Hi all,

I just finished watching a very interesting presentation by Stephen Bissette on Swamp Thing and the Comics Code, presented a couple of years ago at the Jackson Concatenation Convention and available online here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PnKsyyn-LOHGE3-5qxdtYLUijny5IAIb/view.
Interviews with Bissette (in print or on video) always provide illuminating insights into the creation and publication of comics. This one included a few tidbits that I hadn’t heard before (or had at least forgotten) including:

• The influence of Nicholas Roeg’s 1970s films on Bissette/Moore’s Swamp Thing;
• The hidden Gumbys in some of the early Bissette/Totleben art;
• The fact that Bissette and Totleben had also supplied samples to DC showing Totleben pencilling and Bissette inking, and that it was Len Wein who ultimately decided that Bissette should be responsible for pencils and layouts.

There’s a bit more of a description of what is discussed in the Bibliography.  I really recommend it as a basic overview of Swamp Thing and its emergence and later re-invigoration in the 1980s in the wider context of popular culture and comics publishing.