Thursday, July 4, 2019

The Swamp Monster cover source


This is the cover to K.G. Murray's Swamp Monster #NN[2]:


This issue was published c.February 1981 and the contents are indexed on AusReprints.

The source for the cover has eluded me for years and I can finally shed some light on its provenance.

This is an illustration by none other than Berni Wrightson from a 1974 colouring book titled The Monsters Color-the-Creature Book:


As Wrightson says, "[I]t turned out rather crummy... My heart wasn't really in it." 

It appears to have been adapted and/or modified for the cover of La Cosa Del Pantano, a Spanish album edition of Swamp Thing:


This appears to have been published in 1983 - two years after Swamp Monster - which suggests there is yet another earlier iteration of this image to be unearthed, quite likely from a European comics publisher. When this elusive edition turns up we might see the source of the rather distinctive art modification and colour palette of the K.G. Murray edition.

2 comments:

Robert Thomas said...

Fantastic research! I love this Australian issue of Swamp Thing aka "Swamp Monster" and have always wondered where the art or homage for it came from.

Penman said...

Wow. Always wondered about this. Well done!