Not Yeti Friday - Solomon Grundy

Solomon Grundy is a supervillain from the DC comic book universe. He is often an adversary of the Green Arrow.

If he had a lot more body hair and went around naked, he'd totally pass as a yeti.

But who is this Solomon Grundy? Why, he's the first ever strongman zombie. And probably the first ever zombie supervillain to be named after a 19th century nursery rhyme:

Solomon Grundy,
Born on a Monday,
Christened on Tuesday,
Married on Wednesday,
Took ill on Thursday,
Grew worse on Friday,
Died on Saturday,
Buried on Sunday.
That was the end of
Solomon Grundy.

According to the rhyme, Solomon was 5 days old when he died - only an infant. But look at this guy, he's no baby! DC Comics failed to fact-check. Tsk! Tsk!

I kid. Their origin for the character is actually quite appealing. Wealthy Cyrus Gold was murdered and dumped in a swamp. Mysteriously reanimated fifty years later, his first order of business was to join a hobo camp. His memories are now gone, and he cannot recall his name when asked by the hobos. Striving to reconstruct his past life, all he can come up with is a mundane and negligible detail- that his birth happened to fall on a Monday. A clever hobo in attendance is reminded of the nursery rhyme and dubs him 'Solomon Grundy'. The zombie likes it and calls himself that forevermore.

Yes, Solomon Grundy is the first ever strongman zombie supervillain to be named by a hobo.

He was invented in 1944 which leads one to believe he may be the first ever zombie super-villain in the first place.





A more recent version of Grundy from the animated show "The Batman" depicts him as more of an actual rotting desiccated corpse (Note: link does not actually go to a picture of an actual rotting desiccated corpse, just the new Grundy depiction from The Batman) and less like a hairless yeti wearing a ripped up suit.