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alibi_shopThe Saga of the Swamp Thing #20-30 (1984)
Swamp Thing #31-32 (1985)
Swamp Thing Annual #2 (1985)
Written by Alan Moore
Art by Steve Bissette/John Totleben, except #28/#32 by Shawn McManus, #30 Bissette/Alfredo Alcala, #31 Rick Veitch/Totleben
Now the famous stuff begins. If anyone is reading this, sorry, it's long.
Alan Moore's work on Swamp Thing has been a lot of people's introduction to the series, and his second issue, "The Anatomy Lesson", has been presented as the first one in anthologies because that's where he fully broke away from Pasko's storyline (as well as being his first one with both Bissette and Totleben). That's fine, it's a great story and it works well as a starting point, but I'm glad to have finally read #20 as well because it's interesting to see so many Mooreisms emerging right away before the new story has kicked in. So I'll start there.
That first issue is called "Loose Ends", referring to our heroes being hunted down by the Sunderland Corporation—although if you wonder whether that's also a joke about cleaning up Pasko's absurdly complicated plotting, well, with Moore if something could be a joke then it probably is. Functionally it serves the purpose of getting rid of all the human characters except Abby and Matt, blowing up our last familiar location, and letting Sunderland capture Swampy for like the tenth time except now he's dead (yeah, right). We've seen things like that before. What's less familiar is the variety of narrative tricks Moore uses to build suspense, most notably the kind of parallelism where someone's dialogue continues as voiceover through an unrelated series of panels till some event coincidentally lines up with a phrase in the voiceover*, or where a repeated image like Sunderland's executive desk toy measures out time for something else; these are as subtle as a sledgehammer, but undeniably entertaining. There are also some early signs of Moore's interest in toxic masculinity: Matt Cable, rather than using his (very recently and arbitrarily introduced) godlike psionic powers on a grand scale, becomes a petty sleaze who's basically using them to jerk off**, whereas Dennis, who was always kind of an ass, hooks up with Liz and gloats about how she seems "scared, vulnerable, the way a woman should be". But aside from the cliffhanger with Swampy being helicoptered away, there's not really any indication of where the plot might be going.
So then we get "The Anatomy Lesson", in which Moore retcons the entire series by saying that Swampy was never Alec Holland, but just borrowed his memories. It's a bold move that not only closes off any future idea of using "can I change back" as a plot goal (it's a bit confusing that Arcane did briefly change him into Alec years ago, so let's just agree that Arcane can do magic stuff that makes no sense), but provides a good excuse for Moore to set up even more big changes for the character later as he gets more in touch with his real nature. But there are other things about the story that would make it particularly exciting for someone who'd been following the comic all this time.
First, it looks freaking spectacular, the best possible upgrade from Tom Yeates; so did the earlier Bissette/Totleben guest issues, but they're continuing to push their unusual design and rendering ideas further, and whenever they get to draw Swampy all big and detailed with more vegetation on him than ever before, he's frankly beautiful while still looking like he might kill you. I have no idea how these two managed to crank out so much elaborate work on a monthly comic with only a couple of guest artists. Also, I've forgotten to praise the coloring by the great Tatjana Wood, who's been with the series pretty much the whole time (while also coloring just about every other comic in the world) but seems to me to work particularly well with Totleben's inks.
Second, in a series that's only slightly flirted with crossovers before, Moore shows right away that he's kind of a magpie who likes gathering weird things from other comics, but always in a logical way: Woodrue the Floronic Man is a very obscure character, and (as the Flash later points out) an incompetent villain, but his plant theme works for this and so does his beaten-down outcast point of view. (The previous writers would have given us a half-page recap of Woodrue's background. Here it's like one line.) We'll meet a few famous superheroes later on, but Moore isn't nearly as interested in them—they're too powerful and well-adjusted for this story—so he distances them with an ominous narration that never names them (calling them "the overpeople"), which for me is still a bit pointless but at least different. Moore's magpie activity regarding characters with supernatural/horror roots will of course be super-important for The Sandman and other Vertigo titles, but we're not there yet.
Third, whether writing an unfamiliar character or an established one, Moore is awfully good at establishing character through dialogue; within the first two pages, mostly narrated by Woodrue, we know exactly what kind of a dick Sunderland is, and also what kind Woodrue is. Woodrue's narration could also be seen as kind of a joke on the conventions of the whole series: it's verbose and florid and very pushy with its metaphors, a style that Moore is dialing back on somewhat in the omniscient narration (somewhat), but coming from this guy it's just right. (Moore also may be poking fun at one of Pasko's verbal tics when he has Sunderland remind himself of Liz Tremayne's name and her book, something that occurred about a dozen times in earlier issues.) Also, this is an issue where we get two recaps of Swamp Thing's origin—but both times they actually work as dialogue: it's not just someone doing a required thing for the readers, he's conveying relevant information to another character and this is how he would say it. That may not seem like rocket science, but in mainstream comics of 1984 it was a rare treat.
So that's "The Anatomy Lesson". It's worth noting that the basis of the whole premise—one of those "strange but true!" stories that Moore is so fond of—is James McConnell's 1960 research with planarian worms, which by 1984 had been pretty well debunked, or at least McConnell's extravagant claims about it had been. Whether Moore knew that, I have no idea; I didn't, in fact quite the opposite, I kept encountering the mythical version of it in books (probably first in The People's Almanac, which also taught me some questionable stuff about Bigfoot, ESP, and sex). The legend will probably never die.
In the next dozen issues, two of which are stand-alone fill-ins, there are two main story arcs: Woodrue trying to destroy humanity, and the third return of Arcane. The former is notable for introducing the idea of a collective consciousness of plant life, which will be pretty important later, and also for focusing on the human casualties of supervillain violence to an unusual degree; I think it's also the first time Swampy solved a problem basically by talking and not fighting. The Arcane story is a whole other thing. It's easily the most disturbing material ever seen in the series, both in subject matter (Matt dies and is possessed by Arcane who uses Matt's power to create monsters and zombies and mentally influence people to commit horrible crimes and then he kills Abby and damns her soul), and in how far Bissette and Totleben pushed their visuals to convey not just gross-looking monsters but hideous states of mind.
The issue that famously led to Swamp Thing dropping the Comics Code seal, in which Arcane finally reveals himself and Abby freaks out about having slept with her dead evil uncle, is very effective at evoking dreamlike creeping dread and a fear of physical and mental contamination. It's also overwrought and excessive and, since we've known the secret for some time, it doesn't build any suspense for us as it goes on and on but just serves to draw out Abby's suffering. Moore treats her with empathy, she already has 100 times more personality than she's had in the last ten years, and she will eventually become more of an active protagonist... but at this point she's mostly just gone from "the one who tags along with Matt everywhere" to "the one horrible things happen to", and it's too bad that the first attempts to acknowledge sex more openly in the series are all hideous (granted that this is a horror comic). I think this is one bit where the insanely good visuals and verbal skill hide the fact that Moore is still somewhat immature and inexperienced with this kind of horror and has fallen into pushing the same button for 22 pages.
After finally doing away with the series's oldest remaining villain, there's a big Swamp Thing Annual issue where Swampy literally goes to hell to save Abby (who is at least unconscious down there and not seeing any of the gnarly stuff Bissette has drawn). There's not much to this story but it does advance some of Moore's themes: 1. Swampy's spirit can roam all over, 2. there's going to be a lot of cosmic mythological stuff (of a loosely-defined ecumenical kind), 3. DC has a lot of mystical characters. We're about to get some more of the latter, but this article is already too long.
(Oh yeah, I didn't say anything about "Pog". "Pog" is great of course. It's an idea that should not have worked—Moore was completely nuts to think he could write a whole issue in Pogo-speak—but it does; "Enough, and enougher still!" would be a great line in any story. Anyway, just read this person.)
Next: Moore's monster mash
Swamp Thing #31-32 (1985)
Swamp Thing Annual #2 (1985)
Written by Alan Moore
Art by Steve Bissette/John Totleben, except #28/#32 by Shawn McManus, #30 Bissette/Alfredo Alcala, #31 Rick Veitch/Totleben
Now the famous stuff begins. If anyone is reading this, sorry, it's long.
Alan Moore's work on Swamp Thing has been a lot of people's introduction to the series, and his second issue, "The Anatomy Lesson", has been presented as the first one in anthologies because that's where he fully broke away from Pasko's storyline (as well as being his first one with both Bissette and Totleben). That's fine, it's a great story and it works well as a starting point, but I'm glad to have finally read #20 as well because it's interesting to see so many Mooreisms emerging right away before the new story has kicked in. So I'll start there.
That first issue is called "Loose Ends", referring to our heroes being hunted down by the Sunderland Corporation—although if you wonder whether that's also a joke about cleaning up Pasko's absurdly complicated plotting, well, with Moore if something could be a joke then it probably is. Functionally it serves the purpose of getting rid of all the human characters except Abby and Matt, blowing up our last familiar location, and letting Sunderland capture Swampy for like the tenth time except now he's dead (yeah, right). We've seen things like that before. What's less familiar is the variety of narrative tricks Moore uses to build suspense, most notably the kind of parallelism where someone's dialogue continues as voiceover through an unrelated series of panels till some event coincidentally lines up with a phrase in the voiceover*, or where a repeated image like Sunderland's executive desk toy measures out time for something else; these are as subtle as a sledgehammer, but undeniably entertaining. There are also some early signs of Moore's interest in toxic masculinity: Matt Cable, rather than using his (very recently and arbitrarily introduced) godlike psionic powers on a grand scale, becomes a petty sleaze who's basically using them to jerk off**, whereas Dennis, who was always kind of an ass, hooks up with Liz and gloats about how she seems "scared, vulnerable, the way a woman should be". But aside from the cliffhanger with Swampy being helicoptered away, there's not really any indication of where the plot might be going.
So then we get "The Anatomy Lesson", in which Moore retcons the entire series by saying that Swampy was never Alec Holland, but just borrowed his memories. It's a bold move that not only closes off any future idea of using "can I change back" as a plot goal (it's a bit confusing that Arcane did briefly change him into Alec years ago, so let's just agree that Arcane can do magic stuff that makes no sense), but provides a good excuse for Moore to set up even more big changes for the character later as he gets more in touch with his real nature. But there are other things about the story that would make it particularly exciting for someone who'd been following the comic all this time.
First, it looks freaking spectacular, the best possible upgrade from Tom Yeates; so did the earlier Bissette/Totleben guest issues, but they're continuing to push their unusual design and rendering ideas further, and whenever they get to draw Swampy all big and detailed with more vegetation on him than ever before, he's frankly beautiful while still looking like he might kill you. I have no idea how these two managed to crank out so much elaborate work on a monthly comic with only a couple of guest artists. Also, I've forgotten to praise the coloring by the great Tatjana Wood, who's been with the series pretty much the whole time (while also coloring just about every other comic in the world) but seems to me to work particularly well with Totleben's inks.
Second, in a series that's only slightly flirted with crossovers before, Moore shows right away that he's kind of a magpie who likes gathering weird things from other comics, but always in a logical way: Woodrue the Floronic Man is a very obscure character, and (as the Flash later points out) an incompetent villain, but his plant theme works for this and so does his beaten-down outcast point of view. (The previous writers would have given us a half-page recap of Woodrue's background. Here it's like one line.) We'll meet a few famous superheroes later on, but Moore isn't nearly as interested in them—they're too powerful and well-adjusted for this story—so he distances them with an ominous narration that never names them (calling them "the overpeople"), which for me is still a bit pointless but at least different. Moore's magpie activity regarding characters with supernatural/horror roots will of course be super-important for The Sandman and other Vertigo titles, but we're not there yet.
Third, whether writing an unfamiliar character or an established one, Moore is awfully good at establishing character through dialogue; within the first two pages, mostly narrated by Woodrue, we know exactly what kind of a dick Sunderland is, and also what kind Woodrue is. Woodrue's narration could also be seen as kind of a joke on the conventions of the whole series: it's verbose and florid and very pushy with its metaphors, a style that Moore is dialing back on somewhat in the omniscient narration (somewhat), but coming from this guy it's just right. (Moore also may be poking fun at one of Pasko's verbal tics when he has Sunderland remind himself of Liz Tremayne's name and her book, something that occurred about a dozen times in earlier issues.) Also, this is an issue where we get two recaps of Swamp Thing's origin—but both times they actually work as dialogue: it's not just someone doing a required thing for the readers, he's conveying relevant information to another character and this is how he would say it. That may not seem like rocket science, but in mainstream comics of 1984 it was a rare treat.
So that's "The Anatomy Lesson". It's worth noting that the basis of the whole premise—one of those "strange but true!" stories that Moore is so fond of—is James McConnell's 1960 research with planarian worms, which by 1984 had been pretty well debunked, or at least McConnell's extravagant claims about it had been. Whether Moore knew that, I have no idea; I didn't, in fact quite the opposite, I kept encountering the mythical version of it in books (probably first in The People's Almanac, which also taught me some questionable stuff about Bigfoot, ESP, and sex). The legend will probably never die.
In the next dozen issues, two of which are stand-alone fill-ins, there are two main story arcs: Woodrue trying to destroy humanity, and the third return of Arcane. The former is notable for introducing the idea of a collective consciousness of plant life, which will be pretty important later, and also for focusing on the human casualties of supervillain violence to an unusual degree; I think it's also the first time Swampy solved a problem basically by talking and not fighting. The Arcane story is a whole other thing. It's easily the most disturbing material ever seen in the series, both in subject matter (Matt dies and is possessed by Arcane who uses Matt's power to create monsters and zombies and mentally influence people to commit horrible crimes and then he kills Abby and damns her soul), and in how far Bissette and Totleben pushed their visuals to convey not just gross-looking monsters but hideous states of mind.
The issue that famously led to Swamp Thing dropping the Comics Code seal, in which Arcane finally reveals himself and Abby freaks out about having slept with her dead evil uncle, is very effective at evoking dreamlike creeping dread and a fear of physical and mental contamination. It's also overwrought and excessive and, since we've known the secret for some time, it doesn't build any suspense for us as it goes on and on but just serves to draw out Abby's suffering. Moore treats her with empathy, she already has 100 times more personality than she's had in the last ten years, and she will eventually become more of an active protagonist... but at this point she's mostly just gone from "the one who tags along with Matt everywhere" to "the one horrible things happen to", and it's too bad that the first attempts to acknowledge sex more openly in the series are all hideous (granted that this is a horror comic). I think this is one bit where the insanely good visuals and verbal skill hide the fact that Moore is still somewhat immature and inexperienced with this kind of horror and has fallen into pushing the same button for 22 pages.
After finally doing away with the series's oldest remaining villain, there's a big Swamp Thing Annual issue where Swampy literally goes to hell to save Abby (who is at least unconscious down there and not seeing any of the gnarly stuff Bissette has drawn). There's not much to this story but it does advance some of Moore's themes: 1. Swampy's spirit can roam all over, 2. there's going to be a lot of cosmic mythological stuff (of a loosely-defined ecumenical kind), 3. DC has a lot of mystical characters. We're about to get some more of the latter, but this article is already too long.
(Oh yeah, I didn't say anything about "Pog". "Pog" is great of course. It's an idea that should not have worked—Moore was completely nuts to think he could write a whole issue in Pogo-speak—but it does; "Enough, and enougher still!" would be a great line in any story. Anyway, just read this person.)
Next: Moore's monster mash
no subject
2019-05-19 23:31 (UTC)