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alibi_shopSeeing that the DC Universe streaming service had put up a whole lot of Swamp Thing comics in its reading section (presumably because of the upcoming TV show), I decided to catch up on the older ones I'd never seen, and maybe look again at the ones I had read. So I'm going to write some notes while I do that, not one issue at a time or anything, just whatever I think of.
Swamp Thing is mostly talked about these days for being Alan Moore's big break in America, and his work on the series in the '80s is notable in many ways which I'll get to later. Other people have since done other things with it. But the early stuff is interesting too, as a bridge from an older tradition of horror comics to a newer kind of SF-tinged dark fantasy that had both one-off monster threats and serialized story arcs. It wasn't the only comic doing the latter: Marvel's Tomb of Dracula started around the same time, as well as the other green swamp whatsit Man-Thing, both with very different styles. Swamp Thing looked more traditional in some ways than either of those, somewhat closer to the older forms (especially with its first two creative teams), but it also had a special tragic element: a hero who was doomed to be a monster and knew it.
Swamp Thing #1-10 (1972-74)
Written by Len Wein
Art by Berni Wrightson
The first two pages of issue 1 do a good job of summarizing what you're going to be getting from here on: lots of gorgeous lushly inked illustrations of spooky nature scenes, a big monster brooding about how he died, and a lot of very flowery narration.
Wein has a ton of things to get done in the first couple issues: set up major characters Alec Holland and Matt Cable (and Alec's doomed wife Linda), introduce two sets of villains, get Alec blown up and turned into Swamp Thing, establish what Swamp Thing is, send Matt on a misguided quest to destroy Swamp Thing, bring up the idea that maybe Alec could become human again, but then no he won't. It's super busy, and the pacing feels weird partly because he keeps switching between this overwritten redundant narration (not unlike what you'd see in a comic from 20-30 years earlier) and just letting scenes play out through action and dialogue (which works better even though the dialogue isn't great).
He also almost immediately decides to take Swamp Thing out of the swamp and send him to eastern Europe, because that's a better place to put a castle with a wizard in it—the evil Arcane. It doesn't make much sense in terms of the overall focus of the series, but I imagine the conversation went something like: "We can have different kinds of horror monsters in this. How about a Frankenstein situation but also with black magic?" This also is how we get Abby Arcane, who will be the other human protagonist along with Matt, even though neither of them have any real identity yet except "person who can have adventures and isn't a monster." After a while it kind of seems like Matt and Abby are supposed to be a couple already, although there's been no romance at all.
Meanwhile, Berni Wrightson, who is at this point about 23 and has done just a little horror stuff (including an early proto-Swamp Thing story), is filling the pages with gorgeous shadowy images that wouldn't look out of place in '50s EC titles. His rendering of Swampy isn't as detailed as some, but it's a great design that's both heroic and monstery (recessing the nose and mouth beneath a little shelf is his best idea, as the face can look more human or more alien just by adjusting the shadows), and blends well with the way he draws the swamp; he's good with other monsters too, Arcane's crew, a werewolf, etc. Human beings are not his strong point yet; they don't look bad exactly, they're just in different styles from one panel to the next. One thing Wrightson does seem very uncertain of is how to draw a dog—so it's unfortunate that Wein introduces a dog in the beginning who will be important to the plot for quite a while (and he's so determined that we not forget about the dog that he even puts it on a plane to Romania during the Arcane story). In close-ups, Wrightson draws the dog looking a bit like present-day Sam Elliott.
There are a few themes established in these issues that will recur a lot. 1. Randomly recapping the origin of Swamp Thing every so often; you see that kind of thing to some extent in all comics from this time, just because it would be hard for a new reader to find back issues, but since Swampy's origin is somewhat complicated, the recaps are not brief. 2. Swampy meets an angry mob; they're afraid of anything that's different! 3. Swampy saves a weird child with psychic powers who's accused of being a witch! 4. Robots for no reason! 5. The ghosts of slaves, depicted sympathetically yet super-stereotypically (also, Wein's narration never fails to point out that a Black character you're looking at is in fact Black).
The Wein/Wrightson run leaves off at a fairly arbitrary point (another fight with Arcane*), and has only very briefly flirted with any larger DC Comics stuff (Batman shows up and is useless), but it's clear by this point that this is a pretty great idea for mixing many kinds of genre material. Maybe Alec can be cured some day, but that's not the focus of the story; it's about how sad yet cool it is to be a monster. Also, like Man-Thing and unlike basically all superhero comics, it mostly has a rural focus, which means it's possible to invent an infinite number of small towns in Louisiana and give each of them a different horror problem. It's not hard to see some influence of those qualities on later kinds of genre entertainment—Angel, The X-Files, etc.—even though so far we've only scratched the surface of what can be done with the actual premise.
Next: Redondo & friends; Conway blows it all up
Swamp Thing is mostly talked about these days for being Alan Moore's big break in America, and his work on the series in the '80s is notable in many ways which I'll get to later. Other people have since done other things with it. But the early stuff is interesting too, as a bridge from an older tradition of horror comics to a newer kind of SF-tinged dark fantasy that had both one-off monster threats and serialized story arcs. It wasn't the only comic doing the latter: Marvel's Tomb of Dracula started around the same time, as well as the other green swamp whatsit Man-Thing, both with very different styles. Swamp Thing looked more traditional in some ways than either of those, somewhat closer to the older forms (especially with its first two creative teams), but it also had a special tragic element: a hero who was doomed to be a monster and knew it.
Swamp Thing #1-10 (1972-74)
Written by Len Wein
Art by Berni Wrightson
The first two pages of issue 1 do a good job of summarizing what you're going to be getting from here on: lots of gorgeous lushly inked illustrations of spooky nature scenes, a big monster brooding about how he died, and a lot of very flowery narration.
Wein has a ton of things to get done in the first couple issues: set up major characters Alec Holland and Matt Cable (and Alec's doomed wife Linda), introduce two sets of villains, get Alec blown up and turned into Swamp Thing, establish what Swamp Thing is, send Matt on a misguided quest to destroy Swamp Thing, bring up the idea that maybe Alec could become human again, but then no he won't. It's super busy, and the pacing feels weird partly because he keeps switching between this overwritten redundant narration (not unlike what you'd see in a comic from 20-30 years earlier) and just letting scenes play out through action and dialogue (which works better even though the dialogue isn't great).
He also almost immediately decides to take Swamp Thing out of the swamp and send him to eastern Europe, because that's a better place to put a castle with a wizard in it—the evil Arcane. It doesn't make much sense in terms of the overall focus of the series, but I imagine the conversation went something like: "We can have different kinds of horror monsters in this. How about a Frankenstein situation but also with black magic?" This also is how we get Abby Arcane, who will be the other human protagonist along with Matt, even though neither of them have any real identity yet except "person who can have adventures and isn't a monster." After a while it kind of seems like Matt and Abby are supposed to be a couple already, although there's been no romance at all.
Meanwhile, Berni Wrightson, who is at this point about 23 and has done just a little horror stuff (including an early proto-Swamp Thing story), is filling the pages with gorgeous shadowy images that wouldn't look out of place in '50s EC titles. His rendering of Swampy isn't as detailed as some, but it's a great design that's both heroic and monstery (recessing the nose and mouth beneath a little shelf is his best idea, as the face can look more human or more alien just by adjusting the shadows), and blends well with the way he draws the swamp; he's good with other monsters too, Arcane's crew, a werewolf, etc. Human beings are not his strong point yet; they don't look bad exactly, they're just in different styles from one panel to the next. One thing Wrightson does seem very uncertain of is how to draw a dog—so it's unfortunate that Wein introduces a dog in the beginning who will be important to the plot for quite a while (and he's so determined that we not forget about the dog that he even puts it on a plane to Romania during the Arcane story). In close-ups, Wrightson draws the dog looking a bit like present-day Sam Elliott.
There are a few themes established in these issues that will recur a lot. 1. Randomly recapping the origin of Swamp Thing every so often; you see that kind of thing to some extent in all comics from this time, just because it would be hard for a new reader to find back issues, but since Swampy's origin is somewhat complicated, the recaps are not brief. 2. Swampy meets an angry mob; they're afraid of anything that's different! 3. Swampy saves a weird child with psychic powers who's accused of being a witch! 4. Robots for no reason! 5. The ghosts of slaves, depicted sympathetically yet super-stereotypically (also, Wein's narration never fails to point out that a Black character you're looking at is in fact Black).
The Wein/Wrightson run leaves off at a fairly arbitrary point (another fight with Arcane*), and has only very briefly flirted with any larger DC Comics stuff (Batman shows up and is useless), but it's clear by this point that this is a pretty great idea for mixing many kinds of genre material. Maybe Alec can be cured some day, but that's not the focus of the story; it's about how sad yet cool it is to be a monster. Also, like Man-Thing and unlike basically all superhero comics, it mostly has a rural focus, which means it's possible to invent an infinite number of small towns in Louisiana and give each of them a different horror problem. It's not hard to see some influence of those qualities on later kinds of genre entertainment—Angel, The X-Files, etc.—even though so far we've only scratched the surface of what can be done with the actual premise.
Next: Redondo & friends; Conway blows it all up
no subject
2019-06-11 04:39 (UTC)no subject
2019-06-11 18:00 (UTC)