1.  

I first heard about the Heap when I was about seven or eight. It was a bit after I'd seen both Starwars and Alien. I was reading the seventh issue of the Micronauts with the Man Thing guest starring and my father drifted over and sat down so I waddled up and started to ask him questions about the book to cover what I wasn't sure about. Mainly I wanted to see if he recognized the Man-thing and had seen him in anything else.(Dad knew about Batman and Spider-Man maybe he'd know about other guys?)

He took one look at the Man-Thing and said that "that guy sure looks like the Heap. He was in Airboy comics!". I had to take his word for it because back then you couldn't just go google "heap" and "airboy". I suppose I could have asked a librarian about it though. I was too young to get much use out of a card catalog on my own

2.

I can't get over that guy with the head bracing and shoulder pads in white having a double bladed sword. It is absurd (and I am pretty darn predisposed to dislike Liefield's work)  but it is still a very pure sort of an early/childish creative impulse to take a samurai sword and then DOUBLE it so it's twice as cool. So I give Liefield credit for thinking like a child would when creating that guy.

It kind of reminds me of Kirby's decision that the Forever People should all ride around on what was essentialy a huge multi-saddle motorcycle.(or ATV really). The fact that it is a motorcycle like your big brother might have or that you've seen a good guy riding on TV makes it cool. The fact that Big Bear's motorcycle can pass through solid object and seats all of his friends at once so "they can be cool with him" makes for a wonderful childish fantasy.

I kind of wish that modern super hero comics were more willing to come up with stuff like that to hook kids who like real world objects.

Oh God I just praised Liefield for something. I'd better get the Steel Wool and alchohol. It's the only way I'll ever feel clean again.

3.

I remember some the Assemblers of Aangar. There was an onvious Pym character called called Blujay, a magical lady called the Suilver Sorceress and a Thor guy called Wanjinda. More recently Robin had the Verteran who is sort of a throwback to the Nick Fury WW2 book and Captain America who has secretly run parallel to Batman. Another set of Avengers clones is the Maximums who recently appeared in the pan-demsional slush of Superman/Batman.

I always thought that while they were different in many ways the Omega Men and the Micronauts seemed to be pitched at pretty much the same audience. Likewise I saw some strong signs of a parallelism forming between the Perez/Wolfman version of New Teen Titans and the The 2nd group of X-men in the 80's. Both were  seemingly being put into direct competition with the other.

Liefeld                                                      JB

I've always seen a similar one that is Liefeld/ JIm Lee

That Lee was published before that Liefeld I believe.  I don't know about the Liefeld on the other page. Here is another Liefeld (New Mutants 93)/Byrne(FF247). Neat image

Alan Moore paid homage to both Man-Thing and The Heap during his Swamp Thing run.  There were easily recognizable versions of each as members of the Parliament of Trees.  The Heap character even had a model of a WWI German plane hanging from his branches.

Man, I can remember getting nightmares from some story -- I think it
was from a Gold Key horror anthology -- in which some monster was
living inside a child's sandbox.

*****

Do you have any recollection of which series this may have been in?  It sounds great.

My first exposure to Man-Thing was from one of those read along records Marvel used to put out.  You know, a 45 record and stiff comic book to read along with the voices?  Anyway, it was the clown one (I think from Adventure into Fear 11), where this clown ghost is laughing in the swamp.

Freaked me out as a kid.  Possible permanent damage.  Would explain a lot.

JB, did you know that the attractive woman on that House of Secrets cover you posted is Louise Simonson?  from an interview with Bernie Wrightson:

"I recall Len offered me the 'Swamp Thing' short story to draw that night. The deadline was really tight and I remember doing most of the work on a weekend. I had help from Kaluta, Jeff, Weiss and Louise. I remember that to save time we photographed the whole thing. The bad guy is Kaluta who could make himself look really oily. I parted his hair in the middle and he had this great moustache. Of course, I was the hero because the girl was Louise Jones, Jeff's wife, who I had a crush on and I got to put my arm around her."

http://www.twomorrows.com/comicbookartist/articles/05wrights on.html

yay! my first post!

Derek