Comic Book Creator 6: Swampmen Preview

#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

twomorrows publishing

raleigh, north carolina

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].

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.”

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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.

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 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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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

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,

by JON B. COOKE with George Khoury

44

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

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

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

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.”

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

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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?

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.

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

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

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

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

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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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-

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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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

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.

All art and characters TM & © DC Comics.

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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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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

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

Swamp Thing TM & © DC Comics. Photo © Thomas Yeates.

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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

‘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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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

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

SWAMPMEN

MUCK-MONSTERS OF THE COMICS AND THEIR MAKERS

IF YOU ENJOYED THIS PREVIEW, CLICK THE LINK TO ORDER THIS ISSUE IN PRINT OR DIGITAL FORMAT!

COMIC BOOK CREATOR #6: SWAMPMEN!

SWAMPMEN: MUCK-MONSTERS OF THE COMICS dredges up Swamp Thing, Man-Thing, 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!

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ISBN-13: 978-1-60549-057-1 ISBN-10: 1-60549-057-1

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Back cover painting by Douglas Klauba