Len Wein...and now Harry Dean Stanton

Bill Sienkiewicz

Ya know it's ironic that this tragic news about Len Wein's passing should come just over a week after I fished this issue of Comics Interview 32 out of a quarter box. Which as you may have guessed I grabbed because of The Swamp Thing article inside. Cheesy as the early 80s Wes Craven film was it seemed really cool to me at the time and it was actually my introduction to The Swamp Thing character. And then one day I saw an issue at a drug store some where and that would be the beginning of what was a pretty big Swamp Thing collection. I even had this Swamp Thing action figure at one point it was actually kinda cool it had this detachable hand with a line attached to it that pulls the hand like a fisherman's reel.
As for Wolverine, I was a fan long before it was hip to be a Wolverine fan in the 80s I collected every appearance I could find. Back then a Wolverine appearance in a non-X-Men title was always guaranteed to bump up it's value but I didn't care much about that I just wanted to read more Wolverine and seeing him interact with other Marvel super heroes from Captain America to Spider-Man and even ROM was beyond awesome. Ofcourse Wein's body of work went far beyond just co-creating Swamp Thing and Wolverine and I think it's nice to know all that will still be around for future generations to enjoy.

Len Wein and Hugh Jackman at the 2008 San Diego Comic-Con

Over the years I've done a few unique Swamp Thing centric blog postings over here if you never saw them or don't remember them you suck, but here are the links anyways...
http://suicidesquadtaskforcex.blogspot.com/2010/11/why-didnt-squad-ever-run-into-swamp.html
http://suicidesquadtaskforcex.blogspot.com/2016/11/swamp-thing-and-golem.html
http://suicidesquadtaskforcex.blogspot.com/2013/12/poison-ivy-vs-swamp-thing.html

September 15th Update: So now we have it happen again this week. Another big name from our child hood as comic book and sci-fi fans has passed away. This time it was Harry Dean Stanton who died at 91. Stanton has had a long career on both the big screen and small spanning for decades. I knew him best as Brett from ALIEN and as Brain from Escape from New York. And don't forget about Stanton's brief appearance in the first Avengers film where he plays a security guard who finds Bruce Banner amid a mass of debris caused by him falling through the roof of an abandoned building while he was The Hulk.

Black Power

Fan art by Peter Temple left click to enlarge

Obviously I like this fan art other wise I wouldn't have posted it here but at the same time part of me wants to see even more black heroes from Marvel and DC in here kinda like those Marvel Universe Handbook or DC Who's Who montage covers. Off the top of my head specifically I'm thinking Luke Cage, Misty Knight, Blade, the John Stewart Green Lantern and Mr. Fantastic. Don't know if Amanda Waller quite fits the profile of what defines a "super hero" but I'd include her just on general principle.

Ok and now for another kind of black power. Just by chance today I passed through The 4th Annual Vintage Car Show in Downtown Hayward (California) while running some errands and look what they had there. Not at all a fan of the tim burton Batman films (or much of anything from burton for that matter) but I have to admit the batmobile in those movies was one of the few things they had going for them. The tumbler is my favorite though.