Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Saga of The Swamp Thing #13 - May 1983

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The Phantom Stranger in "The Man Who Isn't There"!

Nick Cuti delivers his second (and final) Phantom Stranger adventure, once again drawn by Fred Carrillo:

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The family eventually moves away, "leaving" little Yehudi behind.

Yehudi grows up, and moves to New York City, where he sees much, but, like his childhood, is never seen by anyone:
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...you may say there are better moments in comics than The Phantom Stranger punching out a checkerboard-bedecked drug dealer. I disagree.

Anyway, the Stranger talks to a witness to all this--Yehudi, who is amazed someone can actually see him!

The Stranger offers Yehudi a chance to "join the human race" but solitude is all he has ever known, so he rejects the Stranger's offer. But the Stranger persists, telling him that Yehudi's life of stealing is leaving him with more empty an existence than even the drug dealer.

Yehudi tentatively agrees, and finds himself actually "there." He runs into the same drug dealer trying to push his junk on a young woman, and interferes:
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Be sure to be here next issue for the continuing adventures of...Yeshudi Jones!


No, not really, of course--we never saw Yeshudi again (unless Grant Morrison is using him in Final Crisis, of course). And that wasn't the only bit of finality in this story--this is the last installment of The Phantom Stranger as a back-up for Swamp Thing.

But, the Stranger did get a chance--before he was shown the door--to guest-star with Swampy himself, in a two-parter that we'll get to the day after next.

So, what's tomorrow? Well, I thought it'd be nice to talk with another one of the Phantom Stranger's scribes, so be here tomorrow when we'll talk with Nick Cuti!


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

At first I thought Yehudi was going to turn out to be dead!
You know, I wonder if this story wasn't inspired by Christopher Priest's novel "The Glamour", about a community of people who are so nondescript they actually achieve a sort of invisibility.
Hmmm--maybe not. I just checked on Wikipedia and the novel wasn't published until '84. Weird coincidence. (Now THAT'S a title DC should have used for one of their horror anthology books in the early 70's.)

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