Review: The Joker: Talking Bust and Illustrated Book

Hmm…how do I review “The Joker: Talking Bust and Illustrated Book”? It is produced by publisher Running Press, which suggests I should approach this package as a book, though DC Comics historian Matthew K. Manning’s The Joker: Behind the Smile is no taller than my thumb, and by my estimate, approximately 7,000 words shorter than the Wikipedia page devoted to the Clown Prince of Crime. There are some nice pictures illustrating such milestones as The Joker’s debut in Batman #1, Bill Finger’s creation of an official back story in the classic Red Hood storyline, the Neal Adams years, the Frank Miller and Alan Moore years, Batman: The Animated Series, and a few twenty first century comics.

The real star of this package is a plastic Joker bust the height of my middle finger that says several Jokery phrases (in either Mark Hamill’s voice or a reasonable facsimile) at the push of a button. As just a book or just a collectible, there would not be much to say about this mini box set, but taken together for a fairly reasonable price, “The Joker: Talking Bust and Illustrated Book” makes a decent souvenir from your latest trip to Gotham.

Review: 'Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers!'

In 1940, Theodore Sturgeon published an atmospheric, highly unsettling story about a murderous mass of swamp vegetation called “It” in Unknown magazine. Sturgeon’s career would continue to blossom, adding such achievements as the script for the classic “Star Trek” episode “Amok Time” and inspiring Kurt Vonnegut’s Kilgore Trout to his résumé. The swamp creature would go on to have an even more flourishing life. Shortly after the publication of “It”, The Heap oozed across patriotic Airboy comics. In the sixties, seventies, and eighties, muck monsters like the Lurker in the Swamp, Bog Beast, Marvin the Dead-Thing, Man-Thing, a revived Heap, and especially, Swamp Thing were sprouting up in every comic brand worth its salt.

Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers!, the sixth installment of The Comic Book Creator series, doesn’t get too deeply into why swamp monsters caught on the way they did (I think it has to do with both our fear of primordial swamp environments and the way such isolated places serve as pathways to exploring our own feelings of isolation), but it doesn’t skimp on anything else about these unique creatures. This text-thick, completely illustrated edition features a detailed and critical timeline of muck monsters in the comics, full-color pin-ups, the full text of Sturgeon’s “It”, biographies of the half-dozen-or-so major muckers, and a series of very in-depth interviews with monster makers such as Len Wein, Alan Moore, and Bernie Wrightson (Swamp Thing), Steve Gerber and Val Mayerik (The Man-Thing). Rather than being mere page-filler, these interviews are consistently fascinating, whether Wein offers his brief but thought-provoking take on the appeal of swamp monsters, Wrightson gets into his Monster Kid childhood, or Moore waxes philosophical about his Swamp Thing contributions and handles some no-punches-pulled questions graciously (although it is off topic, I was hoping he’d discuss The Killing Joke a bit too, but he doesn’t). While Swampmen doesn’t hesitate to take its bizarre topic seriously, there is almost always a sense of fun purveying this colorful, informative, artful, and intelligent volume.