With the publication of the subject of today’s blog post fifty years ago, the collaboration between writer Len Wein, artist Bernie Wrightson, and editor Joe Orlando on Swamp Thing that had begun with a one-off short story in House of Secrets #92 (Jun.-Jul., 1971) came to a close. According to an interview Wein gave The Comics Journal in 1979, the trio’s issue-to-issue production of the ongoing Swamp Thing series — which, unusually for DC Comics at the time, regularly began with a joint plotting session between writer, artist, and editor held every couple of months in the latter’s office, followed by Wrightson pencilling the entire story before Wein wrote a word of the script (a version of the “Marvel method”, if you will) — started out as a great working experience… but then, somewhere along the way, it stopped being so:
We had fun on Swamp Thing. Boy, did we have a great time! We looked forward to getting in there and plotting those next issues and producing the comic, and locking ourselves away and drawing and writing and having a great time. It stopped being a great time for all sorts of reasons that are nobody’s business but ours. It just ceased to be fun. It stopped being fun and it started to be work. When it started to become work, it was no longer really worth doing. That was the big problem.
In Christopher Zavisa’s 1979 book Berni Wrightson: A Look Back, Wrightson offered his own personal perspective on how the experience went sour, at least for him:
…we were continually getting later and later with each issue. Sometimes it seemed that I would do the pencils and Len would take several weeks to get them to the letterer. By the time they got to me, I had to make up for everyone’s lost time when I inked the book. In comics, it doesn’t matter who made the book late in the first place, it is just who had it last. Since my inks were the last thing that went into the book, I was blamed for the late issues…
Issue #10, “The Man Who Would Not Die,” was plotted by me and Len wrote the script. Before I started the book, I told everyone this was the last one. We were late again, and I was completely fed up. I brought back the characters from issue #2 and was determined to make the book the best one. But as we got later and later, my enthusiasm for the issue waned too badly to do a really good job on it. Issue #10 turned out to be a very weak issue. It’s a shame because the story had some good qualities about it that could have developed into something great.
A quarter-century after Zavisa’s book’s publication, as well as his own TCJ interview, Len Wein gave an interview to Jon B. Cooke — eventually published in Comic Book Creator #6 (Winter, 2014) — in which he spoke more frankly about matters that, in 1979, he characterized as “nobody’s business” but his, Wrightson’s, and Orlando’s. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Wein’s recollections of the circumstances surrounding the collaboration’s end in general, and the production of issue #10 specifically, didn’t entirely sync up with Wrightson’s account from 25 years before:
I had a kidney stone attack, my first one, and I was in the hospital for a while. Bernie had a girlfriend at the time who was convincing Bernie that he alone was the reason the book was successful. By the time I went into the hospital, she convinced him that he could do this whole thing by himself, the writing and the art. So he convinced Joe to let him do the next issue on his own. Of course, I’m arguing, “But I’ll be out of the hospital in a couple of days!” But Bernie went ahead and plotted the whole issue out and, before he dialogued it, I came out of the hospital and Joe said, “Well, Len’s back. We should at least let him dialogue the issue,” so they gave me the plot and it had a lot of holes in it. I went through it and said, “You realize if you do this and that and this and that,” because I do have editorial skills, and Joe said, “Oh, Len’s right,” and made Bernie redraw about half the issue to re-plot to match my plot. Because Bernie was so embarrassed by the ordeal, he left the book after that issue.
Wrightson had more to say in later years, as well; the same special “Swampmen” issue of Comic Book Crestor that carried Cooke’s interview with Wein also included one with Wrightson (like Wein’s, it had been conducted in 2004); in it, the artist states:
I quit Swamp Thing just because I was just getting tired of doing it, partly because it just seemed to be the same thing, issue after issue. You know, it was, “What new monster can we come up with for Swamp Thing to fight?” And I don’t know, I just felt like it was going nowhere. We were like repeating ourselves. Plus I was becoming disenchanted doing color comics. If you look at the last issue I did, issue #10, that was done with a pen. Up until then, I’d been working with a brush, and I worked really hard on that one because I was using a pen for the whole book for the first time… when you draw with a pen, it takes longer than drawing with a brush… But for some reason, I wanted to do it all in pen. So long story short, when the book finally came out, covered with all this dark color. Everything is a night scene and all that beautiful line work just disappeared and I just got really disenchanted with the whole thing and I think what the hell is the point of working this hard and putting this much into it if you’re not even going to see it?
I was just very unhappy with how it turned out.
Obviously, we’ll never know which of these after-the-fact recollections most closely approximates the reality of what actually happened fifty years ago — and while it’s something of a cliche to say “the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle”, I think it’s an appropriate observation to make here. In any event, that’s all the background information I have to share about the making of Swamp Thing #10, at least for now — so let’s go ahead and take a look at the book itself…
…although, seeing as how we haven’t checked in with Swampy since his encounter with Batman back in issue #7, we might want to take just a moment to catch up on how our hero got from Gotham City to his current, obviously non-urban locale. Fortunately, that’s a much simpler narrative than the behind-the-scenes backstory we just reviewed… in fact, it can be pretty much summed up as “Swamp Thing hopped a 
train out of Gotham that got him about as far as the Appalachian town of Perdition, where he had a run-in with a Lovecraftian horror by the name of M’Nagalah (issue #8’s ‘The Lurker in Tunnel 13!’); after that, another train took him most of the way ‘home’ — i.e., to the Louisiana swamp where scientist Alec Holland’s transformation into the Swamp Thing had originally taken place. There, Swampy hoped to use his old abandoned lab equipment to search for a cure for his condition, but, alas, said equipment had recently been cannibalized by a stranded alien seeking to repair his crashed spaceship (issue #10’s ‘The Stalker from Beyond!’).” Naturally, there’s more to both stories than just that brief synopsis can convey, but at least you now know how our “huge, shambling, moss-encrusted monstrosity” of a protagonist came to be where we find him in the opening scene of “The Man Who Would Not Die!”.
“Aunite De Luvian“. That’s pretty funny, right? But it’s a joke you might never have been exposed to, if you’ve only read “The Man Who Would Not Die!” in a collected or digital edition. That’s because when DC reprinted this story almost a decade later in Swamp Thing (1982) #18 (Nov., 1983), within a new framing sequence written by Martin Pasko — and edited by one Len Wein — someone decided to change the character’s name to the equally jokey (or so at least it must have been considered) “Auntie Bellum“. That change has persisted through later reprintings, despite it not being true to the original comic’s script and art; and while you can see why someone might have thought the replacement name fit better with the themes of the story, back in 1983, it hasn’t aged well at all. It’s a minor thing, I know; but I do believe it would behoove DC to change it back. (UPDATE, 2/10/24, 1:00 p.m.: Per information shared by Tom Vincent in the “Bernie Wrightson — Master Illustrator” group on Facebook, Auntie’s surname has been restored to “De Luvian” in the hardcover collection Absolute Swamp Thing by Len Wein and Bernie Wrightson, published in 2022.)
Wrightson’s art for this page arguably gives us readers a clearer view of Swampy’s “grotesque quarry” than our hero is himself afforded, which may account for why we — well, those of us who remember Swamp Thing #2, anyway — are likely to catch on to their identity before he does. (OK, the cover probably helps, too.)
According to several accounts, DC briefly got into a bit of trouble with the Comics Code Authority around the sixth issue regarding Swamp Thing’s perennially “undraped” status. If that’s accurate, then you have to figure that the CCA folks were all asleep the day that Swamp Thing #10 came through the office. (For the record, the Un-Men hadn’t worn clothes in ST #2, either; but there they were in general a less humanoid-looking bunch, and were colored in unnatural shades of red, purple, yellow, etc., to boot.)
Anton Arcane has undoubtedly changed drastically since the first and last time we saw him, back in ST #2; but I think it’s fair to say that this new look — at least from the neck up — would be the defining one for Swamp Thing’s arch-enemy in the decades to come. You just couldn’t get any creepier, or nastier, than the face Bernie Wrightson bequeathed the character in this farewell performance.
Confident of his ability to take Swampy on his own, Arcane tells his Un-Men not to interfere…
From this point of the story on through its climax, Wein and Wrightson pace their narrative to build mounting suspense in a truly masterful fashion; so as not to spoil the effect, your humble blogger will therefore be shutting up for a while…
Sometime later, Swamp Thing awakens to find himself completely alone. The old cemetery looks just as it had before… save for the mysterious appearance of seven new headstones, the one in the center taller than the others. Swampy wonders if he should wait for dawn to come, so that he can examine the stones more closely…
(Just in case you’re wondering, “De Luvian” was replaced by “Bellum” in later reprintings on this page as well, something which I would guess must have required alterations to the art as well as to the lettering.)
I’m sorry that Bernie Wrightson was disappointed in how this story turned out, however valid his reasons may have been. As a reader back in 1974, I considered “The Man Who Would Not Die!” one of the highlights of his ten-issue run on Swamp Thing; fifty years later, my opinion hasn’t changed. But I’m also 
glad that the artist was able to move on almost immediately to an experience he found more rewarding. Over the next three years, Wrightson would produce a small but brilliant body of work for Warren Publishing’s black-and-white magazines that may well represent the his peak achievement in the comics medium. Alas, my younger self didn’t have the good sense to buy any of the issues featuring his stuff off the stands when they were new, so I regret to say that you won’t be reading about them on this blog… though that shouldn’t stop you from looking the material up for yourself (especially since it’s been so conveniently and handsomely collected by Dark Horse Books in the single volume whose cover is shown at right).
Meanwhile, back at DC Comics, Swamp Thing would continue — and, at least at the beginning, with two of the three individuals who’d made it a success continuing in their accustomed roles. Naturally, editor Joe Orlando wasn’t going anywhere — at least not until publisher Carmine Infantino pulled him off the book (which never happened), or until it was cancelled (which of course it eventually was, with issue #24 [Aug.-Sep., 1976]). But writer Len Wein, who as a freelancer could jump ship at any time, also decided to stay on… at least for a little while. And his later stories, illustrated from full scripts by Nestor Redondo, are hardly without merit — and we will in fact be looking at at least one here on the blog, a few months from now.
But however good the later issues of Swamp Thing‘s original run might get, they’d never quite match those produced by the creative team of Len Wein and Bernie Wrightson under the direction of Joe Orlando — an especially fruitful collaboration that’s worth commemorating here at its close with the following illustration by Orlando himself, which was originally published in Roots of the Swamp Thing #5 (Nov., 1986):
I’ve only recently started buying and reading Bernie’s Swamp Thing, started with issue #5, hey, a gorgeous copy so I figured I could try it and easily sell it, well, I needn’t worry, great stuff. I’ve since made my way up to issue #10 (and I’ll soon start at #2 and go to #4)…when I read Bernie’s comments about it not being fun and the plot being repetitive – I can understand that – to me the book feels like a showcase of Bernie’s great artist talents, the plot seems to be a string to hang some fantastic artwork on.
Hope i’m not being too harsh here, just my feeling that great books always seem to have a fantastic synergy between writer & artist – O’Neil & Adams, Claremont & Byrne, Bendis & Maleev, Brubaker & Phillips…whilst Swamp Thing feel is visually wonderful but a little lopsided, light on character development or any momentum to the story. I’ll stop whinging and gather some more positivity by going to look at the cover of #9, it’s stunning!
Loved all ten of Wrightson’s issues, my favourite comics of the 1970s. Glynis Wein helped Berni to colour #2 which may be why the un-men had so many different hues. On the other hand, Wrightson may have had all of the surviving un-men in #10 have Caucasian complexion because of the revenge storyline against slavemasters by African-American ghosts.
This was actually the *first* issue of Swamp Thing that I picked up when it was new, then I backtracked and purchased the prior issues, along with House of Secrets #92, and continued with the series until #24. While I enjoyed Redondo’s art in those, the post-Wein scripts began to falter, especially as the series drew to a close. My eleven year old self was especially displeased with #24 in 1976. An entirely different creative team (except for editor Joe Orlando) was on that one, and the result was the nadir of the run.
#10 still looks great, despite Wrightson’s complaints. Many years ago I remember seeing La Creature des Marais #1 and #2, French reprints in black and white, and all of #10’s linework was crystal clear.
Berni’s flashback villain in #10, Samson Parminter, reminded me of a maskless Yosemite Sam!
In an interview with the Comics Journal in 1982 or 3, Wrightson complained that he felt chained to the drawing board for two years on Swamp Thing, while his friends were out goofing off and enjoying life. When he was previously doing covers and short stories for DC’s House of Mystery and the like, he had more freedom to do the same.
Am I mistaken or did Wrightson get help from other people in finishing the issue?
It was too bad he left (I had just come back to the book with the previous issue after reading te Werewolf issue and was looking forward to seeing more of his work).
Nestor Redondo’s work was great but something was lost.
I actually liked David Micheline’s work. At that point in his career (stuff appearing in the second half of 1974 and early1975) he was somewhat inconsistant (great story followed by a weak story) but it was promising. His first story (The Tomorrow Children in #14) almost had a Gerber’s Man-thing vibe (if Gerber;s Man-Thing had been less cynical and ironic).
Jeff Jones did a lot of inking in the latter half of #9, and a few panels in #10 (the last panels of pages 17, 18, and 19, e.g.).
Berni Wrightson said in interviews, “Redondo can draw circles around me, but he didn’t have a handle on the (Swamp Thing) character.”
Berni was thrilled in January, 1974 when he started working for Warren where he was better paid, could work at a larger size, and had his original art returned to him (something DC had not yet done for him).
After Neal Adams’ championing of Siegel and Shuster receiving royalties and creator credit for Superman, the same was done for Wein and Wrightson: they received creator credit and royalties on all Swamp Thing products, including the films and television series.
Wrightson came back to color comics in 1975 with covers on Kong for Joe Orlando at DC and inking Ditko on Morlock 2001 & the Midnight Men for Atlus and Rich Buckler on Batman #265 at DC. He also inked several Marvel covers.
It is too bad color comics were not doing Wrightson’s kind of story when he was active as an artist. He probably would have thrived in “Indy” comics . . . .
Finally, it is odd that Batman issue did not get more publicity, as it had Wrightson, as well as Buckler (still a big-deal Marvel artist then) and Michael Fleisher (a hot writer at DC then).
In the 1970s DC really didn’t promote artists (unlike Marvel in the Bullpen Bulletins), but just characters. That is why Neal Adams, at the height of the Ra’s al Ghul saga, could “anonymously” do some El Diablo (Zorro knock-off) short stories in Weird Western Tales, a Clark Kent short story and a Human Target backup in Superman and Action Comics, and a short story in Our Army at War with *no* publicity that this superstar artist was there. DC wanted the characters, not the creators, to sell the books. Creators were interchangeable, but the “flagship” characters not at all. Even when DC ran house adverts or Direct Currents blurbs for some of those first 10 issues of Swamp Thing, the creators’ names were not part of the sales pitch. I’m sure that the “suits” were afraid of the work-for-hire creators getting too much control.
Well, there were the “Kirby Is Coming!” ads in late 1970.
Also,, Neal Adams’s The Baby Who Walked Through Walls did get a shout out in ENB’s “Direct Currents” at the time (the childrem were based on Adams;s own children).
I got the idea that the work Adams did on Human Target and El Diablo were functions of what Marvel called “The Dreded Deadline Doom;” much like his and Giordano’s work on B&B #102, done when Arparo got sick.
El Diablo was sort of a strip in search of creators. Kanigher created it with Morrow and it went to a few people (Buckler?) before going back to Morrow and then going to Adams & Wrightson with a Cary Bates script Bates kept writing it after Wierd Western #10. I think Adams pencilled & inked two before it went to Alfredo Allcala for the last two stories. Jonah Hex took over the full book then.
Adam’s OAAW story was probably done by him because what Russ Heath was doing under Joe Kubert’s Editing was knocking everyone’s socks off at DC then.
Adams also did a Weird War Tales cover (and inked the story over Bill Draut’s pencils) for Orlando’s first issue of Weird War Tales and inked Dave Cockrum’s Batman cover at around that time. Adams seemed to help people out or tried to bring them to favorable attention . . . .
The throw-away El Diabls story with Wrightson is probably one of Adams best looking jobs. Wrightson had also inked parts of a GL/GA story over Adams for Julie schwartz.
“Kirby is coming” is the exception to the rule. He was *the* feted Marvel creator, coming over to the “enemy” camp….but, as you know, the honeymoon was short-lived.
Swamp Thing and the war comics were aimed at an older audience than DC’s super-hero fare in the early to mid ’70s. Back in 1966 Stan Lee realised that university students were reading his and Ditko’s the Amazing Spider-Man, though the target audience was younger. Later issues like the ones with the drug themes or the death of Gwen Stacy in 121 – 122 were certainly not aimed at the kiddies.
I will say that DC always made a bigger deal about the Shazam Awards in 1970-’73 (when DC dominated them) than Marvel did.
DC had House Ads where Marvel might mention it in a letter col.
The House Ads usually featured drawings by Adams of winners like Kubert, Infantino, Adams, Giordano and O’Neil (or photoes of Wein and Wrightson in 1973).
In addition, wasn;t Adams the driving force behind the Shazams anyway. He may have pushed it . . . .
When Ditko moved to DC to work on The Creeper, there were Ditko Is Coming ads too but those were clearly an exception — presumably hoping to grab some Marvel fans.
When Adams took over The Spectre the book did devote a text page to having the Spectre interview him so they must have thought it was worth announcing.
I can see pros and cons of DC’s outlook at the time. If they saw their prime audience as basically kids, 4-10 or so, most of those fans likely were character orientated and didn’t pay much attention to who the creators were; fans 11-15 may have been more in the middle, but I think by 16 many fans who kept on collecting were likely more interested in particular writers and artists than in the characters. All just a hunch on my part.
Admittedly, there were also the type of fans who would keep on collecting a series they liked even during runs by writers and artists they didn’t particularly care for, but those would be hardcore fans of the character or at least a specific series featuring the character. I was moderately in that mode for a time, but never to the extent that I’d get everything featuring one particular character over any other comics. But once I really got into a particular series, at least until my early adulthood, I’d keep collecting that series even when I didn’t particularly care for the writing and/or art.
Hey John, since you know and like Bat #265, look up a Canadian artist called Vince Marchesano…very interesting stuff! Vince ghost penciled for Buckler and he tells a great story of Bernie yelling out to him at a con that he just inked his work (Vince was not aware of who was going to do it, obviously Bernie knew who the actual artist was). Fantastic Four #160-#162 were also penciled by Vince under Buckler’s name.
We’re all aware of George Perez starting his carrier as ‘understudy’ or ‘apprentice’ to Buckler (and Buckler’s run on FF certainly has Perez influences through it especially towards the end when Perez gets artist credit) but I’d love to know if anyone has an understanding of Buckler’s set-up – was it a studio where he farmed out work? Are there other artists that ghosted for Rich?
Hope you enjoy this extra facet to Bat Man #265
Interesting.
That might have been why Buckler’s style was not very consistant.
Buckler gave a lot of talented people like Geirge Perez, Keith Pollard and Arv Jones their starts.
The mechanics of how that worked, I’m not sure; but George Perez went a long way from there . . . .
Thanks John, I’ll investigate Keith, do like his work…and I think I only own a few Marvels by Arvell!
I own Batman #265 as well. So many tiny panels! This was long before “decompression” came to comics.
In the Wrightson Artifact Edition that was released a few years ago is an unfinished splash page for a 1975 Batman story. Here is an interesting article about it and the roughs Berni did for Detective Comics #455, cover dated January, 1976. None of his work (directly) saw print on it. Here is an account of that issue:
https://www.cbr.com/secret-artist-behind-iconic-batman-vampire-story/
I love getting info like this. Thanks!
I didn’t much care for horror comics back in the day, but man, did I love me some Bernie Wrightson. I didn’t buy every issue of Swamp Thing, but I did buy several, including this one, just for the joy of looking at his art and trying to copy every panel in a effort to learn to draw the way Bernie did. I was unsuccessful, of course, but I remember loving this issue from that first splash page with the Eisner-esque “Swamp Thing” carved into the tree to the use of shadows and negative space on the foliage, even to the way Bernie used the shadows to cover up the more tender bits of Swampy’s and the Un-Men’s anatomies, all the way to those god-awful worms in the last panel, devouring the space as our hero stalks off into the distance. Wrightson was a genius and it’s a shame he wasn’t having fun on the book by this time, but man, what a legacy he left.
Of course, you can’t read the story of Arcane’s transformation from man to un-man without thinking of Wrightson’s work on Frankenstein, arguably the finest work of his career, as the story recounts the death and resurrection of Swampy’s greatest foe. And though I don’t remember specificially, I doubt Arcane stays dead (it is comics, after all), despite the fact we see him so expertly reckoned with at the end. I would like a tad more explanation about Arcane’s swim across the Atlantic, however. I don’t care how durable the un-men’s bodies are, being submerged that long in salt water, not to mention swimming side-by-side with all the creatures who live there who would consider the un-men a tasty snack, is going to take a toll, and I’d love to hear how that worked out. Comics, amirite?
Anyway, whatever happened on Swamp Thing, I hope Wein and Wrightson were able to reclaim their frienship at some point. These first ten issues of Swamp Thing are a classic, but it would be a shame if it came at the expense of the relationship of the men who created it. Thanks, Alan.
How about one of the un-men who went about with a *crutch* — how did that transAtlantic swim work out? Of course, one could retcon the idea that Cranius’ formidable mind kept all sea predators (and the US coast guard) at bay until they reached the Gulf of Mexico.
Wrightson said in a later interview that his plot for Swamp Thing #10 was too coincidentally like Ray Bradbury’s “The October Game,” though he had not read it at the time.
Chris, I don’t know about “The October Game”, but in Wrightson’s interview in Comic Book Creator #6, he mentioned the Bradbury story “The Handler”. I thought about mentioning that detail but ultimately decided against it after reading the EC Comics adaptation of that yarn (pub. in Tales from the Crypt #36), mainly because the stories aren’t really all that similar (and, as Wrightson said, he hadn’t read the Bradbury one when he came up with his plot for ST #10 in any case).
The whole story has been posted here if anyone’s curious: https://marswillsendnomore.wordpress.com/2012/10/26/ec-comics-ray-bradbury-the-handler/
Thanks for the clarification, Alan. Will have to revisit where I read that.
Don, as far as I know, Wein and Wrightson got along fine in later years; they did a lively and amiable joint interview for Back Issue #6 in 2004, for example. That said, I don’t know if Wrightson ever had a chance to respond to Wein’s “girlfriend” story re: ST #10; that interview didn’t see print until 2014, and we sadly lost both creators just three years after that.
The girlfriend’s identity is still a mystery to me: Berni had previously dated Mary Skrenes (who wrote “All in the Family…” under the nom de plume Virgil North in 1970, though it didn’t see print until 1972 in House of Mystery #204). Wrightson said in A Look Back that he was getting over “a terrible love affair” in early 1971 when he drew “The Reaper of Love” in his BadTime Stories anthology. In a later interview he mentioned having a terrible breakup in 1970 when Len Wein first told him about his Swamp Thing short story plot for House of Secrets #92. In the late ’70s Wrightson dated Daina (Howard Chaykin’s ex-wife), and subsequently married Michele Brand, a colourist at Warren. So who was the anonymous femme who told Berni he could do it all in #10? Hmmm…. That is 50 year old insider information. I suspect Mike Kaluta (and the Shadow) knows.
Mary also did great work over at marvel with Omega the Unknown, Gerber spoke very highly of her – he had all these wild ideas and Mary apparently was the one who turned them into a story/ploy and linked them all. It’s a great book, I don’t know why I like it, but it’s strangely compelling, I think the fact Mary and Steve threw out a lot of established comic gospel makes it very interesting.
In addition, she **was** Virgil North, was an assistant editor on those “gothic romance” horor comics DC tried in 1971 and collaborated (or out right ghosted) a lot of Steve Skeates;s stuff and appeared as a character in Adams’s Night of the Reaper.
Sort of like a part of the comics version of the Bloomsbury Group or the Dorothy Parrker of the 1970s comics Algonquin Round Table , , , ,
Thanks for another wonderful overview of a classic comic and the behind-the-scenes elements that resulted this being the last of one of the great comics runs. Despite Wrightson’s reservations about the quality of the final printed version, his artwork still looked exquisite and his plot was rather intriguing, a ghost story charged with tensions from injustices of the past and Arcane, more freakish than ever, a modern incarnation of slavemasters of the past, claiming “ownership” of Swamp Thing’s body based solely on his desire and supposition that he is a “superior” person everyone else in the world must bow down to.
Reading your comments about the CCA’s concerns over Swampy’s lack of clothing did make me think of “The Anatomy Lesson” by Moore, Bissette & Totleben. Therein it was revealed that Swamp was plant matter infused with the consciousness of Alec Holland as he died and which did its utmost to recreate Holland’s body, including his internal organs. In doing so, logically it would also have fashioned its own version of Holland’s sexual organs, although either by convenience kept in eternal inky shadow or covered by a vegetative jock strap. Even Moore and company never ventured to display what would happen if Swamp got really turned on and couldn’t hide his, ahem, woody!
M, B & T did do their own take on ghosts of Louisiana’s slavery-infused past.
In more ways than one . . . .
In interviews Berni Wrightson always made it sound as if he made the break from DC in December, 1973 when he completed the art for Swamp Thing #10, and moved on to Warren in January, 1974 when he adapted Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat” which was published in Creepy #62….but he seems to have forgotten his two page collaboration with Jeff Jones (in alternating panels), “The Believer,” published in Vampirella #33, the same month as the Poe story for Creepy. But his professional Warren work goes back even farther (not counting his fan drawing published in Creepy #9 in 1966 or 67): he drew (uncredited) the inside covers of Vampirella #28, cover dated October, 1973 which were reprinted in Eerie #52, cover dated November, 1973. These are spot illustrations for a board game satire called “Werewolf—an Exciting Game of Detective Skill.” This was done around the same time as Swamp Thing #6.
The interesting thing is that Wrightson almost quit the Swamp Thing series after #4. Len Wein wanted to do “A Clockwork Horror” for #5, but Berni did not want to do a robot story at that point, and threatened to walk out. To appease him “The Last of the Ravenwind Witches” ran in #5 and “Clockwork” ran in #6.
I suspect that during that momentary rift Berni drew the Werewolf board game art for Warren, testing the waters for his exit. The timing is consistent. He later said in his Comics Journal interview that it was painful to create a lot of the panels in #6, and that “detail doesn’t always translate into passion.” Here are scans of his first work for Warren:
http://tinyurl.com/5a25ywhm
http://tinyurl.com/3etr75bb
I really do appreciate these reviews and comments for providing me with all the background in-and-outs about the comics I collected and enjoyed way back when. I have to admit to being unsure as a youngster regarding the pronunciation of some names of artist and writers – Buscema, for instance – so maybe this is the best place to finally learn if I should be saying Len Ween or Len Wine, or even perhaps something else?
He pronounced it “Ween.”
What was it Don Henley sang? “There are three sides to every story – yours, mine, and the cold hard truth.” I’m sure Joe Orlando had his own perspective on what happened.
Regardless, we had 10 issues that, collectively, are Hall of Fame caliber. Though I remember being less than thrilled with SWAMP THING #8 to 10 at the time, compared to my feelings for issues #3 through 7, they still were like nothing else on the market at the time. Though I wasn’t a big fan of horror comics at the time, I loved this title and was deeply saddened when first Wrightson and then Wein left.
In the 1980s, I met Wein at a convention. A very affable guy. I asked him about Moore’s take on Swamp Thing (this might have been around the time that the “American Gothic” arc was just getting started. Wein laughed and said, “Everybody forgets that I edited Alan Moore’s first issues. I APPROVED them!” What gratified him most, though, was that sales on a book were being driving by the writer, not the artist.
Anyway, this story was a solid one to end their run, and in hindsight, doesn’t really represent that much of a dip in quality compared to what came before.. Thanks for allowing this revisit!
Wein also pointed out one of Moore’s weaknesses was his tendency to have the villain triumphant, then someone go AHA You’re Wrong and suddenly it’s over. “A-Ha, Floronic Man, if you kill all the animal life, plants won’t have a source of carbon dioxide!” “A-ha, ancient evil, you don’t realize that you and Good can co-exist peacefully, just like plants!” “A-ha, Gotham City prosecutor, if you arrest Abby Arcane for bestiality, you’ll have to arrest Superman!” (all these are wrong).
I saw that as someone who greatly admires and enjoys Moore’s run, though it will never connect with me like Wein/Wrightson did.
An old-school ghost story with Arcane mixed in made for a great farewell to Wrightson.
While I enjoyed Redondo’s art, Wrightson’s alien worms in the last panel looked so much creepier than Redondo’s. I enjoyed Michelinie’s run but David A. Kraft is one of my least favorite writers — though admittedly turning Swamp Thing into some kind of a Hulk-style superhero in that final arc would have taxed almost anyone.
Apparently Swampy was supposed to fight Hawkman in #25, but it never saw print. A few images survive. Not sure if any of it was in Cancelled Comics Cavalcade (“ashcan” issues in extremely low print numbers, merely to establish copyright of material — all due to the DC implosion of 1976).
1978
You are correct. Swamp Thing was cancelled in 1976, two years before the implosion.
In an odd way, Moore’s run on Swamp Thing probably owes more to Gerber’s Man-Thing (as did Marty Pasko’s earlier, less heralded, run)..
Swamp Thing seemed to be a way to revisit and play with the tropes of classsic horror (literary and cinematic), where Man-Thing became a way for Steve Gerber to revisit and play with his own obcessions and “pet rocks.”
The subsequent Vertigo stuff DC did seemed more rooted in the Gerber tradition (Gerber would probably laugh hysterically at that phrase),
For me, no one who subsequently drew Swamp Thing could touch Wrightson’s vision in those first ten issues—-not even Wrightson himself. His wraparound covers for the 1977 & 1978 reprints were good, especially the first one, but not on a par with his #1 – #10 covers, nor was his 1977 Comic Art Convention cover. He inked the Swamp Thing in one panel of a 1977 issue of Challengers of the Unknown, and it is probably his best published drawing of the character after the series ended. Mike Nasser (Netzer) pencils:
https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-DVBk9lOZkHM/T6RLgMuXp7I/AAAAAAAABpk/NPjkNh553w4/s1600/Challengers-Unknown-082_08.jpg
This issue was a double whammy for me. As a huge fan of Wrightson’s lush brushwork, I was disappointed with the scratchy line work on display here, which at the time I perceived as a rushed, inferior effort. But the real gut punch came with the realization that Berni was leaving the book. (Not sure if that was announced on the letters page or not apparent until I picked up #11 two months later.) After seeing Wrightson’s Frankenstein work somewhere down the line, I came to appreciate what he was doing here. Also became a big fan of Nestor Redondo and his interpretation of the title character.
No offense to Len Wein, but I agree with the sentiments expressed above that the writing was pretty basic and Berni’s artwork was the real draw. I think possibly Wein’s strongest ST script was “The Eternity Man” from #12 — for the time, a fairly original time travel story, with a bit of pathos.
In regard to the genesis of this story, there does seem to be some disconnect between artist and writer. For one thing, I don’t see any indication in the artwork that the escaped con who suddenly keels over is riddled with bullets. Feels like Berni may have had another explanation in mind (maybe a spell from Auntie De Luvian?) that wasn’t shared with Len.
The portrayal of blood in DC and Marvel comics of the 1970s was a touchy thing, and if indicated at all, it was usually solid black, not red.
There was no announcement that Wrightson had left the series until the lettercol of #11. It would have been “bad for business” to say so prematurely. Comments on #10 and the difference in Wrightson’s linework were addressed in the lettercol of #13.
Swamp Thing 10 was the last issue of the series that I bought, but that was actually based on a misunderstanding on my part. If I remember correctly, it was announced on the letters page that ST 10 was Bernie Wrightson’s last issue. I believe that I thought that also meant it was Len’s last issue also, and I was not interested in getting a book that would not have Len and Bernie. It would be only many years that I would learn that ST 11-13 were written by Len. Many years later I would see ST 11-13 and I must admit I was very disappointed and did not care for those stories at all. Nestor Redondo is a very good artist but he was not the right fit for Swamp Thing, at least in my opinion. And something seemed off in Len’s writing on 11-13. There was some kind of magic that happened with the original team on ST 1-10 that made those books (again in my opinion) very special. Regarding ST 10, I have read the interviews with Len and Bernie that you quoted. They are very interesting, but I was not aware of what was going on behind the scenes when I read ST 10 50 years ago. I read and enjoyed the story then, and enjoyed your review now and believe this issue still holds up and love Bernie’s art as much as I every have. You may not have seen (and I now can’t remember where it was) an interview with Len before his untimely passing) where he discussed that there were plans and attempts to reunite Len and Bernie for a high quality Swamp Thing graphic novel and Len had actually prepared a plot but at the last minute Bernie decided not to do it. I’m not sure if that’s what turned into the mini-series that Len did with Kelly Jones but it’s possible. I know that Len was very disappointed because he did want to work with Bernie again.
I have also commented on ST 10 because this book had a personal significance for me but I did not know it at the time and only realized this much later. ST 10 was the last DC comic that I would buy for over 6 and a half years. I had been steadily dropping my purchase of certain DC books over the last 2 years. Similar to you, Alan, I had started with DC, in late 1965, with JLA, Superman, Batman, Flash, and many others, but by January 1974 I had dropped all those. One of the few others I had just bought was Shadow 4 (January 1974), but I did not pick up Shadow 5 (which came out in March 1974) and I realize that I either missed it or saw that it was done not by Kaluta but by Frank Robbins whose work I did not care for at that time (although I have come to appreciate it more now). So yes, I did not even look at a DC book for many years. This does mean that I missed, for example, Englehart’s Batman and JLA which I did eventually see many years later as back issues. I’ll be interested to see what else I may have missed during those years in your column. What brought me back? As you might guess it was Wolfman and Perez on the New Teen Titans but that did not mean I automatically started buying lots of DC books. It would be a very slow return depending on creative teams. Thanks again for taking us back to an enjoyable book.
I went in the opposite direction, in a sense. Read a little Marvel as a kid (would have read more if I had more money), dropped those books completely during the move from the UK to the US. I might not have bothered with Marvel again had they not put out Doc Savage in 1972; I picked it up, then reflected that the Avengers had always been my favorite so I wound up right at the start of Englehart’s run.
“You may not have seen (and I now can’t remember where it was) an interview with Len before his untimely passing) where he discussed that there were plans and attempts to reunite Len and Bernie for a high quality Swamp Thing graphic novel and Len had actually prepared a plot but at the last minute Bernie decided not to do it.”
Wein and Wrightson both discussed that project in their Comic Book Creator #6 interviews I quoted from in the post. Evidently Wrightson got as far as completing rough pencils for the first installment, eight pages of which were printed in that magazine. Ah, what might have been!
You can see 40 pages worth of Wrightson’s roughs for the aborted Swamp Thing: Deja Vu here:
https://www.comicartfans.com/GalleryPiece.asp?Piece=1451575
This is page one. Just follow the link to page two, and so on.
Thanks, Chris!
Thanks Alan! I knew I read that somewhere, just couldn’t remember the details and where I read it.
Oh Bernie, you fretted without reason for your dislike of the coloring. Your excellence shown through regardless of it.