEVE MITCHELL, LARRY HAMA, HOWARD CHAYKIN, SAL AMENDOLA, JIM CRAIG, RIC MEYERS, and ALAN KUPPERBERG, Atlas Checklist, HEATH, WRIGHTSON, SIMONSON, MILGROM, AUSTIN, WEISS, and STATON discuss their Atlas work, and more! COLÓN cover!

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#18: 1970s MARVEL COSMIC COMICS

#19: HARVEY COMICS

#20: ROMITAs & KUBERTs #21: ADAM HUGHES, ALEX #22: GOLD KEY COMICS & examinations: RUSS MANNING ROSS, & JOHN BUSCEMA Interviews & Magnus Robot Fighter, WALLY WOOD &

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Joint interview between Marvel veteran and superb Spider-Man artist JOHN ROMITA, SR. and fan favorite Thor/Hulk renderer JOHN ROMITA, JR.! On the flipside, JOE, ADAM & ANDY KUBERT share their histories and influences in a special roundtable conversation! Plus unpublished and rarely seen artwork, and a visit by the ladies VIRGINIA and MURIEL! Flip-covers by the KUBERTs and the ROMITAs!

ADAM HUGHES ART ISSUE, with a comprehensive interview, unpublished art, & CHECKLIST! Also, a “Day in the Life” of ALEX ROSS (with plenty of Ross art)! Plus a tribute to the life and career of one of Marvel’s greatest artists, JOHN BUSCEMA, with testimonials from his friends and peers, art section, and biographical essay.

HUGHES and TOM PALMER flip-covers!

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#23: MIKE MIGNOLA

#24: NATIONAL LAMPOON COMICS

#25: ALAN MOORE AND KEVIN NOWLAN

COMIC BOOK ARTIST: SPECIAL EDITION #1

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Exhaustive MIGNOLA interview, huge art gallery (with never-seen art), and comprehensive checklist! On the flip-side, a careerspanning JILL THOMPSON interview, plus tons of art, and studies of Jill by ALEX ROSS, STEVE RUDE, P. CRAIG RUSSELL, and more! Also, interview with JOSÉ DELBO, and a talk with author HARLAN ELLISON on his various forays into comics!

New MIGNOLA HELLBOY cover!

GAHAN WILSON and NatLamp art director MICHAEL GROSS speak, interviews with and art by NEAL ADAMS, FRANK SPRINGER, SEAN KELLY, SHARY FLENNEKIN, ED SUBITSKY, M.K. BROWN, B.K. TAYLOR, BOBBY LONDON, MICHEL CHOQUETTE, ALAN KUPPERBERG, and more! Features new covers by GAHAN WILSON and MARK BODÉ!

Focus on AMERICA’S BEST COMICS! ALAN MOORE interview on everything from SWAMP THING to WATCHMEN to ABC and beyond! Interviews with KEVIN O’NEILL, CHRIS SPROUSE, JIM BAIKIE, HILARY BARTA, SCOTT DUNBIER, TODD KLEIN, JOSE VILLARRUBIA, and more! Flip-side spotlight on the amazing KEVIN NOWLAN! Covers by J.H. WILLIAMS III & NOWLAN!

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Spotlights great DC Comics of the ’70s: Interviews with MARK EVANIER and STEVE SHERMAN on JACK KIRBY’s Fourth World, ALEX TOTH on his mystery work, NEAL ADAMS on Superman vs. Muhammad Ali, RUSS HEATH on Sgt. Rock, BRUCE JONES discussing BERNIE WRIGHTSON (plus a WRIGHTSON portfolio), and a BRUCE TIMM interview, art gallery, and cover!

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KIRBY COLLECTOR #65

BRICKJOURNAL #32

BACK ISSUE #79

BACK ISSUE #80

BACK ISSUE #81

LEGO ARTISTRY with builder/photographer CHRIS McVEIGH; mosaic builders BRIAN KORTE, DAVE WARE and DAVE SHADDIX; and sculptors SEAN KENNEY (about his nature models) and ED DIMENT (about a full-size bus stop built with LEGO bricks)!

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“Charlton Action Heroes in the Bronze Age!” DAVE GIBBONS on Charlton’s WATCHMEN connection, LEN WEIN and PARIS CULLINS’ Blue Beetle, CARY BATES and PAT BRODERICK’s Captain Atom, Peacemaker, Peter Cannon: Thunderbolt, and a look at Blockbuster Weekly! Featuring MIKE COLLINS, GIORDANO, KUPPERBERG, ALAN MOORE, PAT MORISI, ALEX ROSS, and more. Cover by AL MILGROM.

“Flash and Green Lantern in the Bronze Age” (crossover with ALTER EGO #132)! In-depth spotlights of their 1970s and 1980s adventures, MARK WAID’s look at the Flash/GL team, and PAUL KUPPERBERG’s Lost GL Fillins. Bonus: DC’s New York Office Memories, and Green Lantern: Ganthet’s Tale by LARRY NIVEN and JOHN BYRNE. With BARR, BATES, GIBBONS, GRELL, INFANTINO, WEIN, and more. Cover by GEORGE PÉREZ.

“DC Bronze Age Giants and Reprints!” An indepth exploration of DC’s 100-PAGE SUPER SPECTACULARS, plus: a history of comics giants, DC indexes galore, and a salute to “human encyclopedia” E. NELSON BRIDWELL. Featuring the work of PAT BRODERICK, RICH BUCKLER, FRANK FRAZETTA, JOE KUBERT, BOB ROZAKIS, BERNIE WRIGHTSON, and more. Super Spec tribute cover featuring classic art by NICK CARDY.

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KIRBY COLLECTOR #66

ALTER EGO #132

ALTER EGO #133

ALTER EGO #134

ANYTHING GOES (AGAIN)! Another potpourri issue with a comparison of Jack Kirby’s work vs. the design genius of ALEX TOTH, a lengthy Kirby interview, a look at Kirby’s work with WALLY WOOD, MARK EVANIER and our other regular columnists, unseen and unused Kirby art from JIMMY OLSEN, KAMANDI, MARVELMANIA, Jack’s COMIC STRIP & ANIMATION WORK, and more!

DOUBLE-TAKES ISSUE! Features oddities, coincidences, and reworkings by both Jack and Stan Lee: the Galactus Origin you didn’t see, Ditko’s vs. Kirby’s Spider-Man, how Lee and Kirby viewed “writing” differently, plus a rare KIRBY radio interview with Stan, MARK EVANIER and our other regular columnists, unseen and unused pencil art from FANTASTIC FOUR, 2001, CAPTAIN VICTORY, BRUCE LEE, & more!

75 YEARS of THE FLASH and GREEN LANTERN (a crossover with BACK ISSUE #80)! INFANTINO, KANE, KUBERT, ELIAS, LAMPERT, HIBBARD, NODELL, HASEN, TOTH, REINMAN, SEKOWSKY, Golden Age JSA and Dr. Mid-Nite artist ARTHUR PEDDY’s stepson interviewed, FCA, MICHAEL T. GILBERT in Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, BILL SCHELLY on comics fandom history, and more!

Gentleman JIM MOONEY gets a featurelength spotlight, in an in-depth interview conducted by DR. JEFF McLAUGHLIN— never before published! Featuring plenty of rare and unseen MOONEY ART from Batman & Robin, Supergirl, Spider-Man, Legion of Super-Heroes, Tommy Tomorrow, and others! Plus FCA, Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, BILL SCHELLY, and more!

Celebrates SOL BRODSKY—Fantastic Four #3-4 inker, logo designer, and early Marvel production manager! With tributes by daughter JANA PARKER and son GARY BRODSKY, STAN LEE, HERB TRIMPE, STAN GOLDBERG, DAVID ANTHONY KRAFT, TONY ISABELLA, ROY THOMAS, and others! Plus FCA, MICHAEL T. GILBERT, BILL SCHELLY, and more! Cover portrait by JOHN ROMITA!

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COMIC BOOK CREATOR #6 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #7 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #8

DRAW! #29

DRAW! #30

SWAMPMEN: MUCK-MONSTERS OF THE COMICS dredges up Swamp Thing, ManThing, Heap, and other creepy man-critters of the 1970s bayou! Features interviews with WRIGHTSON, MOORE, PLOOG, WEIN, BRUNNER, GERBER, BISSETTE, VEITCH, CONWAY, MAYERIK, ORLANDO, PASKO, MOONEY, TOTLEBEN, YEATES, BERGER, SANTOS, USLAN, KALUTA, THOMAS, and others. FRANK CHO cover!

BERNIE WRIGHTSON interview on Swamp Thing, Warren, The Studio, Frankenstein, Stephen King, and designs for movies like Heavy Metal and Ghostbusters, and a gallery of Wrightson artwork! Plus writer/editor BRUCE JONES; 20th anniversary of Bart Simpson’s Treehouse of Horror with BILL MORRISON; and interview Wolff and Byrd, Counselors of the Macabre’s BATTON LASH, and more!

MIKE ALLRED and BOB BURDEN cover and interviews, “Reid Fleming, World’s Toughest Milkman” cartoonist DAVID BOSWELL interviewed, a chat with RICH BUCKLER, SR. about everything from Deathlok to a new career as surrealistic painter; Tales of the Zombie artist PABLO MARCOS speaks; Israeli cartoonist RUTU MODAN; plus an extensive essay on European Humor Comics!

DAVE DORMAN demonstrates his painting techniques for sci-fi, fantasy, and comic book cover, LeSEAN THOMAS (character designer and co-director of The Boondocks and Black Dynamite: The Animated Series) gives advice on today’s animation industry, new columnist JERRY ORDWAY shows his working process, plus more Comic Art Bootcamp by BRET BLEVINS and Draw! editor MIKE MANLEY! Mature readers only.

We focus the radar on Daredevil artist CHRIS SAMNEE (Agents of Atlas, Batman, Avengers, Captain America) with a how-to interview, comics veteran JACKSON GUICE (Captain America, Superman, Ruse, Thor) talks about his creative process and his new series Winter World, columnist JERRY ORDWAY shows his working process, plus more Comic Art Bootcamp by BRET BLEVINS and Draw! editor MIKE MANLEY! Mature readers only.

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creator’s creators

The Ronn Sutton Story

Self-taught comic artist forges independent career, now 40 years+ and counting! historical, educational, and even romance comics, “You have no talent and will never work in comdepicting an array of characters that have includic books.” Such were the last words that the head ed the Man From U.N.C.L.E., Sherlock Holmes, of the art department said to me on my final day at Honey West, Draculina, The Phantom, Elvira, Fear school. He was dead serious, too. But, strangely, Agent, Vampira, my own Starbikers, among others. a few months later I had moved from my Toronto I’ve illustrated the works of Oscar Wilde, Edgar home to the U.S., was sleeping on Bernie WrightAllan Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle, Graham Masterton, son’s living room couch, working erratically at Neal and currently adapting Leigh Brackett’s Citadel of Adams’ Continuity Studios, modeling periodically Lost Ships into a graphic novel. for Jeff Jones, and “ghost” penciling and inking People always want to know about my pages for Howard Chaykin. experiences of having done courtroom sketches.

Today, more than 40 years later, I’ve drawn The simple truth is I fell into it by accident, but for a couple hundred comic book stories (including seven years I did (mostly) on-call freelance asa nine-year run penciling Elvira, Mistress of CBC‘s own Illustrator Extraordinaire Ronn Sutton in a pic taken signments, some reprinted as far away as France. the Dark for Claypool Comics), plus worked in

by Janet L. Hetherington.

The most notorious case was the trial of Momin animation, had an extensive magazine illustration Khawaja, the first man in Canada convicted of terrorism. Police snipers career, and drawn nearly 100 freelance assignments as a courtroom sketch were stationed on the courthouse roof while police carrying machine guns artist for newspapers and television. patrolled the hallways with bomb-sniffing dogs. Pretty unnerving. On another So, in every way that really counts, I’m a self-taught artist.

From childhood I was addicted to both reading comic books and drawing, occasion, I sat next to a man who had confessed to 12 separate murders. in the days when the best source for comics were smoke shops, drugstores, Never a dull moment.

Ye Crusading Editor asked me to write this piece because I’ve drawn the and trading with other kids. I’d read every comic I could get my hands on — Dell, Charlton, Gold Key, ACG, Tower — but Marvel and DC comics were the Comic Book Creator pencil portraits that have been appearing in this magazine, as well as this issue’s opening spread of “The Ascent of Swampmen,” most desirable. So, enthusiastic as a mid-teen, I published five issues of my seen in this very publication. But drawing comic stories is my great love. own mimeo (!) and ditto (!) fanzine, Whirlwind, before eventually contributIllustrating guns and babes and monsters and horror and spaceships, but no ing illustrations, comics and portfolios to much slicker fanzines like Comic super-heroes… well, rarely, anyway. & Crypt, Always Comes Twilight, Comic Crusader, and later the color cover I live in Ottawa, Canada, in a house full of artwork that has framed to the Spider-Man Marvel Comics Index [1975]. As my interest in drawing Wally Wood roughs hanging in the bathroom, with my true love, comic book became more sincere, my fondness for super-heroes (Kirby!) started to be scripter and screenwriter Janet L. Hetherington and our omnivorous pet replaced by all the other types of comics: sci-fi, horror, war, Westerns, plus the great newspaper strips by Leonard Starr, Stan Drake, and Al Williamson, cat, Heidi.

You can see nearly 200 pieces of my artwork at http://www.ronnsutton. and I eventually discovered underground comix, too. com and can contact me at RonnSutton@aol.com for commissions, assignI sort of never looked back, so that a rambling comics career of more ments and conversation. than four decades has largely been untouched by super-hero assignments.

— Ronn Sutton, comic book artist It’s been a diverse career of drawing horror, humor, adventure, detective,

coming attractions: cbc #7 in winter

Horrors… It’s Bernie Wrightson!

COMIC BOOK CREATOR #7 spotlights the brilliant artistry of Baltimore’s own BERNIE WRIGHTSON, from his days as a fanzine wunderkind to ascent into the top ranks with Swamp Thing and the glorious Warren years (“Jenifer,” “The Pepper Lake Monster,” Poe and Lovecraft adaptations); as well as the whole Studio experience shared with Michael Wm. Kaluta, Barry Windsor-Smith, and the late Jeffrey Catherine Jones; and transcendence into legend with his illustrated Frankenstein adaptation. Plus we examine his work in detail, with a fantastic showcase of unforgettable work.

Frequent Wrightson collaborator BRUCE JONES, triple-threat artist/writer/editor, is interviewed, plus we include a look at the latest book THE SECRET HISTORY OF WONDER WOMAN; we spend time with red-hot popular artist/writer — and husband/wife — team of GABRIEL HARDMAN & CORINNA BECHKO about their ongoing work all over the place; CBC checks in with BATTON LASH on his longtime series Supernatural Law; and who cares it’s past Halloween, when we can dissect the long-running annual series The Simpson’s Treehouse of Terror annual series with Bongo-man

80 pages • Full-color throughout • $8.95

190

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

© Bernie Wrightson

Bill Morrison? Plus Richard Bruning on the design of comics… and, of course, HEMBECK!

a picture is worth a thousand words Thomas Yeates, pencils and inks, Swamp Thing commission piece, 2007.

Art © Thomas Yeates. Swamp Thing TM & © DC Comics.

TM & © DC Comics.

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

191

one last thing

The Thing of It Is…

The long, strange trip of Swampmen, and a few minor things, like the meaning of life

Above: Douglas Klauba, artist extraordinaire, painted the first version of our book’s cover, back when it was subtitled “Muck-Monsters of the Comics.” Co-editor Khoury suggested maybe eight months or so back to change it to “Muck-Monsters and Their Makers,” more inclusive and more accurate! Inset right: John Totleben’s cover art for The Telegraph Wire (a newsletter for the Comics & Comix retail chain back in the ’80s) originally had Swampy and Abby giggling over Alan Moore’s Superman Annual, but Ye Ed is a clever one, huh? Below: My 1986 Valentine’s Day card for Beth, love of my life and partner for life.

In some ways, finally getting this book to press feels like closure. The intense endeavor to finally get it done, get it complete with the best effort humanly possible — thank you, John Morrow, for your amazing patience and understanding; I can’t imagine the stress of fearing the ball might be dropped again — is very reminiscent of the intensity of getting Comic Book Artist #1 into the printer’s hands, way back in the spring of 1998. It’s exasperating, exhausting, and completely invigorating. It’s a whole mix of emotions, most predominately hope.

Details are still being worked out, but it is likely my production and design skills will not be gracing the pages of CBC starting next issue. With another publisher friend, we will be launching a monthly magazine devoted to contemporary comics entitled ACE. For the first time, I will be earning a full-time salary for my efforts about comics.

Advertising work will switch to part-time and, with the grace of TwoMorrows, I will remain as editor of CBC, keeping it on a quarterly basis. Wish me luck!

That subtitle atop this send-off?

The meaning of life? I’ve finally learned (and pretty much knew anyway, by the example of my extraordinary mother, it just was a long time coming to realize it) that it’s about sharing and helping others. It’s about hope, pushing aside the bondage of self, and being available to do the next right thing.

Back before we were married, Beth and I bonded with a shared love of a certain comic book. She never cared for comics much as a kid, taught my obsession with them was silly, but something about Alan Moore’s storytelling connected us to one another, albeit briefly, through the conduit of this medium I care for so much. Yes, there was the thrill and the shock and expert manipulation of a true wordsmith at the top of his game certainly. But most of all what made Beth habitually read Swamp Thing during Alan’s tenure was the tale it told about the profound, deep, and abiding love between two very different creatures, who through adversity, the spectre of death, and separation, persevered, and the two were stronger when they became one. Thank you, Alan.

I hope that the folks who participated will appreciate the presentation. I hope those who were left out will give pardon (and wish Godspeed when CBC launches “The Swampmen Files” section, printing the omitted interviews). I hope every single one of you buys George Khoury’s amazing book about the joy of our hobby, Comic Book Fever, when it arrives next year (hah! — I win, G.K.!). I hope to continue this amazing journey with one of the finest men I have ever known, John Morrow, because it’s no fun without you, pal. I hope my wife forgives me for the weeks and weeks of me waking her up from a perfectly sound sleep at three in the morning because I was plugging away on this book. I hope ACE is a big hit for Rob and I, so I can do lots ’n’ lots more books. I hope you, kind reader, enjoy this tome and sense some of the joy that went into making it. Mostly I hope this book is worth the wait.

Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers

Swamp Thing TM & © DC Comics. Man-Thing TM & © 2014 Marvel Characters, Inc.

192

I winch when I’m looking through an old issue of Comic Book Artist and come across an advertisement from more than ten years ago trumpeting the (ahem) impending arrival of my next book Swampmen: Muck-Monsters of the Comics, co-edited with one of my best friends in this crazy comics biz, George “Kimota!” Khoury. I mean, geesh, over 12 years ago… really? But as I sit here, finishing up a long stream of all-nighters (not as easy as it once was, believe you me!), writing this last piece for this long-awaited tome, I’m inclined less to feel guilty and ashamed of having neglected this responsibility for so long, as I am to reflect how this is a much better book than what it would have been back in the ’aughts.

Don’t get me wrong.

If I could do it all again, I would’ve been more attentive and striven much harder to meet my obligations; but what is, is. Suffice to say the last decade was difficult for us at Casa Cooke and my sense of self and of place was tested. But here and now? I could throw out the old chestnut, things happen when they’re supposed to happen, but I do think this book is improved because of the delay. Today there’s a much larger color section than originally planned, and it contains more essay writing than anticipated (a true joy and utterly time-consuming task for this writer, much as I regret it held back this “summer” annual’s release), and there’s an added poignance that I can’t quite articulate, but I’ll try….

I do regret that Steve Gerber and Jim Mooney aren’t alive to read this, but the genuine loss felt for them — both gracious and kind men who encouraged me and were generous (Steve expressed the importance of my interviewing for posterity and Jim insisted on drawing the illustration found in his interview) — I hope it’s apparent in this book that they are sorely missed.

And I wish, too, that all of the planned interviews had seen print in this production. Interviews with Michael Uslan, Thomas Yeates, Paul Levitz, Karen Berger, Gerry Conway, Jesse Santos, Roy Thomas, a joint talk with Bissette and Veitch; and conversations planned with Martin Pasko and Gaspar Saladino; not to mention e-mail interviews with J.M. Dematteis and Nancy A. Collins, among others… Oy, seriously, there is enough for another 192page book. My appreciation to everyone who made an effort to participate in Swampmen, and if I’ve forgotten any contributors, so many who contributed art and artifacts, please contact me and I’ll do my best to publicly acknowledge your support in future issues of Comic Book Creator.

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TwoMorrows. A New Day For Comics Fans!

TwoMorrows Publishing • 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 USA • 919-449-0344 • FAX: 919-449-0327 E-mail: store@twomorrows.com • Visit us on the Web at www.twomorrows.com

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All characters TM & ©2015 their respective owners.

DIGITAL

Swamp Thing TM & © DC Comics. Illustration ©2014 Arthur Adams.

SWAMPMEN

MUCK-MONSTERS OF THE COMICS AND THEIR MAKERS

52195

ISBN-13: 978-1-60549-057-1 ISBN-10: 1-60549-057-1

Edited by Jon B. Cooke & George Khoury

Plus these special features: • “It,” the classic Theodore Sturgeon short story that started it all, fully illustrated 9 781605 490571

1

82658 97073

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03

In the 1970s, there came a legion of muck-monsters rising forth from the muck ’n’ mire of comic books and, boy, were they many! DC Comics had their top mudman SWAMP THING; untouchable MAN-THING shambled through pages at Marvel; THE HEAP disgusted and stunned kids reading Skywald mags; lobster-red BOG BEAST came out of a tarpit to spook Atlas/Seaboard’s audience; Gold Key gave us the accursed Lurker in the Swamp; and even Warren Publishing had their Marvin, the Dead Thing! Join us for the definitive story behind this weird sub-genre of horror comics, including interviews with Alan Moore, Bernie Wrightson, Steve Gerber, Mike Ploog, Len Wein, Stephen R. Bissette, John Totleben, Rick Veitch, Val Mayerik & Jim Mooney!

$21.95 in the USA

• The complete, behind-the-scenes story of the true origin of Swamp Thing • Pages from “Déjà Vu,” the unfinished graphic novel by Wrightson & Wein • Thorough look at the controversial “Swamp Thing in the Holy Land” comic book • Exclusive muck-monster pin-ups and rarities.

Swamp Thing TM & © DC Comics.

Other characters TM & © their respective owners.

Back cover painting by Douglas Klauba