Comics Review: Swamp Thing: Earth to Earth [Book 5] & Reunion [Book 6], Alan Moore, Rick Veitch, et al.

This review was originally published on Pol Culture.

Scriptwriter Alan Moore’s run on Swamp Thing is widely considered to be one of the best--some claim the best--continuing adventure-comics series of the 1980s. Fortunately for readers, it divides quite neatly into three parts.

In the first third, collected in Books One and Two, Moore moved the feature away from its original self-pitying premise. The Swamp Thing, who was once a research scientist named Alec Holland, abandoned his quest to regain his lost humanity. He accepted and embraced his life as it was, and, at the end of the second book, his friendship with the Abby Cable character blossomed into love. The first two books chronicle the character’s realization of himself as a well-adjusted individual.

The second third, known as the “American Gothic” storyline and collected in Books Three and Four, depicts the character’s growth from an individual to a citizen. Moore’s apparent view is that being exclusively preoccupied with one’s own circumstances, no matter how happy they are, is an inadequate engagement with life. One must recognize that one embodies a part that contributes to the whole of society, and that one has an obligation to make both the part and the whole as good as one can. The episodes have Swamp Thing encounter the various evils of human existence--racism, sexism, and environmental pollution, among others--and each contribute to the lesson that one cannot push evil away and compartmentalize it. The dangers it presents can only be minimized with direct engagement. One must also recognize that it is as much a part of any situation as the good.

The final third, which comprises Books Five and Six, is harder to pin down thematically. At times, Moore seems to be using Swamp Thing to tell modern fantasy versions of the Trojan War and the Odyssey. At others, he seems to want to explore the responsibilities of being a god. But it is hard to tell, as Moore repeatedly touches on these ideas and then backs away from them. He drops them entirely at points. This is not to say the collections are poor reads. Moore’s extraordinary sense of craft rarely falters, and the characterizations of Swamp Thing and Abby Cable remain vivid. However, Books Five and Six lack the richness of their predecessors. Moore doesn’t seem to have a strong sense of where he wants to go. It is hard to escape the feeling that he is coasting.

Book Five starts out with a bang. A subplot involving Abby in Book Four takes center stage. Her relationship with Swamp Thing has come to the attention of the local authorities, and she is arrested for breaking the laws against bestiality. The case becomes a media circus, Abby loses her job, and she becomes a pariah in the Louisiana community in which she lives. Disgusted by the way she is treated, she jumps bail and flees to Gotham City. (Swamp Thing is published by DC Comics, and it takes place in the same narrative universe as Batman and Superman.) The Gotham police arrest Abby by mistake, but before they release her, they receive a fugitive warrant from Louisiana. Swamp Thing returns from the “American Gothic” adventure just as she is about to face an extradition hearing. Now possessed of a god-like power to control the world’s vegetation, he demands Abby’s release and declares war on the city after they refuse. What follows is one of the most spectacular might-makes-right battles over a woman in all of storytelling. Agamemnon, Menelaus, and the fleet of a thousand ships are nothing compared to Swamp Thing.

The war on the city is awesomely imagined. Swamp Thing has vegetation overwhelm the city in a way that gives the term “urban jungle” a whole new meaning. (Picture the Manhattan of the film I Am Legend a few centuries down the road, and you’ll have a pretty good idea of what is done.) As things progress, Swamp Thing ups the ante, such as heightening the vegetation’s scent to bring a plague of insects down on the city. Needless to say, Batman launches an offensive against Swamp Thing, and he gets put in his place as well.

The drama matches the spectacle. One sympathizes with Swamp Thing’s anger over the small-mindedness and bureaucratic obstacles that keep Abby from him, but one also respects the city’s refusal to turn her over. Their view is that they can’t just circumvent the law and acquiesce to what amounts to terrorism, despite their doubts that Abby’s relationship with Swamp Thing was somehow criminal. And Moore goes out of his way to make the reader uneasy about Swamp Thing’s actions. He draws explicit parallels between Swamp Thing’s war on Gotham and the destructive, self-righteous rampage of the Woodrue character in Book One. He also emphasizes that Swamp Thing’s actions don’t really solve anything. Abby is freed only after a legal argument successfully points out the absurdity of the crime with which she was charged. (The argument is hilariously witty, and one of the highlights of the book.) Moore also points out that what goes around comes around. Federal agents use the occasion of Abby’s release to ambush Swamp Thing, and they nearly destroy him.

It’s at this point that the material seems to drift. Moore has Swamp Thing find himself far from home after the attack, and the remainder of the episodes are divided up between Abby’s life without him, and his adventures while trying to make his way back to her. (If the Gotham City section was Swamp Thing’s Trojan War, these stories are his Odyssey.) The episodes are well-crafted in themselves, but they don’t build any momentum; they often feel as if Moore was just marking time until his run was complete. He gives us an entire episode written from inside Abby’s grief over Swamp Thing’s apparent death, which is a cheat considering that Swamp Thing isn’t dead. Illustrators Stephen Bissette and Rick Veitch each script an episode in Moore’s stead that adds nothing to the overall. The only notable thing about Swamp Thing’s version of the Great Wanderings is that they begin with his Island of Calypso rather than end there. The most interesting aspect of the latter episodes are the supporting characters Moore introduces to Abby’s life, but he develops them only to kick them to the curb in his finale.

The feeling that Moore’s attention is wavering becomes quite conspicuous in the next-to-last episode. Those who familiar with the Odyssey know that Homer spent a good deal of time building suspense in preparation for Odysseus’ final battle with his wife’s suitors. It was the battle he needed to win in order to reclaim his throne and make his homecoming complete. Swamp Thing’s final clash with his enemies, specifically his revenge on the federal agents who ambushed him in Gotham, is nowhere as developed. It feels rushed, and parts of it seem truncated, as if scenes had to be cut in order to fit it into one issue.

Alan Moore and Swamp Thing wave good-bye to each other. From Swamp Thing: Reunion. Art by Tom Yeates, colored by Tatjana Wood. Copyright 1987, 2003 DC Comics.

The final episode is a shambles. Upon their reunion, Moore has Swamp Thing and Abby decide to abandon the outside world completely, which is a betrayal of the themes of engagement and responsibility that have driven the preceding series. Swamp Thing considers whether his capacity to end famine and hunger means he has a responsibility to do so, and he decides it isn’t his problem. One can’t help but feel that Moore is running away from the moral implications of what he has presented before. Moore’s sense of craft also seems to fail him. He frames the episode around having a stand-in for himself bid Swamp Thing good-bye, but he doesn’t integrate it with the main narrative. He also doesn’t do much to develop the metafictional conceit of giving himself a role in the story. One would only realize the character was a stand-in for Moore if one knows what he looks like. And if one doesn’t recognize him, the scenes featuring the character make little sense. The episode is an extremely disappointing conclusion to Moore’s run.

However, a bad final chapter certainly doesn’t undermine the entire series. Most of the disappointments of Books Five and Six come from considering them relative to what has come before. A similar dynamic affects one’s appreciation of the work of cartoonist/penciller Rick Veitch and inker Alfredo Alcala, who take over from Stephen Bissette and John Totleben. Veitch lacks Bissette’s intensity and command of detail, and Alcala’s rendering is nowhere as nuanced as Totleben’s, but the work is perfectly fine when considered on its own terms.

And that is ultimately what one comes away with. Even with its flaws, Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing was perhaps the most humane and morally conscientious superhero series ever published. Books Five and Six are no exception. Moore may flirt here with questions about the responsibilities of godhood, and he may ultimately turn his back on the theme of the moral necessity of engagement with the world. But he never abandons the emotional heart of the material found in Abby and Swamp Thing’s relationship. One can fault him for not staying true to his themes in these closing episodes, but he always stays true to his characters. The moralist gives way to the storyteller, and if one has to choose between the two, isn't that how one would want it?

Comics Review: Swamp Thing: The Curse [Book 3] and A Murder of Crows [Book 4], Alan Moore, Stephen Bissette, John Totleben, et al.

This review was originally published on Pol Culture.

Alan Moore's initial goal with the Swamp Thing series was to divorce it from the self-pitying tone that had hobbled the efforts of his predecessors. When Moore took things over, the character was a man whose body had been transformed into a monster's, and his purpose was to find a means of changing himself back. Moore identified this premise as a metaphor for denial. The solution he came up with for the problems it posed was ingenious: turn it inside out. The point of the strip became the character's implicit quest for self-fulfillment. The hope of returning to the life he led before his transformation was abandoned in favor of embracing the happiness to be found in his present circumstances. The crux of this was his relationship with Abby Cable, which blossomed into love in "The Rite of Spring," the final episode of Book 2. Moore began with what he called a "Hamlet covered in snot," and ended with a "happily ever after" moment--sort of.

The material was originally published as part of an ongoing monthly comic-book series, so after Moore reached this endpoint, he had to answer the question of where to go next. He responded by taking the character's engagement with the world around him to the next level. The "American Gothic" storyline, which comprises Book 3, The Curse, and Book 4, A Murder of Crows, of the collected series, begins with Swamp Thing in a state of self-absorbed contentment. But this is no happily ever after. His body dies after being accidentally poisoned, which leads to the discovery that he can grow new bodies at will. He also meets John Constantine, a British occultist and psychic who goads him into a series of confrontations with supernatural phenomena across the U. S. The journey is a parade of evil and horrors, with Constantine in many ways acting as the Virgil to Swamp Thing's Dante. One of Constantine's goals is to bring Swamp Thing to a greater understanding of the nature of good, evil, and how they function in the world. This sets the stage for the storyline's climax, an apocalyptic encounter between divine manifestations of good and evil in which Swamp Thing is a full participant. Ultimately, the knowledge he has gained from his experiences is what brings things to a peaceful resolution. The "American Gothic" has him grow from an individual to a citizen. The story ends with him becoming one who takes responsibility in making the world a better place. At the very least, he is now one who works to keep things from getting worse.

In essence, Moore continues to see denial as something to be overcome; he just moves his focus from the personal to what denial means relative to society. "The Nukeface Papers," the two-part episode that begins things, is built around the issue of one of the most conspicuous examples of societal denial: environmental pollution, specifically the handling of nuclear waste. No one Moore presents can think beyond their personal circumstances. Two nuclear-industry workers pitch drum after drum of nuclear waste into a bog, telling each other, "outta sight is outta mind... an' what the eye don't see... the heart don't grieve over." The local sheriff is too caught up in his card game to pay much mind to local troubles. As for Swamp Thing, he is completely caught up in his happiness with Abby, seeing everything outside of it as "the carefully logged hysteria of a world he no longer belongs to." Everyone's so oblivious to the pollution and its dangers that they might as well be boozing it up with the stuff, and Moore gives us a character who does exactly that: Nukeface, a wandering derelict who downs the toxic waste as if it were the finest cognac. Everybody has their preferred poison, after all, and Nukeface, figuratively speaking, introduces everybody to the latest in throwing up and hangovers--the sort that would leave everyone nostalgic for the old kind. They'd at least survive.

"The Nukeface Papers" doesn't come to a proper resolution--everyone just keeps going their own way. This seems fitting, as the evils the story illustrates really can't be resolved. Crimes of convenience, indifference, and denial are a constant in life. The same is true of the other evils Swamp Thing encounters, which are explicit metaphors for such things as the cycles of violence between men and women, different races, opposed communities, and others. None of these resolve themselves in a way that leaves Swamp Thing with any sense of pride or accomplishment, but Moore has him recognize that they are, to a degree, the extreme expressions of constants. Good and evil feed each other, and the best that can be hoped for is that the two maintain a balance be maintained. It's this knowledge that allows Swamp Thing to bring about the resolution of the storyline's climactic conflict.

Moore constructs the "American Gothic" storyline in order to give Swamp Thing (and the reader) a metaphysical understanding of good and evil, and the climax turns the character into something of a metaphysical politician. Moore makes Swamp Thing a negotiator--one with no sense of guile--and the character's earnestness is highlighted by pairing him with Constantine, who's a different sort of political animal: a manipulator. But, repellent as he is in some respects, Constantine is a do-gooder at heart. He knows the danger that is coming, and one senses that he jerks people around because he knows he couldn't get them to do anything otherwise. Almost everyone whose assistance he needs is either an egomaniac, a flake, or some other kind of headstrong personality. Constantine talks in hints and circles, and as infuriating as that can be for Swamp Thing and others, it's the quickest and, at times, only way to get them where they need to go.

"American Gothic" has flaws. The episodes that comprise Swamp Thing's journey through the American landscape are fine by themselves, but they seem arbitrarily placed relative to one another--they feel as if they could have been presented in almost any order. The knowledge Swamp Thing gains in one episode has no bearing on the ones that follow until the storyline arrives at its climactic section. The material might have been more effective if Moore had dramatized Swamp Thing's accumulation of wisdom--if the character had confronted each of the individual horrors using the knowledge he had gained in his dealings with the previous ones. The material's format as an open-ended serial also becomes annoyingly conspicuous at times. One can comfortably read these volumes without having read the first two in the series, but about halfway through Book 4, Moore introduces a subplot involving the Abby Cable character that has no relevance to the other material. Worse, it's left hanging after it's been developed to a crisis point. One needs to come back for Book 5 to find out where it's going. Serials do not make for tidy reads.

But one is more than willing to come back for Book 5. The reasons go beyond Moore (complemented by the able efforts of artists Stephen Bissette, John Totleben, and others) making the "American Gothic" a compelling read in its own right. He builds on the thematic material of his first two Swamp Thing collections to leave the reader with a more complex starring character and philosophical worldview. The "American Gothic" is far richer and more resonant than what's come before, and it leaves one happily anticipating what Moore will use Swamp Thing to bring the reader next.

Comics Review: Superman: Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow, Alan Moore & Curt Swan, et al.

If there was ever a story that Alan Moore could be considered a pair of hands on, Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? may be the one. By all accounts, the story concept was worked out in advance. In the mid-1980s, DC Comics had hired a popular cartoonist to reboot Superman, and the outgoing editor, Julius Schwartz, decided to leave with a bang. His final issues of the two ongoing Superman series, Superman and Action Comics, would feature a two-part series finale. The story would tie off every continuing narrative thread in the strip. Superman's relationships with Lois Lane, his friends, and his assorted enemies would be resolved once and for all. According to Schwartz, Moore, whose quality scriptwriting was fast making him an industry darling, lobbied hard for the assignment and received it. It was a story written to specifications, and given Schwartz's reputation for hands-on editing of scripts, it was may have been substantially rewritten after Moore turned his draft in.

As such, the story is not a piece one comes to with high expectations. The likely writing-by-committee aspects of its creation aside, it was intended as a going-away present to fans of Schwartz's run, and that sort of thing usually has an in-group quality that makes a story alienating, if not incomprehensible. The surprise of Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? is how accessible and affecting it is. One may not be familar with many of the characters, or the assorted references to preceding stories, but one finds it doesn't matter. Schwartz and Moore quickly and deftly lay out the relationships of the various characters, and they find the pathos in the material as well.

The story begins with Lois Lane, now married and with a baby boy, giving an interview to a reporter. It's several years in the future, and she's asked to recall Superman's last days. The events she describes are a whirlwind of tumult and death. Superman is revealed to the world as Clark Kent, both friends and enemies turn up dead or are killed, and Superman must face the realization that these are his final days. He soon discovers that everything that has happened has been manipulated by his most dangerous enemy, and their final confrontation forces him to make a choice: abandon his principles as Superman, or see Lois Lane die. He saves her, but Superman can be no more.

As can be seen in another story, "For the Man Who Has Everything..." (review here), Moore sees Superman as an odd, even unhealthy personality. He's incapable of embracing happiness or becoming close to others. His emotional commitments are to abstractions, such as the legacy of Krypton, the homeworld he never knew, or the "ideal" of Superman. He's all about aggrandizing himself, not finding fulfillment, in his relationships with others. The drama in Whatever Happened comes from the conflict between the two impulses. It's implicit that Superman has always fancied himself as a savior to others, but the events in the story challenge this view of himself, and he has to face the fact that being Superman has opened his loved ones to the danger they presently face. This leads to him acknowledging the emotional pain he's caused by keeping them at arm's length. In the story's most poignant moment, he calls himself a coward, berating himself for letting others waste their love on him and messing up their lives. He's chosen the ideal of Superman at their expense. It's a powerful set-up for the climax, where he chooses to save Lois, the person he loves most, at the price of that ideal. Schwartz and Moore give the character a fittingly ironic ending: his heroism comes when he casts the ideal of Superman aside.

It's a remarkably subversive treatment of the character, and it may seem more typical of Moore than Schwartz, whose approach to costumed superheroes was about as traditional as they come. (Schwartz was a key definer of the traditions.) But if I had to choose between Schwartz and Moore as the principal author of the story, I'd choose Schwartz. The plot-heavy, first-this-then-that story structure is a Schwartz hallmark, as is the elegantly composed, cleanly rendered art (provided by Curt Swan with inking by George Pérez and Kurt Schaffenberger). The only thing about the story that's typical of Moore is the against-the-grain treatment of Superman, but Schwartz was too fastidious an editor to let something like that through if he hadn't been sympathetic to it. He certainly wouldn't have otherwise let a character say, without challenge, "Superman? He was overrated, and too wrapped up in himself. He thought the world couldn't get along without him." The story was conceived as Julius Schwartz's swan song, and that should be its legacy.