MUCK MONSTER MONDAY - ANOTHER HEAP IN THE MIRE

Once again, it's time for Muck Monster Monday, and this week our attention turns, once again, to The Heap.

A Heap - if not THE Heap returns. Art by

Hector Varella

Yes, that's right, in 1971 comics first swamp creature returned to print. Sort of.
Skywald Publications was a company founded in 1970 by Sol Brodsky, the former production manager for Marvel Comics, and entrepreneur Israel Waldman. It's primarily remembered for it's black and white horror anthologies Nightmare (23 issues), Psycho (24 issues), and Scream (11 issues).
Amongst the writers who worked for Skywald were Gerry Conway, Steve Englehart, Doug Moench, Gardner Fox, Dave Sim, Len Wein and Marv Wolfman. Artistic duties were handled by, amongst others, Bill Everett, Gene Day, Bruce Jones, Tom Sutton and John Byrne.
It was in the pages of the second issue of Psycho (March 1971) that writer Charles McNaughton and artists Ross Andru and Mike Esposito introduced a new version of the iconic bog beast.
This Heap was pilot Jim Roberts, whose cropduster plane crashed into an Army toxic waste dump. Exposed to a strange nerve gas, Roberts mutated into a shambling mound of slimy green matter. Unlike his earlier counterpart, the Roberts Heap kept his intelligence, although he was unable to communicate verbally with those he encountered during his global search for a way to free himself from his curse, whether by kill or cure.
Ross Andru soon took over the scripting duties on the strip, followed by Al Hewetson. Other artist on the strip were Pablo Marcos and Xavier G. Vilanova.
There was also a one off comic book called The Heap cover dated September 1971 which was written by Robert Kanigher and illustrated by Tom Sutton.
With the demise of Psycho with it's 24th issue, this new Heap faded back into obscurity.
Whether Skywald actually legally acquired the rights to use the character from Hillman Publications who had published the original Heap stories is unclear, although Roy Thomas, then an editor and writer at Marvel Comics said in an interview with Alter Ego magazine (Vol. 3 #81, 2008) that he had suggested to Sol Brodsky the idea of reviving The Heap... 

The Heap #1 Art by Tom Sutton and Jack Abel.

"I was also responsible for Skywald Publishing introducing a Heap character. I had lunch with Sol Brodsky soon after he left Marvel Comics to co-found Skywald. He was looking for heroes to do. I couldn't write for him, so he was kind of picking my brain, and I wanted to help without getting too involved, since Stan Lee wouldn't have liked that. I told Sol, 'Well, we have the Man-Thing, so you ought to get someone to revive the Heap.' He remembered the character since he was a comic-book artist in the 1940s."

It's interesting that Roy should mention the Man-Thing there, because as far as I can tell, Man-Thing had yet to make it's first appearance in Savage Tales #1 (May 1971). If Roy DID mention Man-Thing in his lunch date with Brodsky, then Sol must have really rushed to get the Heap story out before that Man-Thing debut. Either that, or the Man-Thing story had been sitting around for a bit.
And so, as the Heap goes shambling off into the sunset (again), we turn our attention to the big two swamp creatures. The afore-mentioned Man-Thing and his DC counterpart Swamp Thing.
That's next time on Muck Monster Monday.
See you then
Steve

MUCK MONSTER MONDAY - OUTER SANCTUM

"Come in, I've been waiting for you! I've been waiting for you to fix my squeaking door!... What?... You say you're not the carpenter?... You have come to hear a story?... Very well!"

During the course of Muck Monster Monday, I'm not generally going to be looking at the one-off bog monsters that have wandered through the four colour pages, such as those that appeared in the early Marvel monster titles like Tales Of Suspense. There will be a couple of exceptions however, such as this one.
In 1952 EC Comics launched a new humour comic book onto the market. Written primarily by it's editor Harvey Kurtzman, Mad became one of the longest running humour titles, still running today, and certainly one of the most influential with it's groundbreaking parodies.
In the comic's fifth issue - and it was still a traditional comic book, not yet having adopted its more familiar magazine format - Kurtzman and artist Bill Elder parodied the long-running radio show "Inner Sanctum Mystery" which ran from 1941 to 1952. The show, more commonly known simply just as "Inner Sanctum" was an anthology show featuring tales of mystery, suspense and horror, featuring tongue-in-cheek introductions by "your host, Raymond".
But if satirizing the radio show wasn't enough, Kurtzman and Elder also chose to parody comics most famous (at the time) swamp creature "The Heap".

Another Heap is born!!

I have no idea if "Inner Sanctum" ever did an adaptation Of Theodore Sturgeon's story "It!", or indeed any stories featuring swamp monsters of that ilk, but the combination works perfectly. Although occasionally I do wonder what "Ghastly" Graham Ingles would have done with it, Elder's art is perfect for the story, cramming more sight gags into one panel than some comics manage in an entire issue.  Kurtzman's story is great fun, and it's interesting to note that when our walking garbage Heap is born, Kurtzman describes it as "a horrible glob of standing swamp thing".
Hmmm! Two other swamp creatures to be, mentioned in one caption!
The story can be found in numerous reprints, and can be seen in various places on the old interweb including here Outer Sanctum! Check it out.
Next time on Muck Monster Monday, I glob about The Blog. Er... I blog about the Glob!
See you then
Steve

MUCK MONSTER MONDAY - HEAP'S OF FUN!

Air Fighters Comics #3 - 1st Appearance of the Heap

Less than two short years after Unknown published Theodore Sturgeon's seminal story "It!", the first of many similar creatures made in appearance in the comics pages. Hillman Comics were first in on the act when the Skywolf story "Wanted By The Nazis"  in Air Fighters Comics #3 (December 1942), written by Harry Stein and drawn by Mort Leav, introduced Baron Von Emmelmann, a German fighter pilot who is shot down at the end of the First World War over a Polish swamp.
Somehow clinging to life, his body decayed and merged with the plant life in the swamp, until during the early years of the Second World War, a strange creature rose from the mire. A creature that would become known as "The Heap". In appearance it resembled nothing more than a huge, shambling, green, haystack with a root for a snout.
After his initial encounter with the fighter ace Skywolf, the Heap turned against it's former countrymen, fighting with the Allies against the Nazi regime.
It later started wandering the globe, sometimes encountering other sinister creatures, sometimes wandering into town, helping people in need, like a moss encrusted version of Shane.

Splash page to the Heap story in Airboy Vol. 10, #3

After Air Fighters Comics #3, the Heap continued to appear sporadically in the Skywolf series as a guest star, before being given it's own back up strip starting in Airboy Comics (as Air Fighters Comics was retitled in 1945) vol. 3 #9 (1945) and continuing until the final issue, vol. 10, #4 (May 1953).

In the earliest issues, The Heap was accompanied by a young boy, Ricky Wood whose model biplane stirred deep buried memories within The Heap of his/it's former life.
Later on in this run, the Heap's origin was slightly tweaked, with the revelation that the Roman Goddess Ceres was responsible for The Heap's origin.
Oh, wait a minute, another story says it was Mother Nature that was responsible.
And another variation of the origin says it was the souls of innocent babies, murdered by an ancient warlord that brought the monster to life!
Er, make your minds up Hillman!
Although the strip ended in 1953, the character wasn't forgotten and was a major influence on Marvel Comics' Man-Thing and DC Comics Swamp Thing. In fact, The Heap even made a brief blink-and-you'll-miss-him cameo appearance during the "Parliament Of Trees" issue of "Swamp Thing" by Alan Moore and Stan Woch.

The Heap returns in the 1980s

Then, in 1986, Eclipse Comics picked up the rights to some of the Hillman properties and launched a new Airboy comic, which occasionally featured The Heap as a supporting character. The muck monster also appeared in another Eclipse title, the team book "The New Wave". After Eclipse Comics went bankrupt in the 1990s, the company's assets were acquired by Todd McFarlane's Image Comics. McFarlane introduced a new Heap in the pages of his popular comic "Spawn", but that's a story for another time...
In the meantime the original Heap stories have found a new audience in a three volume hardcover series entitled "Roy Thomas Presents The Heap" from the British publisher PS Artbooks. For more information, see their website http://www.pspublishing.co.uk/

Links for the individual volumes can be found at...

Vol. 1
Vol. 2
Vol. 3
That's it for now for this Heap, but rest assured we'll be looking at other Heaps soon.
Next time on Muck Monster Monday, a look at DC's first Swamp Monster. No, not Swamp Thing. In fact, you may not even think of him as a muck monster, even though his origin is virtually identical. Who is it? I'll leave it to you to work it out. But he WAS born on a (Muck Monster) Monday...

See you soon,
Steve

MUCK MONSTER MONDAY - "IT!"

Welcome, loyal readers, to the first edition of "Muck Monster Monday", where, every Monday I'll be looking at the shambling heaps that roam the swamps of four-colour comics. From Man-Thing and Swamp Thing to the lesser known creatures such as The Heap.
Now, when I decided to do this it was to do an issue by issue look at Alan Moore's classic run on Swamp Thing in the vein of my current series looking at Jack Kirby's Fourth World. Then I decided to take it back to the original Len Wein/Berni Wrightson run. That then led to a comparison with Marvel's Man-Thing which in turn led to me going back to the earlier muck monsters. Sometimes I just don't know when to stop!
The roots (if you'll pardon the pun) of the swamp creature genre, however lie not in the comics medium, but in the science-fiction/horror pulp magazines of the 1930s and 1940s.
For it was in the pages of one of the pulps that a particular short story was published that started an entire genre. This seminal story by Theodore Sturgeon was simply called "It!" and originally appeared in the August 1940 edition of "Unknown".

 Supernatural Thrillers #1 featuring an adaptation of "It!"

It's the tale of a plant monster that is revealed to have been formed in a swamp, around the skeleton of a man called Roger Kirk. In a book review published in the September 1949 of Astounding Science Fiction writer and critic P Schuyler Miller described "It!" as "probably the most unforgettable story ever published in Unknown."

The story influenced a number of comic book stories, especially in the giant monster titles of the pre-hero Marvel Comics such as Tales Of Suspense, Tales To Astonish, Strange Tales and Journey Into Mystery. 
Marvel would later adapt the story itself in the first issue of the horror anthology "Supernatural Thrillers" although the suggestion by Marvel that it should become a regular series was vetoed by writers Roy Thomas and Tony Isabella because of it's similarity to Marvel's already existing Man-Thing. As Isabella said on his blog on 16th April 2013...
"When Supernatural Thrillers #1 sold very well, someone high up at Marvel wanted an "It!" comic book. When Roy Thomas and I discussed this, we decided that we couldn't do a continuation of the Sturgeon story because we were already publishing Man-Thing as an ongoing series. That's when I suggested we look at the sales of our monster reprint titles and how we discovered that the two issues that reprinted the Colossus stories by Larry Lieber and Jack Kirby had sold better than other issues of those titles. I started developing what became It! The Living Colossus!"

Although we had to wait until 1972 for this official adaptation, "It!" inspired muck monsters started roaming the comics pages much earlier. In fact the first appeared just two short years after Sturgeon's story.
That creature was known as "The Heap", and there'll be more about him next week...
I'll be back later in the week with another "Fourth World Thursday".
See you soon,
Steve