 Swamp Thing changed the course of American comics. The mature
readers label, and the entire Vertigo line, sprung out of Swamp Thing's "sophisticated
suspense." It made
Alan Moore
famous and taught him how to write stories of 20+ pages. It provided a home for Mark Millar
long before he was famous. It featured work by Neil Gaiman, Rick Veitch,
Grant Morrison,
and Jon J. Muth. It brought John Totleben to national attention. It inspired and influenced
The Sandman.
Its spin-off series, Hellblazer, introduced
Jamie Delano
to the American public, which watched him remold an ambiguous character into the most
worthwhile of all corporate American properties. The same title brought the
Preacher
team of
Garth Ennis,
Steve Dillon, and Glenn Fabry from obscurity to national attention. It
also featured writing by Brian Azzarello, Phil Jenkins,
Warren Ellis,
Eddie Campbell,
Grant Morrison,
and Neil Gaiman -- as well as art by Dave McKean, Kent Williams, David Lloyd, Richard Corben,
and lots of work by Sean Phillips.
Here is the whole story, seperated into eras for your ease of
understanding. These eras are as follows:
Following these eras is a list of other sites of interest.
Here I have to confess: I love Swamp Thing and Hellblazer.
Hellblazer has proven to be the best corporate-owned title in America.
Jamie Delano's
work on the title is quite good and established John Constantine as a realistic character, one
haunted by a past built up by being involved in so much horror. Garth Ennis's work on the
title has been quite fun. Paul Jenkins's work has been underrated.
Warren Ellis
and Brian Azzarello, as well as Neil Gaiman,
Grant Morrison,
and Eddie Campbell, have also written quite memorable stories for the title. While
Hellblazer has come to overshaddow Swamp Thing, the progenitor title has proven
quite good as well. The issues of the original series featuring Bernie Wrightson's art are
quite good, setting the muck-encrusted monster against bizarre opponents such as Anton Arcane
and in bizarre situations, such that of a robotic town. While Martin Pasko's issues are not
particularly memorable, they set the stage for
Alan Moore's
venerated run on the title, one of great subtlety.
Moore's classic "The Anatomy
Lesson" remains the ultimate revision to a character's history. He had Swamp Thing have sex
with Abby Arcane; when he featured vampires, he pointed out that they could live underwater
better than on land; when he featured a warewolf in "The Curse", he linked it to menstruation;
when he wrote a zombie story, he tied it to slavery and fear of rotting corpses in graves,
ending the tale brilliantly with a zombie getting a job in a movie ticket booth, a workspace
much like a coffin, making the obvious yet revolutionary argument that slavery is not dead:
it has only transposed itself onto the workplace. In this period (so to write),
Moore
knew less what he was doing than he simply wrote well without self-consciousness. He had
Heaven and Hell wage their final war, concluding with the obvious (postmodern) fact that the
two were mutually dependant, and he introduced John Constantine. His last arc featured a
space-travelling Swamp Thing and included a number of mainstream DC characters, all of which
Moore
dealt with intelligenty.
Rick Veitch, Moore's successor, was more playful; his issues dissected
American corporate culture. Particularly memorable were the appearances of super-heroes during
his run. Veitch focused on their cultural impact and their psychosis in brilliant ways,
showing -- in a comic that took place within the continuity of the DC Universe -- Superman as a
conservative bulwark, standing for the established powers, for corruptable and money-swayed law
over justice, and as someone people worship to the extent that kids have jumped off rooves
imitating him. And Veitch gave Swamp Thing a child, an odd occurance even in books without a
vegetable protagonist. His stories often featured multiple narratives or coincidences with
meaning, like those of
Watchmen
but with magical patterns rather than the darkness of the universe behind them. One issue
featured three narratives in seperate tiers on the page, a forerunner to the classic story he
illustrated from Moore's script in
Tomorrow Stories #2.
The Veitch run on Swamp Thing was also going to include Jesus depicted as a white
magician, a story that, even in its censorship, brought comics to a wider audience and forced
us to examine corporate policies on art and religion (i.e. commerce).
Doug Wheeler's run on the title was certainly painful at times, and Nancy
A. Collins's run featured many stories with little point. But Collins wrote a very long story
that, despite awkward bumbs along the way, did what one of her predecessors should have done
and broken apart Abby and Swamp Thing, to which Veitch had shown the Parliament's reaction:
she is, after all, an animal. The implications of "The Anatomy Lesson" were still being
figured out. Collins had an issue that featured primitive peoples worshipping Swamp Thing, as
well they would. This was a character whose humanity was an illusion, a false remembering, and
it took Mark Millar to finally show this obvious fact.
Millar, while stumbling at times, gave us memorable stories. He played
up the incest theme between Abby and her demonic uncle. He finally addressed the issue of
other elements, which presumably had parliaments as well. He made Swamp Thing four times as
inhuman again as he had ever been, and gave us a Swamp Thing that had transcended these human
concerns entirely. He told us what Tefe had been there for all along. And he gave us the
ultimate Arcane story, one that cannot be surmounted and at last ended the repetition of his
repetitive return as arch-nemesis.
If he revived title is not up to par, let us remember that it at least
makes Tefe the protagonist. This is a title that, much more than Hellblazer, has
changed. We watched Tefe be conceived and now she is a teenager; if teenage angst is passe,
and if the writing thereof is not up to par, let us be thankful that the character has at least
aged -- such a rarity in comic books. This is not some sidekick propelled to
central stage through death, itself admirable compared to most comic books. As we have watched Swamp Thing go from
muck-encrusted monster to plant elemental, then to one unable to hold onto a relationship with
a human woman, then to earth elemental and finally transcendent being, so too have we watched
him become a father, seen that baby born and jeapardized, seen that child used for her powers,
and now see that teenager deal with teenage nonsense. The glory behind the relaunch of the
title is that it illustrates all of this and that it, too, will change.
And if the second Black Orchid series was poor -- and it was --,
let us remember the first, with its wonderfully anticlimatic story by Neil Gaiman and its
beautiful art by Dave McKean. This, too, is a part of Swamp Thing and his legacy. There's
more here that's good than in any other corporate comic. Compared to this, Gaiman's The
Sandman, while it may reach greater heights, was a flash in the pan.
Of course, there are complaints. John Constantine's past seems overly
mined and discongruent, a product of a number of writers who have added information. He will
turn fifty on 10 May 2003, yet we see little of him aging; he was younger during Ennis's issues
than
Delano's,
and his aging has now effectively stopped, save for
Delano's
well-done Hellblazer Special: Bad Blood mini-series. And, of course,
Warren Ellis
should not have been censored; had he not, he would have given us many more challenging and
memorable stories.
The implications of "The Anatomy Lesson" should have been realized
sooner. The continuity between Swamp Thing and Hellblazer (as well as Black
Orchid) should have been tighter. The incest implications could have been played up
earlier, as well as the vegetable sexuality. Rick Veitch should have been allowed to finish his run
rather than be censored, and his successors should have been
Jamie Delano
and Neil Gaiman as planned. Swamp Thing's relationship with Abby should have fallen apart
sooner. Instead of the last twenty issues with Abby, Swamp Thing should have spent twenty
issues alone, really coming to terms with the fact of his inhumanity, struggling with his
feelings about mankind's treatment of the planet and his own awareness that his moral outrage
over that is itself a human response. He should have had homosexual sex during this time,
realizing that he was not gendered as well as a man, and this should have led to his awareness
of his androgyny. He should have pushed himself as an elemental, reshaping continents. And
DC's super-heroes should have responded. He should have built a vegetable skyscraper, than a
vegetable city, in which to meet them and talk with them. And they should have dealt with the
fact that they cannot defeat him. And he should have realized that his desire to remake the
world was itself human and that he needed to retire again. At which point Mark Millar's
stories begin. And, following Millar, we should never have gotten Swamp Thing as he had been.
One of the most eggregious literary offenses is backtracking from a shattered wall. One does
not become the world elemental and come back; whether Abby lives or dies is of no concern to
one on such a level. And this is exactly what we should have had to deal with, as we focused
on a Tefe who is a teenager without a father, instead of odd appearances of Swamp Thing as he
was, as if the writers have no significant understanding of Millar's point, as if the being who
was featured in Millar's "Trial by Fire," let alone the one at his conclusion, would become the
old muck-encrusted monster to attend a party or worry about a teenage elemental with her human
mother.
But, of course, these complaints only serve to illustrate how good
the saga of the Swamp Thing, as well as John Constantine, really is. It's an awkward work, a
patchwork saga, but it's got a great deal of glory and the whole is magnificent, even if we
worry at times that it's lost its head and we cannot find it.
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