Roots Of The Swamp Thing: New Swamp Thing Comic Solicited, Plotted, Scripted by China Mieville, Shelved and Then Relaunched... Sort Of

Roots of the Swamp Thing: Your Portal to the Universe of Swamp Thing, The Un-Men and John Constantine: Hellblazer

• Part 1: Before Year 1
• Part 2: Year 1 to 1899
• Part 3: 1900 to 1969
• Part 4: 1970 to 1979
• Part 5: 1980 to 1984
• Part 6: 1985 to 1988
• Part 7: 1989 to 1991
• Part 8: 1992 to 1994
• Part 9: 1995 to 1999
• Part 10: 2000 to Present

Born on the Bayou
A history and introduction

Creature Features
Articles and feature stories

Cover Gallery
Judge the books by the covers

Forgotten Lore
Unpublished tales

In the Swamplight
Issue-by-issue breakdowns

Elemental Lineage
Past lives and other entities

Upcoming Releases
Coming to a bog near you

What's New Bayou?
Archived news updates

About Me
Portrait of a swamp-nerd

Homepage
Go back to the roots

Contact Me
Comments, corrections & tubers

Thanks to Joe Bongiorno, who first dragged me kicking and screaming into the mucky mythos of Swamp Thing, and to Paul Giachetti, who created the amazing header banner.

Thanks also to reader 'Alec Holland,' whose support has been invaluable; Mike Sterling, for promoting Swamp Thing and this site; and Kevin Church, for his excellent optimization advice.

And thanks to Len Wein, Bernie Wrightson, Alan Moore, John Totelben, Stephen Bissette, Jamie Delano, Garth Ennis and all the other creators whose work inspired this site.



New Swamp Thing Comic Solicited, Plotted, Scripted by China Miéville, Shelved and Then Relaunched... Sort Of by Rich Handley *June 1, 2010* You may have already heard about this, but this week, news of a fifth Swamp Thing comic-book series was announced, to be published by Vertigo. According to a story today at BleedingCool.com by "Lying in the Gutters" columnist Rich Johnston, "China Miéville, award-winning English sci-fi novelist and socialist politician with repeat Hugo nominations for his novels Perdido Street Station, The Scar, Iron Council and The City & The City, was approached by Vertigo to start Swamp Thing afresh. He’d already written a short Hellblazer story for issue 250. A series bible had been written, and scripts were being written. And then… Vertigo were told to scrap it. Bin the lot, pay a kill fee." No further details were provided. An hour later, the site published a follow-up story, also by Johnston, revealing why: "Co-publisher Dan DiDio decreed that Swamp Thing was to return back to the purview of the DC Universe, the superhero line. There will be a new Swamp Thing series, creative team as yet unconfirmed, interacting with the Justice League and the like, something generally frowned upon at Vertigo these days." Personally, I'm of two minds about this. On the one hand, I'm ecstatic—any new Swamp Thing is great news, and Vertigo has twice dropped the ball by canceling the post-Millar runs just when they were getting great. On the other hand, I've never been entirely convinced that our favorite muck-encrusted mockery of a man should return to his days of interacting with the DC Universe characters. I can certainly understand why many believe that's a good idea, as the character's roots are firmly... er... rooted in the DC Universe. And most of his run-ins with Batman have been pure gold. But my favorite Swamp Thing tales have always been those devoid of Spandex and capes. I'm also bummed that they had a solid talent like Miéville doing the series, and yet they let him go after he was already several issues into the story, just so he could instead have team-ups with the Justice League. What a bizarre and unfortunate business decision. I'd have loved to see what he came up with. I guess we'll have to wait and see... between this and rumors of a 3-D Swamp Thing film written by Akiva Goldsman, directed by Vincenzo Natali and produced by Joel Silver, I guess it's time for me to begin updating this space once more. By weird coincidence, I was just telling fellow Swamp Thing fanatic Mike Sterling that I was thinking of re-launching this site, which has sat dormant for the past year-plus as I penned two Planet of the Apes books. Needless to say, I've been... ahem... swamped. As more news develops, I'll report it here. Stay tuned... Archived News >

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