COMIC BOOK DEATH MATCH! | 13th Dimension, Comics, Creators, Culture

Feb20

COMIC BOOK DEATH MATCH: Watchmen vs. Squadron Supreme

Posted by Dan Greenfield on Feb 20, 2022

COMIC BOOK DEATH MATCH: Watchmen vs. Squadron Supreme

FRED VAN LENTE gets back in the ring! In a lot of respects, this is recurring 13th Dimension columnist Fred Van Lente’s gutsiest COMIC BOOK DEATH MATCH — pitting Marvel’s cult-fave 1980s maxiseries Squadron Supreme against what’s widely considered the greatest superhero graphic novel of all time, DC’s Watchmen. But it’s all about the details, isn’t it? So sit back and dig this exploration of two surprisingly similar, yet substantially different, comics classics. Who wins the big brawl? Read on. — By FRED VAN LENTE Hey there! For this latest installment of COMIC BOOK DEATH MATCH, we are simultaneously reading two comics often mentioned in the same breath: Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, and Squadron Supreme by Mark Gruenwald and a bunch of artists, most notably Paul Ryan. Both are dark, self-contained mid-1980s 12-issue maxi-series that challenge the suppositions of the superhero genre; and, not coincidentally, their main characters are analogues for another company’s heroes. Rando humans given superpowers by the Grandmaster to fight the Avengers in Issue #70 of that mag by Roy Thomas and Sal Buscema, the Squadron Sinister were obvious stand-ins for Superman (Hyperion), Batman (Nighthawk), Flash (Whizzer), and Green Lantern (Dr. Spectrum). But of course this was far too clean-cut an explanation for Thomas, he of the Grand Unifying Geek, who retconned his own work in Avengers #85. There we learn that in addition to all his other flaws, Grandmaster is a plagiarist: He ripped off the idea for his Sinisters from the Squadron Supreme, a sort of League of the greatest heroes of an alternate reality, where they fight for Justice (get it, get it). Likewise, the main characters of Watchmen are all stand-ins for heroes created for notoriously shady publisher Charlton that were acquired in the 1980s by DC: Captain Atom (Dr. Manhattan), the Question (Rorschach), Peter Cannon: Thunderbolt (Ozymandias), Blue Beetle (Nite Owl), Nightshade (Silk Spectre—sort of) and Peacemaker (the Comedian). Alan Moore crafted a story that was basically “Who Killed Peacemaker?” but DC editor-in-chief Dick Giordano, who had gotten his start at Charlton, immediately saw that Moore’s plans would render most of those heroes useless for further exploitation, and asked Moore to come up with his own characters instead. All the Charlton headliners would in fact go on to become fairly significant players in the DC Universe in one...

Oct27

COMIC BOOK DEATH MATCH: Swamp Thing vs. Man-Thing

Posted by Dan Greenfield on Oct 27, 2021

COMIC BOOK DEATH MATCH: Swamp Thing vs. Man-Thing

Halloween’s coming. The late Bernie Wrightson was born 73 years ago. FRED VAN LENTE pits the Bronze Age muck monsters against each other… Hey, it’s a special Halloween installment of Fred Van Lente’s COMIC BOOK DEATH MATCH, in which our fearless columnist takes two related-but-opposing titles, chooses a bunch of issues covering several years, reviews them, and then, using a completely infallible set of criteria, decides which is better. It’s your foolproof way of ending any and all such comics arguments — a service from 13th Dimension! This time around, it’s Swamp Thing vs. Man-Thing because: A) Halloween is this weekend and B) It’s the late Bernie Wrightson’s birthday! So let’s have at it! — By FRED VAN LENTE A 1940 issue of the Street & Smith pulp Unknown saw the debut of Theodore Sturgeon’s short story “It,” the great-grandpappy of all swamp monsters, a muck-covered skeleton that spontaneously rises up to destroy whatever it gets its claws on out of nihilistic curiosity. Impervious to injury, It is stopped only when It falls into a fast-moving stream chasing a little girl and the waters tear the substance of It’s body away, leaving only It’s inanimate bones behind. It is “a massive caricature of a man,” Sturgeon writes. “A huge thing like an irregular mud doll, clumsily made. It quivered and parts of it glistened and parts of it were dried and crumbly.” Unforgettably terrifying even today, “It” spawned comics imitators quickly, including one of the more enduring Golden Age villains, Solomon Grundy, who shares It’s origin if not It’s look. The Heap, a mainstay of Hillman Comics’ Airboy Comics, had both. Premiering two years before Grundy in 1942, the Heap’s foundation-corpse came courtesy of German WWI flying ace Baron Eric von Emmelman crashing his biplane into a swamp. The Baron died a second time in the mid-1950s comics purge that wiped out scary comics until the relaxation of the anti-horror provisions in the 1971 revision of the Comics Code. In the ensuing boomlet, Etrigan first shed the form of man, Dracula emerged from his Tomb, Hank McCoy further mutated into a blue-furred monster, and Marvel and DC both dispatched an “It”-style bog-shambler to join the mummies, werewolves, and ghosts haunting 1970s comics racks. The Heap is most obviously the direct visual inspiration for Marvel’s Man-Thing (though this “Man in...

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