Sometimes, you’re just 30 years behind on something. No big deal.
Written by Alan Moore
Illustrated by Steve Bissette, John Totleben and Rich VeitchNow in trade paperback, this title collects issues #21-27 of the seminal horror series, starting with “The Anatomy Lesson,” a haunting origin story with terrifying revelations.
Look, I get it. I should have read this a long time ago. There’s no real excuse for me to have wait until I turned 31 to dust this off (purchased years ago) and finally sit down to read it. Well, I guess my only excuse is: I’ve been busy? Regardless, here I am, filling in for Drew on ‘Tradewaiter,’ and this is instantly the book that popped in my head. And you know what? It is really, really good. I mean, I expected that. It’s Alan Moore, on the book that established him as one of the truly exceptional writers of his time. What I didn’t expect was just how good it would be, and how much of that would be due to the art.
On my initial flip through the book, years ago, I was struck by how it was illustrated in a way that screamed early 80s, but laid out in a way that was far more cutting edge for the time. In fact, the layouts still look fresh, and make the modern-day “Swamp Thing” layouts, while nice, seem a bit cookie-cutter by design. The design of the stories, as a whole, are exceptional. The lettering is clean and easy to read, while taking the reader on a journey through the book that makes reading each page fun and rewarding.
And while the book, visually, is very indicative of the time it was produced, it is still a stunning work. The element that really dates it is Tatjana Wood’s coloring, but it also remains my favorite element, visually, of the book. Her colors, to me, define early 80s DC at its best – her work stands out as incredibly expressive and risk-taking in a field that was, and is, very conservative with its chances. She really helps Bissette and Totleben’s work become something special – especially since color is such a hugely important part of this story. The subtle coloring changes on Swamp Thing as the season rolls on is the perfect example of her genius; if he were all of a sudden autumnal, it would beat you over the head. Instead, her colors are suggestive of a change, but could also be a coloring error or a weird shadow. The colors work with the writing and the art in a way that is rarely seen today.
Steve Bissette is the main penciller here (assisted at times by Rich Veitch), and he does a fantastic job with settings that drive others nuts. I doubt that swamps and clandestine science buildings are anyone’s favorite settings, but Bissette makes every corner of the book mysterious, and truly makes the settings characters in the book. His Swamp Thing itself is tall and scary, but also has a lot of humanity behind its eyes (more on that later). John Totleben’s inks are strong but unobtrusive, and work help mesh the bold colors and intricate pencils by adding that dark layer of suspense that the best inkers create. Like I mentioned earlier, Moore is the name that everyone associates with greatness on this book, and while that is true, it takes away some of the deserved accolades from his collaborators.
But Moore does something really interesting in these pages also – he does a soft reboot of the entire Swamp Thing character. Not just his current incarnation, not just of the elements that suit his arc – no, he tosses it all away. He makes (quasi) sense of a character with a murky origin, and establishes the first issue of his run as the only bit of information you really need to enjoy the book. He made such drastic changes to the Swamp Thing mythos that I could see longtime fans dropping the book after #21, when it is revealed that, basically, everything you knew about the character is wrong. It actually gave me pause, as I was considering how many books I’ve dropped due to decisions like this, and I got to thinking that maybe I gave up on the next great run due to stubbornness or just a sense of “I don’t need this new shit!”
Continued belowBut that’s wrong, because Alan Moores are few and far between.
Moore manages to make a character that was interesting but unspectacular into one of the most sought-after DC books of its era. He does this by not only writing really solid scripts (which, again, it’s Moore, that shouldn’t a huge shock), but by having a laser’s focus. Moore’s story features such an economy of elements, as he’s managed to strip away absolutely everything that is secondary to the story, and just let his tale unfold. He also takes a less than important villain, Jason Woodrue, and gives him pathos, power, and makes him seem to seriously be a threat. A huge kudos must go out to his editor, Len Wein, one of Swamp Thing’s creators, who doesn’t get too territorial over his creation, and lets Moore go nuts (and to incoming editor Karen Berger, who really let Moore go nuts later on in the run [I’ve since read all of Moore’s run since starting Vol. 1 for this piece]).
Ultimately, although reading the introduction by Moore really helps, this is a self-contained story that changed the status quo forever for Swamp Thing. While the newest iteration of the book erased a lot of these changes on the surface, the fact that there is still a Swamp Thing book in 2013 is most likely due to these exact issues. Check it out, you won’t be sorry.
