Item Spotlight: A Midnight Constitutional
A constitutional is a walk you take for your health. This one is being taken by something that no longer has any.
The object
2000 Bernie Wrightson "Midnight Constitutional" tee. Black ink on natural off-white, an undead figure moving down a graveyard path, signature and title printed at the hem. Fruit of the Loom Lofteez blank, 100 percent preshrunk cotton, made in Honduras of USA components. Men's XL, great vintage condition, light wear. $149.99. There are two.
And its sibling, 2003, "Gardens of the Dead." Heather gray, a ghoul coming out from behind a tombstone, signed and dated Wrightson '03 with the full copyright line under the graphic. Same Lofteez blank, 90/10 cotton poly, made in El Salvador of USA fabric. XL. $99.99.
Both drawn in pen and ink, crosshatched until the shadows have weight. That is the whole Wrightson signature. No color needed.
Who he is
Bernie Wrightson, 1948 to 2017. Born in Dundalk, Maryland, just outside Baltimore. Drew for the Baltimore Sun at 18, met Frank Frazetta at a New York con in 1967, and started making his own comics because of it. In 1971, with writer Len Wein, he co-created Swamp Thing in House of Secrets #92. He drew the first ten issues of the series and left. Nestor Redondo took over in 1974. The character has now outlived Wrightson's run by more than fifty years. So the version people repeat, "he drew Swamp Thing," is nearly right. The accurate version is "he made Swamp Thing and then let other people draw it." Those are different claims.
For a stretch early on he signed everything Berni, no e. There was an Olympic diver named Bernie Wrightson and he did not want the two confused. He put the e back later.
Seven years on one monster
The thing he is actually remembered for took seven years and nobody asked for it. Starting in the mid 70s he drew more than sixty full page pen and ink illustrations for Mary Shelley's Frankenstein on his own time, working from the 1831 text and not from the movies. To pay for it he sold three portfolios of the plates in 1977, 1978, and 1980, six plates each. The finished book came out in 1983, softcover from Marvel and hardcover from Dodd, Mead, with roughly fifty of the drawings and an introduction by Stephen King. It is still in print. If you have seen one Wrightson image in your life it is probably the creature alone in the laboratory, and you have seen it because it is on the cover.
He also drew the comic adaptation of Creepshow in 1982, the Romero and King movie, and illustrated King's Cycle of the Werewolf and the restored edition of The Stand after that. During Ghostbusters in 1984 he was one of the artists hired to draw the ghosts. The line from "obscure horror comic artist" to "your childhood" is shorter than it looks.
The comic
Bad Planet #6, 2008, RAW Studios through Image. Written by Thomas Jane and Steve Niles, art by James Daly III and Tim Bradstreet. Pulp cover, insect apocalypse, VF/NM, bagged and boarded. $129.99.
The Wrightson link is Niles. He wrote 30 Days of Night. He also wrote City of Others in 2007, Wrightson's first regular comic work in years, then Dead, She Said in 2008, then Frankenstein Alive, Alive!, which started in 2012 as a sequel to the 1983 book and was the last major thing Wrightson drew. He died before it was done. Kelley Jones finished the final issue in 2018. So Niles is the writer who took Wrightson back to the monster thirty years later. Bad Planet is a different book. It is the same lineage.
What it is worth, honestly
I could not find a clean comp for either shirt. One 1999 Wrightson zombie tee in XL turned up on eBay while I was looking and the listing was gone before I could read the price. Wrightson tees from this era do not surface often enough to build a range, and the ones that do are usually the Swamp Thing prints, not these. $99.99 and $149.99 are where I put them knowing that. If you have a better number, I want to see it.
2000 Bernie Wrightson Midnight Constitutional tee, XL
2003 Bernie Wrightson Gardens of the Dead tee, XL
Same shelf
The Lurker in the Lobby, a 2000 guide to Lovecraft on film. Armitage House, first printing, 192 pages, cover painting by Roger Raupp. $29.99. Not Wrightson. Just the right month for it.
Anyway. It's October.