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Post by rberman on Mar 13, 2019 7:13:07 GMT -5
Swamp Thing #61 “All Flesh is Grass” (June 1987) Creative Team: Writing by Alan Moore. Pencils by Rick Veitch. Ink by Alfredo Alcala. The Story: On J586, planet of plant-people, we meet several citizens. Locliss and Disma make love but then quarrel. Shurla the artist makes sculptures out of animal parts but has no patience to explain her work to the rubes. Imrel the priest has lost his faith and is contemplating suicide. Medphyll the aged Green Lantern wonders about his place in the world following the death of his mentor Jothra. Their quotidian dramas are interrupted by the arrival of Swamp Thing, who constitutes a body for himself out of local flora-people. Sorry, folks, didn’t know you were sentient!  Medphyll realizes that a brute force attack will only harm the citizens comprising Swamp Thing. First he mesmerizes his foe with a strobe pattern, then gently plucks apart his constituent plant-people until all that’s left is a series of op-art spheres representing Swamp Thing’s soul. He allows Swamp Thing to animate Jothra’s body, until Swampy is ready to venture on to his next destination.  Back on Earth, Adam Strange finds Abby to tell her about Swamp Thing. But she’s endured so many pranksters that his tale of alien worlds is too outlandish for her to accept.  Covers that Lie: At no point does Swamp Thing have the Green Lantern ring, but the “I have three mouths, and I must scream” image is provocative. My Two Cents: Last issue, Swamp Thing was the accidental victim; here, he’s the accidental victimizer, using his powers blithely without any comprehension of the damage he is doing. Veitch has a lot of fun with the art, like this page (layout presumably by Moore) in which the individual panels form Swamp Thing’s face even though none of the constituent images contain him.  Medphyll is one of the oldest-known members of the Green Lantern corps, dating from Green Lantern #11 in 1962.  Medphyll has a degree of attachment to Jothra which is tempting to read as romantic, though that may just reflect a failure of the modern imagination that we have difficulty conceiving of close male-male bonds in any other terms in our culture. Think of all the jokes about gay hobbits, when what Tolkien was really thinking of was the band of brotherhood that forms between soldiers who risk death together.  The experience of joining together into Swamp Thing gives the citizens greater understanding of each other, resulting in some being more unsettled and some more confident. The tale of Shurla the artist seems particularly relevant to Moore, who must get tired of explaining the meaning of his work over and over to each new interlocutor. Ah, the ennui of the artiste!  The title of this issue comes from Isaiah 40:6-8, which contemplates the transience of our lives in the eternal scope: A voice says, “Cry!”
And I said, “What shall I cry?”
All flesh is grass,
and all its beauty is like the flower of the field.
The grass withers, the flower fades
when the breath of the LORD blows on it;
surely the people are grass.
The grass withers, the flower fades,
but the word of our God will stand forever.
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Post by mikelmidnight on Mar 13, 2019 12:28:17 GMT -5
The séance begins at Baron Winter’s house, allowing Seven Soldiers of mysticism to funnel their power through a reluctant Mento and observe what Swamp Thing is up to in Hell. It’s too much power; Sargon and Zatara, are immolated by the effort, and Mento goes mad. I am not sure what the result of all of this effort and sacrifice was; they are all merely observers of what goes on in Hell, without impacting the outcome. I'm not sure whose idea it was but it seemed annoyingly like an upper-management dictate to kill off older guys in tuxes. The miniseries kept the revisionist view, but played it seriously. Strange was turned into a moping and ineffectual character (very unsympathetic), Rann as we knew it was destroyed and turned into a floating city, and the supporting cast was killed or driven to madness. "Let's smash all the toys we used to play with" can work as a guideline if it's meant to build something new and interesting, but in that regard the series failed completely. The Alan Moore Adam Strange was something unexpected and funny; the miniseries' Adam Strange was something we had seen numerous times and was depressing to boot. I hated the idea of the subsequent series as much as I loved Moore's take. That's the standard followup to Moore though: latch onto his darkness and ignore his light and playfulness. Medphyll is one of the oldest-known members of the Green Lantern corps, dating from Green Lantern #11 in 1962. I appreciated Moore's attention to continuity here, as well as making an alien GL actually effective (they're usually only foils for Hal Jordan), and also his tendency to use heroes who think rather than punch their way out of conflicts. |
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Post by rberman on Mar 13, 2019 18:07:42 GMT -5
Medphyll is one of the oldest-known members of the Green Lantern corps, dating from Green Lantern #11 in 1962. I appreciated Moore's attention to continuity here, as well as making an alien GL actually effective (they're usually only foils for Hal Jordan), and also his tendency to use heroes who think rather than punch their way out of conflicts. And yet Moore complained when his own GL stories about Mogo and Sodam Yat were expanded upon by future writers. There's no pleasing some people! |
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Post by rberman on Mar 13, 2019 20:20:34 GMT -5
Swamp Thing #62 “Wavelength” (July 1987) Creative Team: Writing and pencils by Rick Veitch. Ink by Alfredo Alcala. The Story: Metron contemplates the corpses of nebula-sized Celestials who failed to pierce the Source Wall. He accidentally drains his chair of power while shrinking an ancient Mother Box down to a manageable size. Swamp thing materializes out of the Mother Box and offers to become Metron’s temporary chair, taking them both into The Source.  They pass through a variety of vistas, including a series of pages rendered in increasingly smaller grids (3x3, 4x4, 5x5), before arriving on Apokolips, where Darkseid announces that their journey was not really through The Source at all. Duh, as if anyone can go there!  Nevertheless, the journey has driven Swamp Thing insane. The restoration of his mind involves another series of hallucinations, including Swamp Thing’s fear that Constantine will woo Abby away from him, and his confusion of himself with Alec Olsen.  By the time it’s all over, Metron has his chair recharged, and Darkseid resolves to find a place for the concept of love within his unsolved Anti-Life Equation. My Two Cents: This issue was something of a slog. It seems like Veitch’s tribute to the ending of “2001: A Space Odyssey,” with Swampy and Metron journeying into a psychedelic op-art landscape and returning. But it relies heavily upon previous knowledge of Kirby’s Fourth World that I don’t have, so the endless half-explanations from Mother Box and Darkseid became tedious. Veitch needs to become a better storyteller if he wants to tackle backstory-heavy material like this. “Darkseid has never heard of love before now” makes for a trite conclusion as well.  Metron too comes across as a petulant moron. Is this typical for him? 
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Post by rberman on Mar 14, 2019 6:51:27 GMT -5
Swamp Thing #63 “Loose Ends (Reprise)” (August 1987) Creative Team: Writing by Alan Moore. Pencils by Rick Veitch. Ink by Alfredo Alcala. The Story: Abby visits comatose Matt Cable; no change in his status, but Moore pulls out all the stops with evocative captions.  Chester gives Liz Tremayne a pep talk. She’s recovered enough that sitting down in the bathtub seems safe enough. Visiting the hospital, he runs into Wallace Monroe, whose wife’s recent death was eased by consuming the Swamp Tuber which Chester had given to Wallace.  One by one, Swamp Thing exacts vengeance on the D.D.I. men who plotted his demise.  Finally, Swamp Thing shows himself to Abby, much to everyone’s delight.  My Two Cents: The title says it all. Moore has only one issue after this, so he’s using this issue to resolve all the dangling plot threads, wiping the board before Rick Veitch takes over as writer/artist. Abby talks a lot about what a great guy Chester is. She knows him from their environmental work. Does she know what his day job is?
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Post by mikelmidnight on Mar 14, 2019 11:27:54 GMT -5
Metron too comes across as a petulant moron. Is this typical for him? Absolutely not. He's cool and cerebral and way too smart to be so easily fooled. He has shown a willingness to chitchat with Darkseid in a neutral way, but has always made clear his allegiance to New Genesis. |
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Post by rberman on Mar 15, 2019 7:24:52 GMT -5
Swamp Thing #63 “Return of the Good Gumbo” (September 1987) Creative Team: Writing by Alan Moore. Pencils by Rick Veitch, Steve Bissette, and Tom Yeates. Ink by Alfredo Alcala. The Story: Swamp Thing and Abby hang out in the bog and talk about their experiences while apart. Swamp Thing plays Plastic Man, shaping himself into a boat for her to ride. He rassles an alligator. Abby consumes one of his tubers, and they make love. He ponders the meaning of sex, the possibility of using his powers to eradicate world hunger. He builds Abby a house in the Swamp. Chester and Liz come to greet Swamp Thing; they are moving in together. Swamp Thing encourages Liz to write another book.  My Two Cents: Moore is again operating in a beautifully poetic mode for this final story with no villains. He appears himself in the form of a Cajun swamp-man who feigns ignorance of the famous local monster.  Swamp Thing ultimately decides against feeding the world, on the reasonable theory that humanity would just use the extra resources to proliferate more, pollute more, fight more. Hey, maybe evil does exist after all! He doesn’t call it that, though, since naming it would undermine previous themes.  The previous tension in the Abby/Swamp Thing relationship resolves for the moment, as she agrees to commit to live in the swamp. She must enter his world, because he cannot live in hers. What life will she make for herself here? Moore leaves that for other writers to figure out. Eighty issues past her first appearance, Abby still has no clear personality beyond her attachment to Swamp Thing, and thus to protecting nature. Her origins as a nurse practitioner have been long abandoned; the only two jobs we've seen her work in America were menial waitressing or nurse's aide.  Stephen Bissette recalls his contribution to this issue: “Alan and I co-plotted the pages (8-19) over the phone. I penciled them and added a few notions (including the glimpses of the primordial Swamp Things that pepper pages 15-16, inspired by Walt Kelly and John O’Reilly’s 1952 illustrated book The Glob…” Thus ends Alan Moore’s tenure on Swamp Thing and our tour of this series. Rick Veitch took over from here, bringing John Constantine back, while DC was spinning up the separate Hellblazer series in which Constantine ran for 300 issues, making him one of DC’s most successful characters.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Mar 15, 2019 9:28:52 GMT -5
Moore left on an incredibly strong note. But I felt like it was time for him to leave. He'd said his piece and for me the long space arc was never fully realized and definitely petered out.
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Post by rberman on Aug 21, 2019 10:26:57 GMT -5
I found another Swamp Thing analogue in The House of Mystery #195 (October 1971). Bernie Wrightson drew a story (author unknown) about a soldier who unwisely messes with a tribe of "moss men" living in the forest/swamp. A few samples:    |
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Post by rberman on Aug 23, 2019 21:01:49 GMT -5
Yet another from that era was this Nick Cardy cover (and accompanying lead story) from June 1972. I detect a definite attempt to recapture the lightning in Wrightson's bottle.  Another Cardy cover a few months earlier added baby peril to the same basic domestic equation.  But this one later in 1972 takes the prize for most obvious rip-off of the theme. It's still Nick Cardy but looks much more cartoony for some reason.  |
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Post by amirh1382 on Nov 17, 2021 11:18:29 GMT -5
I don't remember whether you've mentioned it, but Chester is named after Bryan Talbot's head trip character Chester P. Hackenbush. I did not mention and did not know. Thanks for the detail. |
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Post by thwhtguardian on Jul 10, 2022 18:27:08 GMT -5
One of the truly great runs of any title in American comics. It was mined for so much derivative ideas that I’m surprised DC didn’t give us a whole classification of rhyming demons, with the Alliteratives, the Iambic pentametrists and the hendecasyllablists all waging a rap battle in some War of the Rhymers crossover. At the time, though, Etrigan speaking in rhymes added a wonderful creepiness to his presence. A touch of class contrasting his more bestial appearance. This thread will have me going through the long boxes, I can tell!!! Good job, rberman! They actually did give us classes of rhyming demons just like that in the nu52 title Demon Knights! |
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