The Comic Book World is replete with things. At least three Things I can think of off the top of my head: The Man-Thing, The Swamp Thing, and Ben Grimm aka The Thing. And it's a well known rule of academia that if you have three things that may be only tangentially related, you can make a class out of it!
Outside of comics we have a few cultural "Things", in 1893, Ambrose Bierce published a story called The Damned Thing about a hunter who comes to discover he is hunting some sort of Thing that is a color outside the range of human sight.
In 1951, Howard Hawks released a movie, an opera, really, an opera without music called The Thing from Another World starring James Arnes in the title role of The Thing. In this movie, based on the novella by John W. Campbell Jr. called Who Goes There? which, itself is a tidy little bit of cosmic horror inspired by H. P. Lovecraft, an alien spaceship is discovered in Antarctica, the scientists start excavating and discover the frozen body of the alien thing inside which, at some point becomes thawed and is discovered to be some sort of space vegetable.
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| The story that inspired the movie versions of The Thing |
In 1982, John Carpenter remade this film while staying truer to the original novella to great effect in John Carpenter's The Thing which stars Kurt Russell, Wilford Brimley, and Keith David. In this version as in the novella, the Thing consumes its victims and then mimics them to such a degree that the mimics are barely aware they are the alien. This film plays more on the paranoia of the Cold War and even uses some scenes from the Howard Hawks film to show the discovery of the alien craft, by the Norwegians in this version.
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| Kurt Russell in John Carpenter's The Thing |
In the early 1970s before learning of any of these Things I created my own Thing as an imaginary friend after an assignment from the Weekly Reader. I would write stories about Thing and me and eventually, after doing ink blot art will create a new character/imaginary friend named Thunderbolt who at first was more or less a cloud type thing with lightning projecting outward in many directions, but eventually evolving him into a lightning bolt body with a cloud for a head after a suggestion by a teacher.
Which brings us to today, on this Halloween we looks at the first three chapters of the massive Swamp Thing Omnibus that came out on October 10. We witness the origin of the Swamp thing and then we witness the origin of the modern day Swamp Thing.
Next the newly-minted Swamp Thing is abducted by the Un-men, a cadre of grotesques created by a mad scientist living somewhere in Universal Horror Movie Europe named Anton Arcane who is pursuing immortality and believes the Swamp Thing's body just might help him accomplish this. As well as world domination.
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| Abigail Arcane from Alan Moore's run of Saga of the Swamp Thing |
After escaping Arcane, Swamp Thing is aided by The Patchwork Man, another grotesque resurrected from the remains of Anton's own brother, Gregori. Surviving the destruction of Arcane's castle, the Patchwork Man makes his way back to his own village where he spies is daughter, Abigail Arcane. Overcome with paternal grief, the Patchwork Man makes off with Abigail, though his thoughts are muddled and has no real idea as to where he's taking her, Swamp Thing sees Arcane with the young woman and decides to rescue her. The two monsters battle when but a crowd of angry villages show up with torches and shotguns and Abigail loses her footing, the two monsters unite to rescue her.
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| The Patchwork Man |
Thank you for reading! What other comic book things should I cover? What other comic book things are there? Should I consider including the Heap? Or branch this series out into the stories and movies I mentioned above? Be sure to let me know down below or in the comments section of the YouTube video.
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