Really enjoying this thread. Swamp Thing was a character I never read except when he appeared as a guest star in a book I already read. However this thread has me wanting to read his solo stuff.

Swamp Thing #7 “I Have Seen the Splintered Timbers of a Hundred Shattered Hulls” (November 1982)



Creative Team: Written by Martin Pasko. Art by Tom Yeates.

The Story: The appearance of the cyclopes has freaked out General Sunderland as much as anyone. He and his executives abandon ship in a speedboat. Harry Kay surprises us all, offering Barclay a gun so that he and Tremayne can steal a lifeboat and escape. Alas, they can’t get away.



Swamp Thing faces the Cthulhoid monstrosity living in the cruise ship’s swimming pool. Some exposition explains that the creature is a marooned alien who hybridized accidentally with herpesvirus samples that were dumped in the ocean when a Sunderland ship sank some time ago. So basically the monster is a giant venereal disease that has infected much of the crew.



Swamp Thing’s juices are toxic to this monster (just like the flame demon in Pineboro two issues ago), so Barclay whips up a poison bomb which Swamp Thing swims down to the other aliens on the ocean floor. (Looks like breathing is not an issue for Swamp Thing after all.) It explodes, and Swamp Thing awakens washed up on a beach… with dinosaurs! (Again) Liz Tremayne does a whole lot of nothing.

Back in Georgia, psychic Milton Grossman attempts to apprehend Karen Clancy and her thrall Paul Feldner, but it doesn’t work out so well for him.



Back-up Story: “The Haunting of Amanda Dove” with Mike Barr and Fred Carillo telling a Phantom Stranger tale.

My Two Cents: The Cthulhu bit is a retread from the Perdition story of the original series, with a venereal disease angle thrown in that goes nowhere, at least not yet. The most interesting moment in this issue was the “good guy” moment from series heavy Harry Kay, setting up a mystery to be revealed down the line.

The issue’s title comes from the song “Dogtown” by Harry Chapin, which tells the tale of a widow bereaved by the whaling life:



Regarding next issue’s dinosaur story, the last pages promises us “Not another ‘Swamp Thing vs Dinosaurs’ story! But rather, the weirdest, most off-beat story of the year—in this or any other comic.” We’ll see if it lives up to the hype!

Swamp Thing #9 “Prelude to Holocaust” (January 1983)



Creative Team: Written by Martin Pasko. Art by Jan Duursema and Tom Mandrake.

The Story: In an expanded replay of the brief airport scene from last issue, Karen Clancy mentally sets Paul Feldner ablaze and sucks the energy out of him, using it to age herself up to adulthood. Another of Harry Kay’s associates named David Marx volunteers to be Karen’s next “catalyst” to buy time for Kay to do something to stave off a terrible outcome. Kay takes Feldner to a subterranean compound beneath Washington D.C. for medical care. Kay’s bosses in Sunderland Corporation don’t trust him anymore, and General Sunderland tasks an operative, Ellenbeck, to incriminate Kay and terminate Swamp Thing at the behest of an unnamed client. Ellenbeck is none other than “Mr. Grasp,” the operative with robot hands who seemed dead back in issue #2!



Barclay, Tremayne, Swamp Thing, and the surviving "Agent Blue" veteran are approaching New Jersey in the helicopter held together by the veteran’s mental powers. He falls unconscious for no obvious reason, and the helicopter disintegrates, killing him. Somehow our stalwart trio makes it safely to shore despite falling from who knows what height into the ocean at night. They make their way to the clinic at which Harry Kay formerly employed Barclay and find evidence that “Harry Kay” is really Dr. Helmut Kripptmann, a Nazi geneticist and war criminal.

Kripptmann and a rapidly decaying Milton Grossman save the heroes from a Sunderland security squad and then offer to team up with them to save the world. Barclay rejects the offer, so Grossman uses his mental powers to make Swamp Thing sprout plant-tentacles which attack Tremayne and Barclay.

Back-up Story: “Sanctuary of Shadow” with Joey Cavalieri and Fred Carillo telling a Phantom Stranger tale.

My Two Cents: Approaching New Jersey? They were on a boat that left Miami for the Caribbean. How did they get halfway up the eastern coast of the USA before trying to get to shore? This is the issue in which Lizabeth Tremayne could have reasonably exited the story. She’s back in the USA, out of danger, and has no skills or knowledge particularly germane to dealing with Sunderland or Karen Clancy. Indeed, as a journalist, Liz could probably do the most good working her media contacts to expose the nefarious Sunderland Corporation. But nope; she decides to cut and dye her hair to play further cloak and dagger with Swamp Thing and Dennis Barclay.

In the previous Swamp Thing series, I commented that Swamp Thing himself was often cast as the mute observer to an interesting story that doesn’t involve him. Pasko is doing something a little different and odd, in that the most interesting story involves Karen Clancy’s coming apotheosis, and Kay’s attempt to prevent it—but Swamp Thing hasn’t spent meaningful time with Karen since they were separated by vampires back in issue #3. One gets the feeling that Pasko had a “Firestarter/Carrie” story to tell about Karen when he was assigned to write Swamp Thing, and he’s trying to shoehorn the story he wants to write into the story he has to write. The writing style at this point is completely serial, with pages and pages of catch-up exposition about the Karen Clancy plot required throughout each issue.

That said, Pasko has done a good job keeping the reader off-balance about Harry Kay. First he was a black ops guy employed by the baddies. Then he was a physician doing cruel experiments on behalf of the baddies. Then he suddenly started helping the good guys and talking like he was a secret servant of the greater good, trying to save the whole world. But now when spurned by potential allies, he immediately attacks. There’s more of this story to come.

An issue of Variety Magazine reports the alleged death of Liz Tremayne when the Sunderland cruise ship SS Haven sank in issue #7. This raises lots of questions. Who wrote this story? Liz had been captured and was a drugged sex slave on the ship. Sunderland certainly wouldn’t want her presence there being known like this. Similarly, the article mentions the immolation of Paul Feldner. That occurred in public at the airport, but Harry Kay quickly spirited Feldner’s body away for treatment, so how would anyone know who he was, to write a story about him?



Pasko spends half a page venting his spleen about his skepticism toward the federal government, including the ambition which is “the cancer beneath the presidency.”

Redondo gives us another cool image working the “Created by…” credit into the art.

The Martin Pasko /Yeates run is criminally underrated. I re-read it every few years , even more often than the acclaimed Alan Moore run.

That technique is hatching and was an old standby in comics; even color comics. Mike Grell made extensive use of it in his work, as he drew much of his inspiration from illustrators, like Pyle, Wyeth and Parrish.

So true. I have read the Pasko/Yeates run 3-4 times since buying off the rack. Only read Moore's run the one time when bought off the rack. I do believe this review thread has chosen my Halloween reading for this fall.