Mon-Daze

The move, the house, the house, the bank, the realtor -- the process!

Process uber alle, and no time to do much of anything else here today.

One item of note:
My final contribution to the Saga of the Swamp Thing series is now out in graphic novel format as DC approaches the end of reprint volumes covering Rick Veitch's tenure on the series. Book 9 of Vertigo/DC's ongoing compilation series, Swamp Thing: Infernal Triangles, is just out, collecting Rick Veitch's penultimate arc of Swamp Thing stories and art (reprinting Saga of the Swamp Thing -- hereafter SOTST -- #77-81, 1988, and Annual #3, 1987). These also include Jamie Delano's guest-scripting the book's title story (for SOTST #77) and my rebirth tale "To Sow One's Seed in the Wind" (SOTST #78, November 1988) -- and yes, the masturbatory reference was deliberate. Swamp Thing organically gives 'rebirth' to himself, a conceit that allowed me to phantasmagorically vent/reinvent my own impressions of homebirth (both daughter Maia and son Daniel were born at home) and bid a fond adieu to Abby and Swamp Thing that felt correct at the time. It was also a valentine to my son Dan, reflecting the experience of his birth three years earlier.

The story was conceived in part as an answer, a companion and an inversion of my prior Swamp Thing script effort, "Reunion" (SOTST # 59, April 1987, with art by Veitch & Alcala; reprinted in Swamp Thing Book 6: Reunion, 2003). That script, written to my daughter Maia (now old enough to appreciate it, I hope), presented a first-person view of aging, death and bidding life and one's loved ones farewell via the return of Abby's father Gregori Arcane -- aka The Patchwork Man, victim of brother Anton Arcane's Frankensteinian experiments in the original Len Wein/Berni Wrightson series -- just in time to bid his daughter farewell before he disintegrated completely. That story was set in part in a nursing home that consciously echoed my own teenage years in Colbyville, VT, living between two nursing homes.

If anyone cares, I might also mention the final entry in what became a meditative trilogy on birth and death: my one-shot script for Dark Horse's Species mini-series, which I don't have right at hand at the moment; that experience proved unsatisfactory (due primarily to publisher Mike Richardson's eleventh-hour edit of a key story point), though it was a hoot to at last work with my pal Mark Nelson on something. "To Sow One's Seed in the Wind" allowed me to collaborate with fellow Kubert School alumnis Tom Mandrake, and that was fun. Tom's art arguably wasn't up to the high standards of his later Spectre work (which was, to my mind, real breakthrough stuff), Tom did a nifty job, as did series inker Alfredo Alcala. Of course, all these birth/life/death/parenting concerns were ultimately channeled into Tyrant, as well as -- well, life. The Ultimate comicbook.

In any case, nice to see the story again. This also means that everything I did for DC on the character (save for the art I did for the DC indexing miniseries and various promotional art and art & text; all the narrative work is what I'm referring to) is now back in print in the US. I believe Midnight Days (featuring John Totleben's and my own farewell to the character, via Neil Gaiman's script "Jack-in-the-Green") is still available and in print; correct me, please, if I'm wrong. It's all in reach at last!

More later -- on something else -- time permitting --