The Internet Ooze, Blobs, Jellies, & Slime Database

So we have a start to an Internet Slime, Blobs, Jellies, & Ooze Database (ISBJODb). This is what the Internet has needed for a very long time. We just didn't know it until now.

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I'll start with the pre-scientists, pseudoscientists, and scientists of ooze, slime, and primordial soup:

Lorenz Oken (1779-1851)-German natural philosopher and apparent originator of the concept urschleim, earth's primordial slime or primordial ooze.

Thomas Huxley (1825-1895)-English biologist and "discoverer" of Bathybius, the supposed living/non-living slime at the bottom of the ocean.

Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919)-German biologist and enthusiast, with Huxley, of Bathybius.

Charles Darwin (1809-1882)-English naturalist and originator of the expression "warm little pond," now used to refer to what is called the primordial soup.

Sir John Murray (1841-1914)-Canadian-British biologist, oceanographer, and explorer; scientists on his expeditions debunked the concept of Bathybius.

H.G. Wells (1866-1946)-English author--originally trained as a biologist and zoologist--and historian of everything, including the jellies of the primordial earth.

Alexander Oparin (1894-1980)-Russian biochemist, author of The Origin of Life (1924), and originator of the concept of the primordial soup.

Dr. Carl Sagan (1934-1996)-American scientist and author; proponent of abiogenesis.

I guess I should include Harold Urey (1893-1981) and Stanley Miller (1930-2007) for their work on the Miller-Urey Experiment of 1952.

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Next are swamp monsters. First are fictional monsters generated by the swamp or in the swamp or that came out of the swamp. After that are pseudoscientific, i.e., cryptozoological, monsters that dwell in the swamp.

The giant amoeba in "Ooze" by Anthony M. Rud (Weird Tales, March 1923).

The monster in "Slime" by Joseph Payne Brennan (Weird Tales, March 1953).

The Heap, a comic book character created by Harry Stein and Mort Leav in 1942. The Heap is a German aviator shot down over a swamp in Poland in 1942.

Man-Thing, created by Stan Lee, Roy Thomas, Gerry Conway, and Gray Morrow in 1971. Man-Thing is a scientist working in the Florida Everglades when he dies and is born again from the swamp.

Swamp Thing, created by Len Wein and Berni Wrightson in 1971. Swamp Thing is a scientist in a Louisiana swamp who is murdered and arises again from the swamp.

Cryptozoological Swamp Monsters--All of these are Bigfoot-like creatures, but I wouldn't rule out the influence of the pop-culture swamp monster on the people who are supposed to have seen them. As I've said before: before these things can be seen, they must be imagined. It is usually artists who do the imagining. Note that sightings of these creatures were mostly contemporaneous with Man-Thing and Swamp Thing in comic books.

• Skunk Ape (1950s through 1970s)
• Boggy Creek Monster (1971)
• Abominable Swamp Slob (1973)
• Honey Island Swamp Monster (1974) 

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Next are ooze, slime, jelly, and other colloidal creatures from genre fiction and comic books:

Again, the giant amoeba from "Ooze" by Anthony M. Rud (1923).

Ubbo-Sathla from the story of the same name by Clark Ashton Smith (Weird Tales, July 1933).

Shoggoths from the fiction of H.P. Lovecraft (Astounding Stories, Feb-Apr. 1936) and Robert Bloch (Weird Tales, May 1951).

Again, the monster from "Slime" by Joseph Payne Brennan (Weird Tales, March, 1953).

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G.W. Thomas, author of Dark Worlds Quarterly, has compiled a list of stories from Weird Tales involving slime monsters. I won't steal his thunder. I'll just refer you to his list:

"Slime Monsters in Weird Tales," July 8, 2020

I will have one to add to that list when I write about Otis Adelbert Kline.

Mr. Thomas has also compiled lists of comic book stories:

"Plant Monsters of the Golden Age: Slime Monsters!" December 23, 2021

"Return of the Slime," September 15, 2022

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Following are some ooze, slime, jelly, and other colloidal creatures or inventions from other media, including radio, children's books and animation, toys, movies, and television shows. I'll start with a blob-type monster that easily fits in with the all-devouring slime monster:

"The Chicken Heart," an episode of the Lights Out radio show, broadcast on March 10, 1937, immortalized in Bill Cosby's comedy routine "Chicken Heart" on his album Wonderfulness (1966).

The Schmoo, from Li'l Abner by Al Capp (1948).

Bartholomew and the Oobleck by Dr. Seuss (1949).

Silly Putty (toy) (1949).

The Blob (1958) and its sequels.

Flubber, from The Absent-Minded Professor (1961).

The Globster, a carcass that washed up on shore in Tasmania in 1962, named by cryptozoologist Ivan T. Sanderson; other globsters and blobs came after it.

Antibodies, which attacked Raquel Welch in Fantastic Voyage (1966). We remember Raquel Welch, who died recently at age eighty-two.

Gloop and Gleep from the animated TV series The Herculoids (1967), created by Alex Toth.

The Rovers in The Prisoner (1967) aren't quite colloidal, but I'll throw them into this list anyway.

The giant amoeba from the Star Trek episode "The Immunity Syndrome" (1968).

Barbapapa and family, created by Annette Tison and Talus Taylor (1970).

Slime (toy) (1976).

The T-1000 from Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), a kind of metallic/robotic slime, a machine-slime.

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You might have noticed that certain sounds recur in regards to ooze, blobs, jellies, slime, mud, muck, mire, and other liquids and colloids. For example, there is the "oo" sound in ooze, Oobleck, Schmoo, and Gloop. Other sounds related to these things include the "o" and "u" sounds in: gob, glob, glop, glub, blob, blub, plop, clot, blot, clod, bubble, blubber, rubber, Flubber, mud, muck, and putty. Is there any significance in any of that? I don't know. My first guess is that many of these words are onomatopoeic.

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If you have never read the original Barbapapa books, you should. They're really charming, and the creatures themselves are lovable and memorable. One thing I learned in reading about Barbapapa is that he was inspired by cotton candy, which is called barbe à papa--"papa's beard"--in French. The image of cotton candy combined with that of Barbapapa made me think of ectoplasm. The word ectoplasm shares half of its roots--plasm--with protoplasm. Plasm is from the Greek, "something formed or molded." In the modern sense of the word, plasm denotes "the gelatinous fluid found in living tissue," according to the Online Etymology Dictionary. That source notes that "German language purists preferred Urschleim." I guess all things return to their ur-sources. By the way, ectoplasm also refers to the "exterior protoplasm of a cell," and was first used in this sense in reference to amoebas in 1883. Anyway, all of that leads into the first serial in Weird Tales, "The Thing of a Thousand Shapes" by Otis Adelbert Kline, March and April 1923.

Text copyright 2023 Terence E. Hanley