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alibi_shopSwamp Thing #88-98 (1989-1990)
Written by Doug Wheeler
Art by Pat Broderick/Alfredo Alcala, except #88-89 by Tom Yeates, #94 by Kelley Jones, #98 by Tom Sutton/Alcala
I keep forgetting to mention the covers. John Totleben is still doing them, and they're consistently gorgeous—so if I'd been buying the comic every month back then, I might have stuck with it through this patch just for the covers. Maybe.
Who is Doug Wheeler? I've been unable to find out anything about his previous or later work in comics; all I know is that a lot of people really don't like him. Anyway, now he's writing Swamp Thing and, given Rick Veitch's abrupt departure, it's no surprise that the attempt to follow through on Veitch's two big storylines is a bit clunky (the effort to get around the fact that the Holy Grail was a plot element, but then the part about Jesus had to be removed, is particularly arbitrary). Unfortunately what comes after that is not super interesting either.
I didn't think the time-travel plot was very promising before, and it still isn't; the solution (which I presume was Veitch's idea, since it involves a pun that he had to set up ahead of time) is a causality-loop thing that's clever but pointless, and what it contributes is mostly 1. some stuff I've heard before about how the bad humans wiped out the perfect Neanderthals, and 2. a little more backstory for the Parliament of Trees business. After that, it's all about Tefé Holland finally being born, and suspense about her magical role in the world, with a pretty long and elaborate storyline set in hell; maybe it's just me but I always find intrigue among demons to be really boring (e.g. the only parts of Mike Carey's Lucifer I didn't like). It seems like the upcoming plot will partly involve "the Gray"—a somewhat cool idea from Steve Bissette in Swamp Thing Annual #4 (which I haven't been able to find), where the fungal world has its own spirit analogous to the Green and it's not very nice—but that's not developed yet.
The caveman bit actually raised my hopes for Wheeler's writing, briefly: his narration for the early humans, even though they're the villains, conveys their point of view and their unfamiliar ethical system in a way that makes sense and doesn't waste any words. That close-third-person style has a dry sort of documentary quality that's odd for this series, but it's effective, whereas when he writes dialogue or internal narration or omniscient narration, I just don't like it at all (don't even get me started on his rhyming dialogue for Etrigan). Almost the only time when I actually enjoyed reading that stuff was in a very silly issue narrated by a one-off character who, despite being very square, is purely overjoyed to learn about Swamp Thing and, during an interesting trip through Swampy's house, describes the mysterious music he hears there as the most beautiful thing he's ever heard "aside from Lawrence Welk". That bit has kind of a Veitchian humor to it, which is otherwise absent except for some of the stuff described below under "grossest things".
Much of the time, Wheeler is clearly trying to follow in Moore's and Veitch's footsteps in terms of ecological and philosophical themes. But whereas Moore could be preachy by setting up a situation whose moral implications are clear, Wheeler just literally preaches, telling you what the thing means. There's an issue where three magic-using people with special knowledge hear about Tefé's birth; after some monologues about how she might be destined to redeem humanity from its sins, they travel to the swamp bearing gifts; and then someone points out—making an astonished face—that they're like the Three Wise Men! Similarly, there's a story where one of the extremely romanticized Cajun townspeople (a late invention by Moore, leading to a whole lot of attempts at dialect by Wheeler) uses his never-before-seen magic powers to tear down civilization and bring back the past, but then he's told basically "No, you shouldn't try to bring back the past", so he realizes he shouldn't try to bring back the past, and stops, the end.
Tom Yeates's art really did improve a lot recently, but he's soon replaced by Pat Broderick. I don't have a lot to say about Broderick. He's fine, he's probably better than Yeates, and he works all right with Alcala's inks, but he's not really the person for drawing anything particularly weird (the one time someone eats one of Swampy's psychedelic tubers, there's no attempt to show what he sees at all, it's just described)—the exception being the hell scenes, where despite the boring script we get a few cool-looking demons. There's a single issue drawn by Kelley Jones that's like a flashback to the Berni Wrightson days, but cartoonier and more gruesome, with one of the most monstrous versions of Swampy ever; that's nice to see, even though the story is ridiculous.
Inventories
I won't bother to list "later seen in Vertigo" stuff from here on, because Sandman and Hellblazer are already well established and that's all I'm really familiar with.
Non-human animals: Lots of them in the prehistoric scenes and they're pretty good. We learn that Tefé can control bees, for some reason (that scene is very reminiscent of Miracleman, although I'm sure "magic baby using powers when no one's looking" has been done lots of times). And if the cute little aliens from "Pog" count as animals, we get one back for no real reason other than nostalgia; Wheeler is surprisingly not too bad at writing their dialect.
Swamp Thing origin recaps: I'll change this to backstory recaps in general. Wheeler does two big spreads of flashback panels covering all kinds of stuff (including the origin) for no real reason—there's no explanation of any of it, so it only makes sense if you've already read everything.
[new category] Grossest things: Kelley Jones establishes that his issue is the horror one by immediately giving you an ax stuck in a head surrounded by severed limbs. Swamp Thing recycles a used diaper by sticking it inside his torso. I guess the demon stuff in hell is gross, but whatever. But Wheeler's grossest and possibly best idea is this: when Tefé teleports her spirit the same way Swampy does, she also discards her body in the same way, but she's not made of plants—so what you see is basically a baby exploding.
Next: Wheeler spins out
Written by Doug Wheeler
Art by Pat Broderick/Alfredo Alcala, except #88-89 by Tom Yeates, #94 by Kelley Jones, #98 by Tom Sutton/Alcala
I keep forgetting to mention the covers. John Totleben is still doing them, and they're consistently gorgeous—so if I'd been buying the comic every month back then, I might have stuck with it through this patch just for the covers. Maybe.
Who is Doug Wheeler? I've been unable to find out anything about his previous or later work in comics; all I know is that a lot of people really don't like him. Anyway, now he's writing Swamp Thing and, given Rick Veitch's abrupt departure, it's no surprise that the attempt to follow through on Veitch's two big storylines is a bit clunky (the effort to get around the fact that the Holy Grail was a plot element, but then the part about Jesus had to be removed, is particularly arbitrary). Unfortunately what comes after that is not super interesting either.
I didn't think the time-travel plot was very promising before, and it still isn't; the solution (which I presume was Veitch's idea, since it involves a pun that he had to set up ahead of time) is a causality-loop thing that's clever but pointless, and what it contributes is mostly 1. some stuff I've heard before about how the bad humans wiped out the perfect Neanderthals, and 2. a little more backstory for the Parliament of Trees business. After that, it's all about Tefé Holland finally being born, and suspense about her magical role in the world, with a pretty long and elaborate storyline set in hell; maybe it's just me but I always find intrigue among demons to be really boring (e.g. the only parts of Mike Carey's Lucifer I didn't like). It seems like the upcoming plot will partly involve "the Gray"—a somewhat cool idea from Steve Bissette in Swamp Thing Annual #4 (which I haven't been able to find), where the fungal world has its own spirit analogous to the Green and it's not very nice—but that's not developed yet.
The caveman bit actually raised my hopes for Wheeler's writing, briefly: his narration for the early humans, even though they're the villains, conveys their point of view and their unfamiliar ethical system in a way that makes sense and doesn't waste any words. That close-third-person style has a dry sort of documentary quality that's odd for this series, but it's effective, whereas when he writes dialogue or internal narration or omniscient narration, I just don't like it at all (don't even get me started on his rhyming dialogue for Etrigan). Almost the only time when I actually enjoyed reading that stuff was in a very silly issue narrated by a one-off character who, despite being very square, is purely overjoyed to learn about Swamp Thing and, during an interesting trip through Swampy's house, describes the mysterious music he hears there as the most beautiful thing he's ever heard "aside from Lawrence Welk". That bit has kind of a Veitchian humor to it, which is otherwise absent except for some of the stuff described below under "grossest things".
Much of the time, Wheeler is clearly trying to follow in Moore's and Veitch's footsteps in terms of ecological and philosophical themes. But whereas Moore could be preachy by setting up a situation whose moral implications are clear, Wheeler just literally preaches, telling you what the thing means. There's an issue where three magic-using people with special knowledge hear about Tefé's birth; after some monologues about how she might be destined to redeem humanity from its sins, they travel to the swamp bearing gifts; and then someone points out—making an astonished face—that they're like the Three Wise Men! Similarly, there's a story where one of the extremely romanticized Cajun townspeople (a late invention by Moore, leading to a whole lot of attempts at dialect by Wheeler) uses his never-before-seen magic powers to tear down civilization and bring back the past, but then he's told basically "No, you shouldn't try to bring back the past", so he realizes he shouldn't try to bring back the past, and stops, the end.
Tom Yeates's art really did improve a lot recently, but he's soon replaced by Pat Broderick. I don't have a lot to say about Broderick. He's fine, he's probably better than Yeates, and he works all right with Alcala's inks, but he's not really the person for drawing anything particularly weird (the one time someone eats one of Swampy's psychedelic tubers, there's no attempt to show what he sees at all, it's just described)—the exception being the hell scenes, where despite the boring script we get a few cool-looking demons. There's a single issue drawn by Kelley Jones that's like a flashback to the Berni Wrightson days, but cartoonier and more gruesome, with one of the most monstrous versions of Swampy ever; that's nice to see, even though the story is ridiculous.
Inventories
I won't bother to list "later seen in Vertigo" stuff from here on, because Sandman and Hellblazer are already well established and that's all I'm really familiar with.
Non-human animals: Lots of them in the prehistoric scenes and they're pretty good. We learn that Tefé can control bees, for some reason (that scene is very reminiscent of Miracleman, although I'm sure "magic baby using powers when no one's looking" has been done lots of times). And if the cute little aliens from "Pog" count as animals, we get one back for no real reason other than nostalgia; Wheeler is surprisingly not too bad at writing their dialect.
Swamp Thing origin recaps: I'll change this to backstory recaps in general. Wheeler does two big spreads of flashback panels covering all kinds of stuff (including the origin) for no real reason—there's no explanation of any of it, so it only makes sense if you've already read everything.
[new category] Grossest things: Kelley Jones establishes that his issue is the horror one by immediately giving you an ax stuck in a head surrounded by severed limbs. Swamp Thing recycles a used diaper by sticking it inside his torso. I guess the demon stuff in hell is gross, but whatever. But Wheeler's grossest and possibly best idea is this: when Tefé teleports her spirit the same way Swampy does, she also discards her body in the same way, but she's not made of plants—so what you see is basically a baby exploding.
Next: Wheeler spins out
