The Heap was something of an accidental success story in the Golden Age of Comics, a character who wound up having a much greater lifespan than was ever initially intended, and in fact well outliving the series that first gave him life. The Heap was the first of the swampy muck-monsters in comic books, all of whom were derived in some way from Theodore Sturgeon’s short story IT! It first appeared in the Sky Wolf series in AIR FIGHTERS COMICS as a malevolent entity, a thing that Sky Wolf and his men had to destroy. But the creature was so popular with audiences that it was brought back again and again, and eventually wound up carrying its own long-running back-up feature once AIR FIGHTERS COMICS had become AIRBOY COMICS following the close of WWII.
As a solo horror star, the Heap’s backstory as the aviator Baron von Emmelman who barely survived a fatal crash into the swamplands during World War One and who was reborn as an almost mindless, swampy husk with incredible strength was expanded upon. In some stories, the Heap was almost a force of nature, contending with dark and more sinister nightmare creatures. In others, in the manner of Will Eisner’s The Spirit, he performed an almost walk-on role in some other characters’ stories, providing some closure and wrap-up to whatever problem was facing them.
The author of this final Heap adventure is no longer known, but it was illustrated by Ernie Schroeder who had performing such duties regularly in the twilight of the series’ run.
Gone but not forgotten, the Heap would resurface time and time again, much like the creature itself. In the early 1970s, as a sudden interest in swamp creatures emerged, Skywald introduced a new version of the Heap for a brief period:
Even later, and more memorably, writer Alan Moore tied the Heap into the greater mythology of DC’s Swamp Thing, which he was then in the process of reinventing. Moore couldn’t entirely come out and say what he was doing, but comic fans with some background knowledge recognized the figure that Moore spotlighted among the Parliament of Trees in SWAMP THING #47 as the Heap himself.
Along with Airboy and his extended cast of characters, Eclipse Comics brought the Heap back again in the late 1980s. And once that firm had gone out of business and its assets were purchased by Todd McFarlane, that creator and others introduced another new version of the Heap in SPAWN.
The Tom Brevoort Experience 
I remember reading Alan Moore telling how he worked up extensive story ideas for the Heap as a writing exercise. Sometime later, Alan was tapped by DC for ideas. He reworked his Heap ideas into his Swamp-Thing run.
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And yet, his first story was centrally-focused on a piece of Swamp Thing continuity that wasn’t anything in Heap lore, his second was a story built around the Demon and one of the Demon’s old villains (which was Bissette’s idea), then he came back to the Alec Holland thing, then brought back Arcane…
I don’t doubt that he came up with stuff for the Heap that he converted into Swamp Thing lore — I’ve done a lot of mental writing challenges like that and gotten a lot out of them — but it took him quite a while to start making it central. It was cooking in the background of stories built on DC lore, at least in the foreground.
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We’re just exchanging ideas, but I wrote, “He reworked his Heap ideas into his Swamp-Thing run.” I didn’t mean the exact specifics that you mentioned, using DC characters, etc. Just another “swamp monster” and foundational ideas for his possible approach to it. I’m sorry if I didn’t elaborate, I was just drawing a connection to the Heap, since Tom’s feature is about that character. I didn’t expect it to be a subject of debate.
From “The Extraordinary Works of Alan Moore”, by George Khoury (“and friends”), page 83. “”And I thought, ‘Well, if you were ever offered an American comic character, just at the drop of a hat, would you be able to come up with workable ideas for it?””
“And I thought, well, let’s see. Let’s just think of the most unlikely character that I could ever be offered, just off the top of my head, and then come up with some rough proposals. And the character that popped into my head, as the most unlikely character that I could ever be offered was the Heap, the Hillman Comics swamp monster. So that was the first name that popped into my head, so I started thinking about what could be done with the Heap.”
“I thought, ‘Well… he’s largely a massive vegetable matter as I understand it, so there’s probably a lot that could be done; visual tricks that could be done using the character’s camouflage possibilities. That we could have, for example, a scene where actually art of the main character is visible in the foreground for five panels, and it’s not until it moves that you realize that it is part of the living being, rather than a moss covered stone or something. I thought about other various things that could be done playing up the aspects of the character that were more plant-like and less animal-like.”
“So this was just an intellectual exercise, a creative exercise, and I kind of ran through a few ideas to convince myself that I could still turn out some interesting variations upon an idea at the drop of a hat. And then, it was a couple of weeks later when Len (Wein) called and when I found myself putting the Swamp Thing proposal together. I’m note even sure I remembered my thoughts about the Heap of the few weeks previously. It wasn’t until shortly afterwards that I thought, ‘Well, that was strange, that I should have been working out what to do with a swamp monster characters just before I was called and offered one”.
I didn’t suggest that all the DC-specific characters were included in his exercise of thinking of ideas for the Heap. Or all the in-depth character analysis and subsequent development. Just that Tom’s article was about the Heap, and once Alan Moore had brainstormed ideas for the character that eventually were worked into his Swamp Thing. Maybe his ideas for the Heap only constituted 1% of his Swamp Thing proposal. But I don’t believe that makes my earlier statement untrue or misleading. It was only meant to be a little tid-bit on the subject of the Heap.
Thank you. -)
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Like I said, I don’t doubt that he did it — and I’ve done it myself, very fruitfully — and I’m not debating you on it.
I just find it interesting that he sublimated those ideas pretty thoroughly under DC-specific content for a while.
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That’s really not a very good story, sad to say.
And it looks like there was some editorial meddling along the way. The Heap grabs one of the bad guys — to absolutely no effect, because he’s free in the very next panel to get trampled to death (we assume, off-panel) by the horse. And then the horse runs into a convenient cave on the moors that has nothing to do with the plot where something awful (we assume, off-panel) happens to the other bad guy and the horse.
Wow, call the awards committees!
But hey, the writer and artist got paid (we assume, off-panel), and the readers weren’t subjected to any more of that nonsense. In Heap stories, at least.
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To bad this last issue story ( Vol. 10#4 ( 111 ) ) wasn’t in Airboy Comics Vol. 10#3 ( 110 ) ( April 1953 ) instead and that Vol.10#3 ( 110 )’s story wasn’t in the last issue. Vol. 10#3 ( 110 )’s story: Centuries earlier the Hammer of Otzberg came into being, wielded by a giant bronze colossus and directed by the mysterious Watcher, to stop the northern Mongol hordes threatening democratic Europe. Today, the Colossus stands unused and motionless, but the urge of the locals to be free has not ceased, and one Sven Huber longs for that freedom. The Heap saves him from harm and escorts him to von Emmelman’s former home, dresses him in his flier’s tunic to make his escape to freedom possible, but it is the Colossus that settles accounts ( comics.org — I assume the cover is what the Colossus looks like )
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The Heap also made an appearance in Avengers#92 ( September 1971 — flashback with other WW II comic book heroes ) and the all-New Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe A-Z#4 ( 2006 ) says the Heap existed during World War II ( on Earth 616 ), but his adventures have yet to be determined ( or see marvunapp.com ). Maybe the Heap mutated into War-Thing ( the WW II Man-Thing )?
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Interesting. Those wily Marvel guys. š Maybe just mentioning the name w/o a drawing is safe. And there are a few characters with generic enough sounding names at both companies, like the Scarecrow, Bolt, Warlock, Funny to think now how even less exact similarities like Wonder Woman/Man and Power Man/Girl used to cause some teeth gnashing ad hand wringing.
I wonder if anyone in a Man-Thing story was ever given dialog like, “Dang, Jimmy! That there Man-Thing is one HEAP a’ugly trouble!”
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The Last Heap Story is something of an uncut gem, the sort of thing you can only find by sorting through mounds and mounds of comparative rubbish.
The opening caption, with its allusion to a “cave of the banshees,” made me think that we were going to see something based on the Irish legend of the pookah, a spirit that sometimes takes the form of a horse to beguile mortals to their doom. The horse does convey a sense of the uncanny, though it really is just a mortal animal. But then the story takes an interesting turn, as it’s the Good Poor Girl’s competition, the Bad Rich Girl, who disappears into said cave, with no rational explanation as such.
The story was written years before pop culture got its most enduring taste of a horse-pookah, Disney’s 1959 DARBY O’GILL. However, that movie adapted stories from two tale-collections from the early 20th century- so IF there’s a horse-pookah in any of them, that might’ve been what the unbilled writer was drawing upon– even though I admit the word “pookah” never appears in the Heap story. Equally possible that there was some other source for this writer’s suggestion of a dangerous horse-spirit.
Note I said “horse-pookah.” That’s so that no one could call me on the arguably more famous rabbit-pookah “Harvey.” But of course not only is Harvey not horsey, he’s also totally benign.
It’s certainly one of the better end-stories I’ve come across for a cancelled series.
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And now I’m curious to see if the next to last story did anything to set readers up for the Heap to pop up in Ireland here.
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For the most part I enjoyed reading Heap stories once I found them on Public Domain websites. (Great way to educate yourself on non-Big Two characters). If memory serves, there is a point where The Heap is empowered by Mother Nature (or Earth, I’m not quite sure) to act as her champion – a sort of early draft of The Swamp Thing and the Parliament of Trees.
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