Available at finer Walmarts everywhere this week is DC’s Swamp Thing Halloween Horror Giant #1. Part of the DC/Walmart 100-Page Comic Giant! line of books, this volume is packed with an amazing assortment of spooky DC tales. Plus, it’s 100 pages for only $4.99…at that price how can you afford not to?
The main draw of the book is the BRAND NEW Swamp Thing tale by Brian Azzarello and Greg Capullo which is amazing. Capullo is obviously having a blast drawing monsters in this story and Azzarello brings us a Swamp Thing tale that is probably one of best I’ve read in recent memory.
But wait, there’s more!
Swamp Thing is cool and all but only takes up the first dozen pages of the book. Why, that leaves us with EIGHTY-EIGHT more pages of seasonally appropriate DC stories. One of the things I’ve always dug about DC is that they don’t seem to be afraid to pull from their vast library of comics for anthologies such as this. I’m already crossing my fingers for a DC Holiday collection in a couple of months.
As for the rest of the book, there’s an Enchantress and Blue Devil story, a Zatanna story (by Paul Dini, the biggest professional Zatanna fan out there), a Superman vs zombies story, a Scarecrow story (because of course), Aquaman and The Demon (weird, but okay), a classic Batman and Robin story, AND the origin of Swamp Thing!
The above mentioned Batman and Robin story is indeed a classic and probably my second pick for the best story in the book. Check this out, it’s written by Denny O’Neil (from an idea by Berni Wrightson with an assist from Harlan Ellison!) and art by Neal Adams and Dick Giordano. It’s entirely “Night of the Reaper” and it’s as awesome as it sounds. Published sometime in the 70’s, this tale has Batman and Robin squaring off against the Grim Reaper ON HALLOWEEN. What more can you ask for? Remastered art? Well, it’s got that too! It really shows that Adams is one of the top-tier Bat artists of all time.
This is one of those collections that has to be picked up and enjoyed. If you’re the cool parent, grandparent, aunt, or uncle you are duty-bound to snag one of these for the young comic book fan in your life. If you’re the neighborhood Bruce Wayne, buy a stack of them and pass them out to Trick of Treat-ers! They’re only five bucks a copy and you’re a billionaire, what do you care?!?
