|
|
Post by rberman on Jan 28, 2019 22:28:03 GMT -5
Swamp Thing #6 “A Clockwork Horror” (October 1973) The Story: Making his way to the town of Burgess, Vermont, Swamp Thing meets an impossible couple: Alec and Linda Holland! They introduce him to Mayor Klochmann, who eventually explains that he has made android replicas of various people who met untimely deaths. Swamp Thing is enamored of “Linda” and stops just shy of kissing her.  Matt Cable has been assigned by his bosses (in the Army?) to investigate this very town, and he brings Abigail along, because why not? But the Conclave has been tracking Cable somehow. They show up in Burgess with a strike force to kidnap Klochmann and put his talents to more malign and lucrative work. Cable and Abigail are flown away on a Conclave helicopter. Swamp Thing tears a battle droid to shreds, but Klochmann is gunned down in the fight, as are the “Alec” and “Linda” androids. The other androids have been programmed for pacifism, but the death of their maker causes them to slip a gear, and they engulf the strike force in a mechanized horde. Swamp Thing hops a freight train for Gotham City, figuring that Cable and Abigail will have been taken there. To be continued… My Two cents: A solid issue. Swamp Thing got to be part of the action but ultimately was not the deciding factor, and the Conclave conspiracy, essentially dormant since issue #1, finally gets some traction as the story structure segues from anthology into multi-part serial. The splash page has some fun Eisner-esque embedding of the title and the credits into the materials on Matt Cable’s desk. 
|
|
|
|
Post by berkley on Jan 29, 2019 1:40:00 GMT -5
SW#4 was my first issue, back in the day, and I remember the Wrightson-designed werewolf making a big impression - why hadn't anyone thought of that before (maybe someone had?)
I missed #5, but vividly remember #6: that splash page with Matt Cable's desk struck me as the coolest thing in the world, for some reason - the files, the clock-radio (I had never seen or even heard of a digital clock before), the files and newspaper clippings, the whole idea of someone using all these scraps of information to solve a mystery - for years afterwards this picture played a large part in my mental imagery of fictional detectives.
|
|
|
|
Post by rberman on Jan 29, 2019 9:22:33 GMT -5
Swamp Thing #7 “Night of the Bat” (December 1973) The Story: Batman is shaking down some wharf rats for information on The Conclave and its agent “ Mr. E.,” not realizing that Mr. E (“Mystery,” get it?) is Nathan Ellery, one of his own senior staff at the Wayne Foundation. Ellery has his pet German mad scientist Dr. Hammerschmidt torturing Matt Cable and Abigail Arcane (captured last issue) for information on something or other. Swamp Thing arrives in Gotham City and plays gumshoe, stealing a fedora and overcoat and hanging out in a bar until he overhears mouthy patrons discussing The Conclave. He finds Hammerschmidt, Cable, and Abigail in a decrepit warehouse and is in the process of unstrapping the victims from electric torture chairs. Hands off, you Teutonic fiend!  Something weird happened in the editing at this point, because on the next page, Batman has followed a trail of clues to an apartment building, and he and Swamp Thing are both outside confronting each other. I think we missed a scene in which Swamp thing completed the rescue of Cable and Abigail and learned where to find Ellery and the Conclave at this new building. Anyway, Batman attacks, and Swamp Thing lays him flat, then scales the building exterior while Batman takes the stairs inside. Both heroes reach the top floor simultaneously, catching the crooks in an accidental pincer move from door and balcony. Ellery falls victim to the old “fell off the balcony while backing away from the fearsome foe,” not unlike Arcane in issue #2. Swamp Thing disappears into the night, leaving Batman to clean up the rest of the goons.  My Two Cents: Swamp Thing finally enters the DC Universe, as teased last issue by a “Gotham City” sign. His exploits don’t fit very well in the world of super-heroes, but Batman makes the most sense, being both a popular character and one of DC’s more gothic choices. As I said above, this story appears to have lost one or more pages to tie together the German torturer scene with the Ellery penthouse scene. Cable and Abigail disappear abruptly from the narrative at the same point. I feel like "German scientist torturer with an electric chair" is a stock character with its roots in anti-Nazi stories. Mel Brooks satirized the role in The Muppet Movie.Berni Wrightson draws a terrific Batman, with long, curved ears that extend from the back of the cowl rather than the sides or top. However, his weasely Bruce Wayne is severely off-model, with a weird pointy chin. Also, look, at that panel of Batman and Swamp Thing sparring above. Does Swamp Thing look like he’s 7’5”? He ought to be quite a bit taller than Batman. 
|
|
|
|
Post by Roquefort Raider on Jan 29, 2019 19:43:07 GMT -5
The picture of Batman standing on a rooftop with the wind at his back was the most impressive representation of the hero I had seen up to then. Wrightson did not usurp his reputation as a great comic-book artist!
|
|
|
|
Post by berkley on Jan 29, 2019 20:15:24 GMT -5
Wrightson took the Neal Adams version of the Batman and made it work with his style. I've never liked the Kelley Jones version, which looks to me like a grotesque, almost Liefeld-esque, exaggeration of Wrightson's.
That 3rd panel above, with Batman silhouetted against the blue night-sky, leaping from a skyscraper - could this have been one of the inspirations for Miller's iconic Dark Knight cover? Or was this already a well-worn visual trope for the character that Wrightson was making use of?
|
|
|
|
Post by rberman on Jan 29, 2019 20:50:27 GMT -5
It just hit me that Batman is depicted living in a penthouse in Gotham City at this point in his career, rather than in Wayne Manor with the Batcave.
|
|
|
|
Post by rberman on Jan 29, 2019 20:52:55 GMT -5
Swamp Thing #8 “The Lurker in Tunnel 13!” (January 1974) The Story: In snowy Appalachia, Swamp Thing wrestles a grizzly and gets exposition from a dying codger about Perdition, a gothic town with a cursed mine. Sounds like fun! So off Swampy goes. The townspeople first attack him with shovels and picks (another town without firearms) and then surprisingly turn welcoming. The pretext of a lost child lures him into a haunted mine tunnel, where he encounters a horrific, tentacled Lovecraftian blob named M’Nagalah. Swamp Thing collapses the mine tunnel, apparently killing M’Nagalah. But at least one of the villagers appears to be infested with a spore from which M’Nagalah can over time grow again…  My Two Cents: A straightfword Cthulhu homage. Len Wein makes mighty bold in this story. First, he makes no bones about its Lovecraftian origins, even namechecking ol’ Howard Philip at one point. (But who is Bierce?) Villagers worshiping and sacrificing to an ancient cosmic horror, and all that.  Second, M’Nagalah claims to be the unifying center of human experience, from the origin of life on planet Earth to the rise of the Neanderthals to the creativity of human authors. It seems to me that quite a few beings have laid claim to such honors in both the DC and Marvel universes. Continuity Note: The story of M'Nagalah continues in Challengers of the Unknown #82 (1977), in which the Challengers come to Perdition. The cover says "Starring Swamp Thing," but really it's just a flashback to his own issue #8 here. However, he does become a Challengers regular in subsequent issues, for reasons to be discussed later. (Hint: his own series bombed.) 
|
|
|
|
Post by MDG on Jan 29, 2019 21:26:43 GMT -5
Swamp Thing #8 “The Lurker in Tunnel 13!” (January 1974)My Two Cents: A straightfword Cthulhu homage. Len Wein makes mighty bold in this story. First, he makes no bones about its Lovecraftian origins, even namechecking ol’ Howard Philip at one point. (But who is Bierce?) |
|
|
|
Post by Prince Hal on Jan 29, 2019 22:31:38 GMT -5
It just hit me that Batman is depicted living in a penthouse in Gotham City at this point in his career, rather than in Wayne Manor with the Batcave. Yeah, he had shut down Wayne Manor and moved to the Gotham penthouse in Batman 217, four years earlier. |
|
|
|
Post by rberman on Jan 29, 2019 22:57:47 GMT -5
Just to be meta, statues of both Man-Thing and Swamp Thing appear in a carnival in Superboy #198 (1973)  Also, the cover of Swamp Thing #5 appears on the wall in Adventure Comics #431 (1974).  |
|
|
|
Post by rberman on Jan 30, 2019 6:09:21 GMT -5
Swamp Thing #9 “The Stalker from Beyond!” (April 1974) The Story: Matt Cable and Abigail Arcane are on a December beach vacation in Florida, and the weather is not cooperating with her desire to wear her Vampirella bikini into the chilly surf. Cable’s bosses assign him to accompany a military detachment looking for a crashed UFO in the same swamp that birthed Swamp Thing.  Swampy has just made his own way back to that same swamp. He’s enraged to find that his abandoned lab has been requisitioned by an alien working diligently to repair his damaged spaceship in private before the locals catch up to him. How dare he! Swamp Thing attacks but is swiftly defeated and thrown in a bog, presumably dead.  The army arrives and ties up the alien. They’re supposed to bring him back to base for questioning (and probably worse), but the field commander gets itchy to just execute him on the spot.  Swamp Thing rescues the alien, who gives a final kiss-off speech to the cruel Earthlings before heading back into his spaceship. It must not have been as repaired as he thought, because seconds after taking off, it crashes back down in a fireball. Bummer! I bet the Army wasted no time in carting away all the wreckage (mechanical and biological) for analysis.  My Two Cents: Let’s make it clear from the outset that despite the issue’s title, the alien is not a stalker; he’s just an E.T., hoping to fix his spaceship and return to his home and mind his own business. Swamp Thing is as guilty of persecuting him (initially) as the soldiers are. But then he has a change of heart and plays Deus ex palo. The army dudes are a “shoot first, ask questions later” caricature/critique of the American military, which was none too popular with some in the mid-1970s. Swamp Thing says his first words ever: “Huh?” Next issue his vocabulary is upgraded to include “No!” and it grows steadily thereafter.  Abigail Arcane and Matt Cable are lovers, right? He’s been taking her on both missions and vacations, but we haven’t had a shred of dialogue that either tells us or shows us that there is any affection between them. All they talk about is work and weather. Maybe Len Wein doesn’t feel comfortable writing romance? Cable has been expressing second thoughts about his anti-Swamp Thing vendetta, and he also stands (ineffectively) against the army brutes, so he’s getting a more sympathetic portrayal over time. Unusual for its era, the cover of this issue is simply a pin-up of the protagonist. No dialogue, no captions, no hint of what he’s going to be doing in this installment. Possibly because the story had not yet been written. Looks cool either way.
|
|
|
|
Post by rberman on Jan 30, 2019 18:51:39 GMT -5
Swamp Thing #10 “The Man Who Would Not Die!” (June 1974) The Story: Swamp Thing intervenes when a chain gang escapee appears on the verge of murdering a hag sitting at a campfire. The thug succumbs to his wounds, and the hag (“ Auntie Bellum”) tells him of an antebellum (get it?) plantation owner who abused his slaves and came to a grisly end, evidently at the hands of the ghostly Black Jubal, a murdered one-armed slave.  Following a curious sound into the swamp, Swamp thing is beset by a mis-shapen Arcane and a host of his similarly grotesque Un-Men. Arcane has been sorta resurrected by his creations and still wants to carry out his project of switching bodies with Swamp Thing, even though his current body seems plenty powerful as it is. Swamp Thing is being overwhelmed when a host of slave-ghosts, risen from a nearby graveyard, come to his aid. When he regains consciousness, the ghosts are gone, the Un-Men are occupying seven new tombs in the graveyard, and Auntie Bellum is gone, replaced by the tombstone of Elsbeth Bellum, the lover of Black Jubal. Spooooky!  My Two Cents: Swamp Thing plays the damsel role in this ghost story, rescued by Black Jubal and his zombie friends. The last panel shows two creepy tentacle beasts crawling over the grave of Elsbeth Bellum, a set-up for next issue's story Too bad Abigail Arcane didn’t find a place in this story about her uncle in Louisiana.  Elsbeth “Auntie Bellum” will appear in a much later issue with a new pun for a nickname: “Auntie De Luvian.”
|
|
|
|
Post by Rob Allen on Jan 30, 2019 19:30:02 GMT -5
Auntie De Luvian's sister Bertha De Luvian moved to Chicago, got married and had two sons - Jake and Elwood, the Blues Brothers.
Her married name was Bertha D. Blues.
|
|
|
|
Post by tarkintino on Jan 30, 2019 21:13:40 GMT -5
Swamp Thing #7 “Night of the Bat” (December 1973) Yes--and in 1973, Batman was well into that darker period which started back in the Novick/Robbins period. If any DC character would fit into a Swamp Thing (or Shadow) book seamlessly, it was Batman. Okay, but in this case, one had to just go with it, since Wrightson was not--in my view--the most versatile artist who could illustrate just about any character in a comic company's roster, so knowing that at the time, I just accepted his version of Batman, which was fine in the darker form of visual storytelling. Wrightson's Bruce Wayne...not so much. |
|
|
|
Post by rberman on Jan 31, 2019 6:36:46 GMT -5
Swamp Thing #11 “The Conqueror Worms!” (August 1974) The Story: Matt Cable has decided that maybe Swamp Thing isn’t so bad after all. As he and Abigail Arcane head into the swamp to find him, they’re beset by an alligator-man hybrid, then rescued by Deus ex palo. Then the giant tentacle things from the end of last issue fell all three of our heroes. Abigail and Cable are carried off to join other prisoners of Professor Zachary Nail, commander of the mutated beasties. Nail is a Noah-figure who predicts the end of the world due to pollution and is gathering humans to repopulate the species from his hi-tech ark beneath the swamp. So far he’s captured two young women, two young men, a middle aged guy, and an old guy. They stage an insurrection, aided by Swamp Thing once he discovers the hidden base under the swamp. A good thing too, because (1) Nail's mutated worm servants were actually planning to betray Nail and breed humans for food, and (2) In a fit of pique, Nail activates the nuclear auto-destruct on his base. The humans make it to safety, but Swamp Thing encounters a huge gem which knocks him out, and he awakens in dinosaur-land. Cliffhanger! Continuity References: Professor Nail battled Ghost-Breaker Terry Thirteen “as detailed in Phantom Stranger #14, ‘Spectre of the Stalking Swamp,’” a Len Wein story from August 1971, just a month after the Swamp Thing debut in House of Secrets. It seems Wein was not so reticent at the time to revisit Swamp Thing stories as he would later claim. The presence of Phantom Stranger on the cover makes this an example of “covers that lie” as well, since the story is about Thirteen.  My Two Cents: A good issue, with lots of characters and action. Nestor Redondo takes over for Berni Wrightson on art, doing a creditable job. On the cover, Luis Dominguez’s swamp monster looks much more unfinished and swampy than Wrightson’s muscular version; just compare the covers of #9 and #10. Going along with the “Noah’s Ark” theme, most everyone in this story has a name from the Bible: Luke, Kain, Matthew, Zachary. Every Abigail does, even though she’s from a Baltic state and might have been expected to have an ethnic name like Danute. Nail also calls his base “New Eden.” If Nail were sane, he’d realize that he needs more young women, the demographic least likely to just waltz into the swamp for his giant slugs to capture.  Never mind the effects of pollution on the swamp; what will the effect of this nuclear explosion be? I suspect the answer is “nothing.” The black captive Bolt says one of his worm jailers is “as innocent as Simon Legree.” I am of the generation that never read Uncle Tom’s Cabin and know that reference only through its inclusion in the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical The King and I. Adults under 40 probably don’t know it at all. Swamp Thing did play a role in the escape of the captives, but they showed enough agency on their own behalf that I won’t classify this as Deus ex palo. Also, Matt Brand appears to have reconciled himself that Swamp Thing really is a good guy, after what, the third time getting his aid? A slow learner is better than not learning at all. But now Bolt the black guy has a grudge against Swamp Thing, who dragged him out of the base rather than letting him kill Nail for shooting his girlfriend Ruth dead. “An explosion in an underground base separates our heroes, sending some of them to dinosaur-land” is of course the well-known climax of X-Men #114 (1978), which leads me to wonder whether Claremont was thinking directly of this Swamp Thing arc or was just riffing off of the “Lost World Romances” that Len Wein himself was imitating, like Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864). 
|
|
