Tell me about Swamp Thing

I'm not sure Tuomas is reading the same book that I did. Abby/Alec's love was presented as unearthly, but also grounded in the same sorts of experiences that are common to everyone, hence the "Rites of Spring" issue. As for it being a fairy-tale, well, it was presented in a book that was marginally, a superhero book, and superheroes (at the time) were pretty much just modern fairy tales. Though I don't see how you could reconcile that term with the horrors presented with The Monkey King, Arcane and Abby's trip to Hell.

And anyone who didn't start out on text-heavy comics (of which you had many examples in the 60s-80s in the US, actually it was the primary mode) would think that SWAMP THING is completely out of control when it came to text on the page. I actually like it. It feels like it was written as much as it was scripted. Haven't read it in several years, but I'm not sure I'd take the pruning shears to it. Different strokes, etc.

If you think there's a huge difference between SWAMP THING and his other contemporary work, I'd look to his editors and collaborators, since no writer is an island in comics, not even Alan Moore (who at the time was just another new writer and not the titan he is in the field now.)

Yeah, I love most everything Moore's done, but I've never been able to get into his Swamp Thing run. Too much caption-itis, etc.

It is too bad that Swamp Thing has not been put out in some Showcase editions, both the Bernie Wrightson and Totleben/Bissette artwork would look great in black and white.

I got into the Moore run on Swamp Thing pretty early on. It is a pretty crazy book when you think that the thing used to be sold in grocery stores, it wasn't even a direct title until way later on. I have not read any of those issues in twenty years, but they are on my list to go back and check out. I remember the issue where Abby eats the tubar was very trippy and the issues where Batman shows up with one of the Arcane arcs was really great.

I've read Moore's run more times than I can count - the first thing of his I ever saw (since it was the first American mass market thing of his available...? I remember seeing issues of Warrior around the same time). I musta been 12-13. The captions do get pretty purple and heavy-handed. Otoh it allows for him to do all kinds of great transitions - stuff he would later get a lot of mileage out of on Watchmen - it made the stories feel bound together by a creepy synchronicity.

Waiting for Heave Ho to start the Adrianne Barbeau thread on ILHTML.

I'm pretty sure there's some recent (last two or three years) pocket book format pre-Moore Swamp Thing repring.

yo: Secret of Swamp Thing

I guess the Moore run isn't that bad, it's just that too much text in captions is the one thing I hate most in comics, I've left quite a many comics in the shelf that might've been good otherwise (like Sacco's Palestine) because of that. It just totally undermines comics' own strength as a medium, since most of the stuff in the captions could be told with images. Also, it's often even so that the captions could be left off without changing anything else, because the images themselves already tell the story strongly enough, but it feels like the writer doesn't trust the images enough, so he has to include the extra text. This happens in Swamp Thing too, and the reason I find especially strange is that Moore is normally such a visual, anti-caption storyteller.

"Normally" needs to be placed in context - the majority of his work between 1978 and 1983 is very word-heavy. It's far more the style of the text than the wordiness itself that changed on Swamp Thing.

I haven't read a lot of his early work, but he'd already started V for Vendetta before Swamp Thing and was writing Watchmen around the same time, right? So the wordiness seems more an aesthetic choice than something he hadn't grown out of yet.

If you have real problems with wordy Alan Moore, check out the final Miracleman book he did.

Watchmen is two-three years later.

Watchmen hit the shops in 1986, and Moore's last Swamp Thing issue was in 1987, so he was writing them at the same time. I've read some 1986 Swamp Thing issues, and they still have that caption thing, so I think it's safe to say Moore simply chose a different aesthetic than with Watchmen.

From Hell = wordiest thing he ever did

(altho not captions)

Watchmen hit the shops in 1986, and Moore's last Swamp Thing issue was in 1987, so he was writing them at the same time. I've read some 1986 Swamp Thing issues, and they still have that caption thing, so I think it's safe to say Moore simply chose a different aesthetic than with Watchmen.

But he STARTED one before the other, they weren't consistently concurrent. It's ludicrous to argue that he chose his style on Swamp Thing in opposition to his style on Watchmen when Watchmen started years later, and to refuse to acknowledge that Watchmen was part of him deliberately moving away from his early, wordy aesthetic when you HAVEN'T READ any of the early stuff!

Swamp Thing was Bernie Wrightson's breakout work. I have all those early issues, they're great. Very ECish.

When I was a kid I had random issues of Swamp Thing, mainly from Moore's run. In the past year I've started reading it from the very beginning (Bronze Age Omnibus) and I'm currently in the Wheeler years.

The old monster comics were fine and fun, if repetitive. Swamp Thing falls off another truck and stumbles into shenanigans! Alan Moore had some perfect issues, occasionally handicapped by bad art. Bissette + Totleben is consistenly good in a strange, appropriate way. Alfredo Alcala's inking kills anything that it touches. He inked some Bissette and it sucked. He's the inker for the end of Moore's run all the way through Wheeler. I assume he leaves when Nancy Collins starts?

Rick Veitch's run sucks with occasionally bits of goodness. In general I dislike the intrusion of super heroes and guests in Swamp Thing, but Moore managed to do it well for the most part. During Veitch's tenure it becomes ridiculous and the art is clunky and the stories go off the rails. Doug Wheeler's run is also shit, maybe because the art is so bad? His voice is better than Veitch, but there's not a lot to love.

I feel like I'm chasing the high of Moore's run with drastically diminishing returns. How much longer before it gets better? Does it get better? I've read mixed things about Nancy Collins and her omnibus is out of print, so maybe I should give up on this.

Rick Veitch's run sucks

Get out.

The intertwining Veitch ST & Delano Hellblazer runs are some of my all-time favorite comics (as I mentioned fifteen years ago upthread and also elsewhere).

Nancy Collins's run is mostly godawful. Avoid.

Do yrself a favor and jump ahead to Morrison & Millar. You won't have missed anything.

Hmmm. If the Veitch bit is your fave, then I may hold out for more opinions on Collins.

Seriously, get Sgt Rock and Tomahawk and all the rando DC stars of yore out of my swamp horror. Honestly, I would be happy with a soap opera all about Abby, Alec & Teffe.

Is Sandman the thing to turn to if Alan Moore Swamp Thing was my jam?

Another vote for Roaring Rick here so take it with a salt lick but I would recommend more Moore really; the ABC comics are often extremely Swampy, partic Promethea

I've read two of the Moore collections and am working through the current miniseries by Ram V. That New 52 Omnibus that just came out has been calling to me.

wasn't resurrection of old, forgotten characters Moore's thing though? floronic man, solomon grundy, etrigan... that's basically what Watchmen is too. and loeg.

i have big holes in my swamp thing collection after volume 2, i should try and pick up the pieces. there's a comixology gn sale every month but they aren't the bargains they were.

Agree that skipping to the Millar run is better than reading anything in between, or jumping to Sandman and Promethea would both be more fulfilling. Maybe try Brat Pack on the way, just to see if you like Rick's actual thoughts on superheroes, though.

Or Maximortal, which is one of my favorite Veitch joints (and one of my favorite comics period).

Although if you didn't like his ST run he might just not be for you, as his other work isn't that dissimilar.

Brat Pack has an ending and is far more scabrous.

Fuck it. Bought a huge chunk of the rest of ST vol 2 off of Ebay fro pretty cheap. Can Nancy Collins be as bad as Doug Wheeler? I'll find out!

What about vol 3 that focuses on Tefe? Any good?

are you asking for reverse psychology or

No, v3 is not particularly good. Yes, I know it's written by fan favorite Brian K. Vaughn. It's still not particularly good. Feels (retroactively) a bit like a CW show. Tefe's a teen, fyi.

If you do pick it up, though, don't forget to get a copy of the related Swamp Thing Secret Files (featuring a story written by an ILXor!).

I’m probably going to begrudgingly work my way through it. I read some of Moore’s best issues when I was 9 or so and they still fascinate me. So much so that I want to see where the characters wind up. At some point it will get better than the Doug Wheeler era.

to the best of my memory, Swamp Thing never got 50% as good again as it was when moore was on it. reading books for the characters is totally understandable but I think you're at a dry well.

Hard disagree, but that's generally the line I draw with Hellblazer (the initial Delano run is fantastic, everything after is a pale shadow if not outright shitty).

(roaring rick excepted of course)

a dry well.

yeah, if you a) don't like Veitch and b) won't skip to Millar or c) jump over to Hellblazer/Sandman et al, you're definitely in for a tough slog. although Collins is probably better than Wheeler, if that's the totality of your bar...

Doug Wheeler's run is also shit, maybe because the art is so bad?

Several decades ago I bought every instalment of Quest For the Elementals as a bargain bundle and I remember the art being quite nice and clean, but the story sucking.

I forgot/never knew that Millar did a run. Wikipedia doesn't make it sound particularly worth reading.

It's pretty good, one of the better Millars IMO. Can't remember if it's still rumored or more or less confirmed at this point that Morrison ghosted quite a bit of that run beyond his initial four issues.

I don't believe I can ever be objective about Doug Wheeler's run, as the issue where Swampy traverses hell with Bartle at his side was my first ever randomly purchased (or semi-randomly, as that eye-catching Totleben cover depicting the infernal gates still looks pretty killer to me) mature readers comic at the ripe old age of 12 and I continued to fascinatedly buy that run and the Quest for the Elementals was just the most epic thing I'd ever read at that point and frankly still seems pretty great if you want my unvarnished opinion which, as I note, is untrustworthy as all get out in this instance.

I think I read it shortly after bingeing Moore's run for the first time so may not have been judging it on its own merits.

At the very least, you have to give it up to Wheeler and Millar for their willingness to get weird and swing for the fences. Both runs really push the boundaries with these long epics that mimic what Moore and Veitch did with their respective runs. And Wheeler took on the pretty thankless task of subbing in for Veitch (and Gaiman/Delano) at the last minute, which clearly didn't even pay off for him in the long term (the only other credit I recall of his was one of the Tekno Comics books right before that whole thing imploded).

The Collins run started out decently but the wheels came off quickly. Pretty much everything she did was low stakes as hell, which can be fine and which a better writer can pull off in a compelling way. But even her character development stank, so there was no real upside to scaling the title back into this domestic drama centered around Louisiana. The horror/supernatural elements are just dull as hell and often retreads of what came before (a serial killer, a ghost pirate, a patchwork monster, the return of Arcane, yawn). And, boy, I sure hope you like exclamation marks! Because at some point she starts ending every sentence with them! And I'm honestly not even exaggerating! Every single sentence! It's ultimately just a soggy, effortless endeavor where absolutely nothing of consequence happens beyond the very end of the very last issue of her run, where Abby leaves Swampy and one of the elementals drags Tefe away into the Green.

A slight derail, but I disagree on Hellblazer! I love love love the Delano run, but there is stuff worthwhile after that. I know that people like Garth Ennis for the wrong reasons (juvenile sensibility, violence), but some of his issues are really beautiful short fiction, particularly the issues where John leaves and it's just Kit and the book just becomes these funny/wistful short stories about Irish city life, sorta like Brendan Behan or an early Terence Davies movie.

Most people forget there was this Paul Jenkins/Sean Phillips run. It is less flashy and superheroic, but it has this tone of middle aged melancholy that I quite like and great moody art...

There are a few issues that are generally not as available by Eddie Campbell--it's not a perfect run, but it has a kooky texture and Australian politics; a kind of interesting vibe. There is also one issue by Gaiman and Dave McKean as a rare interior artist that is worth looking over.

However, I agree on the other stuff not being great!

Ennis wasn't bad but most of my disdain for his run is that he turned John Constantine into a stock Ennis character and then most subsequent writers just ran with his changes. Moore and Delano's Constantine was much more nuanced and not merely the swaggering, smirking Dreamworks caricature he later became.

There was well-written stuff after Delano but I'm generally just not that into the runs that lean more Ennis. Jenkins and Carey did alright and hearkened back to the OG Conjob a bit.

I prefer the writing on the Ennis issues (at least until Steve Dillon came onboard), and the art on the Delano issues (although iirc John Rxdgwxy refused to draw some 'blasphemous' content? - (sic) may know more - and also about Eddie's abrupt departure from Hellblazer)

Swamp Thing just seems like one of those titles that has had every possible variation wrung from it and has no real reason to keep on going other than copyright control.

I would agree with that. Even as a huge fan of the character, I quit a short way into the Diggle/Dysart run (v4, I believe?) and haven't returned. Millar's end to v2 is just fine as a stopping point.

I really liked Jenkins' Hellblazer run, at least most of it. To me, it felt like he combined elements of the Delano and Ennis versions of the character, but without the worst indulgences of either. Some of the stories related to Constantine's past, which had been kind of confusing up to that point (to me at least), and gave it some clarity. The only downside is that the last three or four stories were a bit aimless and disappointing.

The weird thing with Delano, for me, is that I enjoyed the one-off issue he wrote long after his actual run a lot more than the run itself!

Does Constantine ever discover the tree tattoo on his butt that Swampy got when he was controlling Constantine's body? Abby mentions it once but Constantine didn't seem to catch what she was saying. Does this pay off in Hellblazer or something, or did it get forgotten about?

idrc, but Constantine gets involved in enough opportunistic sex magick through the years that it probably doesn't bother him

also about Eddie's abrupt departure from Hellblazer

p much what you'd expect - he just didn't get on with the Big Two system of editorial involvement, and bailed out. he especially resisted the editor's chosen plot of sending white magician John to the Australian outback to go on a vision quest with a "witch doctor" from a made-up indigenous people. keen-eyed readers may note that Jenkins' run immediately opens with this cover

afair Campbell's only other stint on an ongoing WFH book was two issues on Captain America this century, in which he confidently drew Iron Man looking like this, having not kept up to date on costume changes in the previous four decades

one issue by Gaiman and Dave McKean as a rare interior artist that is worth looking over

the Morrison/ Lloyd two-parter that ran next to this is also good