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alibi_shopSwamp Thing #1-14 (2004-2005)
Written: #1-6 by Andy Diggle, #7-8 by Will Pfeifer, #9-14 by Joshua Dysart
Art: #1-6/9-12 by Enrique Breccia, #7-8 by Richard Corben, #13-14 by Timothy Green II
Maybe it's fitting that a comic that was originally about a person getting blown up and burned up and then recreated as an unrecognizable monster would spend the next 30-plus years being repeatedly cancelled and then dredged up and handed off to a random assortment of writers, like: "Here, maybe you can make something out of this." It's no longer possible to really do a continuation of Swamp Thing—it's been demolished and reimagined too many times—but you can absorb some of its memories.
The new main writer, Joshua Dysart, and the two others we get before him, seem to understand this; they all have some new ideas and have grafted pieces of Swamp Thing history onto them, and the results vary but a lot of them are good. But the biggest asset in this latest go-round is the art of Enrique Breccia. I had never seen his work before, but his father Alberto Breccia was one of the greats not only in South American comics but worldwide, and there are obvious parallels in their styles: there's an effortless precision in line and texture and composition, but also a looseness that lets forms and spaces become more abstract at times, and the inking is wonderfully alive. For US readers, the way he draws faces may take a little getting used to—it's not really any more cartoony than for instance Wrightson's or Petersen's, it's just a different tradition where eyes, noses, etc. are stylized in a somewhat different way—but it all feels like part of a cohesive vision. He's an incredibly good choice for this comic, and all of his several different versions of Swampy are great.
One area where Breccia is slightly less at ease is in very large-scale stuff, like Godzilla-sized elemental beings battling it out. That only happens in the initial Andy Diggle storyline, and it's part of an effort by Diggle to undo most of the grandiose and (in my opinion) dumbass ideas added by earlier writers, while also squeezing one last drop of fun from their ridiculousness. Mark Millar gave Swamp Thing power over everything in the world*, so Diggle comes up with a reason why he has to ditch all that and go back to being just Swamp Thing—although this involves the same kind of epic-yet-boring conflict that Millar did so much of, and he repeats Millar's arbitrary idea of bringing back Sargon the Sorcerer as a villain. I was much happier with the way he chose to get rid of Brian Vaughan's** silly "the Green now looks a lot like the human world" thing: Swamp Thing takes one look at that, goes "WTF, this is stupid, it's probably Tefé's fault", and just instantly puts it back to normal. Tefé herself is killed again and then revived again***, this time as a human. I have no idea how any of this would play to someone who hadn't read all of the previous comics, but that doesn't seem to be Diggle's concern.
After a couple of filler issues with totally insane Richard Corben art, Dysart starts off his new arc with an odd mix of new and very old elements. We're back in Houma. Abby lives there with Tefé; they're more at ease with each other now*, and also better written, and they're both in new relationships that seem OK. Swamp Thing is on his own, kind of semi-retired, until a naïve Cajun witch (with yet another version of how to write a Cajun accent—Dysart really lays it on thick) tries to summon his spirit and instead gets a demon from hell. Who could it be? Of course it can't be Arcane again. Arcane became a good guy, and anyway everyone's sick of Arcane. So... it's Arcane.
This latest battle with Arcane is mostly the exact same shit he always does. He has a monstrous body and he wants to possess Swamp Thing's body; he talks a lot about killing everyone; he makes people have horrible visions of atrocities; he's sent back to hell in an arbitrary way. There are two novelties here. First, he brought along another demon who's in love with him; their offspring may be a future plot point. Second, the answer to "why is he evil again" is part of an attempt to make DC Comics theology even more confusing. Dysart isn't crazy about the Christian aspect of this mythos, so even though hell is still a big part of the story, he downplays its importance by having another cosmic character call it just a "toxic Christian construct". And he says that when Arcane apparently went to heaven, he really went to his own personal heaven ruled by his own idea of God, which isn't forgiving at all (even though the idea of Arcane being converted in the first place makes no sense if there's no forgiveness) and therefore sent him back to hell. But somehow having been in pseudo-heaven gave him a new power based on faith, or something like that—it doesn't seem to make much difference anyway. A more interesting take on religious ideas (kind of reminiscent of Moore and Veitch, and also Doctor Who) is the shorter story arc where a malevolent preacher turns out to be not a madman or a demon, but just an interdimensional being who needs to absorb people's faith in order to get back home—and Swamp Thing decides to let it keep most of those souls because who knows, maybe they're better off this way.
A minor thing I like: after Houma suffers an outbreak of horrible visions, everything goes back to normal—but everyone is still pretty fucked up about it. This may not last, but I still appreciate any acknowledgement that the kinds of massive trauma that superhero comics regularly inflict on the general population would have lasting effects.
I think this is all somewhat promising, but I've been wrong before. No matter what, it's worth it for the art.
More lists I'll probably get tired of doing
Best pseudoscience gibberish: A demon's essence is described as "soiled on a quantum level". A doctor says that Tefé's symptoms of massive bleeding probably weren't caused by psychedelic drugs—unless she has "a neural transmitter imbalance".
Who needs continuity anyway: People still think Swamp Thing is a myth, even though his adventures have often been a huge public thing. Abby's boyfriend from Houma doesn't know she was involved with Swamp Thing, even though that was also a huge public thing. Abby's boyfriend is the first man she's been with since Constantine, so "Don" never existed (yay). Swamp Thing never killed Tefé before (contra Millar), but Vaughan established that she hates Swamp Thing and thinks he's super dangerous; but now she can't imagine that he could ever hurt her.
Grossest thing: There are quite a few gruesome deaths, and the usual demons, but the prize goes to Will Pfeifer's timely twist on the "evil industrialist who's hunting Swamp Thing" idea: Ramhoff, a tech billionaire who's a crass childish slob with no grand designs at all, he just thinks having a taxidermied Swamp Thing would be cool.
Next: Dysart writes about some grownups
Written: #1-6 by Andy Diggle, #7-8 by Will Pfeifer, #9-14 by Joshua Dysart
Art: #1-6/9-12 by Enrique Breccia, #7-8 by Richard Corben, #13-14 by Timothy Green II
Maybe it's fitting that a comic that was originally about a person getting blown up and burned up and then recreated as an unrecognizable monster would spend the next 30-plus years being repeatedly cancelled and then dredged up and handed off to a random assortment of writers, like: "Here, maybe you can make something out of this." It's no longer possible to really do a continuation of Swamp Thing—it's been demolished and reimagined too many times—but you can absorb some of its memories.
The new main writer, Joshua Dysart, and the two others we get before him, seem to understand this; they all have some new ideas and have grafted pieces of Swamp Thing history onto them, and the results vary but a lot of them are good. But the biggest asset in this latest go-round is the art of Enrique Breccia. I had never seen his work before, but his father Alberto Breccia was one of the greats not only in South American comics but worldwide, and there are obvious parallels in their styles: there's an effortless precision in line and texture and composition, but also a looseness that lets forms and spaces become more abstract at times, and the inking is wonderfully alive. For US readers, the way he draws faces may take a little getting used to—it's not really any more cartoony than for instance Wrightson's or Petersen's, it's just a different tradition where eyes, noses, etc. are stylized in a somewhat different way—but it all feels like part of a cohesive vision. He's an incredibly good choice for this comic, and all of his several different versions of Swampy are great.
One area where Breccia is slightly less at ease is in very large-scale stuff, like Godzilla-sized elemental beings battling it out. That only happens in the initial Andy Diggle storyline, and it's part of an effort by Diggle to undo most of the grandiose and (in my opinion) dumbass ideas added by earlier writers, while also squeezing one last drop of fun from their ridiculousness. Mark Millar gave Swamp Thing power over everything in the world*, so Diggle comes up with a reason why he has to ditch all that and go back to being just Swamp Thing—although this involves the same kind of epic-yet-boring conflict that Millar did so much of, and he repeats Millar's arbitrary idea of bringing back Sargon the Sorcerer as a villain. I was much happier with the way he chose to get rid of Brian Vaughan's** silly "the Green now looks a lot like the human world" thing: Swamp Thing takes one look at that, goes "WTF, this is stupid, it's probably Tefé's fault", and just instantly puts it back to normal. Tefé herself is killed again and then revived again***, this time as a human. I have no idea how any of this would play to someone who hadn't read all of the previous comics, but that doesn't seem to be Diggle's concern.
After a couple of filler issues with totally insane Richard Corben art, Dysart starts off his new arc with an odd mix of new and very old elements. We're back in Houma. Abby lives there with Tefé; they're more at ease with each other now*, and also better written, and they're both in new relationships that seem OK. Swamp Thing is on his own, kind of semi-retired, until a naïve Cajun witch (with yet another version of how to write a Cajun accent—Dysart really lays it on thick) tries to summon his spirit and instead gets a demon from hell. Who could it be? Of course it can't be Arcane again. Arcane became a good guy, and anyway everyone's sick of Arcane. So... it's Arcane.
This latest battle with Arcane is mostly the exact same shit he always does. He has a monstrous body and he wants to possess Swamp Thing's body; he talks a lot about killing everyone; he makes people have horrible visions of atrocities; he's sent back to hell in an arbitrary way. There are two novelties here. First, he brought along another demon who's in love with him; their offspring may be a future plot point. Second, the answer to "why is he evil again" is part of an attempt to make DC Comics theology even more confusing. Dysart isn't crazy about the Christian aspect of this mythos, so even though hell is still a big part of the story, he downplays its importance by having another cosmic character call it just a "toxic Christian construct". And he says that when Arcane apparently went to heaven, he really went to his own personal heaven ruled by his own idea of God, which isn't forgiving at all (even though the idea of Arcane being converted in the first place makes no sense if there's no forgiveness) and therefore sent him back to hell. But somehow having been in pseudo-heaven gave him a new power based on faith, or something like that—it doesn't seem to make much difference anyway. A more interesting take on religious ideas (kind of reminiscent of Moore and Veitch, and also Doctor Who) is the shorter story arc where a malevolent preacher turns out to be not a madman or a demon, but just an interdimensional being who needs to absorb people's faith in order to get back home—and Swamp Thing decides to let it keep most of those souls because who knows, maybe they're better off this way.
A minor thing I like: after Houma suffers an outbreak of horrible visions, everything goes back to normal—but everyone is still pretty fucked up about it. This may not last, but I still appreciate any acknowledgement that the kinds of massive trauma that superhero comics regularly inflict on the general population would have lasting effects.
I think this is all somewhat promising, but I've been wrong before. No matter what, it's worth it for the art.
More lists I'll probably get tired of doing
Best pseudoscience gibberish: A demon's essence is described as "soiled on a quantum level". A doctor says that Tefé's symptoms of massive bleeding probably weren't caused by psychedelic drugs—unless she has "a neural transmitter imbalance".
Who needs continuity anyway: People still think Swamp Thing is a myth, even though his adventures have often been a huge public thing. Abby's boyfriend from Houma doesn't know she was involved with Swamp Thing, even though that was also a huge public thing. Abby's boyfriend is the first man she's been with since Constantine, so "Don" never existed (yay). Swamp Thing never killed Tefé before (contra Millar), but Vaughan established that she hates Swamp Thing and thinks he's super dangerous; but now she can't imagine that he could ever hurt her.
Grossest thing: There are quite a few gruesome deaths, and the usual demons, but the prize goes to Will Pfeifer's timely twist on the "evil industrialist who's hunting Swamp Thing" idea: Ramhoff, a tech billionaire who's a crass childish slob with no grand designs at all, he just thinks having a taxidermied Swamp Thing would be cool.
Next: Dysart writes about some grownups
