#6 presents
Muck-Monsters and Their Makers! Interviews with:
Bernie Wrightson Alan Moore Steve Gerber Mike Ploog Len Wein Stephen R. Bissette Rick Veitch John Totleben Val Mayerik Jim Mooney
Swamp Thing TM & © DC Comics. Used with permission.
& C REATURE FEATURES!
Cover art & color by Frank Cho
This Comic Book Creator special was initially conceived as a book project over ten years ago and, back in the day, our friend and artist extraordinaire Frank Cho agreed to contribute the Swampmen cover (thank you, thank you, thank you, Mr. Cho!). We just had to use some of the cover space to list the superlative creators we’ve interviewed herein but, in acknowledgment of Frank Cho’s amazing work, as our frontispiece on page one, we include Frank’s cover art unaltered, sans logos and blurbs. What a gloriously macabre and atmospheric masterpiece! Chicago artist Douglas Klauba, who has been a buddy since we met at a WizardWorld convention a good while back, contributes our back cover painting, a wonderfully eerie and evocative portrait of bayou beasties. Doug has contributed to Moonstone’s Kolchak and Phantom comics, and was part of the Dynamite Entertainment’s Project: Superpowers titles art directed by Alex Ross. Visit Mr. Klauba at www.douglasklauba.com. Our opening spread — drawn by remarkable Ronn Sutton and colored by terrific Tom Ziuko — is, of course, a pastiche of the iconic “March of Progress” infographic delineating human evolution illustrated by Rudolph Zallinger for the 1965 Early Man volume of the Time-Life’s Life Nature Library. From left: Ted Sturgeon’s It, The Heap from Airboy Comics, Atlas/Seaboard’s Bog Beast, Lurker of the Swamp from Gold Key, Marvel’s Man-Thing, and Swamp Thing from DC Comics. Cover details on page four, clockwise from upper left: Airboy Comics Vol. 9 #5 [June ’52], Ernest Schroeder, artist; Swamp Woody icon by J.D. King; Psycho #2 [Mar. ’71], Hector Varella, artist; Monsters Unleashed #3 [Nov. ’73], Neal Adams, artist; The Occult Files of Dr. Spektor #21 [Aug. ’76], Jesse Santos, artist; and Swamp Thing #9 [Mar.–Apr. ’74], Bernie Wrightson, artist. Page five photo by Erik Henne of www. erikhenne.com. Used with permission. Endpapers by Arthur Adams.
Table of Contents Introduction: Love, Envy, and Bayou Beasts........................................ 8 Born of the Bayou: What Is—and What Isn’t—a Swampman....... 10 Sturgeon’s Monster: It All Began With “It”........................................ 12 SWAMPMEN The Heap: From Monster to Villain to Hero at Hillman Comics....... 18 Between That Heap and Those Things: ’50s Swamp Monsters..... 24 Silver Sludge & Boggy Bronze: ’70s Muckman Chronology........... 26 Marvin, the Dead-Thing: Mr. Kanfer’s Short Life-After-Death*...... 37 The Glob: Hillman’s Heap Done Marvel-style.................................... 38 Return of the Heap: Skywald’s Grotesque Revisioning.................... 40 Man-Thing: The Savage Beginnings of the Marvel Monster.......... 44 Swamp Thing: The Tragic Creature’s Roots....................................... 52 Bog Beast: A Tar-Monster Rises at Atlas/Seaboard........................ 60 Lurker in the Swamp: Gold Key’s Haunted Swamp Dweller........... 62 “It” by Theodore Sturgeon*.................................................................. 64 THE MUCK-MONSTER MAKERS Swamp Thing: Len Wein.............................................................................................. 74 Bernie Wrightson............................................................................... 90 The Man-Thing: Steve Gerber..................................................................................... 112 Val Mayerik....................................................................................... 124 Mike Ploog........................................................................................ 126 Jim Mooney...................................................................................... 130 The Swamp God: Alan Moore....................................................................................... 132 Steve Bissette.................................................................................. 150 Rick Veitch........................................................................................ 162 John Totleben................................................................................... 174 Swampmen Contributors.................................................................... 183 Creator’s Creators: Ronn Sutton......................................................... 190 Coming Attractions: Bernie Wrightson headlines CBC #7............ 190 A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words............................................. 191 One Last Thing: The Thing of It Is….................................................. 192 * Alas, we had hoped to feature the short story “It” immediately following the essay on Mr. Sturgeon’s tale, but printing expenses prohibit the inclusion of a b-&-w signature amidst the color section, thus poor ol’ Marv had to shoehorned where he doesn’t fit chronologically. Instead “It” appears at the end of the color pages, where Marvin is supposed to be, on pg. 64. Oh, well…!
THIS SPREAD: Previous page ghost image is pulp illustration master Edd Cartier’s macabre drawing of Theodore Sturgeon’s “It,” with Kimbo the hunting dog meeting his grim demise. From Unknown [Aug. 1940], courtesy of Will Murray. Cover details on the bottom tier of page previous, from left, “It!” by Jim Steranko, Supernatural Thrillers #1 [ Dec. ’72]; The Glob by Herb Trimpe, The Incredible Hulk #121 [Nov. ’69]; Frank Thorne’s Bog Beast, Tales of Evil #2 [Apr. ’75]. This page cover details from top: Marvin, the Dead-Thing, by Enrich Torres, Eerie #49 [July ’73]; Neal Adams’ Spectre of the Stalking Swamp, The Phantom Stranger #14 [July–Aug. ’71]; and Taboo by Jack Kirby, gracing Strange Tales # 75 [June ’60].
Love, Envy, and Bayou Beasts
Lessons found in the strange sub-genre of American horror comics, swamp monsters
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Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers
Swamp Thing TM & © DC Comics. Tales of Horror, Bog Beast TM & © the respective copyright holders.
C’mon, admit it: the swamp monster phenomenon, the origins of which stretch back to early days of the form but, bubbling out of the ooze, becoming a genuine sensation by the early 1970s, is certainly a weird ’n’ wonky — and decidedly resilient — trend in comic books. At its base essence, the sub-genre is about decomposing corpses, rotting in sinister marshes, and somehow miraculously transforming into sentient monsters that are oft hellbent on terrorizing local townsfolk. While, as you’ll see, the direct roots of this bizarreness actually stretch back to a science-fiction/fantasy pulp magazine in 1940, it was in four-color funnybooks where arose the likes of innumerable two-legged man-critters from the musty, rank bayou. Taken at face value, it’s a head-scratcher what this strange category of horror comics actually means, wouldn’t you agree? Comic book publishers, like most purveyors of popular culture, have always chased the latest Big Thing to satiate their audience’s fickle, ever-changing tastes, and though precursors can be found in the titles of decades prior, it was the early ’70s liberalization of the Comics Code that summoned forth a legion of monster men from the miry muck. Virtually every imprint in the field had a respective version: DC introduced Swamp Thing; at the same time, Marvel offered the debut of Man-Thing; Skywald boasted a revival of the original comic-book beastie, The Heap; the short-lived Atlas/Seaboard gave us the crimson-hued Bog Beast; even Gold Key got in the game with the Lurker of the Swamp; and Warren Publications featured Marvin, the Dead-Thing. And this line-up doesn’t include supporting characters in other titles such as The Glob in The Incredible Hulk. Good lord, there’s a trail of muddy footprints throughout that notorious ten-year span called the Me Decade! But so what? Why produce an entire book studying these macabre characters? The Comics Magazine Association of America had eased up the rules in 1971 and newsstand racks subsequently exploded with sub-genres of horror: vampires, werewolves, zombies, monsters of Frankenstein, Satan spawn, ghouls, exorcists, living mummies, and manphibians… What makes the category of reanimated dead people born of the swamp so special? Why focus 192 pages on creatures formerly known as Roger Kirk, Baron Eric von Emmelman, Alex Olsen, Ted Sallis, Alec Holland, Jim Roberts, some guy named Marvin, and brethren of like demise? The premise, used to superbly creepy effect in prose by renowned fantasy author Theodore Sturgeon and then rather cheesily for a decade in Hillman’s Airboy Comics of the ’40s and ’50s, was admittedly somewhat silly, never mind becoming a cliché due to tremendous overuse in the ’70s. Why, begs your humble editor, should we even care? Well, dearest reader, maybe it’s less about the premise than it is the execution. Maybe it’s about the quality infused by a handful of comic book creators who produced sometimes resplendent work. Mind you, not all of the material was top shelf (we’ll get to the wildly variant degrees of craftsmanship herein, don’t fret!) but some of the comic books — those helmed by Len Wein, Bernie Wrightson, and Nestor Redondo; Steve Gerber, Val Mayerik, and Mike Ploog; as well as Alan Moore, Steve Bissette, John Totleben, Rick Veitch, and company — transcend the genre and speak directly to the vagaries of the human condition. But, in all honesty, that’s only partly why I initially started this project over ten years ago, originally planned as a standalone TwoMorrows book. Don’t get me wrong: at the time they first appeared, I loved the Wein/Wrightson/Redondo Swamp Thing and Man-Thing by Gerber/ Mayerik/Ploog… and the Moore/Bissette/Totleben reinvention of Swamp Thing, perhaps the best continuing horror comic series ever done. But, truth be told, it was sheer and utter jealousy at the heart of this tome’s conception. I blame it on my co-editor, George Khoury. Let me start at the start. I first encountered George via email and prompted by TwoMorrows publisher John Morrow, George audaciously asked me, a stranger whose work he admired, to design a book cover for him — for either a pittance or (choke!) no money. I immediately took a liking to this bold
Artwork © Mike Ploog. Man-Thing TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.
Introduction young man and, in due course, we became pals and confidants, and I volunteered to design and lay out his superb examination of one of the most important comic series ever, Kimota! The Miracleman Companion. And what a glorious time I had participating in that astonishing (and sadly out-of-print) volume, which fortified the already great esteem I held for writer Alan Moore, as a creative force and a man of dignity. Naturally, as George is my brother from another mother, I was compelled to became competitive, and I schemed of my own Moorebased project in which, roles reversed, Khoury would assist me in putting together a definitive book. Thus was born Swampmen: The Muck-Monsters and Their Makers. George and I jumped in with gusto, even traveling together on a whirlwind journey to Northampton, England, for an interview with Mr. Moore. While my buddy interviewed any number of swampmen by phone, I flew to California for a huge Bernie Wrightson interview and day-long visit to Len Wein’s Woodland Hills abode. Then, after a flurry of activity talking to dozens of creators and a great deal of time accumulating material and conducting research… stuff happened. The entire project was shelved indefinitely by yours truly. It had been abortively revived on occasion, once solicited by TwoMorrows, but that too fell apart — my fault entirely. (Let’s just say Ye Ed had his own regenesis to undergo, a personal transformation to become something different, experience a reinvention, resurrection, into… Jon-Thing, if you will!) And, thus, with the aughts behind us and my rejoining the TwoMorrows family, finishing this awesome collection has finally become a blessed reality. What started off as a product of envy, Swampmen has grown into the study of something quite resonant and, we hope, as you traverse these pages, you’ll recognize that there’s often deeper meaning than talented artists and writers merely telling scary stories about spooky muck-monsters. We find that (among many other fascinating aspects) at the heart of Swamp Thing is not just a love story about a mutated vegetable and a whitehaired woman named Abby; it’s very conception is the result of love and loss in the lives of creators Wein and Wrightson themselves. We hear firsthand from the late Steve Gerber about his bringing an abiding poignance and absurdity to Man-Thing, and introduce a unforgettable talking fowl along the way. We learn how Moore fortuitously picked the character he deemed the worst in comics and, through sheer happenstance, was able to extrapolate that outline, done for his own amusement, into one of the most sublime series in the history of the form. And then there’s Rick Veitch’s futile struggle to tell a story of Swamp Thing at Calvary on that dark Friday afternoon some 2,000 years ago. And that unpubbed S.T. graphic novel… This is about much more than just man-monsters emerging from the morass to frighten. Alas, despite the fact we accumulated material that reached into recent years, we are limiting our main focus to the 1970s swamp monsters when the fad exploded and specifically to the ’80s revival of Swamp Thing, precisely the Alan Moore era (though we are remiss in not covering the Saga of the Swamp Thing issues prior). Before this decision to leave out much of the ’80s and all of the ’90s to the present day, many folks who wrote and drew in those eras generously gave of their time and shared artwork. We ask the pardon of all left out of Swampmen, and thank everyone who participated. We hope, too, all who helped are listed on our contributors page. Any oversight (it has been over 12 years in the making!) will be duly noted in future issues of CBC.
You might think it odd that a co-editor is named on the dedication page. Truth is George doesn’t know I’m dedicating this tome to him and I hope it stands as testament to our enduring friendship. G.K. supported and encouraged yours truly in those dark days of isolation and for that — and for his tremendous, invaluable help with Swampmen — I am forever grateful. One final note: After much discussion with Ye Publisher, we’ve decided this will be the final CBC Annual. This decision comes because we just might jump to change frequency next year, and also due to confusion created by these double-sized issues as they don’t explicitly look like the regular CBC. Much as I’ve loved this twice-the-length indulgence, it’s time to focus on the regular mag. (That doesn’t preclude possible CBC Presents books, mind you!). Now, bring on the horrors! — Ye Crusading Editor.
Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers
Previous page: Far left was auctioned by Heritage, which dated this Bernie Wrightson illustration as from 1975. The piece included a Post-It notation: “Bill — I’m not sure if this is the first Sw. Th. —Bernie.” Inset bottom right is a cover repro of the Australian comic book Tales of Horror, #3 [1976], published by Gredown Pty. Ltd. and featuring a Bog Beast reprint from Atlas/Seaboard’s Weird Tales of the Macabre #2. Painting by Phil Belbin.
Below: Certainly one of the high-points of the initial Man-Thing series was the Steve Gerber and Mike Ploog tour de force, “Night of the Laughing Dead,” Man-Thing #5 [May ’74]. This is a 2002 pencil recreation by Mr. Ploog of the artist’s classic cover.
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Below: At the request of the artist, Matt Kaufenberg photomanipulated Francis Tsai’s superb Man-Thing illustration and created an entirely new edition of ManThing #11, complete with some cleverly made-up cover blurbs.
* “Solomon Grundy, born on a Monday/Christened on Tuesday/Married on Wednesday/Took ill on Thursday/ Grew worse on Friday/Died on Saturday/Buried on Sunday/That was the end of Solomon Grundy.” 10 10
because it resembles the Gillman) the Manphibian from Legion of Monsters #1 [Marvel, Sept. ’75]. We say they’re more related to reptilian bi-peds — think the Gorn from Star Trek or API’s The Alligator People movie [’59] — lest we allow Howard the Duck adversary Garko, the Man-Frog, into the mud-drenched mix! Some might also think there’s a slew of behemoths and shamblers from the pages of the horror comics and Atlas giant monster titles of the 1950s warranting inclusion. Alas, most of those gargantuans — whether Monstrom, the Dweller in the Black Swamp; the Thing from the Swamp; Creature from the Black Bog; or Thing from the Hidden Swamp — are actually alien invaders bent on world domination. And because contributor David A. Roach includes the Marvel/ Atlas critters in his survey, we’ll be giving the nod to some of these fetid fellers, especially the now world-famous Groot, the walking tree creature (and Parliament of Trees member…?) and breakout character (with pal Rocket Raccoon) from the 2014 summer movie blockbuster Guardians of the Galaxy. But enough about who is not a Swampmen and let’s introduce those we have selected for inclusion: • Swamp Thing: Say what you will about the seminal Theodore Sturgeon character “It,” but when most of us think of monsters rising from the morass of the sinister bayou, it’s the resilient DC character Swamp Thing who first comes to mind. Maybe it’s the fact that the sympathetic creature became an instant fan favorite upon his debut in 1971 due to the mastery of emerging comics artist Bernie Wrightson; or maybe it was the burgeoning and resonant romance between Swampy and Abigail Arcane as developed by scripter Len Wein; or perhaps the two major motion pictures that have been made — Swamp Thing [1982] and The Return of Swamp Thing — plus a television series [’90–’93] and a cartoon show [’91]. They all bring Swampy to mind. (The NBC series Constantine, set to debut around the time this book is released, has teased that the Plant Formerly Known as Alec Holland might be appearing in that occult drama series. NBC tweeted a picture of Constantine holding a business card plus the message “Experiencing a demon problem? Call John #Constantine, Master of the Dark Arts at 404-248-7182.” When you call, a recording says, “Hello, you’ve reached John Constantine. And that’s John Constantine. If you’re looking for Alec Holland, try the bloody swamp.” [http:// tinyurl.com/q3ka2cy].) Whether, courtesy of an bio-restorative formula, a reanimated corpse made into a muscular giant composed of swamp debris or as redefined as a
Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers
Man-Thing © Marvel Characters, Inc. Illustration © Francis Tsai.
Just what makes a Swampman? Early on, we pretty much decided to focus more on the so-called descendants of Theodore Sturgeon’s “It” and less on the Frankenstein monster-inspired dead men who snap back to life. The general criteria — though not rigid, mind you — are that they are those reanimated corpses taking on the physical characteristics of swampland. That is, creatures of once living and breathing human flesh but, through whatever horrid process, they are transformed from man into monster, now composed of mud, debris, and muck ’n’ mire, and often great strength. Some folks take exception to our rather arbitrary selections and decry, for instance, the omission of the Golden Age nemesis of the Green Lantern and Justice Society of America tormentor, Solomon Grundy. Yes, the horror is “born on Monday” in Gotham City’s Slaughter Swamp, grown from the skeleton that “lay in a bog for 50 years and an incredible biological miracle took place! On his bones a pseudo-life was built. Bits of rotten wood and leaves built themselves into the monster of Solomon Grundy.” Or so explains Alan Scott, a.k.a. Green Lantern, at the end of “Fighters Never Quit,” the Solomon Grundy debut story in All-American Comics #61 [Oct. ’44], by writer Alfred Bester and drawn by Paul Reinman. But we reckon, despite the “It”-like origin and vivid description of a living corpse rising “out of the oozing slime,” Grundy (who was given his moniker from the 19th century nursery rhyme*) is more inspired by Mary Shelley and Boris Karloff, given his resemblance to the Universal Studio monster from the long-running Frankenstein motion picture franchise. There are also advocates who say we should include swamp monsters such as The Creature of the Black Lagoon and (perhaps
“It” ©1994 Theodore Sturgeon Literary Trust. Illustration © the respective copyright holder.
Inset right: The illustrations of the late Joan Hanke-Woods, winner of the 1986 Hugo Award for “Best Fan Artist,” graced the cover and interior of a limited edition reprinting of Theodore Sturgeon’s classic short story “It.” The stapled pamphlet, originally selling for $2, was published in 1978 by Misfit Press for the Eastern Michigan University SF Society. Small, low-resolution repros of Hanke-Woods superb drawings can be found at http:// www.collectorshowcase.fr/divers_ edit_amer_page_5.htm.
Dramatis Personae Just what makes a Swampman?
Swamp Thing, Solomon Grundy, Green Lantern © DC Comics. Sporr © Marvel Characters, Inc. Creature from the Black Lagoon © Universal Studios, Inc. MAD © William M. Gaines, Agent. Swamp Thing illustration © Glen Ostrander.
walking and talking plant that somewhat resembles a humanoid, Swamp Thing is the definitive Swampman. • Man-Thing: Though erroneously viewed as Marvel Comics’ answer to Swamp Thing — both characters, we shall learn, were actually developed simultaneously — Man-Thing was the resident bog dweller at the House of Ideas during the ’70s, with a personality (or is that lack of personality?) distinct from the sensitive navel-gazing vegetable-partner of Abigail “Abby” Arcane Cable Holland. Scientist Ted Sallis, facing imminent death, injects himself with a “super-soldier serum,” drives his car into a swamp, dies, and his decaying body melds with the detritus of the quagmire, transforming the poor soul into a grotesque, mute, bug-eyed, horrible-looking miscreation dubbed the Man-Thing. Based in the Florida Everglades, endowed with rudimentary sensitivities, and able to inflict hellacious pain with a mere grip — “For whatever knows fear… burns at the Man-Thing’s touch!“ — the Marvel creepy critter is most definitely a top-tier Swampman. • The Heap: If Swamp Thing is the Big Daddy of Swampmen, The Heap is the comic-book Grande-Père of them all. In honesty though, there are at least three distinct incarnations of the character that first appeared in Air Fighters Comics #3 [Dec. ’42]. First, you got your Hillman Heap, the shaggy brute born in the wake of Ted Sturgeon’s “It,” once German World War I air ace Baron Eric von Emmelman, whose decaying dead body absorbs forest litter to metamorphose into the carrot-nosed (and initially fanged) walking stack of hay. He becomes an instant reader favorite, stalking through 11½ years of Air Fighters and its 1945 retitling into Airboy Comics, as villain, hero, and oft silent witness to horror and crime, remaining a featured player until the very last issue. Second, upstart Skywald Publications presented their version of The Heap in the second issue of black-&-white horror mag Psycho [Mar. ’71], a truly terrifying monster made from the cadaver of cropduster pilot Jim Roberts courtesy of toxic waste. That version lasted a couple of years at ill-fated Skywald. And, third, Todd McFarlane used the moniker for a Spawn #73 [June ’98] guest star, the dead Eddie Beckett whose carcass (are we sensing a pattern here?) intermingles with “necroplasm,” plus soil and garbage to manifest into a gargantuan adversary for Spawn. (Herein, you’ll also see even more variants of The Heap, but suffice to say these are the three main incarnations.)
• The Bog Beast: While not actually born of the bayou, the Atlas/Seaboard comics Swampman certainly was of the same ilk as his surface-born brethren. Crimson-hued Boggy actually hails from “within the dark and mysterious regions of this planet’s depths,” or so says the character’s first color comic story, in Tales of Evil #2 [Apr. ’75]. Subterranean or not, the creature was a ’70s monster, lived in a swamp, and certainly seemed made of rotting flesh and muck. Check! • The Lurker of the Swamp: Like Bog Beast, this Swampman — a creation of writer Don Glut and artist Jesse Santos — appeared only in a handful of stories, but the criteria is certainly met in this good-guy monster who started off as the remains of a nameless murder victim forever changed by the “Haunted Swamp” into an eventual ally of Gold Key’s Dr. Spektor.
Inset left top: Let’s not forget HEAP! — a wacky parody of the Hillman comics character — was featured in writer/editor/layout artist Harvey Kurtzman and artist Will Elder’s “Outer Sanctum” story in MAD #5 [June-July 1953]. Here’s a couple of panels depicting the pulsating, quivering, and growing beastie’s origin. Inset left bottom: From top, monsters from the wild we consider outside the parameters of our definition of “swampmen”: the Creature from the Black Lagoon (from the cover of Arthur Adams’ 1993 adaptation of the ’50s movie, Universal Monsters: Creature from the Black Lagoon); Solomon Grundy, in a cover detail of All-American Comics #61 [Oct. ’44] by Paul Reinman; and SFbased critters like Sporr, from Tales of Suspense #11 [Sept. ’60], from the Jack Kirby/Dick Ayers cover. Below: Glen Ostrander’s faux Swamp Thing cover.
• Marvin, the Dead-Thing: Croaked dude becomes monster “by toxic waste as an amalgam of vegetation and undead flesh,” as one Internet observer writes. Double-check! Wish we had the space to discuss other creatures of the comics — Sludge, Bog Beast Demon, Muckman, etc. — but the accursed swamp denizens listed are our featured players. So grab your galoshes and mosquito repellent, and let’s get into the mire, Swampfans!
Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers
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Inset right: The very first comic-book muck-monster of them all, the legendary, unforgettable creature called “The Heap” first appeared in the aerial war title Air Fighters Comics #3 [Dec. ’42], as guest star in the “Sky Wolf” feature. Cover art by Charles Biro. Below: Arguably the most impressive (that is mammoth!) look given the Heap was in late ’45 and mid’46 ‘Sky Wolf” stories, where he is depicted as downright gargantuan! Here is his monstrous entrance in Air Fighters Comics V2 #10 [Fall ’45]. Words and art by unknown. When his solo feature began in Oct. ’46, the Heapster was down 250 lbs. and two-foot shorter.
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Bloodlust was big in comics back when the form was new, and yet, though prominent in the pulps and on radio programs of that period, horror wasn’t a proper genre in the field until as late as 1947, with the advent of ACG’s Adventures into the Unknown #1 [Fall]. Still, in the late ’30s and early ’40s, especially with the prospect of world war reaching our shores, kids were fed a steady diet of heroes killing bad men and terrifying monsters. Horror itself was ingrained in comics from the very beginning. American children sensed people were suffering terribly in Europe and Asia, that the “Ratzis” and the “Nips” were often savage to innocents not of their liking. Newspapers and radio reports blared about the rape of entire cities and tragic loss of civilians when the Blitzkreig indiscriminately rained its payloads. So it was natural for the freshmen class of superheroes, that joyful legion of characters so shiny and new, joined with the adventurers, aviators, crime-fighters, and secret agents sharing the funny-book pages, to betray not the slightest regret in taking the lives of their adversaries. Unfettered by killjoy self-censorship, comic book publishers gave youngsters (before ma and pa took note) heapin’ helpings of violence. Batman sported a gun holster on his utility belt and even Superman would blithely allow a villain to fall to his demise. And, boy, once WWII was on for the good ol’ U.S. of A., dispatching
squinty-eyed, rabid Germans and Japanese with pointy teeth and sharpened fingernails was de rigueur across the industry. Monsters, whether vampires, ghouls, werewolves, Frankenstein-like reanimated corpses, and hunchbacks — more often than not knock-offs of the fiends starring in Universal motion picture franchises — were frequent guest-stars in any number of comic book stories. For all practical purposes, Captain America Comics was simply a horror title that just so happened to star a super-endowed, patriotic monster-killer. Such was the environment where arose from a fetid, dank Polish swamp, the very first muck-monster in comics, this version a white-maned, blood-thirtsy, vampiric beast sporting extended fangs dripping saliva. The publisher was Hillman, an movie star magazine outfit which, since 1940, had been looking for a breakthrough in the profitable comic book game. After three dud titles, they finally hit it big with Air Fighters Comics, but only after a quick revamp when the first issue sputtered, with #2 [Nov. ’42] introducing Airboy (who becomes a bona fide sensation) and Sky Wolf, two colorfully-clad aviators gleefully taking on our enemies, as the U.S. was fighting a real war with Japan and Germany. A Blawkhawk wanna-be, Sky Wolf was a pilot with apparently a singular distinction: his helmet. “He wore the pelt of a white wolf into battle, arranged so the wolf’s head covered his own,” writes Don Markstein on his Toonpedia website, ”with the man’s face visible through the wolf’s wired-open mouth.” Oh, and Sky Wolf kills Nazis. After Sky Wolf’s debut (where we discover that Hitler himself has taken a sinister interest in the airman), it’s in his second episode, AFC #3 [Dec. ’42], when enters proper our subject of interest, the behemoth called by Jim Steranko in his Steranko History of Comics, Vol. 2 [’72], “One of the most fantastic and original characters ever created in the history of comics.” On page two of “Wanted by Nazis,” we learn the story of a WWI German air ace who crashes to his death in a desolate Eastern European marsh… “But Baron Emmelmann’s will to live has been a powerful force,” a caption explains, “time passes… and brings an unearthly transformation that has drawn its oxygen food from the vegetation… a fantastic HEAP that is neither animal… nor man….” Steranko breathlessly expresses the appeal of the monster: “Heap! The very name conjures up images of the unknown — unspeakable, indescribable, undying. Heap! Neither human nor beast, yet with the form and instincts of each. Heap! Covered with a thatch of bristly swamp growth and decades of fetid swamp — and alive!!!”
Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers
Header panel detail from Airboy Comics V7 #7 [Aug. ’50]. Art by Ernest Schroeder. The Heap, Air Fighters Comics, and Sky Wolf TM & © the respective copyright owner.
by JON B. COOKE with Christopher Irving
The Heap, Air Fighters Comics, and Sky Wolf TM & © the respective copyright owner.
What made the character so instantly compelling with kids of the day was evident in that first story. First, he is a gigantic monstrosity, savage and feral, covered in shaggy detritus (at first a pale white). Plus he feeds off the blood of animals he pounces on to suck dry the poor critters with his prominent fangs. And the Heap could even be goofy, with cartoon hearts floating above his head indicating infatuation with a hapless German soldier. And he possesses lethal strength and just enough intelligence to be proactive, less observer than participant. The Heap’s first appearance was written by Harry Stein with art by Mort Leav, although Hillman editor Ed Cronin likely had a strong hand in the character’s execution, given the editor’s story conferences. Artist Ernest Schoeder related to interviewer Jim Amash in Alter Ego #42 [Nov. ’04], “My editor at Hillman was Ed Cronin and we became close friends. We wrote together. I’d come in at lunch time and we’d discuss plots. Ed would leave it up to me to fill out the story. He was a good writer and came up with brilliant plots. He could take any idea, no matter how far out it seemed, and make a good plot out of it.” The artist-creator, in an essay written for A/E #19 [Dec. ’02], mentions only briefly the fateful creation. “Although my work appeared in books of Fiction House, Hillman, MLJ, and Lev Gleason,” Mort Leav relates, “I never worked directly for any of those outfits. My jobs went there only by way of the [Jerry] Iger shop. That included the creation of ‘The Heap’ with Harry Stein. We were having a ball coming up with names before settling on ‘The Heap.’ That was in the ‘Sky Wolf’ strip, where I also drew a villainous character; half his head and body were made of steel.” Steranko writes, “Writer Harry Stein’s concept turned the character into the greatest monster of all by adapting freely from the world’s classic horror tales. He lived on blood like a vampire, had the strength and immortality of Frankenstein, looked like a combination of a werewolf and abominable snowman, and had a touch of the Golem, too. With all this going for it, how could it miss? The Heap returned. And returned. And returned.” The Heap was obviously a big hit with readers, and though his return to the title would be slow and shambling, he would
come back, his demeanor oft less monstrous and more heroic, his fangs gone, fur changed to darker hues, yet always mysterious and violent enough to keep his fans wanting more, enough so that when the title was renamed Airboy Comics [V.3 #9, Oct. ’46], the muck-monster was granted a back-up series of his own. The wonderful, often wonky solo stories, now usually set in the U.S., introduce for a period a revolving-door supporting cast, including Rickie, a boy sidekick with a toy airplane, a regular player for a spell; and even Roman dieties (who are shown to be instrumental in his origin (a revelation that turns the Heap’s birth from freak accident to divine intervention), with the god of war and goddess Ceres now wagering on the creature’s fate. (Of the multitudinous “Heap” tales themselves, rather than rehash the oft macabre, sometimes ferocious stories, we urge all to check out the three-volume hardcover set, Roy Thomas Presents The Heap, published by PS Artbooks, which reprints the complete run. But, of the artists behind the exploits, one in particular, we’ve more to discuss…. )
Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers
Inset left: Panel detail from Air Fighters V2 #10 [Fall ’45]. Above: The Heap began his career as guest-star/villain in the “Sky Wolf” feature. This repro of the Air Fighters #3 [Dec. ’42] splash page is by artist Mort Leav. Below: More Leav art from AFC #3 — the origin sequence of the then-white furred Heap with a panel detail overlay.
Below: A continuing motif in the Kanigher-scripted “Enemy Ace” exploits was the relationship between the German air ace Von Hammer and a wolf who hunts in a Bavarian forest. An evocative panel from the same SSWS issue listed above. Art by Joe Kubert.
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by JON B. COOKE with George Khoury
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Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers
Savage Tales TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. Conan TM & © Conan Properties, Inc.
Above: John Buscema’s cover painting for the poorly distributed black-&-white adventure magazine published by Marvel, Savage Tales #1 [May ’71], which included the very first appearance of ManThing, in the origin tale as plotted by Roy Thomas, scripted by Gerry Conway, and drawn by Gray Morrow. The second issue (sans Ted Sallis) wouldn’t appear for another 29 or so months, in Oct. ’73.
Tempting as it is to speculate that the liberalization of the Comics Code launched the ’70s craze (though those changes certainly made for a permissive environment), the legion of comic-book beasts from the bayou began their onslaught even before the 1971 modifications and, indeed, entirely outside the Authority’s purview. It was in the Code-free pages of black-&-white magazines published by competitors — one a brand-new outfit — where commenced the odd category within horror comic books, the muck-monster genre. Right off, Stan Lee must have realized the upstart rival would be trouble for his House of Ideas. After all, it was being run by his longtime right-hand man, Marvel production manager Sol Brodsky, who had just quit to form that new challenger, Skywald Publishing. Brodsky and partner Israel Waldman’s plan was to respectively take on both Marvel and the top purveyor of black-&-white comic magazines, Warren Publishing. Lee need not have worried about the color line, as it folded after no more than a few issues each of Tender Love Stories, Wild Western Action, Jungle Adventures, and Butch Cassidy; but the Skywald horror line, comprised of Nightmare, Scream, and their flagship title, Psycho, would last a few years longer. Of concern, perhaps, was Skywald’s inclusion of regular features in their horror books, even resurrecting the Golden Age Heap. Despite Marvel publisher Martin Goodman’s reluctance to get into the b-&-w comics magazine field again (after ill-fated Spectacular Spider-Man and Pussycat), Stan the Man wanted in on Jim Warren’s action and planned an adventure title — “rated M for Mature readers” — that, like the Skywald line-up of Hell-Rider, The Crime Machine, and horror books, would showcase continuing characters. Thus a new title was scheduled, #1 featuring the first installments of a Conan the Barbarian series, Ka-Zar, the Femizons, Black Brother, and a shambling, Heap-knock-off called Man-Thing.
Roy Thomas, who worked closely with his boss in the Marvel bullpen at the time, remembered, “Stan Lee called me in… to begin this new book called Savage Tales…. Stan wanted to do a series called ‘Man-Thing.’ He just had a sentence or so, just the idea of some guy doing some experimental drug and getting sort of fused with the swamp, so he becomes this creature. It sounded a lot like the Heap, but Stan never mentioned that character (although he’s said in many other places since then that he was very familiar with the Heap). I knew of the Heap, of course, but didn’t mention it. I didn’t like the name ‘Man-Thing,’ because we already had a character the Thing, and I thought it was confusing….” “So with that couple of sentences,” Thomas continued, “I went off and plotted the story. I don’t remember writing it down, but apparently I did, because someone sent me a copy of my original two-page plot…. I gave it to Gerry Conway, who wrote a script from it, and it was given to Gray Morrow to draw. It was my intention to basically bring the Heap into comics. By that time, of course, we were actually picking up the ball fairly late, because I’d already done the Glob in The Incredible Hulk, and the Glob was clearly the Heap, with a couple of minor changes.” Gerry Conway concurs, “Man-Thing was really Roy’s idea, something that he wanted to do because of his interest in the old Heap character… I got the assignment from Roy. I was Roy’s pinch-hitter, so whenever he would start something that he didn’t really feel like he wanted to carry forward, he would turn it over to me. I did Tomb of Dracula; I did the ‘Man-Thing.’ I think my first several assignments were to write the dialogue on Astonishing Tales, X-Men, ‘The Inhumans’ in Amazing Adventures. Just stuff that he would start and that he wasn’t really that enthusiastic about.” The “Marvel Method” predominated at the House of Ideas at the time, where a written or verbal plot was given to a pencil artist, who would pace the story to his liking, sometimes adding elements, sometimes not, who would then return it to editorial for dialogue and captions to be added. Thereafter the story would be lettered and inked. “I didn’t really like doing what I thought of as horror material,” confessed Thomas, “even though this was sort of super-hero horror. It started as early as when I plotted the first issue of Tomb of Dracula, from a very brief verbal concept by Stan — or sometimes on my own, like the first issue of [Marvel Spotlight] ‘Werewolf by Night.’ I would plot the story, in greater or lesser detail, sometimes even giving a written plot to the artist, sometimes not. And then I’d give it to somebody else, usually Gerry at that stage, to write. Once I had done the general concept, I went back to my other books. I had no desire to write the first story of ‘Man-Thing’ or ‘Werewolf by Night,’ or [Tomb of] Dracula, or whatever.” Thomas did have specific ideas with the characterization as first presented. “We wanted him to be quite different from
Man-Thing TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.
characters like the Thing and the Hulk. And whatever stage the Hulk was at, at least remembered something, at least he spoke, and I thought we needed a different twist. The Hulk had had about 12 different speech patterns, the Thing maybe just a couple. And besides this, in my mind at least — and I was overseeing this more closely than Stan was — he was the Heap, and the Heap was silent, so it made sense for this guy to be silent, too. Except because the human being was alive within Man-Thing, instead of just some bones in a swamp as in the case of the Heap, he had more of a humanity about him, potentially, than the Heap did. But I never really brought that through. That was for the writers to do.” Gerry Conway recalls receiving the dialoguing job because Thomas may have been underwhelmed with the art. “I think he started off with wanting to do ‘Man-Thing,’ and then, as I kind of recall, he wasn’t all that thrilled with Gray’s pencils, so he just turned it over to me to write it. Then I added my two cents to the thing, in terms of characterization and general writing style, and that was pretty much it.” The late Gray Morrow, who had achieved notable success as artist on the Warren b-&-w horror titles a few years earlier and at the time of Savage Tales #1 was gaining notice on the DC mystery books, probably designed the character based on the old muck-monster prototype. “As far as I know,” Thomas says, “Gray Morrow just drew it. He probably knew about the Heap, whether it was mentioned to him or not, so he just drew it about as close to the Heap as anything could be, which is exactly what Gerry and I wanted. Stan certainly had no objection. And everybody was very happy with it.” The nascent writer was delighted to be teamed with the veteran artist. “Gray was a great character,” Conway said. “He looked like an artist. I think at this time he had this very saturnine type look. He had this little goatee and this pointed hair that came down into a point on this forehead. He was angular, and a very serious guy too. I don’t think he really enjoyed writing and doing comics that much, but he liked working, as did we all. He didn’t have a great sense, from a storytelling point of view, of how to break things down but, boy, could he draw. He’d draw the heck out of stuff. I think we did two or three stories together over the years. I was always very happy to be working with him… I just loved the idea of working with Gray Morrow, who I had been a fan of since seeing his artwork on the covers of paperback books in the early ‘60s.” Personal touches by the creators found their way into the yarn. Thomas says, “I remember Gray drew in a couple of people he knew, like a friend of mine (and maybe his and Phil Seuling’s) named Chester Grabowski, who I used to play poker with, as one of the hooligans in there, and I recognize him every time I see Chester at a convention somewhere. Carole Seuling tells me the other male hoodlum in the story
Above: Andy’s evocative Batman #655 [Sept. 2006] cover sans trade dress. Colors by Dave Stewart. Above: Spectacular “Man-Thing” splash page done in ink-&-wash by the incomparable Gray Morrow, originally appearing in Savage Tales #1 [May ’71] and superbly remastered for the Man-Thing Omnibus [2012] by the folks at Marvel Comics. Courtesy of Marvel Masterworks’ master-man Cory Sedlmeier.
Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers
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by JON B. CookE
Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers
Swamp Thing, House of Secrets TM & © DC Comics.
If the Heap at Skywald and Marvel’s Man-Thing echoed, with their ferocious brutality and scantily-clad damsels, those cheap, knocked-out horror comics of the early 1950s, the resident muck-monster at DC Comics resonated with the very best that bygone era offered in four-color tales of the macabre. By the early ’70s, the home of fondly-recalled titles Tales From the Crypt, Haunt of Fear, and Vault of Horror might have been 15 years gone from American newsstands and yet, in the pages of Swamp Thing, the exquisite quality of Entertaining Comics seemed resurrected courtesy of the excellent Graham Ingelsinspired pen of a young, brilliant artist and clever writing of a smart up-and-coming fan-turned-pro not unaccustomed to Feldstein & Gaines twist endings. And, truth be told, it’s likely no coincidence that delineator Bernie Wrightson and scribe Len Wein were shepherded by a notable E.C. Comics alumnus, talented artist and clever plot-man Joe Orlando (who, only a few years prior, had been story editor at the black-&-white horror mag outfit Warren Publishing), whose second act in life as DC’s premier mystery comics editor was in full flower. Through these three emerged the most famous swamp monster of all. By 1971 Joe Orlando was earning his keep (and then some) at the House of Superman. A few years earlier, editorial director and future publisher Carmine Infantino had, born of desperation and pressure from the executive suites upstairs to boost circulation, implemented the renowned age of artist-as-editor at DC Comics, which ushered in extraordinary and innovative material from, among others, multi-talented creators Jack Kirby, Joe Kubert, and Mike Sekowsky. Infantino wisely snatched artist-editor Dick Giordano from Charlton Comics and also the street-smart Orlando, then freelancing for MAD magazine and other commercial accounts (including, now and again, DC), to both head up their own titles for a revitalized mystery comics line inspired by the E.C. of old. Though once featuring suspenseful if rather innocuous tales of the strange and unusual, by the time of the Batman TV show, House of Mystery and sister title House of Secrets had gone “super-hero,” with HOM showcasing “Dial H For Hero” (sockamagee!) and the exploits of Eclipso and Prince Ra-Man sharing HOS (the latter title actually suffering cancellation in late ’66). But, by the decade’s close, the comics industry was facing imminent doom. Readers, particularly girls, were leaving the field in droves and those who remained often became attracted more to the inter-connected Marvel universe. Infantino is hired to bring on the era of the “daring and the different” by DC’s new corporate owners in an effort to return the company to those glorious — and profitable — days of Batmania. Then-publisher Irwin Donenfeld orders a revival of the mystery anthology books and, after hours at DC, buddies Infantino and Orlando, both Italians sons from the boroughs of New York City who had met a few years earlier and hit it off, conspire to come up with new concepts. “While I was an artist,” Infantino told this writer, “he would come up to DC working on a few things and we would just sit and talk. I just listened… and Joe was full of ideas.” (Infantino later boasts to interviewers that
Swamp Thing TM & © DC Comics. Photo © the respective copyright holder.
Orlando, known for helming the family of “weird” anthology titles from Plop! to Weird War Tales, was for a time the editor responsible for DC’s best-selling comics.) In his memoir, The Amazing World of Carmine Infantino, the late artist/publisher wrote, “Super-heroes were doing well in the late-’60s and early-’70s, but I always looked for other types of characters to do, just in case the super-heroes died off again. I threw out a barrage of different titles partially as a smoke screen. I wanted to sneak out House of Mystery and House of Secrets without Marvel noticing. We launched a chain of lightweight horror/mystery books, and they were successful before anyone at Marvel realized what we were doing.” Infantino continues, “I knew Joe Orlando would be perfect to put those kind of books together and his books became bestsellers. Marvel tried to compete, launching [short-lived mystery anthology comics] Tower of Shadows [and Chamber of Darkness]… and then using some of our own talent — Neal Adams, Wally Wood, and Bernie Wrightson all did a few stories for them. But they couldn’t get Orlando and he was our best-kept secret weapon!” As the DC mystery books hummed along, editor Orlando searched for ways to entice girl readers back into the fold, first by ripping off the Archie Comics template with retooled teen humor titles Swing with Scooter and Leave It to Binky, and then introducing a (perhaps Dark Shadows-inspired) Gothic slant to the line-up, which even permeated Wonder Woman and Batman for a spell. “That’s because, at that time,” Orlando told this writer, “the Gothics in the paperback market were doing so well. I studied the covers on the paperbacks and they always had the woman in the foreground, a sinister guy pursuing them, and a house or castle in the background with always one window lit. So that was a formula I used.” And, verily, it is during this period when came job number J-1135, an eight-pager fronting the June–July 1971 issue of House of Secrets, #92, a modest story of Victorian-era ill-fated romance, albeit a bizarre revenge fable replete with a creature born of death. Thus, behind a Gothic “lady in peril” cover, arrives “Swamp Thing,” effectively introducing a character which, to date, has headlined nearly 300 U.S. comic books, two major motion pictures, one live action television series, an animated cartoon show, a toy line, a plethora of merchandising, and multiple generations of devout fans. And while this, the first Swamp Thing episode, is not precisely canon but actually a nascent prototype, if you will, the origin of Alex Olsen’s sad, tragic opus has three fathers — writer Len Wein, artist Bernie Wrightson, and editor Joe Orlando — the same trio of creators who subsequently spawned the man-monster once called Alex Holland, the creature we today all know and love. The editor-creator, in an interview with Comic Book Artist, recalls his influence on the initial tale came from his former place of employment. “In fact, the first story was done in House of Secrets,” said Orlando, “and I fed to Len the idea from an old E.C. story that I loved (which I didn’t draw) where they took the brains out of this guy and put it into an ape and the last panel is that it’s Christmas time and he looks into the window of his home and sees his wife and children celebrating Christmas and there’s a picture of Daddy. The family turns and screams and he has to run and leave. I thought that that’s such a powerful idea and it’s in the first Swamp Thing story.”
Left: Exceptional commission piece courtesy of Jonathan Ross. All artwork on previous and this page by the incomparable Bernie Wrightson.
Previous page: Far left is an enlarged panel detail from Swamp Thing #4 [Apr.–May ’73]; top inset a commission from ’74; bottom inset the cover of House of Secrets #92 [June–July ’71]. This page: Top left is the cover of Swamp Thing #1 [Oct.–Nov. ’72]; left is Louise “Weezie” Jones posing for the HOS #92 shoot by Jeffrey Jones (used as photo reference), courtesy of Michael W. Kaluta. Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers
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A Man, a Duck, and a Monster Writer Steve Gerber on the grand absurdity of his beloved Marvel comics stories Conducted by JON B. COOKE Inset right: Vignetted detail of Mike Ploog Man-Thing #7 [July ’74] art, with the creature formerly-known-as Ted Sallis turning a little human in the ish’s final cliffhanging panel in that issue.
Below: Dressed-for-business comics writer Steve Gerber in a photo lensed by former Comics Buyer’s Guide publisher Alan Light at the 1982 San Diego Comic Convention.
Comic Book Creator: You missed the E.C. Comics? Steve Gerber: Pretty much. I may have seen a couple of them, but I don’t have any clear memories. CBC: Did you have any interest in horror at all? Steve: I had very little interest in horror, because I always found horror movies kind of corny and silly, and monster movies and stuff. The monsters always looked like guys in rubber suits. I had never really paid much attention to that genre at all, before I had to write it. CBC: Did you see possibilities within the medium itself that went beyond kind of juvenile super-heroes? Did you have any perception of comics as a valid form of communication? Steve: I never understood why other people didn't have that perception. It never occurred to me that they weren't that. I could see, I think, some of the silliness about comics, in certain ways. But, to me, the comic strips in the newspaper, the comic books I was reading, and the editorial cartoons by Herblock and Oliphant, were all part of the same thing, as
Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers
Photo © Alan Light. Man-Thing TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.
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[Stephen Ross Gerber, who arrived at Marvel just in time to receive his first professional script assignment — “Night of the Nether-Spawn!” starring ManThing, in Fear #11, Dec. ’72 — quickly rose to become one of the most daring and innovative writers in American comics, injecting his tales with edgy humor, pathos, and remarkable introspection. It was in the pages of his “Man-Thing” where fans first took notice of the Missouri-born scribe, especially when arrived a cigar-smoking, hat-wearing, and cracking-wise duck named Howard, the fowl trapped in a world he never made. Steve was interviewed on Nov. 26, 2002, and this piece was transcribed by Steven Tice and copy-edited by Aaron Kashtan. The writer passed away in 2008, at the age of 60. — Y.E.]
was Disney animation and all of that stuff. CBC: Did you see that there were cool things at Marvel and that something new was happening there? Steve: Oh, no question of that. I missed the first issue of the Fantastic Four; the second one I actually bought at the drug store. There was absolutely no question that something really strange was going on. CBC: Now, with the rise of the counter-culture and the questioning of authority that took place in the ’60s, were you of a like mind as it was progressing? Steve: Yeah. I was always a little bit on the fringes of that, but yeah. I was a hippie/Commie/weirdo/ Pinko [laughter], but not a big drug user, actually. CBC: Did comics fit into that? Steve: They did to me. I don’t think most of the people creating the stuff at that time were really thinking about it, but the imagery of the comics and the imagery of a lot of ’60s rock-&-roll and psychedelia and all that, all seemed of a piece to me. CBC: Did you get any exposure to the underground comics once they started coming out? Steve: Yeah, yeah. CBC: Was that a startling discovery? Steve: I wouldn’t call it startling, exactly, but it was — again, I never really was drawn to the undergrounds either, because there wasn’t much story material there. I would pick them up occasionally, find them, and then not think about them again for six months. It’s always been stories and the characters that have drawn me in, and ideas. CBC: After college, you went into advertising? Steve: Actually I spent about six months at a radio station, prior to that, writing advertising copy, and then got a job offer from an advertising agency in St. Louis and went over there. CBC: How big was the agency? Steve: It was a small agency, a local agency in town. Well, a medium-sized local agency. Not one of the big nationwides. CBC: And how was your experience there? Steve: Tremendously boring. I just didn’t have a whole lot to say about savings-&-loan institutions [laughs] or much of an interesting way to say it, that kind of thing. It was fun for a little while, and it was interesting. I learned an awful lot about design techniques and typefaces, and working for timing and radio, and stuff like that, but it was not very interesting. About eight months into it, I wrote a letter to Roy [Thomas, who Steve knew from fandom], asking if there was anything open at Marvel, and as it turned out, there was. CBC: This was when they were really starting to expand? Steve: Exactly. It was 1972. They had just been purchased by Cadence Industries, and had just hooked up with a new
Man-Thing, Howard the Duck TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.
The Muck-Monster Makers distributor, I think. They were about to literally double the amount of comics they were publishing. CBC: Did you just say “the hell with it” and just go? Steve: Pretty much. Roy had me take a writer’s test. They sent me six pages of this Gerry Conway Daredevil story, drawn by Gene Colan, to dialogue, just to see what I would do with it. I wrote those, sent them off, and waited in terror to find out whether or not they were going to be taken seriously. Roy wound up calling and offering me a job. CBC: Were you writing to ape Stan Lee’s or Roy’s or Gerry’s style at the time? Or were you writing to impress? Steve: Well, I was writing to impress, certainly, but I’m sure I must have been hugely influenced by what Stan, Roy, and Gerry were doing at that time. So, trying to “ape” them, not exactly, but trying to sound like a Marvel comic, yes. CBC: Did you infuse humor into it, or did you play it pretty straight? Steve: Well, in that particular sequence, I couldn’t. There was not a lot of room for humor. In fact, I didn’t know at the time, but it was a very, very difficult sequence to write. The whole thing was a car chase, mainly with the exterior of the car. I don’t think you even saw who was in the car until the end of the six pages, and Daredevil was swinging over the buildings in San Francisco trying to follow and ultimately catch whoever was driving. So there were not a whole lot of possibilities for humor in that particular sequence. CBC: So Roy got back to you pretty quick. Steve: Within a couple of weeks, it seems to me. CBC: So Roy called and offered you a job? Steve: At a pay cut from what I was getting. [laughter] CBC: How’d you sell this to your wife? Steve: Well, she knew I was very unhappy in the advertising business. There was also the promise of what Marvel called, and still does call, “freelance work,” meaning work you took home from the office and were paid separately for. So it looked like we would be able to do it, like we would be able to pull it off. CBC: When you went there, Roy obviously was taking on a lot more responsibility, right? Stan was out of the office a lot? Steve: Roy had already become editor-in-chief. CBC: Did you see that you could ascend through the ranks at Marvel? Was a staff position a possibility, or was freelance work really the goal? Steve: I started working on staff and I had assumed that I would just continue working on staff. It didn’t work out, for a number of reasons, but yeah, I had actually thought I would remain on staff up there. It was only after I got there that I found out that most people didn’t stay on staff. They came in, worked on staff for a short time, and then wanted to go freelance. CBC: So why didn’t you stay on staff? Steve: Actually, I think it’s what [Jim] Starlin mentioned [in a CBA interview]: I kept falling asleep at work. CBC: Because you were doing freelance at night? Steve: It was because I was doing freelance at night, but also because I suffer from sleep apnea, and the sleep I was getting wasn’t doing me any good. I didn’t know that for another 15 years. [laughs] Really not until about five years ago. CBC: So were you looked upon as a slacker who was just catching Z’s? Steve: Yeah, and as a little weird. People did, even as Starlin did in that article in your magazine, think of it as narcolepsy or some strange disease or something. It certainly wasn’t that, but it was something almost as dangerous. CBC: Obviously this ailment invaded all aspects of your life? Steve: It introduced an element of chaos into my life that was so enormous that I can’t even begin to describe it. I still
suffer from it today to some degree. I have never been able to sleep on a regular schedule, and still can’t, even now, with the machine I use to regulate it. It went on for so many years, basically for the first 45 years of my life, 40 years, whatever it was, from the time I was 15 and onward, roughly. It was an ailment that doctors didn’t even know existed until sometime in the early ’80s. I was actually tested for it once in the mid’80s. The tests came back negative or the doctors screwed up and lost the tests. I’ve never had a reasonable explanation of that. When I tested for it a number of years later, they came back and said, “Yes, you’ve got a really serious case of this.” CBC: So you had to go freelance? Steve: Pretty much. I was asked to go freelance, really. CBC: Were you still on staff when offered your first gig? Steve: No, actually, I was offered my first gig before I start-
Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers
Above: Wauuggghhh! What a find! Contributor Mike Blanchard shared this rarity, the original, unobscured cover art for Giant-Size Man-Thing #4 [May ’75], which featured a head shot of Howard the Duck, rather than the printed “Gorko, the Man-Frog” blurb. Magnificent art by Frank Brunner. This issue of the awkwardly named comic, of course, featured the first solo story of the fowl trapped in a world he never made. Gerber reveals that Neal Adams was intended to be the illustrator of that tale, not Brunner! 113
The Saga of the Swamp God The tender, unsettling horrors of Alan Moore’s epic tale of Swamp Thing and Abby Conducted by JON B. COOKE & GEORGE KHOURY Next page: Portrait of “The Original Writer,” Alan Moore, photographed by dear CBC friend and advisor José Villarrubia. Below: This exquisite painting by Stephen R. Bissette and John Totleben, which appeared as the cover of The Comics Journal #93 [Sept. ’84], so impressed DC editorial that it led to painted covers on the Swamp Thing title.
Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers
Painting © Stephen R. Bissette & John Totleben. Swamp Thing TM & © DC Comics.
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[Alan Moore, one of the finest writers — if not the finest writer — to ever emerge from the realm of the comic book, single-handedly revolutionized the mainstream medium, introducing real-world sensitivities and a bold, captivating style that continues to be attempted by lesser talents. His tenure in the field has been tumultuous and sporadic, peppered with disaffections with both the top U.S. publishers, yet still a great supporter of much smaller imprints. George Khoury and Ye Ed visited the British scribe in his Northampton, U.K., row house (where he does his writing) on a bright Saturday afternoon and evening in May 2002. — Y.E.]
Jon B. Cooke: When did you start writing comics? Alan Moore: Doctor Who was the start of my writing career, though I was still drawing at that time. The writing started out as a way to supplement my drawing career, and then the drawing career [on his comic strips, Maxwell the Cat, and Roscoe Moscow] became too time-consuming to supplement my writing career. I started working at Marvel and then they sacked [writer and Alan’s mentor] Steve Moore on the main strip. This was after I’d done two or three of the back-up strips for Doctor Who. I think I was next in line to take over the lead strip and I’d gotten a very precarious hold on a comic writing career. But, on the other hand, this was Steve Moore they’d sacked, so I said I couldn’t work on Doctor anymore. The assignment was important to me money-wise, but this was Steve Moore. He was my best mate. So I said that I didn’t want to do anymore work for Doctor Who, but I was still okay working at Marvel. When I stopped working on Doctor Who, it was a big decision, but also Warrior was starting at the same time. This was Dez Skinn’s attempt to perhaps get revenge on Marvel. (He actually used Paul Neary as an artist on Warrior.) At the beginning, there was Dez starting up Warrior and he asked his original crowd — Steve Parkhouse, Steve Moore, Dave Lloyd, Steve Dillon, all the people that he’d been working with on The Mighty World of Marvel — to work on the new magazine. I think Steve Moore recommended me and Dez had seen the article where I was interviewed about what it was like to be a fledgling writer. They asked me if there was any project I would like to do in the future, and I said, just off the top of my head, that it would be great if someone revived Marvelman. I had a really brilliant idea as to how to do that character in the 1980s. Dez had seen that so he got in touch and said that he was going to get the rights to Marvelman for his new comic and would I like to write it? I said, “Sure.” Jon: What is your writing process? Do you write on a computer? Alan: I do it on a notepad. Jon: In longhand? Doesn’t that hurt? Alan: Yes, but one of the better British TV comedies, Father Ted, is about a group of Catholic priests in Ireland, and there’s a bit where there’s an old lady who looks after them, Mrs. Doyle, and makes them tea every five or six minutes. Somebody gets her a new tea-making machine, and says, “You’ll love this, Mrs. Doyle! It will take the misery out of making tea.” She looks at him with contempt and says, “Perhaps some of us like the misery.” [laughter] That’s my attitude. When I was starting out and not handling so many books, it would normally take me three days. On Swamp Thing, I did eight pages a day, handwritten and then typed. Jon: How long does it really take? For this one you said 15 hours, but did you include pondering and mentally conceptualizing in that time frame? Alan: There was really wasn’t any pondering at all. Jon: Do the stories take a life of their own and you’re just the conduit? Alan: Sometimes they take a lot of thinking about. Jon: Do they take over? Alan: Sometimes they take over, but it varies.
Photo © Jose Villarrubia. Used with permission.
Comic Book Creator #6 presents Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers
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