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.

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

Swamp Thing Vol. 5 - Earth to Earth

Swamp Thing Vol. 5 - Earth to Earth
By Alan Moore, Stephen R. Bissette, John Totleben and Rick Veitch

The start of the third duology in what amounts to a trilogy of them -- Volume 5 works as a pair with Volume 6; Volumes 3 and 4 also stand together as a whole, as do 1 and 2 -- Earth to Earth is in some ways one of the most enjoyable stretches of the series for me. Maybe because Alan Moore wasn't content to keep hammering at that Gothic horror nail and instead wanted to keep experimenting. Maybe because the idea of Gotham being turned into a primordial forest fascinated me.

Maybe a lot of things, but the bottom line was, I really enjoyed this.

So Abby's (admittedly creepy) love affair with the Swamp Thing is revealed, and she is charged and held for crimes against humanity. I can buy that. Interesting how traditional the way in which this story is built up. Moore introduced the plot strands setting this up quite a few issues back, taking it slow until his epic American Gothic arc was finished. The moment that story wrapped up the seeds of this one germinated and flowered into the most serious display of Swamp Thing's power to date.

The very idea of this arc fascinates me. It is the fruit of seeds (there I go with seed references again) planted waaaaay back at the start of Moore's run, when he first began to toy with the idea of Swamp Thing and Abby's love. See, you can't have a love story without tearing it down. Basic rule of fiction, right? So here we get a wedge driven between them. She is taken away. Swamp Thing is driven to rage and brings Gotham City to a halt by overgrowing the entire city with vegetation. It's an awesome display of power that could have felt comic booky had Moore not handled it with a kind of lyrical meditation on the way in which urban settings asphyxiate us. (Interestingly enough, just days prior to reading this I read a news story indicating that scientific research supports the idea that people who live on tree-lined streets live happier, healthier, safer lives. Here is that story.)

If we're in Gotham that means the Dark Knight. Moore's handling of Batman here was excellent. Moore and Batman are not necessarily a combo that fills me with glee -- I feel that The Killing Joke is Moore's most overrated work -- but you wouldn't know it here. I like this Batman. Tough, relentless, unwilling to give in, but also reasonable, noble, and fiercely loyal to his city.

It doesn't all click, though. Why couldn't Swamp Thing just free Abby and take her away? The explanation we get is half-hearted at best, as if Moore knew he had to address the question but didn't feel like fully thinking it out. Building a statue to this creature after he paralyzed your city? I didn't buy it. An excuse for some long speeches looking back at who Swamp Thing was. (I did like the melodrama of Abby's mourning, though. Absolutely lovely, stirring writing.)

And though I really loved the build up -- if you're willing to go along for the ride the core of this arc is outstanding -- the way in which Swamp Thing is "killed" is a wee bit hokey, laced with Star Trek gobblygook that didn't really ring true to me. Swamp Thing is an elemental, essentially a god, and they're talking "frequencies" and all that? Pseudo science jargon? Didn't click. But I guess Moore needed a way to have Swamp Thing defeated. See, while I can't say for sure that by this point Moore wrote himself into a corner, it was becoming clear that he had a supremely powerful being on his hands, a creature closer to a god than a mere horror. The only things he could throw at him were purely supernatural in nature, and as we know now Moore rarely treads in the same territory for long.

So, he figured out a way to shoot Swamp Thing into space.

This is one of those stories that shouldn't work, yet does in spite of itself. Swamp Thing is on some distance planet, manipulating plants and fungus to recreate the comforting world he once knew, but it's all empty and hollow and eventually falls apart. The false love he creates for himself. The comforting home. All of it a lie, and so he casts it aside before he falls into madness. Quite tragic, really, and handled well. A perfect setup for further adventures in space because it showed the potential behind such a seemingly outlandish idea. I mean, this is a swamp guy. What the hell is he doing in space?

And why the hell does it work?

Because it's in the hands of a writer arguably at the peek of his powers, in the midst of a period during which almost everything he wrote was pure gold. This is just more of the same.

Which is to say, another big pile of gold.

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. 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. 3 - The Curse

Swamp Thing Vol. 3 - The Curse
By Alan Moore, Stephen R. Bissette and John Totleben

It's a good thing Alan Moore and company do what they do well, because the heavy-handed politics on display in the first portion of this volume are the kind of thing that usually sours me on a story. But it was handled well. Obvious and in your face, yes, but well written and illustrated, and enhanced with newspaper clippings tossed around on the pages like so much litter, a presentation so strong that it's easy to forget that the politics are clunkier than the Moore of legend would give us.

At this point Moore started to use Swamp Thing as a platform to talk about Important Issues, from environmental issues to guns to racism and more. It's all a bit in your face, lacking the more refined approach he'd later develop, but he was probably able to develop that more subtle approach in part because he cut his teeth here. Besides, as far as I'm concerned it's hard to find fault with someone who is aspiring to do something great, and that is certainly what Moore was attempting. He was aiming high.

Like in "The Curse," for instance, a story centering on the societal abuse and subjugation of women. Moore takes the ancient tradition of "menstruation huts" and turns it into a tragic werewolf-on-the-loose story. A standard story with a shot of social commentary thrown in the mix. It's a good tale, but what really stands out is the way in which he uses repeated words, phrases and symbolism to underscore the thematic material he's dealing with. Moore would go on to use techniques like this in landmark works such as Watchmen.

The most notable thing in this volume, of course, is the introduction of John Constantine, star of the popular Hellblazer series, central character of a Keanu Reeves film, and the tie that binds so many of DC/Vertigo's magical/supernatural worlds together. It's interesting to see how fully formed he was from the start. This isn't an embryonic version of the character, it's him in all his surly, mysterious glory. He's great.

Also great is the way in which Alan Moore begins building a huge mystery, as if the end of the world is coming. Most of these stories are standalone tales or two-parters, yet this entire volume holds together as a unified whole because Moore injects this mounting dread into every story. They call it the "American Gothic" arc (which continues into Volume 4), and it's pretty great. The narrative jumps from place to place, dealing with the uglier aspects of Americana as he does. It's all over the map, but again, it stands together as a unified whole.

Reading this stuff makes me scratch my head at the people who dismiss Alan Moore as overrated. Here it becomes clear that he was dead brilliant even before he became Alan Moore Creator of Watchmen.

This is essential reading by any measure.

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.

Swamp Thing Vol. 1 - Saga of the Swamp Thing

Swamp Thing Vol. 1 - Saga of the Swamp Thing
By Alan Moore, Stephen R. Bissette and John Totleben

I was not among the lucky ones who first encountered Alan Moore's now legendary run on Swamp Thing while it was first being published. At that time I was still immersed in the world of standard superhero fare, blissfully unaware that comics could be more than one guy in tights beating up another guy in tights. It wasn't until I had dropped out of comics and then returned again years later that I discovered these books. I first read them as presented in DC's collected editions, and it is those collected editions that I read here.

We begin with The Saga of the Swamp Thing, within which legendary writer Alan Moore, with the help of artists Stephen R. Bissette and John Totleben, reinvented a swamp creature, and in the process helped change the world's understanding of what comics could be. Landmark series like Sandman, Hellblazer and Lucifer, all of which I'll be reading for this blog, sprang from what began here.

So how is it? A better question would be, how many different kinds of awesome is this collection? About 17 or so, I'd say. It's pretty astonishing that these stories hit the shelves in 1984. Think about that. These tales are already 25 years old! The writing is just so far ahead of virtually everything else that was on the shelf during that time, I can only imagine the shock people must have felt when they first read them. It must have been a terrible blow for established comic writers of the time. "Oh shit, guys, look at this. This guy ... he can actually write. We're doomed."

I mean, boom, right out of the gate Moore reinvents Swamp Thing with a stirring, chilling tale about as well crafted as they come. "The Anatomy Lesson" is probably in the top 10 single issues Moore has ever written. He dismantles everything we knew about Len Wein and Bernie Wrightson's creation, replacing their man-turned-into-monster with a creature of nature, a beast birthed of the Earth itself. And he did it in a gloomy, heavy, dark fantasy story that sends chills up the bone. What a wakeup call!

And then he keeps going with two superb storylines (the first better than the second) that manage a nightmarish sort of brooding without feeling overly melodramatic or purple. It shouldn't have worked. He uses an obscure B-grade villain called the Florian Man as the main nemesis. This should have been goofy as hell, but instead it becomes magically delicious horror.

Really, if you can't see the awesome in this, you're dead and filled with bugs inside.

Mind you, the art takes a little getting used to. Even upon rereading, Bissette's art is vague and distorted, ugly as often as it's beautiful and often looking like a first draft. But that's what makes it WORK, I think. The art and Moore's writing were a perfect marriage. Closeups of bloated faces and intricately drawn swampland and humans who sometimes barely look human. Perfect. Anywhere else you wonder what this guy is drawing, yet here you wouldn't ask for anything different.

I do hate Moore's Etrigan, though. Maybe it's because I hate verse in general. I've an aversion to rhymes not unlike my aversion to mayonnaise. I know people like it and I'm glad for them, but keep it away from me, please. Whenever Etrigan was on the page I wanted to rush through things.

That's how good this is. It's so good that I'm forced to resort to lousy nitpicks like that just to avoid gushing the entire time. This volume is solid gold. Solid freakin' gold. Anyone who hasn't it read it SHOULD. Like, NOW.

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.