Swamp Thing

[Jeff of Earth-J]

I started reading Swamp Thing from the very beginning... sort of. When I was a kid, I liked superhero comics and not much else (no western, no war, etc.). I also gravitated toward Marvel, so Swamp Thing had two strikes against it right out of the gate (to mix a metaphor or two). I remember seeing titles such as Swamp Thing and Kamandi on the spinner racks but not giving them a second look (or even a first). Even when I walked into a comic book shop for the first time in my life several years later, it took some time for me to overcome my preconceived notions regarding such titles as Daredevil (Frank Miller's) and Swamp Thing (Alan Moore's). Then, in 1986, DC released the Roots of the Swamp Thing reprint series and i started at the very beginning (#1) if not exactly from the very beginning (1972). 

Skip ahead 15 years. I'm now married. My new bride is not wholly unfamiliar with comic books and is willing to read more. I recommended a list of 8 or 10 of my favorites (including the Wein/Wrightson and the Moore/Bisette/Totleben runs of Swamp Thing), most of which she read. I had tens of thousands of comics in my collection at that time, enough to keep us busy reading and discussing for years. But she became interested in comics I didn't have, such as the post-Moore Swamp Thing as well as the complete run of Fables (which I myself still have not read). We spent the next however-many-it-was months collecting backissues of Swamp Thing plus I added those two titles to my pull & hold. 

At this point Tracy has read literally hundreds more issues of Swamp Thing than I have. We don't have every issue (she finally lost interest after the "New 52"), but we have quite a few. Ironically,  it was "Brightest Day" which reignited my own interest, so some of the more recent issues she has not read. I like to "prorate" the cost of my comics by a) reading them multiple times, or b) giving them to my wife to read. We get the best value from those comic we both read multiple times. To that end, we have decided to work our way through every issue we own from 1972 to 2018.

We recently led a discussion through every issue/series in Terry Moore's "SiP-verse" but, if we complete it, this project is more than twice as long. We invite you along for the ride. 

Wein/Wrightson - p1

Nestor Redondo - p2

The "Mopee Thing" - p3

Miscellaneous - p4

Martin Pasko - p5

Alan Moore - p8

Rick Veitch - p25

Doug Wheeler - p31

Nancy Collins - p33

Grant Morrison & Mark Millar - p37

Mark Millar - p38

[Randy Jackson]

An interesting note on how things have changed. In 1986, a girl sporting a Mohawk was weird and would make people look at her like she was nuts. Nowadays, you'd hardly blink. 

Richard Willis said:

I was amused that as drastically as Judith was changed, she still had a remnant of her mohawk. 

[Luis Olavo de Moura Dantas]

Zatanna is a hard one to figure out at this point in time.  Crisis on Infinite Earths ended just three months prior, concurrently with Swamp Thing #46.  Her ongoing title was Justice League of America, where she was arguably the most powerful member of the "Detroit League".  Yet that take on the League had just entered its long, slow wane and a big part of it was writing her away from the team as a prelude of sorts for its disbanding during Legends.

Until now, Zatanna was known mainly as a Justice League member.  The next-to-last to join the traditional League, in fact, not long before Firestorm did.  That team was very traditional and well-known, but there was the perception that it had become a bit stale, leading to the still controversial period often called "JLA Detroit" that ran more or less concurrently with both Crisis On Infinite Earths and the early Alan Moore issues of Swamp Thing.

We have discussed JL Detroit elsewhere, but far as Zatanna goes it was a time of greater visibility and a change of status quo, neither of which ultimately amounted to much.  She ended up as one of the few experienced members of the active roster and was given a bit more characterization, but not much and not very skillfully.  After Crisis ended the JL Detroit lost a lot of its own structure, up to and including leaving behind Detroit and nearly all of its supporting cast and dangling plots. Zatanna had one last storyline which made her a bit of a cypher and cast her away from the Justice League just in time for her to miss the very last storyline which disbanded the team.

The end result is that the Zatanna of Swamp Thing #49 is remarkably close to a blank slate, despite a lot of spotlight in recent years.  I am not personally fond of her links with Constantine, but they do start here and are revisited fairly often afterwards.  For a good while she is a bit of a bridge character, appearing in both Vertigo books and regular DCU ones in almost equal measure despite the significant tone divergence between the two environments.

But we are still a long way from there.  Far longer than I realized, as a matter of fact.  Swamp Thing only became a Vertigo book in issue #129, and Hellblazer in #63 (which revisited the idea of Zatanna as a former fling of Constantine).

[Jeff of Earth-J]

ISSUE #50:

We start with a mystery (or perhaps a secret). "Anniversary" the banner proclaims, but no indication which or of what. The fourth anniversary of this series springs immediately to mind, but no, that would have been #48 (by cover date) or #49 (by issue number). [That there was no issue cover-dated September 1983 accounts for the discrepancy.] This issue is cover-dated July 1986 so... it it the anniversary of the Swamp Thing's first appearance in his own series? No, that was November 1972. I know! House of Secrets #92 was cover-dated July 1971. July 1986, then, is the 15th anniversary of the first appearance of the Swamp Thing. Mystery solved (although I see no need to have been so secretive). 

Storywise, the climactic battle between Good and Evil is somewhat anticlimactic if you ask me. Yes, Sargon and Zatara  both die, and few (apart from Steve Pugh and Tom Mandrake) can draw demons as well as Veitch, Bissette and Totleben, but although Etrigan, Dr. Fate and the Spectre all encounter Evil (from whom it learns fatalism/inevitability, contempt and vengeance, respectively) and the natures of "Good" and "Evil" are somehow changed in some metaphysical fashion, the ending is largely unsatisfying. That is because, although #50 is the end of "American Gothic" storyline, it is not the end of the story arc Alan Moore set in motion in #37; that is still few issues away at this point.

Fans (and even publishers) are free and loose with the term "story arc" and way in which they bandy it about, often using it to describe a simple multi-part story. AFAIAC, a story arc describes a series of stories built around a common theme and contributing toward an overarching conclusion. (Walt Simonson's "Surtur" saga in Thor or Ostrander and Truman's "Trade War" in GrimJack are good examples.) Some arcs overlap. Whereas Alan Moore's "American Gothic" storyline in Swamp Thing fits these criteria, I think it is actually contained within Moore's second arc of stories; either that or it's an overlapping arc of its own which actually began with "Nukeface" is #35-36. Those are mere quibbles. Whether "American Gothic" is a storyline or a story arc of its own, #50 makes for a decent 15th anniversary issue. 

[The Baron]

I strongly suspect that by "Anniversary", they meant to celebrate the fact that it was the fiftieth issue.  I agree that that is not what "anniversary" means, but I have seen the word misused that way on comic book covers often enough that I feel safe in believing that that is what they meant.

[Jeff of Earth-J]

Oh, I know what they meant.

As long as you agree that that is not what the word "anniversary" means, I'm happy.

[The Baron]

Well, I'm all about keeping you happy, Jeff.  ;)

Jeff of Earth-J said:

Oh, I know what they meant.

As long as you agree that that is not what the word "anniversary" means, I'm happy.

[Randy Jackson]

So the Spectre's got Vegeta'd. What a surprise. 

Unlike Jeff, I've always been a fan of this story. Usually I'm underwhelmed by the endings of stories, particularly so called "epic" stories, but I liked this one. There was lasting change--maybe the deaths of Sarhon and Zatara(and the loss I'd Dayton's sanity) don't have massive impact, but they were striking nonetheless--and an epic battle. I also liked that Alec resolved the situation not by attacking the entity but by talking and reasoning with it. The scale was what I expected and overall I was impressed.

Constantine's group did end up being pretty useless (as did Etrigan, Deadman, Dr. Fate, the Phantom Stranger and the Spectre) but I thought that was what was needed for the story. 

Ironic how Zatara told Sarhon to "die like a sorcerer". 

[Tracy of Moon-T]

I also thought it was anticlimactic. What did Constantine and his group actually do besides spy on the doings? The games John played with ST and the others prepared Swamp Thing to prevail but got a lot of people killed. That was sickening to me, especially the forced madness of Steve Dayton. The art was sometimes beautiful but didn't carry a great battle between good and evil to my mind. 

[Randy Jackson]

I think Constantine didn't really have any idea of exactly what he was facing and when plan A failed, he figured that throwing the kitchen sink at the entity was all he could do. He thought that maybe if they could give a magical boost to those opposing the entity that it migtt help. 

Additionally, outside of Dayton it sounded as if all the others were well aware that what they were doing was dangerous and potentially lethal, that this was a situation that could mean tgd end of the world and that this was the hill to stand on. Ultimately they were useless, but they didn't know that going in. 

Tracy of Moon-T said:

I also thought it was anticlimactic. What did Constantine and his group actually do besides spy on the doings? The games John played with ST and the others prepared Swamp Thing to prevail but got a lot of people killed. That was sickening to me, especially the forced madness of Steve Dayton. The art was sometimes beautiful but didn't carry a great battle between good and evil to my mind. 

[Philip Portelli]

Another irony was that this story made Zatara interesting and formidable. If only they used him more like this, especially in All Star Squadron where he was just group shot filler.

[Richard Willis]

Jeff of Earth-J said:

ISSUE #50:

Storywise, the climactic battle between Good and Evil is somewhat anticlimactic if you ask me. Yes, Sargon and Zatara  both die….

It should be noted that Zatara saved Zatanna by substituting his own death. As a consequence, Zatanna is no longer happy with Constantine. Not having read a lot of comics from this period, I wonder whether Zatara “got better” after his death. The reason I wonder is that it seems to me that Zatara died at an earlier time and may or may not have reappeared after his Swamp Thing death.

The hero Blue Devil was killed in James Robinson’s Starman series and later reappeared in the group book Shadowpact. I haven’t read Shadowpact, so I don’t know if his return was explained. The first time I encountered an unexplained return was in Marvel’s Captain America when Baron Strucker showed up without explanation after being thoroughly destroyed in Nick Fury Agent of SHIELD. Up to that point, when I was reading everything, Marvel had been good about explaining characters avoiding death. It was a sign of things to come.

To some comics writers and readers, continuity seems to be a dirty word. I think ignoring continuity is just lazy writing.

…..although Etrigan, Dr. Fate and the Spectre all encounter Evil (from whom it learns fatalism/inevitability, contempt and vengeance, respectively) and the natures of "Good" and "Evil" are somehow changed in some metaphysical fashion, the ending is largely unsatisfying.

I guess that Moore is trying to say that good and evil are in everyone and everything. Not a groundbreaking statement. It should be noted that the Evil entity was particularly impressed by Swamp Thing’s lack of hubris and their rational discussion.

Constantine and Baron Winter have a calm discussion at the end while Steve Dayton is having a serious breakdown right in front of them. Dayton doesn't die, so IMO he can recover. The enormous black tower was just its fingernail!

[Richard Willis]

Philip Portelli said:

Another irony was that this story made Zatara interesting and formidable. If only they used him more like this, especially in All Star Squadron where he was just group shot filler.

Hey, the guy shared Action Comics #1 with Superman. He should get some respect.