Swamp Thing Vol. 6 - Reunion

Swamp Thing Vol. 6 - Reunion
By Alan Moore, Stephen R. Bissette, John Totleben and Rick Veitch

The end of the sixth volume of Alan Moore's legendary Swamp Thing run is, in fact, The End.

Oh, the series went on. There was critically acclaimed work that followed, including by the excellent Rick Veitch (Can't Get No), but this truly feels like the end of a saga.

Volume six caps off everything Moore built and created starting with volume one, and it does so with as much inventiveness and experimentation as when he started. Swamp Thing is in deep space, coming in contact with an array of unusual cultures on his journey back to Earth. The tales here may not be as strong as what came before -- I did not find the stories here as engaging -- but I appreciated Moore's continued willingness to experiment even as he neared the end of his time on the book. A spaced out psychedelic text story told from the point of view of a massive organic machine, for instance, did not engage me as a reader, but I admire the fact that this team took chances even at this late stage of the game. It would have been easy to coast at this point, to take it easy and finish out their run, but they weren't content to do so. That's the mark of a great creator.

Through these space tales Moore messes around with viewpoint and style again and again. When it works, it works. Really liked the Adam Strange story and REALLY liked the Green Lantern tale on the world with sentient plants. What a disturbing mess that incarnation of Swamp Thing was! Thousands of lifeforms fused into one massive, crazed Swamp Thing!

There are two non-Moore stories here. Normally that might be a knock against a collected edition, but not here. Stephen Bissette and Rick Veitch each turn in a tale, and both are excellent efforts that fit nicely with the tone set by Moore. If you removed the credits many readers wouldn't notice (though some would). They're not quite as effortless as Moore's work, not as graceful or refined, but geez, whose is? Both are excellent and well worth inclusion here.

Alan Moore has been criticized by some as being bad at endings, but that's not an issue here. This is a great, entirely appropriate end to his run. It feels like an end, THE end; like the saga he began several years prior had reached its natural finish and that this character's story had come to a close for good. An easy place for other writers to pick up with their own stories, yes, but really ...

This is The End.

Overall this run was amazing. I wasn't as drawn into this final batch of stories as the earlier stuff (nothing to do with the space theme, either, which I liked), but that's not because they were bad, it's because the other stuff was so extraordinarily good. Reading this only solidifies my view that Alan Moore is the greatest writer in comics.

An earlier version of this review was originally posted at IMWAN.com.

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Swamp Thing Vol. 4 - A Murder of Crows

Swamp Thing Vol. 4 - A Murder of Crows
By Alan Moore, Stephen R. Bissette, John Totleben and Rick Veitch

So Vol. 4 of Alan Moore's legendary Swamp Thing run is very much a companion to Vol. 3 -- not surprising, I suppose, as these are collections from an ongoing series, not a series of graphic novels -- and continues the American Gothic tale started there. John Constantine (of Hellblazer fame) is still leading Swamp thing here, there and everywhere, forcing him to confront the ugliest sides of mankind. We do horrible things to one another, you see (a stunning revelation, that), and Swampie needs to see it. It's all in preparation for some vague Great Big Evil that is going to be dropped on the world. It's like Creeping Death, only not the Metallica song, and it has nothing to do with flatulence.

Anyway, as with the previous volume, the building sense of dread and foreboding is well executed and highly effective. Each story stands on its own two feet as a great piece of dark fiction, yet when read together each seems to be bringing us closer to an awful end. Long before collected editions were the norm (or even on the radar, for that matter), Moore was creating stories that managed to be both effective serial fiction and fantastic long-form stories. That kind of work is a balancing act. Even today, decades after these comics first hit the shelves and years after these trails were blazed, it's a trick very few comic writers manage to pull off.

Know what else? This volume has a Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover!

Ahhh, the crossover, crutch of publishers and bane of the reader who just wants a good, self-contained story. Worse still that this was a crossover with the famous (infamous?) Crisis, a landmark moment in continuity wank that prompted lots more continuity wank. Continuity wank that continues to this day. (I am very much on record as someone who despises obsessive comic book continuity.) Kudos to Moore for not making Crisis come across like the massive masturbatory effort it was. A crossover like this is the sort of thing that really should have seemed out of place in this book, especially coming in the midst of a dense storyline about the end of the world, yet he made it work.

Know what else he made work? A bunch of trees with faces. That's right, trees with faces.

This whole SERIES is full of stuff that has no business being good yet manages to be good anyway. I mean, at one point Abby, Swamp Thing's lover -- right there is something that shouldn't work -- eats a chunk of plant off him. Eats a chunk of plant off him! And this is supposed to be sensual! That should not work. Not even a little. Yet it does. It does come across as sensual and erotic. Okay, maybe kinda a touch goofy, but Moore and company play it so straight that ultimately, it works.

A Murder of Crows culminates in an extended climax featuring a burning hot seance kinda thing, Swamp Thing and a whole slew of quasi-mystical guests fighting a giant tower of black goo in Hell, and a vague ending right out of anime. This sounds scattered and strange, I know, but trust me, it's full of teh awezomes.

Some 25 years after the fact, this remains some of the strongest periodical comic work I've ever read. Highly impressive and essential reading for any lover of the craft.

An earlier version of this review was originally posted at IMWAN.com.

Read my regular, everything-and-anything (usually on writing and music) blog right over here.

Swamp Thing Vol. 2 - Love and Death

Swamp Thing Vol. 2 - Love and Death
By Alan Moore, Stephen R. Bissette and John Totleben

"Hey, that's Matthew the Raven!"

Pretty much my thought while reading the initial arc of this Swamp Thing volume. It was my thought because I am an ass. I never put two-and-two together and realized this Matt was Matthew the Raven from Neil Gaiman's The Sandman. Maybe it was obvious the whole time, maybe it was discussed in interviews and the like, but up until recently I hadn't read many Gaiman interviews and don't recall reading about this connection until seeing it mentioned in, I think, an Absolute Sandman edition.

So right away I had a small joy while re-reading these stories.

Anyway, Love and Death picks up right where The Saga of the Swamp Thing left off, which is to say it continues to make most mainstream comics look not only like work for children, but the work of children. This second collection of Alan Moore's legendary run picks up threads of a story that only existed in the background of that first volume and expands them into a story that is about as horrifying a thing as I've read. I'm talking specifically about Abby and Matthew and, and ....

bugs ...

For all the flack Moore gets for going too far with comics -- misguided critics claim he relies on cheap, easy shock -- stories like this one show that he does indeed know how to use restraint. His restraint is, in fact, what makes the horror here so damn HORRIBLE. He doesn't outright show us or even tell us of the terrible thing that leaves Abby a shaking, quaking mess, but we know what it is. Oh yes, we know. And holy hell does it ever leave you itchy and squirmy and grotesquely unsettled.

Deliciously well done arc, quite disturbing in every way.

Also in this volume, Moore dabbles a bit in the mythology of the afterlife, a bit of DC's world that is not quite consistent between this and Hellblazer and Lucifer and Sandman, all spinoffs of Swamp Thing in one way or another. Moore was among the first (the first?) to really start fleshing out the idea of what DC's heaven and hell are like. Here we get it in an embryonic form only, and it doesn't always jive with what came later. But whatever. It works despite that.

There is also a homage to Walt Kelly's Pogo near the end of this collection, one that has garnered a good deal of praise, and you know what? I don't care for it. It didn't grab me the first time I read it and didn't grab me this time, either. Mind you, it's an astonishing piece of writing. I marvel at Moore's amazing wordsmithing. He forges dozens of brand new, perfectly understandable nonsense words that actually have layered, nuanced meanings. From a writing perspective it's an stunning achievement.

But I just didn't enjoy reading it. I found it a chore to slog through the otherwise impressive wordcraft here. Was terribly heartbroken at the tragic ending made all the more tear-jerking for its mix of light cartoonishness and dark happenings, but overall this story just doesn't win me over the way it wins over many critics.

The final story in this volume is "Rites of Spring," which is the semi-infamous "Swamp Thing sex issue," only it really isn't that at all. That's a dumb tag thrown onto the story by dumb people who probably need to get out of their dumb house for a few hours or something. Anything to make them less dumb. This is more of a drug trip issue, which, let's be honest, almost nobody has ever done well.

I'm not enamored with the trippy part of this issue -- "psychedelic" stuff often seems like a good idea in theory, but in execution it rarely is -- but thankfully it's not the bulk of what makes it special. What makes it special is the mature way in which it explores its thematic material. "Rites of Spring" is a rather stirring look at the consummation of love between two people. It is the culmination of the courtship began in the first volume. When it gets into the stretch of pages with all sorts of crazy I find it loses me, but Moore's examination of the spiritual side of love is moving and ends on a gloriously upbeat note.

Most impressive about Love and Death is Moore's refusal to keep things easy for himself. Far from being content to find a good approach and milk it, he relentlessly challenged himself. He refused to tread the same ground and pushed himself to experiment every chance he got.

I still can't imagine what people were thinking as this was coming out. Must have been mind-blowing.

An earlier version of this review was originally posted at IMWAN.com.

Read my regular, everything-and-anything (usually on writing and music) blog right over here.

Can't Get No - Rick Veitch

This review was originally published at DVDinmyPants.com. Read it in full here.

Can't Get No
By Rick Veitch
(Swamp Thing, 1963, Abraxas And The Earthman)

As an artist and writer, Rick Veitch has paid his dues in the world of comics. While probably best known for his work on Swamp Thing (first as an artist with writer Alan Moore, then taking on full duties with his own acclaimed run) and Heavy Metal magazine, as well as other Moore collaborations, including 1963 and co-creating ABC Comics' Greyshirt character, he has in recent years built up an impressive library of graphic novels, including The One, Brat Pack, and Abraxas And The Earthman.

The most recent addition and one worthy of inclusion on your bookshelf – if you're up for a challenging read, that is – is his latest work, Can't Get No. Billed by some as a post 9-11 work, it's far more than that.

Chad Roe, a businessman who is down on his luck, gets terribly plastered one evening and against his will is tattooed from head to toe by two women. This sends his life into a downward spiral, a spiral accelerated when he is witness to the attacks of September 11, 2001. What follows is a journey of introspection and self-discovery.

First and foremost, and the hardest thing to avoid when talking about Can’t Get No, is the presentation. Not as much the sizing of the pages – it is presented in a “widescreen” 7.25” x 5.75” format, which made for some attractive layouts - but rather the mix of image-driven storytelling overlaid with a twisting, druggy poem of epic length. The images crispy, clearly and dynamically tell a story, while the text is a book length, sometimes pretentious poem that ostensibly has nothing to do with the narrative, yet more often than not intertwines with and comments on that narrative. I really enjoyed this device. While from time to time the two would drift a bit too far apart, when they two came together they really impacted one another in a big way, the verse adding weight and heft to the story, and vice versa. When we see the markers that will disrupt Roe's life in several ways, and the text speaks of a “suffocating self-embrace,” the two separate works become one. Very effective technique. It moves along at such a smooth and rapid clip that the moments when the text gets jarring or clunky or pretentious (and there are a few, most especially the latter) are put behind you swiftly. Far from being a gimmick, it’s truly an essential part of the experience.

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