October 21 - Song for Ted Sallis

So, we've had songs for dead blues singers, songs for wrestlers, songs for gods, songs for Ozzy Osborne, and now we have songs for comic book characters.

I always had an attachment to Man-Thing, partly based on the sadly persistent status of him as a joke or a perceived inferior copy of Swamp Thing. He wasn't, by the way. A baffling act of parallel evolution meant that as Stan Lee and Roy Thomas were creating him for the May 1971 edition of Savage Tales, Len Wein was creating Swamp Thing for the July 1971 edition of House Of Secrets. (although to muddy things up a big, Len Wien would write several formative parts of Man-Thing's mythology) Marvel and DC were just simultaneously proving themselves to be part of the Monster Fucker Nation.

There's something beautiful about songs for monsters, about recognising the humanity within the creature. Tragedies and romances are the same things with different points of emphasis.