A few months ago, I wrote about the “house dress” that, by mid-1973, had become common on the DC comics edited by Joe Orlando. It was a look that included a solid color banner that ran behind the title logo and other necessities (e.g., the price tag, Comics Code seal, etc.) and took up roughly the top third of the cover area. Not every Orlando cover followed this format (see, for instance, Plop), and other DC editors used it on occasion as well. Still, in the period of comics history we’re presently discussing, it was a prevalent enough feature to count as an editorial signature for Orlando, if not precisely a trademark.
At the time of my previous comments, I wrote that giving over a third of the cover’s real estate to a single solid color effectively reduced the canvas available to Orlando’s cover artists. But while that statement was true enough on its face, it really should have been accompanied by an acknowledgement of how Orlando routinely mitigated the negative effect of that design choice by keeping the amount of verbiage used on his covers to an absolute minimum. Nowhere was that truer than with Swamp Thing, whose covers through most of its existence included no blurbs or other typography (other than the necessary elements mentioned earlier) — depending entirely on the strength of the artwork to sell the comic.
That was true even in the case of the issue we’re discussing today, where you have to figure Orlando must have been at least tempted to use a blurb to advertise the fact that Swamp Thing #7 featured a special guest appearance by DC’s second most popular hero. But, no — even here, Bernie Wrightson’s imagery was deemed sufficient to convey the message that Batman would be found within the comic’s pages.
Which it does, beautifully — despite the fact that the Darknight Detective isn’t anywhere close to being the most dominant figure in Wrightson’s composition. As it is, the cover isn’t only a visual knockout; it’s also a remarkable example of Joe Orlando’s commitment to his own personal aesthetic… to what he, in the series’ letters columns, usually referred to simply (but proudly) as “quality”.
But, enough about the cover, and the subtlety with which it announced the issue’s guest star. Whose idea was it to feature Batman in a horror comic (even one with a continuing heroic protagonist) in the first place? Decades later, in a joint interview published in Back Issue #6 (Sep., 2004), Wrightson and his Swamp Thing co-creator, writer Len Wein, indicated that the main idea was to establish that their character, and his adventures, were part of the same fictional universe in which DC’s superheroes operated — and Batman seemed a better fit for that purpose than most of the publishers’ other costumed crusaders:
WEIN: Well, we considered that the Atom would probably not be the best choice of the DC Universe. (chuckles) If you’re doing a horror story, something that’s dark and moody and mysterious, the character who most relates to that is Batman.
WRIGHTSON: Yeah, absolutely. Also, for me, there wasn’t any other character that I wanted to draw. Batman was just [the best choice] from the standpoint of the costume and everything. You know, I always had a problem with superheroes. You can enjoy reading Superman when you are a kid, and you can relate to him up to a certain point, but you know you can never be Superman because you know you’re not from another planet. You know you can never be Spider-Man, because if you really did get bitten by a radioactive spider, you’d probably just die. But Batman is a real guy, and when I was a kid, I always related to Batman because I thought, “Wow, I could be Batman.”
WEIN: And there was always that chance your parents could be murdered by a crazed killer.
WRIGHTSON: Yeah, yeah. What kid doesn’t — no, I won’t even go there. (laughs)
And now that we all know why Batman was in Swamp Thing #7, we should probably go ahead and take a look at the issue… although, since “Night of the Bat” builds on events from previous installments, and we haven’t checked in with the series since our discussion of issue #4 back in February, it would probably be a good idea to briefly review what’s transpired since then.
As you’ll hopefully recall, our muck-encrusted protagonist ended #4 stuck in Scotland having just saved both his relentless pursuer, U.S. government agent Matt Cable, and Cable’s companion Abigail Arcane, from a werewolf. Issue #5 explained how the Swamp Thing returned to the States by stowing away on a cargo ship, then became involved with “The Last of the Ravenwind Witches!” Next, in issue #6, Swampy’s wanderings through rural New England brought him to a small mining community in Vermont where everyone turned out to be a lifelike robot, with the exception of their eccentric but kindly inventor. By the sheerest (and most implausible) of coincidences, Matt Cable also traveled to the same town, having been pulled off the Swamp Thing case to investigate the mystery of the 
previously deserted community’s recent revival. And due to a transmitter embedded in the skull of Cable’s dog, the Conclave — the sinister organization that was responsible for the transformation of Alec Holland into the Swamp Thing in the first place, back in issue #1, and which had been trying to track him down and capture him ever since — became aware of the incredibly advanced robots developed by “Mayor” Hans Klochmann, and determined to seize the technology for their own nefarious purposes. Dispatching their own deadly automaton and a squad of gunmen to seize the town, the Conclave were stymied in their aims by the unexpected presence of Swampy himself. In the end, Klochmann was killed, and his creations destroyed themselves while avenging his murder; however, the Conclave was still able to salvage something from the operation by kidnapping Cable and Abby Arcane (who’d accompanied the agent on this assignment, for no good reason other than that’s her role in the series)… though they left behind their dog.
“A Clockwork Horror” ended with the Swamp Thing, reunited with the friendly canine who’d briefly belonged to Drs. Alec and Linda Holland before the dual tragedies that ended her life and drastically altered his, on board a freight train in dogged (sorry) pursuit of his own hunter’s captors…
That brings us up to date — and to the opening page of Swamp Thing #7:
The members of the GCPD who remain ambulatory chase the Swamp Thing into a blind alley — only to find that he’s smashed his way through the brick wall at the far end, and has vanished…
Len Wein doesn’t tip his hand in his scripting of this scene, but sharp-eyed regular readers of Swamp Thing in 1973 would hardly have failed to notice that Bruce Wayne’s colleague Nathan Ellery looks an awful lot like the corpulent and white-haired leader of the Conclave, who up to this point in the series has been seen mostly in shadow, and referred to only as “Mister E”.
I may be wrong, but I think Bernie Wrightson has here given Bruce Wayne the longest hair he’d ever had up to this time (and maybe even the longest he’s ever had since, not counting storylines where he’s traveling the globe or has amnesia or whatnot).
The final panel on page 4 is an obvious tribute by Wrightson to the Bob Kane illustration that concluded the original, two-page origin of Batman in Detective Comics #33 (Nov. 1939), as shown at left; in offering such, Wrightson was following the lead of fellow artist Neal Adams, who’d done his own, slightly more on-the-nose homage to the same panel a couple of years earlier, for Batman #232 (see right; inks by Dick Giordano).
(Of course, Kane himself had swiped the pose from a 1929 drawing of Tarzan by Hal Foster, though neither Adams nor Wrightson may have been aware of that at the time they drew their versions.)
In addition to giving Bruce Wayne the longest hair ever, I’m fairly certain that Bernie Wrightson has also given Batman the longest ears of any artist since the early Golden Age… though I may be wrong. (For the record, Wrightson’s visualization of the Caped Crusader had first been seen over a year earlier, on the cover of Detective #425 [Jul., 1972]; the ears aren’t quite as long in that illustration, however… or, at least, they don’t appear so to the eye of your humble blogger.)
I’m not quite sure what Wein is getting at with Bats’ comment about Commissioner Gordon not using the Bat-Signal these days, “unless it’s an emergency!” For one thing, my research indicates it had made at least a couple of recent appearances in Batman at the time this story was published;* for another, isn’t “an emergency” kind of the whole purpose of the thing?
At this point, the story rewinds to the breaking up of the Wayne Foundation meeting back on page 4 — but this time, instead of following Bruce Wayne, we stick with Nathan Ellery as he descends to the street and enters a white limousine:
Meanwhile, the “monster” is doing some detective work of his own, slipping into a dive bar on Gotham City’s lower east side in hopes of finding a lead…
The guy with the paper evidently really wants to get in with the Conclave, as he’s willing to attack Swampy to get it back. One thing quickly leads to another…
A 2004 interview with Len Wein that was eventually published in Comic Book Creator #6 (Winter, 2014) included this exchange in regards to the page shown above:
Len: …[indicates ST #7, page 12, panel four] That’s got to be my all-time favorite Batman shot, ever.
CBC: But there’s no way you could be seeing what’s going on below with a cape as long as that blowing between your legs! [laughter]
Len: Who cares? That’s the… best… panel… ever.
A separate interview with Bernie Wrightson for the same publication included the following recollection:
Bernie: …I remember getting teased by Neal [Adams]. [indicates page 12] Batman’s standing on a building, the big middle panel, 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.
Back at our story, Swampy gives up on chasing the dog (not realizing that Batman has found him), and proceeds to the address he has for the warehouse on Potter’s Street…
Swamp Thing immediately recognizes the name Ferrett as that of one of the men directly responsible for the lab explosion that transformed Alec Holland into “a twisted, shambling mockery of life”, as well as the cold-blooded murder of Linda Holland…
Wein and Wrightson make the dust-up between the Swamp Thing and Batman appropriately exciting, despite the fact that the ending (once Swampy decides to fight back, as he finally does on the next page) is never really in doubt…
The Swamp Thing may be gone, but his dog is still around, scratching at the door to Nathan Ellery’s building. And, once again, Batman’s attention to the pooch pays off, as the picks the door’s lock, then follows the animal inside…
Your humble blogger has a confession to make here. Not having re-read this story in decades before picking it back up to prepare for this blog post, I’d completely forgotten that its climax included the shooting and killing of Swampy’s dog (perhaps because of the indirect way it’s presented here), and so was completely stunned when I got to this part. Several days later, I’m still pretty bummed out about it.
Despite appearances, the fate of Nathan Ellery will turn out to be not quite as final as Batman supposes here. But in August, 1973, this definitely felt like the conclusion of the Conclave plotline that had been part of the series since issue #1 (and was most likely intended to be, so far as Wein and Wrightson were concerned, as both creators would be gone well before “Mister E” and his minions were bought back).
When you get down to it, Batman doesn’t really contribute a lot to the resolution of this story; none of his investigative work regarding the Conclave earlier in the story ever gets him anywhere, and it’s only his facilitation of the unfortunate dog’s entry into Ellery’s apartment building that has any bearing on the tale’s final events. And that’s probably as it should be; the title of this book is Swamp Thing, after all, not The Brave and the Bold. Bats is merely a guest at these proceedings, not a full-fledged co-star.
Even so, “Night of the Bat” remains a classic Batman story, half a century after its original publication, thanks mostly to Bernie Wrightson’s wonderfully Gothic, ever-so-slightly horror-tinged interpretation of the Dark Knight — which, I’ll submit, is one of the most memorable visualizations of the character of its decade, if not all time.
And in August, 1973, it certainly ranked as my sixteen-year-old self’s favorite Batman story of the year (if only because I’d somehow missed Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams’ “The Joker’s Five Way Revenge”, which had been published in Batman #251 two months before); though, as things turned out, it wouldn’t be my favorite Bat-tale of ’73 by the time we reached the year’s end. What knocked “The Night of the Bat” out of the top spot, you wonder? Ah, well, I’m afraid you’ll have to check back at this space come late November to learn the answer to that question. I hope I’ll see you then.
UPDATE, 10/12/25: The original version of this post erroneously stated that only the first fourteen Swamp Thing covers were blurb-free. My thanks to Pat Connolly for the correction.
*See, for example, issues #247 (Feb., 1973) and #251(Sep., 1973).
I wonder if the Bat-Signal line was meant as a step back from the Batman TV show, because everyone back then wanted to step away from Adam Ward.
Very much a product of its time, in the sense Bronze Age Batman could still be decked by a random thug with a lucky punch, let alone a swamp monster. I doubt Swampy would win today.
A magnificent story. The cape looks cool, no matter how absurd it is.
Night of the Stalker, maybe? 😀
My lips are sealed until November, Brian! 😉
Great work, you were correct! Excellent Detective work!
Berni’s run on Swamp Thing was magnificent. One of the landmark comics of the 1970s. His drawing of Dr. Hammerschmidt on P. 8, panel 3 was inspired by Ernest Thesiger as Dr. Pretorius in the seminal Universal monster film “Bride of Frankenstein” from 1935:
http://www.ernestthesiger.org/Ernest_Thesiger/Bride_of_Frankenstein_files/pretorius13.jpg
When I was 16-years old (or even now, at 66), I would have killed for a regular Batman comic drawn every month by Bernie Wrightson. Bats really is really the only “tights and fights” character Bernie is perfectly suited to draw. His generous use of blacks (something that’s largely been forgotten in many books these days), the atmosphere and tone of the illustrations really showcase Wrightson’s ability to set the mood for a tale like this. He was perfect for Swamp Thing, don’t get me wrong, but Bernie on a Batman book would have been a chef’s kiss.
So much to enjoy here. Wein wisely keeps Bats a step or two behind Swampy (as you said, Alan, it IS Swamp Thing’s book), but still gives the ol’ Dark Knight some fun action sequences. Haircuts aside, when was the last time we’d seen Bruce Wayne doing Wayne Enterprises business? One of the very few things I didn’t like about the most recent Batman movie was how Bruce Wayne didn’t care whether his business failed or not. It’s good to be reminded that part of Bruce’s mission is to be a good steward of his parents’ money as well as the Avenger of their memory. Besides, how could he possibly afford all those “marvelous toys” without mom and dad’s cash?
It does seem a little unlikely that it would take Bats so long to figure out that Ellery was the Conclave’s mysterious “Mr. E.” I’m sure there was more to Batman’s suspicions that what we got to here, but as previously stated, this ain’t a Batman book. All in all, this was an excellent volume in an excellent series. I’m not sure I read this one fifty years ago…my “superheroes only” rules were pretty tight back in the day, but if I missed it in ’73, then I’m glad I caught up now. Thanks, Alan. This was a good one.
Oh, and Wein was right. The drawing of Batman on page 12, panel four absolutely ROCKS. How long is Batman’s cape? It’s as long as he needs it to be, of course. He’s Batman.
Berni Wrightson actually drew another Batman cover in 1972 around the same time as the one he drew for Detective Comics #425, cover dated July, 1972. It was eventually published *eight* years later on Batman #320 in 1980. Wrightson used an unusual mashup of his initials, “BW,” with ’72 next to it. The only other time I have seen him sign his name this way was on the cover of House of Mystery #204, cover dated July, 1972 (same month as his Tec cover). Enjoy!
https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/marvel_dc/images/b/b9/Batman_320.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20081128210039
The original art looks even better:
https://dyn1.heritagestatic.com/lf?set=path%5B2%2F3%2F0%2F0%2F1%2F23001737%5D%2Csizedata%5B850x600%5D&call=url%5Bfile%3Aproduct.chain%5D
“I hate when Gordon fires up the signal because he’s feeling lonely.”
I gather you’ve forgotten about the ridiculous ears Kelley Jones would draw on Batman?
Not at all, Steve. I was speaking in terms of “as of 1973”, but I see how my use of present tense could have made that less than clear.
Actually, I’ve always figured that Kelley Jones looked at the ears Wrightson gave Batman and said, “Oh, you all think *those* are long, do you?”
In the final panel of the story we see a teaser for #8, “The Terror in Tunnel 13” with a Lovecraftian blob creature of sorts. By the time #8 was published the title had changed to “The Lurker in Tunnel 13,” perhaps as a nod to HPL’s short story “The Lurking Fear.”
But in Berni Wrightson’s pencil roughs for this final page of #7 we see a very different working title, “Haunt of the Creeping Death.” It is always interesting to see the changes that go into the creative process.
https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-U9jJb3Akp3Y/V_A3lWTRcOI/AAAAAAABUYM/NAYjodW2IQIWdcn03FeBQ37IbjUFxLrqwCEw/s1600/bernie-wrightson-len-wein-original-swamp-thing-7-art-prelim-signed-signature-autograph-batman-original-art-1.jpg
Thanks for sharing, Chris A!
I hope you’ll be covering that issue in an upcoming post. From what I recall, it was a genuinely creepy horror tale.
Unfortunately, Ben, the October schedule is already so crammed I don’t think I’ll be able to fit it in. I agree it’s a good story, though!
Ah, too bad. It would have made a good entry for the Halloween season.
One of the early examples of Bats disappearing and leaving Gordon talking to no one.
Kind of a dick move to pull on a friend.
Wein and Wrightson’s intent was not to alienate readers from the Batman, but to indicate that he was not just a man, and certainly not a by-the-book lawman, but almost a supernatural force. The Shadow, for instance, could “cloud men’s minds” and disappear before your eyes. Bats had to wait till your back was turned, but the effect was the same. Sort of like the Lone Ranger suddenly dropping out of sight at the end of a job, and the people said (rather tritely as it was often repeated), “And we didn’t even have a chance to thank him!”
With the Batman “bamf-ing” out of there it only reinforces the concept that he is a grim, determined crimefighter with no time for small talk — or at least that is what various writers have tried to bring across at the time, be it Denny O’Neil, Frank Robbins, or Len Wein, to name a few.
According to Brian Cronin, it was only the second time Batman had pulled that trick on Gordon.
But I can’t seem to make it show the link. https://www.cbr.com/when-we-first-met-when-did-batman-first-vanish-on-commissioner-gordon/
It seems to be working now! 😉
Agreed that Berine Wrightson’s art style was not especially well-suited to the superhero genre, and as he explained in interviews he had no particular interest in them, either. So, I’m very glad he was one of the few artists in mainstream comics during this period who was still able to make a good living drawing the material he actually wanted to draw, and that fit his style. Once superheroes started to become the predominant genre in American comic books, a lot of really talented artists regrettably found themselves having to work almost exclusively on the cape & cowl crowd, even though their work was not a good fit to the dynamic action sequences of those stories.
Sadly, by 1980 many great Filipino artists were relegated to inker status — often over U.S. pencillers with less of a grasp of classic, academic drawing — or they left comic books and comic magazines altogether, working anonymously in the assembly line of Saturday morning animated cartoons. This has been discussed far more in depth in “the Filipino Invasion” issue of Comic Book Artist magazine, published by TwoMorrows, 20 years ago or so.
Yes, I have that one. It was an excellent overview of the Filipino artists who worked in American comics during the Bronze Age.
It is still available for purchase as a digital download from TwoMorrows Publishing:
https://twomorrows.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=98_56&products_id=1154&zenid=mnbtlfjm96p070jpi2bmanf447
That issue of CBA has been very useful for me when I’ve written about the Filipino artists in the past, and I’m sure it will be again.
Speaking more generally, this blog would be a very different beast without TwoMorrows keeping decades-old, sold-out issues of their magazines available in digital format!
Wrightson did some great superhero stories over the years as an inker.
His inks on Neal Adams pencils on GL/BA # 84 (and on the Westren Masked Hero, El Diablo in Weird Western Tales #12) , on Rich Buckler’s in Batman #265 and on Steve Ditko’s (!) on Morelock#3 for Atlas, were very good.
He also worked on the 1988 miniseries The Weird with Jim Starlin.
I loved Wrightson’s work in the ’70s, but he admitted in interviews that he had burned out after Frankenstein and his work was never the same. I agree. His 1983 Dr. Strange wraparound cover was rather disappointing (with fantastic interior work, reprinting Brunner/Giordano’s work on #1, 2, 4, & 5). Likewise I was not a fan of Berni’s work on Batman: the Cult with Bill Wray, Spider-Man: Hooky, the Hulk vs. Thing (written by Starlin), or Punisher: POV. There may be an odd illustration or two that I like out of these, but they were far below the standard he displayed (and maintained) in the 1970s at DC, Warren, and other publishers. He was “lean and hungry” in those years. By the 1980s he was trying to make a living, now being married and with children on the way, and other priorities came ahead of his art being always at its pinnacle. He never became autonomous like his hero Frank Frazetta who was already earning five figures per single painting in the late 1970s, and brought in several million per painting just before his passing. Few commercial artists attain that degree of success, both financially and with total creative control.
Given the fate of “Dawg” in Marvel’s Man-Thing #9-10, canine’s best friends are not swamp monsters.
The first few panels of this story seemed very reminiscent of Will Eisner’s classic Spirit. Mike Ploog was another artist who came on the scene at the right time as his art likewise was more suited to horror or supernatural themes than to standard superheroics. And what a change can happen within a decade in comics sometimes — just a decade earlier, most Batman stories were rather silly kiddy fare but by 1973 most stories featuring him, particularly in solo action, were much more grim & moody, a perfect fit for Wrightson’s style. Admittedly, though, seems the Dark Detective should have figured out the mystery of Mister E. much quicker! I’m going to assume that was an intentional pun by Wein.
A popular one, too. There’s Mr. E the monster slayer in (I think) TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED and Steve Ditko pit a Mr. E against Captain Universe.
Did Ploog ever do any superhero work other than inking Tom Sutton on amazing Adventures # 12?
Not unless you count Ghost Rider!
Great article on one of my all-time favorite comic books.
I was pretty much superheroes-only in 73, so this was my introduction to Swamp Thing. Not sure I’d even heard of the character at the time, but I was immediately hooked. Loved the story. Loved the art. Loved the innovative visualization of my favorite pointy-eared superhero. ST shot to the top of my must-buy list and I immediately embarked on a quest to obtain previous issues.
I was aware of — and impressed with — Wrightson from his work in Plop!, but his depiction here of Batman expanded my mind. Radically different from Adams’ version (at the time, my Platonic ideal) but equally valid — and probably more fitting for a guy who works exclusively at night, dressed like a bat. The much-discussed billowy cape panel is fantastic, as are several others. But for me the most memorable image is Batman’s flying leap at ST on page 16. Dynamically composed and perfectly rendered, it’s a pose I don’t recall seeing before or since.
Given the benefit of hindsight, I think this was possibly Wein’s best ST script — it really felt like the culmination of a wrenching, year-long quest. (Although, when I finally read the prior issues, I was disappointed to learn that the Conclave was essentially non-existent between ST 1 and 6 and that Matt Cable’s “two best friends” were actually relatively new, work-related acquaintances. Maybe the latter was a manifestation of Cable’s guilt over his role in the Hollands’ fate, but more likely Wein felt a need to ramp up the melodrama.)
As befitting his guest-star status, Batman comes across as relatively naive and ineffective — oblivious to Ellery’s extracurricular activities, greatly over-estimating his ability to punch out a police-car juggling hulk and getting out-classed at the detective game by a mute bio-chemist (how do you interrogate someone when you can’t ask questions?). Even still, he is clearly a man supremely dedicated to his mission: battling injustice both day and night, “however long it takes”, no time for small talk with Gordon, “THIS man will just keep coming”. Although O’Neil and Adams deserve most of the credit for re-habbing the character’s image post-Adam West, there is no better portrayal of Batman as a driven, relentless creature of the night than Wein and Wrighton’s work here.
It seems worth pointing out that Batman was still very human in the Bronze Age — in “Silent Night of the Batman” one ordinary guy manages to get the drop on him, for instance. So having Swampy outperform him isn’t as radical as it is today.
I miss Batman being written that way. What’s the point of Batman being an ordinary human being if he’s come up with contingency plans for defeating every single super-powered being in existence?
Bats didn’t have any “anti-bio-restorative formula” in his utility belt, or he could have brought Swampy down to size.,,;)
They were ‘pals’ in two later, non-Wrightson teamups in Brave & the Bold a few years later. Nothing special there, though, except a nice Kaluta cover on the second one.
Yep. Like the Scott Snyder story in which he has a battlesuit that can take down the JLA but he’s still running around Gotham in his regular bat-suit for, reasons.
Wrightson’s inspiration for the Batman’s flying leap pose at the end of page 16 comes from Frazetta’s 1967 cover painting for Conan the Usurper (the arms and upper body):
https://www.frazettagirls.com/cdn/shop/products/frazettagirls-art-print-fine-art-print-stretched-on-wooden-bar-18×24-conan-chained-print-28208201414.jpg?v=1532577332
Sorry to be nit-picking here, but after I read
“the covers of whose first thirteen issues included no blurbs or other typography (other than the necessary elements mentioned earlier).”
I went to admire them at GCD cover gallery for Swamp Thing
https://www.comics.org/series/2034/covers/
And I see issues #14 through #17, at least, look exactly the same way as the first thirteen issues. Starting with issue #18 they revised the top section to no longer be a solid color rectangle, and added the story title between the DC logo and the other regular items. The main cover section art still had no blurbs or typography through #22.
Fairly noted, Pat. Two-plus years later I have no idea why I thought the blurb-free covers stopped with #13 — but, in any event, it was a mistake! I’ve amended the post.