"It" is a Short Story that Theodore Sturgeon wrote in March-to-April of 1940. It debuted in the August 1940 issue of Unknown accompanied by three illustrations by Edd Cartier. The short story's first book treatment followed in the anthology Who Knocks?: Twenty Masterpieces of the Spectral for the Connoisseur in 1946 and it was finally collected in Not Without Sorcery in 1961. "It" is one of the most influential horror stories of the 20th Century because it is the origin point of what today is the dominant image associated with the term Swamp Monster: a humanoid creature, possibly undead, fully or partially composed of (dead) vegetative matter.
Over the course of a century or so, Roger Kirk rots down to a skeleton and that skeleton then becomes caked with mud and mold and dead plant matter. Brewing together in the forest floor, a new creature rises one day. It isn't alive and it knows nothing, but it can reason and possesses boundless curiosity. It first destroys a sapling to see how it works, then a small animal, and this streak ends with Alton Drew's dog Kimbo. When Kimbo doesn't return towards evening, Alton comes looking and discovers the dog torn apart. Alton swears vengeance on Kimbo's killer, but the creature kills him just as easily as it did the dog. Alerted by futile gunshots, Alton's brother Cory and Cory's little daughter Babe separately set out in search of Alton. Cory runs into a man who's come to the area in search of the remains of Roger Kirk because Kirk's grandson has a big reward out for his return. The man has also already seen what's left of Alton and is eager to leave the forest. In his haste, he forgets his suitcase containing the papers on Roger Kirk, which Babe comes across. She is yet unaware of any deaths and makes her way to a secret spot along a brook to meet with her uncle there. Though death stays Alton, the creature does happen upon the spot. It finds the girl of little interest, putting up no defense when Babe throws a rock at it before running off screaming. The creature falls into the brook's rushing water and stays put, intrigued by the experience of eroding away. Roger Kirk's skeleton gets thus left behind for the townsfolk to discover when they come looking for what scared Babe. The Drews get the reward, but Babe's trauma runs deep and money can't bring back Alton and Kimbo.
"It" is part of the Blob Monster and Muck Monster trend that was started by "Ooze" in 1923. The defining difference between "It" and its predecessors is that the creature isn't entirely an amorphous goo. Rather, a human skeleton inside the mud, mold, and dead plant matter gives the creature a humanoid shape from which it does not stray even as it continues loses pieces of itself. Also of note is that It is not a product of science, magic, pollution, or of alien origin like so many other oozes. The creature's origin is essentially a freak repeat of the primordial soup; unlikely, but still presented as all-natural.
There are two branches of fiction that in particular owe one to "It": horror comics and superhero comics. The former wouldn't boom until the 1950s, so it were superhero comics that got into the act first with the 1942 introduction of The Heap. The Heap's manner of creation takes after It's with the key differences being that The Heap is swamp-born rather than forest floor-born and that the The Heap is the human it once was while It is an entirely new creature. Most supers to follow imitate The Heap in these regards. Man-Thing and Swamp Thing are the obvious names, but characters like Solomon Grundy and Brother Power the Geek also draw from "It". Horror comics have adapted "It" twice: firstly unofficially as "The Thing that Grew!", published in Horrific #13 in September 1954, and again as "It!" in Supernatural Thrillers #1 in December 1972. Other creatures that aren't It but designed in its likeness have occasionally starred in horror comics as well. In fact, some of the aforementioned supers, such as Swamp-Thing and Brother Power, started out as one-shot monsters.
"It" provides examples of the following tropes:
- Added Alliterative Appeal: One description of It calls it a "mold with a mind".
- Break the Cutie: Babe is an energetic scamp of a nine year-old girl with a solid sense of loyalty and a strong love for her uncle Alton and his dog Kimbo. Both Alton and Kimbo get murdered by It and Babe ends up the only person to have ever seen the creature and lived to tell it. Of course, nobody truly believes her fantastic account. Babe thus goes from a carefree existence in which she felt absolutely safe to one haunted by trauma and loss and loneliness.
- By the Hair: When It gets hold of Babe, it pulls her up to eye level by her twin braids. When It also swings her back and forth to get some reaction to study, Babe screams in pain and this continues until the creature lets her go simply because there's nothing more to learn from her.
- Canine Companion: A decade ago, Alton lost Clissa to his brother Cory. Cory and Clissa had a daughter shortly after marriage and Alton stayed with the family to help keep their farm afloat. What Alton got for himself is a dog he named Kimbo, who is the main receiver of all the love Alton never could invest in a family of his own. When he discovers Kimbo's badly mangled corpse, Alton is ready to throw his life away on revenge. The former occurs without the latter.
- Cassandra Truth: No one truly believes Babe's story about her encounter with the creature firstly because what she describes can't exist and secondly because she identifies It as the "bad fella", a creature her family had made up to get her to behave. No one denies that something must be out there because of Kimbo's and Alton's brutal deaths and it's not impossible that Babe met that something, but she's still only nine years old and that something is likely a whole lot more normal than a hulking mud and plant monster bound by mold.
- Collector of the Strange: Thaddeus M. Kirk, who died in 1920, was loaded. Without surviving relatives, he invested his wealth into building a grand family mausoleum and had his various family members dug up from all over the country to fill the mausoleum with. His instructions for his fortune after his death are to keep the mausoleum in a good state and to reward whomever would discover the whereabout for Roger Kirk's corpse, which is the only one missing from the mausoleum.
- Contrived Coincidence: It's human skeleton belongs to Roger Kirk, a man whose grandson has set aside a substantial reward for the discovery of his corpse. Fortunately for anyone looking, Roger's remains are very recognizable because of a silver plate set into his skull. So far, this isn't that much of a coincidence, but what stretches it is that right within the two days that It exists, itself an immense freak occurrence, a reward hunter drops by in the forest with all his case papers to inform the locals about the skeleton's significance. And he himself only stays for a few hours after being scared despite what appears to be at least a year's worth of research into Roger's possible whereabouts. Thus, nothing is in the way of the Drews claiming the reward that they very much need to keep their farm afloat.
- Darkness Equals Death: When the creature kills Kimbo, it notices that the dog's eyes stop working and it draws the conclusion that blindness and death are the same thing. As night is beginning to set in, which is the first night It experiences, it believes that it is dying and lays down to be dead until at dawn it realizes it either isn't dead or not dead anymore. It's curious if other creatures also stop being dead at sunrise and sets out to investigate.
- Fearless Undead: It isn't alive. It just exists and its one purpose in existing is to learn. It has no concept of mercy or fear because it has no concept of harm. When it first believes itself to be dead, it lies down to act the part and when it learns it's not dead, it gets up having learned something new but otherwise unaffected by the experience. This attitude becomes fatal later that day when It falls into a brook and understands that the rushing water is eroding its body away. It's a new experience and that's all the creature cares about, staying put until it experiences the novelty of ceasing to exist.
- Kindhearted Cat Lover: One of the wills mentioned in the newspaper clipping the little man carries with him concerns a man who had financed a home for cats who've outlived their owners.
- Non-Malicious Monster: It is capable of acts of great cruelty, but it's not cruelty or anything like it that drives the creature. Rather, It is curious and without any sense of personal self-preservation it cannot perceive the desire to survive that other lifeforms possess. To a degree, the creature doesn't even understand the finality of death. It kills and mutilates and hurts because it learns that way and if it has nothing new to learn, it leaves others well alone.
- Price on Their Head: Roger Kirk disappeared generations ago and was legally declared dead. Because his grandson wants his entire family to rest in the mausoleum he built, he has set up a reward for whomever can bring Roger "home". This money, topped with some twenty years of accrued interest, amounts to a little over 62.000 dollars in 1940. The Drews get the reward because their little daughter discovers the skeleton with its characteristic silver plate in its skull.
- "Ray of Hope" Ending: The skeleton inside It belongs to Roger Kirk, a man who'd gone missing generations ago and whose grandson had arranged a large sum of money to be rewarded to whomever would find his corpse. The Drews get to cash that reward, 62.000 dollars, because Babe found the skeleton. It allows them to keep the farm and even expand it despite Alton no longer being around to help. So, the Drews at least don't suffer financially while they have to come to terms with Alton's and Kimbo's deaths and find a way to treat Babe's deep-running trauma.
- Sibling Triangle: Alton and Cory are brothers and about a decade ago they both tried to court Clissa. Cory won out, married her, and had a daughter with her. Alton stayed with the family to help with farm work and became his niece's favorite adult. He keeps it to himself that he still wishes that Clissa would've picked him and that he would've been his niece's father.
- Silly Will: Inside his briefcase, the little man carries a newspaper clipping about wills that are open to anyone to try to qualify for. One will financially rewards whomever manages to make a trip to the Moon and back. Another will concerns money set aside for the first person to solve a certain mathematical problem. And yet a third will promises a monetary reward for whomever can produce the mortal remains of Roger Kirk so that he may be interred in the mausoleum his grandson built.
- Sir Swearsalot: The Drew adults don't swear much and in any case refrain from swearing when Babe can hear them. Even a word like "misbegotten" is considered uncouth. Yet Babe has a minor habit of swearing with an Austrian accent courtesy of a temporary hired help the Drews had on the farm who evidently did not put a lid on bad language.
- Things That Go "Bump" in the Night: Babe is a handful, which is why her family came up with the "bad fella", a bogeyman to threaten the girl into behaving with. Her father invented the bad fella, but it's mainly her uncle that brings the entity to life by speaking of encounters while out hunting. Babe does believe in the creature's existence, but in a way that she doesn't actually fear it because she knows the adults will protect her. Then one day she finds herself alone in a secret spot in the forest in the grasp of a huge creature of mud, mold, and plant matter with no one to protect her. Babe interprets the creature as the bad fella and though she survives the encounter, from that moment on she lives in absolute terror of the bad fella's return.
- Together in Death: The creature murders Kimbo, Alton's dog, and in trying to avenge his sole companion in life Alton dies at the hands of the creature too. Cory finds their torn-apart corpses right next to each other and mulls that "Kimbo and Alton had spent several years together in the deepest friendship; they had hunted and fought and slept together, and the lives they owed each other were finished now. They were dead together."
- Tranquil Fury: Upon finding Kimbo's corpse, Alton's purpose in life is brought back to vengeance. He believes the dog's killer to be human and embraces becoming a murderer and whatever fate may follow from it just to have revenge. He even threatens to harm if not kill his own brother when Cory tries to take him home. For one entire night, Alton waits in the forest and listens for any clue as to the location of Kimbo's killer. Come sunrise, he lives long enough to learn the killer isn't human and that neither bullets nor beatings do anything to stop it.
