alibi_shop (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
alibi_shop) wrote2019-05-18 12:53 am
alibi_shop) wrote2019-05-18 12:53 am
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Swamp Thing reread, part 3
The Saga of the Swamp Thing #1-19 (1982-83)
Written by Martin Pasko, except #14-15 by Dan Mishkin
Art by Tom Yeates, except #10 by Yeates/John Totleben, #14-15 by Bo Hampton/Scott Hampton, #16-19 by Steve Bissette/Totleben
So, he's back. It's been six years since DC first decided to move the series toward "a new super-heroic mold", gave it to Gerry Conway who turned Swamp Thing back into Alec Holland, then almost immediately announced they were giving it to the total novice David Anthony Kraft, but then cancelled it instead. After all that, it's no surprise that the next iteration would be fairly different from previous ones, and there's almost no attempt at continuity—the Conway issues apparently never happened (Swampy did appear in a few crossovers in the meantime with a hasty excuse for why he stopped being human, but then they just officially disavowed that whole storyline), and I'm totally fine with that.
DC Comics veteran Martin Pasko is our new writer, and despite having the original series writer Len Wein as an editor, he's doing his own thing. We're not going to get the kind of Gothic horror and SF pulp seen in the earlier series; most of the story will be one long scientific-occult-spy-conspiracy-apocalypse storyline in which Swampy not only is almost never in a swamp, but is in pretty much the least swamp-like environments possible, like a lab or a cruise ship or a ski resort.
I'm not sure how I feel about Pasko. There's nothing particularly distinctive or good about the words on the page, and in particular his attempts at humor and hip dialogue are pretty awful. Whenever he stops explaining everything that's going on, there's a nice energy and rhythm in how he intercuts scenes and storylines; the style makes me think he had studied TV screenwriting. But it's overstuffed and never slows down enough to create any atmosphere, and he's working with an artist who usually has no idea what to emphasize.
Tom Yeates is doing his best, I guess. His art is not uniformly horrible; over time it eventually gets a bit less awkward and minimal, although there are some things he never seems to have any interest in rendering (such as swamps). His Swamp Thing often looks like a lumpy action figure with a couple of roots glued on, and a confused expression. Once in a while Yeates pulls off some pretty good action compositions, but even then the overall look is generally flat and devoid of contrast or texture—very TV-like. In issue 10 all of a sudden he's working with an inker, and that definitely seems to help to some degree, but then the inker is gone, leaving us to sadly hope we'll see John Totleben again some day. So, basically, during this period nothing is going to look very good and it's all about the story.
Most of Pasko's run is about two things: yet another witchy child (although he takes this part in a bizarre direction that I definitely didn't see coming), and the latest Evil Super-Science Conspiracy, the Sunderland Corporation. Sunderland is by far the longest-running one of these gangs we've had, but one difference I like is that it's not perfect or focused: the villains sometimes screw up or are working at cross-purposes, there's a confusing number of different evil plots going on, and sometimes they have to deal with random monsters that are unrelated to their plans. The only character who's at all interesting is a mad scientist type who gets three or four different reveals of what his real motivation is. We also have two new human sidekicks (since Abby Arcane and Matt Cable are nowhere in sight): Liz Tremayne and Dennis Barclay, who may not have much more distinctive personalities but do have more specific jobs (journalist, doctor). Liz also wrote a best-selling book about sightings of Swamp Thing, which everyone is constantly talking about—a plot point that's not as far-fetched as it may seem, given that from 1972 to 1982 there were at least 26 Bigfoot books.
Besides Bigfoot, Pasko's writing mines then-current genre obsessions in other ways: all the stuff about psi experiments by the military-industrial complex, and hunting a spooky child, is heavily influenced by Firestarter (although, somewhat hilariously, he says "pyrotic" when he means "pyrokinetic"), and later on we get a lot of Nazi-occultist stuff that's straight out of any number of horror paperbacks of the time. The earlier pulp and Gothic horror roots of the earlier series are pretty much gone. There's an extremely drawn-out big apocalyptic confrontation (during which this suddenly turns into a story about the Holocaust, or rather, about throwing in Holocaust imagery to lend gravitas to fantasy clichés) and then... we're done with that.
As a breather, there's a standalone two-parter: Dan Mishkin's script is nothing too memorable, but guest artists Bo Hampton and Scott Hampton instantly remind us of how nice it can be to have things like shadows, textures, and a sense of design. Plus, there's a swamp!
After that, we're back to Pasko for a bit more—but what a difference, because Steve Bissette and John Totleben are drawing now. I'll say more about them in the next installment, but it's obvious from the start that they're perfect for this series, with their fluid designs and lively faces and crazy-ass monsters. And along with the denser and darker look, Pasko suddenly becomes interested in revisiting more traditional Swamp Thing material: we're back in a rural setting, Abby and Matt are back (married, with some very hasty recaps to explain why Matt is now a total wreck and has psychic powers, which at least makes him more interesting), and so is Arcane, and a bunch of his monsters. And the stage is set for... well, I guess we'll never know what Pasko might have in mind, because he's become too busy with another series so he gets swapped out for some British guy.
Two last things about this period:
1. For whatever reason, they decided to run a backup story in each issue about the Phantom Stranger. While I realize the Phantom Stranger has a venerable history going back to the '50s, he is a pretty boring character (basically, nearly-omnipotent mystery dude who looks and acts like a Bible salesman with a cape, except all of his life lessons are kind of New-Agey) unless you push against his earnestness with humor or figure out a way to cause real problems for him, and these stories don't do either of those things: he just shows up, does some magic, lectures people smugly, does some more magic, and disappears. Many of these are drawn by Filipino artist Fred Carrillo, who has kind of an old-school romance comic style that's fairly pleasant but that really emphasizes the PS's lack of personality.
2. If I counted correctly, Swamp Thing gets shipped in a packing crate at least five times.
By the way, in the course of writing this I happened upon the great blog Roots of the Swamp Thing, which has all of the trivia you could ever want (including things like scans of reader letters complaining about various things) as well as plot summaries and some pretty funny commentary. Anyone looking for actual information should go there instead of here. This is just a rambley thing.
Next: Moore blows it all up
Written by Martin Pasko, except #14-15 by Dan Mishkin
Art by Tom Yeates, except #10 by Yeates/John Totleben, #14-15 by Bo Hampton/Scott Hampton, #16-19 by Steve Bissette/Totleben
So, he's back. It's been six years since DC first decided to move the series toward "a new super-heroic mold", gave it to Gerry Conway who turned Swamp Thing back into Alec Holland, then almost immediately announced they were giving it to the total novice David Anthony Kraft, but then cancelled it instead. After all that, it's no surprise that the next iteration would be fairly different from previous ones, and there's almost no attempt at continuity—the Conway issues apparently never happened (Swampy did appear in a few crossovers in the meantime with a hasty excuse for why he stopped being human, but then they just officially disavowed that whole storyline), and I'm totally fine with that.
DC Comics veteran Martin Pasko is our new writer, and despite having the original series writer Len Wein as an editor, he's doing his own thing. We're not going to get the kind of Gothic horror and SF pulp seen in the earlier series; most of the story will be one long scientific-occult-spy-conspiracy-apocalypse storyline in which Swampy not only is almost never in a swamp, but is in pretty much the least swamp-like environments possible, like a lab or a cruise ship or a ski resort.
I'm not sure how I feel about Pasko. There's nothing particularly distinctive or good about the words on the page, and in particular his attempts at humor and hip dialogue are pretty awful. Whenever he stops explaining everything that's going on, there's a nice energy and rhythm in how he intercuts scenes and storylines; the style makes me think he had studied TV screenwriting. But it's overstuffed and never slows down enough to create any atmosphere, and he's working with an artist who usually has no idea what to emphasize.
Tom Yeates is doing his best, I guess. His art is not uniformly horrible; over time it eventually gets a bit less awkward and minimal, although there are some things he never seems to have any interest in rendering (such as swamps). His Swamp Thing often looks like a lumpy action figure with a couple of roots glued on, and a confused expression. Once in a while Yeates pulls off some pretty good action compositions, but even then the overall look is generally flat and devoid of contrast or texture—very TV-like. In issue 10 all of a sudden he's working with an inker, and that definitely seems to help to some degree, but then the inker is gone, leaving us to sadly hope we'll see John Totleben again some day. So, basically, during this period nothing is going to look very good and it's all about the story.
Most of Pasko's run is about two things: yet another witchy child (although he takes this part in a bizarre direction that I definitely didn't see coming), and the latest Evil Super-Science Conspiracy, the Sunderland Corporation. Sunderland is by far the longest-running one of these gangs we've had, but one difference I like is that it's not perfect or focused: the villains sometimes screw up or are working at cross-purposes, there's a confusing number of different evil plots going on, and sometimes they have to deal with random monsters that are unrelated to their plans. The only character who's at all interesting is a mad scientist type who gets three or four different reveals of what his real motivation is. We also have two new human sidekicks (since Abby Arcane and Matt Cable are nowhere in sight): Liz Tremayne and Dennis Barclay, who may not have much more distinctive personalities but do have more specific jobs (journalist, doctor). Liz also wrote a best-selling book about sightings of Swamp Thing, which everyone is constantly talking about—a plot point that's not as far-fetched as it may seem, given that from 1972 to 1982 there were at least 26 Bigfoot books.
Besides Bigfoot, Pasko's writing mines then-current genre obsessions in other ways: all the stuff about psi experiments by the military-industrial complex, and hunting a spooky child, is heavily influenced by Firestarter (although, somewhat hilariously, he says "pyrotic" when he means "pyrokinetic"), and later on we get a lot of Nazi-occultist stuff that's straight out of any number of horror paperbacks of the time. The earlier pulp and Gothic horror roots of the earlier series are pretty much gone. There's an extremely drawn-out big apocalyptic confrontation (during which this suddenly turns into a story about the Holocaust, or rather, about throwing in Holocaust imagery to lend gravitas to fantasy clichés) and then... we're done with that.
As a breather, there's a standalone two-parter: Dan Mishkin's script is nothing too memorable, but guest artists Bo Hampton and Scott Hampton instantly remind us of how nice it can be to have things like shadows, textures, and a sense of design. Plus, there's a swamp!
After that, we're back to Pasko for a bit more—but what a difference, because Steve Bissette and John Totleben are drawing now. I'll say more about them in the next installment, but it's obvious from the start that they're perfect for this series, with their fluid designs and lively faces and crazy-ass monsters. And along with the denser and darker look, Pasko suddenly becomes interested in revisiting more traditional Swamp Thing material: we're back in a rural setting, Abby and Matt are back (married, with some very hasty recaps to explain why Matt is now a total wreck and has psychic powers, which at least makes him more interesting), and so is Arcane, and a bunch of his monsters. And the stage is set for... well, I guess we'll never know what Pasko might have in mind, because he's become too busy with another series so he gets swapped out for some British guy.
Two last things about this period:
1. For whatever reason, they decided to run a backup story in each issue about the Phantom Stranger. While I realize the Phantom Stranger has a venerable history going back to the '50s, he is a pretty boring character (basically, nearly-omnipotent mystery dude who looks and acts like a Bible salesman with a cape, except all of his life lessons are kind of New-Agey) unless you push against his earnestness with humor or figure out a way to cause real problems for him, and these stories don't do either of those things: he just shows up, does some magic, lectures people smugly, does some more magic, and disappears. Many of these are drawn by Filipino artist Fred Carrillo, who has kind of an old-school romance comic style that's fairly pleasant but that really emphasizes the PS's lack of personality.
2. If I counted correctly, Swamp Thing gets shipped in a packing crate at least five times.
By the way, in the course of writing this I happened upon the great blog Roots of the Swamp Thing, which has all of the trivia you could ever want (including things like scans of reader letters complaining about various things) as well as plot summaries and some pretty funny commentary. Anyone looking for actual information should go there instead of here. This is just a rambley thing.
Next: Moore blows it all up