The seed planted back in episode 2 of Midnight...The Podcasting Hour sprouts as Ryan Daly and Ben Avery pick up the saga of the Swamp Thing with reviews of the first two issues of the monster's ongoing series by Len Wein and Bernie Wrightson. Plus, listener feedback from the "Swamp Thing" short story covered on episode 2.
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Great show but Ben, in looking for comparisons with Man-Thing, Is really stretching in calling a poor dumb dog with a camera ‘a betrayal’. You can’t have a betrayal without intent.
I hugely recommend that recent Wein Swamp Thing series, with Kelley Jones providing moody lush art homaging Wrightson.
All the best to the Wrightsons, that’s such sad news.
I agree with you, Martin. The dog is an inadvertent spy in this story, but not an agent of betrayal. However, in a few more issues he will be!
Great episode fellas, but of course I expected that because you’re covering some of the greatest comics of the Bronze Age; I really feel as though the first dozen or so Wein/Wrightson issues are about as good as mainstream comics get.
I was also saddened about the news re: Bernie Wrightson, but as you said Ryan at least he is still with us and that’s more important. His style is so unique that as a kid getting into comics I latched on to it immediately and anything he was involved with caught my eye: the aforementioned Silver Bullet adaptation, his Frankenstein book, covers he did for PC Comics’ TWISTED TALES. He even did a monster coloring book printed at my beloved treasury size:
http://www.treasurycomics.com/gallery/galleryOTHERoneshots3.htm#monsters
For the record, the Man-Thing Power Record is called “Night of the Laughing Dead” and can be seen/heard here: http://powerrecord.blogspot.com/2007/11/man-thing-night-of-laughing-dead.html
Considering how much horror stuff Power did with their Marvel comics, it’s a damn shame they didn’t ever give us a Swamp Thing adaptation. That would have been AMAZING.
Finally, I love the idea of a sitcom featuring Swamp Thing and Arcane. Cue the Odd Couple music!
Another great episode! Ryan and Ben have a great rapport which makes for enjoyable listening. While listening, I realized I’ve never read these issues before. I’ve read the HOUSE OF SECRETS #92 lots of times. In fact, I seem to recall each fanboy was forcibly issued a reprint of that comic back in the 1990s. I’ve read much of Alan Moore’s run in recent years, and tons from the Vertigo era forward. So how did I miss these issues?!?!
Oh well, it will make listening to your coverage that much more enjoyable. I’ll be discovering these issues through you guys! … So don’t screw it up fellas.
PS: I challenge Ben to work the word “Sludge” into his comments each episode. C’mon, Ben! You can do it! Jump on Now!
Oh, and so sad to hear about Bernie Wrightson. No denying he was a master in his prime. I recall when I managed a comic shop in the 1990s, we had a copy of Bernie Wrightson’s Frankenstein in our store. I was constantly marveling at the detailed line work. If you’ve never seen it, seek it out. It’s breathtaking.
If you hear of a Go Fund Me or something similar for him, please let us know.
Thanks again for the great entertainment, Ryan and Ben!!
Great episode guys. I’m really digging the discussion on these Swamp Thing issues I haven’t read in ages. I really need to get the latest trade of the Wein/Wrightson run. And once again, I REALLY need that Swampmen book from TwoMorrows!
Very sad to hear about Wrightson’s health. I will just go out on a limb and say Wrightson is the single greatest horror artist in comics. It’s not that he can’t draw other things, but no one in comics history can rival his mastery of horror and suspense. I will echo I’m glad he’s still with us, but as an artist myself (although I would barely call myself that compared to someone like Wrightson) the idea of having the ability to create taken from me is just saddening…not so much for the fans, but for the man himself.
Chris
Oh, and one more thing about the somewhat rushed nature of these stories. Comics were in a pretty bad place around this time, sales-wise, and DC titles were popping up and dropping like flies before sales numbers would even come in! Publisher Carmine Infantino was just guessing what would sell, and if his gut told him it wasn’t going well, he would drop the axe, even without data to back it up one way or another.
So maybe Orlando, Wein and Wrightson thought they may have a very narrow window of time to tell their stories, so they rushed ahead into the good stuff.
Chris
Thanks for another great episode reviewing this incredible series. A couple of things to comment.
It is sad to hear about Wrightson. Like Ryan, I ran into him at a couple of cons and had him sign some books including Swamp Thing 3 and 10. With all these guys, I try to help out by buying their stuff or donating to Hero Initiative when I can.
Wrightson’s art is just incredible and really makes this series. It is impossibly detailed and yet he was able to churn out these issues monthly.
As for these episodes, the biggest thing revelation/remembrance for me was that Swamp Thing kills Linda’s murderers. One of the biggest early complaints about Moore’s run was that Alec killed General Sunderland in The Anatomy Lesson. Read the letter columns about that famous issue and you’ll see plenty of people complaining that their head-canon Swampy doesn’t kill. Remembering him executing the thugs puts Anatomy Lesson into a newer light.
Lastly, as you say, there are a lot of horror movie tropes touched on throughout this run. Swamp Thing being dragged through the village on the St Andrew’s Cross, the unmen, Frankenstein (Patchwork Men), a werewolf, and even an alien all traipse through this book.
Looking forward to hearing more!
You do great work, guys. TWO issues an episode? We might get to Alan Moore in my lifetime yet!
Love me some swamp monster action. Finally catching up. Listening while driving
First appearance of my favorite Raven, when he was a government stooge still.
Really enjoyed this episode – Wein and Wrightson had a great handle on the character and the 2 stories were great, although, as mentioned in the podcast, you did have to suspend your belief in a few parts of the plot (biplane going from Louisiana to the Balkans being the major culprit!)
This is my first time reading these stories and am enjoying listening to Ryan and Ben tackle them as I progress through the series myself. Looking forward to the next episode.
My wife asked to read my Alan Moore issues of Swamp Thing. He is a favorite guest on one of her favorite British radio programs, The Infinite Monkey Cage. I retrieved the first half-dozen or so from the long box, but I also included the Wein-Wrightson issues. I thought that in order to better appreciate Moore’s contribution she should read the original run. She enjoyed them, and she made a very good observation. Swamp Thing was quite a passive character. He was re-active, as opposed to most comic-book protagonists who feel compelled to be pro-active (with their powers and responsibilities and so on). Swampy just kept finding himself in situations, not going out to find situations. I love this podcast!
Good coverage fellas. In an effort to cement my place as the Veitch-appreciation guy I would like to recommend the time travel issues 82 and 83. These are where Alec falls backward through different eras and encounters Arcane conducting occult atrocities in WW2 and later meets him in WW1. The mechanics of these encounters are quite clever in that Arcane is not actually sure who or what he is meeting, plus he has some setbacks from the encounters that make his approach in issue 2 covered here make sense. Also these comics feature Enemy Ace and Sergeant Rock. Plus thy are some really messed up horror.
Another great episode and discussion.
Like you guys, I felt having the Swamp Thing’s love interest left alive at the end of HOS #92 made for a much more emotionally powerful story. But it was intended to be a one and done story. I agree that in Swamp Thing #1 it just made more sense to have the love interest (Linda Holland) die in order to move the story ahead more rapidly – and boy did they!! Although I liked the story in issue 2, I personally would have liked Swampy to spend a little more time in the Swamp before heading to Europe. Chris Franklin’s comments above about the state of the industry were very interesting and in light of that, it does make sense as to why they chose to advance that aspect of the story so quickly.
Wrightson’s art in these Swamp Thing stories just gets better and better every time I look at it. His nuanced approach just fits perfectly with the main character and the tone of the stories. Sorry to hear about his recent health issues. He is truly a master of this genre.
As far as that lurking character at the end of issue 2, if I remember my who’s who correctly, that’s not exactly one of Arcane’s un-men. I think it is a character that does have a connection to Arcane himself but even more so to a character we haven’t been introduced to yet in this series – but who definitely becomes important in the ongoing Swamp Thing saga.
I look forward to continue to follow these issues right along with you guys!
Swamp Thing is a “second generation” super-hero to me, and as such I’ll always have a nostalgic soft spot for him. Across the span of the Secret Origins Podcast, the seminal super-heroes that were a part of your life from earliest memory came up a lot, as did the later additions at DC Comics whose introductions at a specific point in fandom are more crystalline in memory. My first meeting with Swamp Thing is appropriately boggy, in that I know he didn’t have the media or market penetration to reach me as a toddler. I have a vague recollection of the feeling of newness in making the acquaintance of this unfamiliar entity, but the specifics are less then clear.
After doing a bit of investigating, I’m pretty confident advertisements for the 1982 Wes Craven Swamp Thing movie (which I believe crossed the boundary into Marvel Comics) and its tie-in series was the genesis point. I remember staring at that poorly reproduced movie poster a lot, with the provocative image of a sensual woman in the grip of a hulking man-thing, plus the tiny, grainy, moody photos at the bottom (especially Louis Jordan in his Indy Jones hat.) I don’t believe I’ve ever seen the movie in its entirety. If it had been on a UHF channel instead of at a movie theater, I might have become a bigger fan. When it finally arrived on basic TV at a time when I could see it, I think my attention was elsewhere. I either caught bits of it flipping across channels or half-watched it while doing something else. There were annoying kids and a rubber suit and a semi-serious tone that didn’t work for me. Ever the contrarian, I was never particularly fond of Adrienne Barbeau. Mostly, I was impressed by Jordan classing up the picture, given that he was after all a Bond villain (even if it was just Octopussy.)
I did buy the first couple of issues of The Saga of Swamp Thing by Martin Pasko and Tom Yeates, although I’m not certain if I picked up the second issue new or years later out of a quarter bin. I was always a sucker for photo covers, so it could have gone either way. The Phantom Stranger back-up “Soul on Fire” isn’t, forgive the pun, burned into my brain in the same way as “…In Shadowed Depths” from the debut issue. Finding a brand new series on the stands wasn’t all that common back then, and the cover was (again, forgive me) swamped with hyperbolic sales copy that sealed the deal. I believe that comic featured my first dismemberment, with Swamp Thing spending most of the story with a stump where his severed left hand (which had its own thing going on) had been. It also had a four page recap of the origin and the threatened filicide of a young girl under a bridge after her father had already done her mother in. It was a lot for a boy reader to take in, yet also seemed overly decompressed. There were a lot of episodes of incident that didn’t connect well and weren’t all that involving. The art suited the material, which is a bit of a backhanded compliment, as it was somewhat mundane. I mean, it was outshone by a Dan Spiegel Phantom Stranger back-up, y’know? I also hope Pasko offered a tip of the hat to Stephen King’s Firestarter as some point. This run got a nod in my beloved 1983 DC Sampler, with a four hour tribute podcast still available on the Fire & Water feed to go with this here Proustian reverie.
I don’t think Swamp Thing got the best distribution, or maybe I was simply that disinterested, but I don’t recall seeing Swamp Thing again until house ads for Saga #27 featuring Etrigan and Abbie Arcane. I want to say I flipped through some of the later Alan Moore issues at mall book stores, but didn’t take the plunge to buy another issue until being swayed by the novelty of one turning up at the local 7-11. Too bad Swamp Thing #59 was a non-Moore issue, and an uncomfortable read that put me off, but not enough to skip #66 as a discounted dinged copy at my first neighborhood comic shop. That was my introductory John Constantine story, ditto Floronic Man, and possibly even Killer Croc. I’d never seen Arkham treated like an actual asylum before, or rather, the fictionalized hell of a Victorian style asylum in a modern setting. This one made an impression on me.
Somewhere in there I also got DC Special Series #2 at what I call the “dust bowl” flea market, a mostly open air, dirt & gravel affair with an indoor section for antiques with my first semi-proper comic shop inside. I tossed through the issue while wandering the market haphazardly under the Texas sun, then read it later that night while soaking in the tub. For the reread ahead of listening to the podcast, I tried to dig up my replacement copy to revisit the experience in pulpy newsprint, but eventually had to give that up in favor of Roots of the Swamp Thing #1 (from a relatively recent acquisition of the set.) I’m usually a champion of Baxter format reprints, but Swamp Thing feels more right on brown/gray paper with dim lighting and muted colors. The origin played much better in long form with Bernie Wrightson art, and I can’t help noticing Pasko/Yeates did an underwhelming recycling of the car “stopping short” splash page in their debut. Len Wein’s story is fine, but I extended his work a line of credit back in the day as I read one meh story after another that makes more sense now that I realize how hugely important Wrightson’s personality was to my enjoyment of Swamp Thing. The visual characterization, the emotion, the lighting, the angles, the overwrought flora and sinewy fauna… go Berni or go home. Wrightson is the apotheosis of EC Comics art, taking only the finest elements of Feldstein, Ingels, Davis, Orlando, Craig and a bit of Wood, then married them to Will Eisner. In retrospect, I agree that the second story feels like it should have come later in the run, but as part of a complete package special edition, Arcane and the Un-Men were exactly what I wanted for the finale. Let me also note that Wrightson’s cover to the first issue definetely feels like it belonged deeper in the run, which is probably why the more debut appropriate #9 gets heavier play (and I even prefer the excessively representative DC Special wraparound, but not the drab Roots painted job.)
By the way, as Anj appropriately noted, that was a Saint Andrew’s Cross in #2, though BDSM aficionados sometimes come up with variations to work in the “X” like “crux decussata.” We had one at the sex shop back in the day, and it doesn’t take much imagination to see how that design could be more beneficial than a standard crucifix. Logic be damned, I loved that sequence of hard traveling.
Seeing how well Swamp Thing works in an old world gothic setting with overtly supernatural trappings, I wish Wein and Wrightson had just done a continuation of the original House of Mystery story. As has been noted, Alec Holland is uncomfortably close to Ted Sallis, and quasi-science fiction/horror work better at Marvel than at DC. Imagine picking up with Alex Olsen a few decades into the 20th century, contemporaneous to the golden age of Universal movie monsters, cycling through revitalized classics. Linda Olsen could have anticipated Wanda Blake’s trajectory, with Swamp Thing acting as an immortal guardian over her children and further descendants across time and distance. Instead, I was plucking odd later issues of Holland’s first run by lesser creators from cheapie bins involving sabre wielding super-heroes and centurions on sky cycles with laser pistols, as well as parts of an extended guest arc in Challengers of the Unknown. Keeping it American “Me Generation” did not pan out.
I also saw The Return of Swamp Thing, probably as a VHS rental, at my brother’s house. As with Howard the Duck, I have affection for its low budget cheesy ineptitude, as everyone seems to know it’s crap but are game to make the best of what they have to work with. I love the music and the use of iconic comic book images in the credit sequences. The cheap suit does a better job of representing the Moore era Swamp Thing than was done with Wrightson’s. To me, Dick Durock is to Swampie as Christopher Reeve is to Superman: the comforting ideal version of a childhood hero in live action. I also recall those tie-in environmentalist PSAs running on local channels, and this movie had a longer life on the late night circuit than the original, probably because the rights could be had for pennies. I didn’t have the USA Network when they were running the TV series, but it seemed to be unusually successful for one of those early, stumbling attempts at programming created specifically for basic cable. Even 72 episodes of badness is an accomplishment, and there was the animated (retroactive) mini-series and toy line. I had a couple of those figures, but they were likely stolen for me by my stepfather, not properly purchased. There was also a couple of video games back then that I never played, but I always respect comic book pioneers in multimedia.
I’ve sampled a bunch of Swamp Thing issues over the years. #84 with the lovely painted cover for the Sandman connection. #113 & 118 by happenstance, and I have to say, the Nancy Collins stuff was not my jam. I fished DC Comics Presents #85 out of a quarter bin in ’89. I only thumbed through the later volumes, with Tefé Holland getting her own brief run, and then the New 52. I’m not sure how to feel about the retconning of the “plant who thought it was a man” retcon. I go back and forth between feeling Swamp Thing’s time has long passed and rooting for him to make a comeback, given his modest inroads into mass media representation.
If I were tasked with reviving Swamp Thing, I must confess, this would not be a case for me to read the entire library of material for research. I don’t think the specter of Alan Moore is particularly helpful, and it might be best to do as he did– blow everything up and start over with the bare bones of the original premise. As is my way, I’d seek direction through contrasting with his other company doppelganger. Man-Thing is a mindless mute creature who works best in anthology stories revolving around swamps and his compulsion to seek out fear and conflict. So you emphasize Swamp Thing’s thoughtfulness and gentility while forcing him out of the comfort and safety of the bayou into city sewers, foreign forests, and so forth. Alec needs connection to humanity, and is a reluctant protector, so perhaps a dynamic similar to the old Beauty and the Beast TV show where Abbie is the one dealing with the complications of the modern world until Alec has to step in when the supernatural manifests? Certainly the presence of adversaries needs to broaden beyond Anton Arcane, so perhaps introduce a MacGuffin that Swamp Thing has to defend, but more personal and less cosmic than the Nexus of All Realities? Revisiting a vulnerable child version of Tefé as the bridge between The Red and The Green? Maybe a political and ecological angle arguing about the basic rights of the Hollands as a family, or Swamp Thing forced to go on the offensive against a corporation or administration actively evolving a doomsday scenario for the planet? It’s tricky, because I like the character smaller and more horror-themed, but there’s a lot of material there to go big action, as well. I mean, if anyone is going to take offense over a con artist demagogue seeking to drain the swamp…