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Bernie Wrightson "Swamp Thing: Deja Vu" complete story FS, scans now up
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Started by Flint Ironstag,

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Flint Ironstag

Flint Ironstag

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Hello friends,

For the first time, I've uploaded all 45 pages of Bernie Wrightson's pencil art for "Swamp Thing: Deja Vu" for your enjoyment and purchase consideration:
 
 

Len Wein and Bernie Wrightson reunited in the mid-1980s for a return engagement on Swamp Thing. "Deja Vu" was to be a three issue, fully painted prestige format comic. Combining elements of their original conception and Alan Moore's revamp, Len Wein said that Deja Vu was one of the best things he'd ever written. Bernie completed the initial pencils, and was working on refining some tight pencil pages (see page five here) in advance of the painting process, when he had an existential crisis and decided that you can never go home again... shelving the project.


Deja Vu is an amazing story, and it's all here, readable in Bernie's art and margin notes. The first half of the story has fun, even joyous adventure elements. The second half revisits Swamp Thing's origin from 1972 from a new perspective, and the plot takes a poignant and emotional turn, as horror and violence elements follow the pathos arising in the middle of the book. 

Truly great stuff, and worth reading in its entirety, even if you're not interested in following my twenty year caretaker position by adding the story to your collection, and being its caretaker for the next twenty years.
 
As this story has been kept together for thirty years, my goal is to keep Deja Vu intact and sell it together as one book.

I paid $250 per page for this art in the 1990s. I'm taking offers starting at $555 a page in 2018 (IE $25K for the whole book). That's pretty good for Wrightson Swampy art, and an opportunity to add a piece of history to your collection! Time payments are an option.
 
Pax,
Sean

DejaVu5TIGHT small.jpg

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Flint Ironstag

Flint Ironstag

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1 hour ago, NoMan said:

Any chance you might expand on this? I'm curious but understand if you can't.

Thanks, NoMan!

Here's some additional information graciously offered by a fellow collector recently:

"Here are the two things I remember reading in interviews, but I don't recall off the top of my head the magazines that I read the statements in.
 
1). A Wrightson interview in which he says that "Deja Vu" was turning out to be the best Swamp Thing story he ever did, and he took full responsibility for not finishing it and he even apologized to Len Wein in that interview for dropping the ball on the project.
 
2). A Jim Starlin interview in which he talked about his collaborations with Wrightson (Punisher, Batman: The Cult, Hulk/Thing GN, Weird mini). He mentioned that they both lived outside of New York and were in fact neighbors. Starlin was able to visit Wrightson on regular basis and always provided encouragement every time he saw Wrightson making progress on one of their projects. At the time, Wrightson was also supposed to have been working on "Deja Vu", but the projects didn't have a deadline and DC editorial took a hands off approach and didn't press Wrightson for new pages. After a while, Wrightson got so involved on the other projects that did have deadlines (Starlin's hands on management worked) that he just didn't have time to work on Swamp Thing. Regretfully as a result, "Deja Vu" never materialized."
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NoMan

NoMan

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3 minutes ago, Flint Ironstag said:

Thanks, NoMan!

Here's some additional information graciously offered by a fellow collector recently:

"Here are the two things I remember reading in interviews, but I don't recall off the top of my head the magazines that I read the statements in.
 
1). A Wrightson interview in which he says that "Deja Vu" was turning out to be the best Swamp Thing story he ever did, and he took full responsibility for not finishing it and he even apologized to Len Wein in that interview for dropping the ball on the project.
 
2). A Jim Starlin interview in which he talked about his collaborations with Wrightson (Punisher, Batman: The Cult, Hulk/Thing GN, Weird mini). He mentioned that they both lived outside of New York and were in fact neighbors. Starlin was able to visit Wrightson on regular basis and always provided encouragement every time he saw Wrightson making progress on one of their projects. At the time, Wrightson was also supposed to have been working on "Deja Vu", but the projects didn't have a deadline and DC editorial took a hands off approach and didn't press Wrightson for new pages. After a while, Wrightson got so involved on the other projects that did have deadlines (Starlin's hands on management worked) that he just didn't have time to work on Swamp Thing. Regretfully as a result, "Deja Vu" never materialized."

thanks for taking the time to respond and especially for taking the time to post OA for Deja Vu

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Flint Ironstag

Flint Ironstag

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1 hour ago, Catwoman_Fan said:

Wow!! :x

 

Thanks for sharing!

I love that you kept the story together all these years. 

Did you get it directly from the Wrightsons?

Did they or Len provide any other insights on where the story was headed?


 

Thanks, Catwoman_Fan! I purchased this story about twenty years ago from a famous artist/collector... I'm not sure if he purchased it from Bernie and Liz, though, or via another collector. The plot for the second and third issues (never drawn, as far as I know) involved Swampy resuming his time traveling to make right the unintended negative effects of his time traveling adventures in Book One. My guess is that no full -script exists, otherwise Bernie wouldn't have included the extensive margin notes in Book One clarifying each sequence and suggesting dialogue.

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artdealer

artdealer

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6 hours ago, Flint Ironstag said:

Thanks, Catwoman_Fan! I purchased this story about twenty years ago from a famous artist/collector... I'm not sure if he purchased it from Bernie and Liz, though, or via another collector. The plot for the second and third issues (never drawn, as far as I know) involved Swampy resuming his time traveling to make right the unintended negative effects of his time traveling adventures in Book One. My guess is that no full --script exists, otherwise Bernie wouldn't have included the extensive margin notes in Book One clarifying each sequence and suggesting dialogue.

Now, I remember the story. I sold this for Bernie to Kevin Eastman back about 22 or so years ago. Bernie wasn't married to Liz at that time.
Bernie and I were living in the same town for several years and I became his art dealer for awhile, which is how I sold the Swamp Thing story
Kevin must have sold it to you.
It's no secret that Kevin sold most of his art about 20 or so years ago. In fact I sold quite a bit for him.

MI

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Flint Ironstag

Flint Ironstag

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13 hours ago, artdealer said:

Now, I remember the story. I sold this for Bernie to Kevin Eastman back about 22 or so years ago. Bernie wasn't married to Liz at that time.
Bernie and I were living in the same town for several years and I became his art dealer for awhile, which is how I sold the Swamp Thing story
Kevin must have sold it to you.
It's no secret that Kevin sold most of his art about 20 or so years ago. In fact I sold quite a bit for him.

MI

Thanks for the clarifying information, Mitch! So, the provenance of this little heap of art is Bernie Wrightson-> Kevin Eastman-> myself.

I was a regular at Kevin's wonderful Words and Pictures Museum in nearby Northampton, MA while it was there. When circumstances lead to it closing, I ran into one of the museum staff... a local guy I knew named Phil Straub... and asked him if Kevin was keeping his impressive art holdings after closing W&P. Phil said "He's selling a bunch of it," which was staggering news. I called Kevin's assistant Fiona who let me know that some of the EC art I was interested in had gone to you a few days earlier. I called you and discovered that Williamson/Frazetta/Krenkel's "Mad Journey" had sold the previous day. I could have retired from the hobby had I been in time to secure that story! James Halperin has it now.

You still had Woody's "You Rocket" and "A Baby" and most of "Hungnam", and some Jack Davis and other stuff. "You Rocket" is still here safe and sound, but I obviously should have done whatever it took to acquire "A Baby" (which, thankfully is still intact with another collector).

Thanks!

2716.jpg

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jqa3

jqa3

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On 2/12/2018 at 7:28 PM, artdealer said:

It's no secret that Kevin sold most of his art about 20 or so years ago. In fact I sold quite a bit for him.

MI

In the Sotheby's June 28, 1999 catalog, Lots #1 - 111 are from the collection of Kevin Eastman

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vodou

vodou

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11 hours ago, jqa3 said:

In the Sotheby's June 28, 1999 catalog, Lots #1 - 111 are from the collection of Kevin Eastman

I bought two pieces from Mitch back then that I'd last seen at Kevin's Northampton, MA Words & Pictures Museum. Both framed proudly and hanging in an area of prominence that nobody could miss. Knowing they were "Kevin's", I (wrongly) assumed those grails would never ever hang anywhere else. I felt lucky just o have seen them, that he was sharing them publicly. Ya know? That they both somehow ended up on my walls instead, for fmv too, holye. Almost twenty years later...I still cannot believe it. I could have quit then and still feel like one of the luckiest people on earth. Or least in the art collecting thing.

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Flint Ironstag

Flint Ironstag

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On February 14, 2018 at 12:10 PM, vodou said:

I bought two pieces from Mitch back then that I'd last seen at Kevin's Northampton, MA Words & Pictures Museum. Both framed proudly and hanging in an area of prominence that nobody could miss. Knowing they were "Kevin's", I (wrongly) assumed those grails would never ever hang anywhere else. I felt lucky just o have seen them, that he was sharing them publicly. Ya know? That they both somehow ended up on my walls instead, for fmv too, holye. Almost twenty years later...I still cannot believe it. I could have quit then and still feel like one of the luckiest people on earth. Or least in the art collecting thing.

Kevin did not hose the people who bought his art, he was/is one of us. 

I am left with the feeling that there is some salient information left out of your post... what two pieces of art did you buy? I probably admired them many times, if they were hanging at Words and Pictures.

I think that the gargoyles are still on the Northampton, MA building that used to be W&P... I'll have to look next time I'm on that side of the bridge.

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Rich Handley

Rich Handley

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Thanks for posting this, Sean! So damn cool to be able to see what this series would have looked like. I notice that the gallery is missing page 23, even though the description says all the pages are there. Do you happen to have that page? If so, could you possibly add it to gallery? I'm very curious what it looks like.  :)  Thanks!

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