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. |
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In the Swamplight
World's Finest Comics #220
| Story Title | Pub. Date |
"Let No Man Write
My Epitaph" | Nov.-Dec. 1973 |
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| Writer | Artists |
| Bob Haney | Dick Dillin
and Murphy Anderson |
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| Cover | Editors |
| Nick Cardy | Murray Boltinoff
and E. Nelson Bridwell |
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| Chronological Breakdown |
| • 1973: As Carlotta Esteban (a.k.a. El Monstro) runs off into the forest, Batman and Superman disagree on how to proceed, for though Batman empathizes with Carlotta's need for revenge on Don Ernerto Rivera—who'd framed her for her father's murder and taken his Brazilian rancho, La Comparsa—Superman is more concerned with her illegal use of stolen treasures from a sunken Nazi treasure submarine. Thus, though Batman knows the sub's location, he feigns ignorance to buy time to help her, unaware Superman has seen through his ruse. Meanwhile, Don Ernesto tells the local peasants forced to work for him that the Nazi gold they used to buy the rancho from him was illegal, thus voiding the sale and reverting the property to his ownership. Furious, one local tries to destroy the favela. When Ernesto hurts the man, Batman steps in. Don Ernest's partner Molina opens fire, but El Monstro takes the bullets, scaring the men off. Batman urges Carlotta to drop her vendetta, but she ignores him, vowing to avenge her father's murder. Batman finds El Monstro in the attic of a nearby hacienda, viewing a painting of herself from before her incarceration. Again he tries to reason with her, but she hits him and heads for Ernesto's office, so frightening Molina that he jumps to his death from a balcony. Ernesto mounts a horse and calls for backup, but his gauchos cannot hurt her. She chases him to the mines, where he climbs a hill and tries to bury her in an avalanche, inadvertently killing himself in the process. Carrying Batman, El Monstro returns to the sub. Superman has already found it, but in raising the boat to the surface, he alarms the Brazilian military, who think it an enemy vessel and bomb it with depth charges, destroying it. Spotting El Monstro, the helicopter pilot sprays Carlotta with defoliant, dissolving her to nothingness despite Batman's attempt to save her. |
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| Trivia |
| • This classic tale, constinues from issue #219, is not directly connected to the Swamp Thing mythos. Still, the similarities in storyline and theme, and the fact that the story is written by Bob Haney (author of the Swamp Thing story in The Brave and the Bold #122), are enough for me to consider them part of the saga. |
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| • An editor's note indicates El Monstro is "a beast-being so strange, so different as to defy their wildest imaginings." However, this statement seems rather humorous in retrospect, given the number of muck creatures formed around that same time in other titles, such as The Phantom Stranger #14, The House of Mystery #195 and #217, The Unexpected #152 and Forbidden Tales of Dark Mansion #10—not to mention, of course, Swamp Thing's debut in The House of Secrets #92. And ironically, the Parliament of Trees is located in Brazil, so there's a whole forest of similar beings not far from the favela (granted, they don't know about it). |
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| Cover Variations |
| None |
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| Other Collections |
| None |
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