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In the latest Comic Book Legends Revealed, discover what could have happened had Rick Veitch not been fired from writing Swamp Thing.
In the latest Comic Book Legends Revealed, discover what could have happened had Rick Veitch not been fired from writing Swamp Thing.
Welcome to Comic Book Legends Revealed! This is the eight hundred and fourteenth installment where we examine three comic book legends and determine whether they are true or false. As usual, there will be three posts, one for each of the three legends.
NOTE: If my Twitter page hits 5,000 followers, I’ll do a bonus edition of Comic Book Legends Revealed that week. Great deal, right? So go follow my Twitter page, Brian_Cronin!
COMIC LEGEND:
Neil Gaiman was
STATUS:
True
In my first book, Was Superman a Spy? And Other Comic Book Legends Revealed….
one of the original legends in that book (and thus not one that originally saw print online before being collected into the book. It was a 50/50 split) was about Rick Veitch being fired abruptly from Swamp Thing over a story that would have involved Swamp Thing meeting Jesus Christ…
Veitch was already planning a conclusion to his Swamp Thing run at the time, with #91 probably going to be the end of the run and then Neil Gaiman and Jamie Delano were going to take the book over, but both men decided not to take over the series out of principle over how Veitch was abruptly fired (for a story that DC had approved multiple times all the way to it being DRAWN).
The great Brian Hibbs interviewed the legendary Gaiman about the possible move back in 1989:
CE: You were slated to write Swamp Thing after Rick Veitch finished his run. Without getting into the politics of the situation, what were your plans for the book?
NG: I didn’t really have any. We never quite really got that far. I had a few ideas about what I was going to do. It was going to be me and Jamie Delano. We were going to split it, and do sort of three issues each on a turnabout basis. Neither of us could have done another monthly book at twelve issues a year, but we could have done it on that basis. It really hadn’t even got to the plotting stages.Having said that, there was a lot of stuff that I did, back when I was originally creating Black Orchid, in terms of working out an unified vegetable theology in the DC world. So there is a lot of stuff in the background that I know about the Swamp Thing world that we never used. Some of that was hinted at in the Annual. (ED NOTE: Swamp Thing Annual #5)
CE: It seemed in the Annual that you were setting up a lot of plotlines.
NG: Yeah, I was setting up a lot of plotlines which I never actually got to do anything with. Doug (ED: Wheeler, current writer on Swampy) should have a copy of the essay that I did, “Notes Toward a Vegetable Theology”, and may well be picking up on some of that stuff.
CE: Was the decision to make Jason Woodrue (The Floronic Man) insane again yours?
NG: That was mine. I heard around the DC offices that New Guardians was going to get cancelled. I went over to (ED: Editor) Andy Helfer, and said, “Great! Can we have Jason Woodrue back, please?” He said yes, so I started messing with Jason Woodrue.
CE: Were you going to turn him back into a villain?
NG: I was going to bring him back as a villain. He was getting back to being Woodrue, the Rue of the Wood, and probably on a much bigger scale, a much nastier scale. It would have been fun, but again it didn’t happen.I probably would have brought back Black Orchid in there. I don’t know, because as I said, it never got that far. Rick still had a few issues. I talked to Rick, we sort of co-plotted Rick’s last few episodes, which never saw print. When I say co-plotted, I mean that we had long bull sessions about them when I stayed up in Vermont for a couple days last Winter. I spent a day with Steve Bissette, a day with Rick, and the evening I spent with Rick we were plotting out Rick’s final sequence.Rick had the end of the time travel sequence, and some Arcane stuff. We talked through what we would have done during the birth of the baby story. We would have done a whole “Gifts of the Magi” number, with various characters coming up, and bestowing the newborn child a gift. What John Constantine would have done, and so forth. That would have brought tears to your eyes, it would have been one of the most moving comics you would have ever read, Brian. You would have wept. It would probably have filled you with hope and inspiration for the rest of your life. And when you were feeling down, you would have taken that comic out, and read it, and felt good again.
CE: (Laughter)
NG: Unfortunately it never saw print.
That is, indeed, unfortunate that that never saw print. Especially since that was just GAIMAN’S side of things! Imagine what the amazing Jamie Delano had planned for HIS issues! It really could have been a perfect transition from Veitch to two excellent new writers, but alas, DC abruptly changed its mind about supporting Veitch’s decision to do a story involving Jesus.
Thanks to Brian Hibbs and Neil Gaiman for the informative interview! My buddy, Daniel Best, has pretty much the entire original Veitch issue up to read at his site here. Go check it out.
SOME OTHER ENTERTAINMENT LEGENDS!
Check out some other entertainment and sports legends from Legends Revealed:
1. Was Gabrielle Reece Cast as the She-Hulk in a Failed She-Hulk TV Pilot?
2. How Did Robert Altman’s Son Make Over a Million Dollars Writing the Lyrics to “The Stupidest Song Ever Written”?
3. Did Superman Returns Use CGI to Reduce the Size of Brandon Routh’s Crotch While He Was Wearing His Superman Costume?
4. Was the Dixie Cups’ Hit Song “Iko Iko” Recorded Without Their Knowledge?
PART TWO SOON!
Check back later for part 2 of this installment’s legends!
Feel free to send suggestions for future comic legends to me at either cronb01@aol.com or brianc@cbr.com
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