Wizard #62 – 1996

Flashback to 1996! Wizard Magazine is five years old and another Swamp Thing series comes to an end. October of 1996 saw the final issue of Swamp Thing series 2 with, #171 “Trial by Fire”. But that’s not why this book is Swamp Thing gold. Wizard #62 is special because it features a Swamp Thing parody image along with an article related to the NES game

Within the magazine is a fold-out calendar and poster, Wizard’s 1996 “Spooky Calendar” to be exact. Swamp Thing and Batman start October strong, featured as the 1st day of the month. Highlighted in this parody panel is Alan Moore’s notable story, “The Garden of Earthly Delights” from Swamp Thing #53. Unfortunately, I’ve yet to write about that issue-and its surrounding story arc-but it’s one of the greatest Swampy arcs. It holds a special place in Swamp Thing fans’ hearts. It features one of many defining moments in Abigail & Swampy’s relationship. Swamp Thing also brings Gotham City to its knees and battles Batman.

“It’s a jungle out there! Alec visits Gotham City in Swamp Thing #53, October 1986” Swamp Thing looks on, unhappy while Batman begrudgingly cleans up Gotham City-post issue #53. Note: although the cover of Swamp Thing #53 reads October 1986, it was published on July 17, 1986.

The back of the Wizard “Spooky Calendar” features a poster of the Fantastic 4 by Jim Lee.

On page 42, the staff of Wizard magazine casts Kingdom Come with acting greats. “Since Alex Ross painted these heroes to look like regular folks, it’d be a cinch to cast, so we did.” Quite a few of their pairings are dead on. I’ve included a couple of the pages below.

In the Drawing Board section of the book, Gill Sanchez won grand prize for his killer rendition of John Constantine. I searched for Gill on the internet and found that he illustrated the cover of The Elvis Files #1 in 2017. It’s great to see he is still working on comics.

The Second piece of Swamp Thing goodness within this issue of Wizard is on page 193. In this segment of Junk Drawer Video Games, “DC Comics: A video Game Guide” features a blurb about the Swamp Thing video game.

It’s mentioned that an SNES and Genesis release may have been possible but the Swamp Thing video game was only available on the NES and Gameboy platforms. A version of the game was in development for Genesis but it never saw the light of day. You can play it though and as I wrote in a previous post, it’s much more fun than Nintendo’s versions.

If you have played the Swamp Thing video game, nothing you’ll read below is a surprise.