While writing a post last night, I was reminded that I’d intended to make a list of Swamp Thing’s smallest appearances. He has many. The appearances range from, and are as small as, a piece of his arm in a Guy Gardner book, to being a statue at a carnival within a Superboy book. The list I never made got me thinking of all sorts of fun Swampy sightings, but specifically Suicide Squad #23 “Weird War Tales” from January 1989. It’s is a good one! I clicked over to my ‘82-‘93 Appearances Page to check it out and was surprised to see that I haven’t written a post about it yet. Well, buckle up friends! Oh, and I’ll get right on that list…

 

Swamp Thing appears on a single page, the title page to be precise. And, appearance might be a slight embellishment on my part. It’s Swampy’s silhouette.

That’s it! It’s simple and hidden pretty well if you’re looking for an actual rendering of the character. There’s no mention of Swamp Thing in this book. He’s just keeping tabs on what’s happening. I’m very interested to know if penciler, Luke McConnell was the mastermind of this hidden gem or if Ostrander & Yale (the writers) made sure Swampy was included. Ostrander did ingest Swampy’s tuber with Del Close in 1988, within Wasteland #5.

Suicide Squad #23 is most commonly known and prized for being the first book to mention Oracle. The panel is below and that’s enough non-Swampy info for one post. Moving on…

This small “appearance” hits upon a few of my favorite things in collecting Swampy stuff. I like obscure appearances and I really like Swamp Thing’s silhouette. It’s why I use my version of the seldom used Swamp Thing logo, seen below, for the fanclub cards I make.

Below is a side-by-side comparison of the logo and the appearance from Suicide Squad #23.

Speaking of silhouettes, Adam Strange Book #2 (April 1990) has a great one in the form of a rock formation. I’ll write more about it another time but that 3-book series has some fun/small Swamp Thing references relating to his stint on Rann. Below is an image from the book.
Smalsh-Yegger (Swamp Thing) being worshiped.

as always, thank you for stopping by. -John