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After the rather brilliant sequence where we slowly, panel by panel, to the narration of a devastated Abby Cable, take our leave of planet Earth, we move out into the cold darkness of the universe, where we eventually arrive at another strange blue world, where in the silence we watch the transformed Swamp Thing stand reborn. And it is an awesome moment, but it's undercut a bit by the impossibility of the situation.
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| Looking at this gives me Hyperion-Shrike vibes... Man, wouldn't it be awesome to have that made into a comic? |
Swamp Thing has found himself on a planet entire galaxies away from his own home world, and it seemed for a moment as if the series had jumped the shark. The sheer distance of it, a distance that has to be measured in time for it to make any kind of logicial sense it is so large.
But, if you've read comics for a while, especially the DC or Marvel kind, you've by now learned that some things just won't or can't hold up, and if you want to continue to enjoy yourself, you're just going to have to learn to let some things go, and besides, in the DC Universe, as we will see, there was precedent for this kind of nonsense. But more than anything, it is Moore that does most of the work, letting you forget those minor quibbles by making this next arc of the Saga the most interesting one yet.
The issue that kicks it all of, My blue Heaven, is almost a meditative piece, because as the exiled Swamp Thing finds himself light years from home, desolate and completely alone, he finds the need to explore himself and the possibilities he had glimpsed himself capable of when conversing with the Parliament of Trees during the Crisis saga. From there Swamp Thing had to rush from one battle into another, having no peace and not a single moment to come to terms with the gained knowledge, not a second to test himself. But here, on this alien world, he has nothing but time and so embarks on an experiment.
My Blue Heaven was a massive departure from what one would expect from the Saga of the Swamp Thing and this is because Moore was going through a fundamental change in his personal life. Though the true change would really only become something that had to be relentlessly pursued when he was writing From Hell a few years later, where in the course of writing he would stumble on a life-altering revelation, here there already was a marked interest in work that was way more concerned with identity and the greater questions of life and existence, than the ecological horror that Swamp Thing was known for. Together with Rick Veitch Moore went with a decidedly more Sci-fi approach, though the horror would still be very much present, as becomes clear when Swamp Thing with only his imagination and the powers of creation at his fingertips ends up creating a perfect homunculus of his wife and lover Abby Cable.
The whole issue, as the informative introductions from Volumes 5 and 6 from the Saga of the Swamp Thing tell us, is basically a creator in conversation with himself, exulting in the power of art and exploring himself through his chosen medium. The Abby Cable homunculus is created by Swamp Thing because he misses her, but it all swiftly devolves into a masturbatory nightmare as he begins to realize what he's actually doing. It is a creator in thrall to his imagination, plodding in the wake of the unreal, avoiding what should be done because of the false delight at hand.
After Swamp Thing's subconscious creates a homunculus of John Constantine, the one man he knows who would never accept willful self-deception like this, Swamp Thing is forced to face that he is wasting his time in a very dangerous and unhealthy manner. The lie has been given to his creation and he sees the road of pain the seductive imagery could take him, and so, in self-loathing and rage, he destroys the Abby Cable Homunculus and then sets out to, somehow, reconnect to the Green of Earth in order to be reunited with it and the woman he loves. Leaving the Blue World behind, his creations falling apart as his will departs them, the space odyssey begins.
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I wouldn't have minded this arc to have been double the length of what it actually is, because there's really only 4 different stories until Swamp Thing gets to go back to Earth and it would have felt more like an actual journey if the whole thing had been more drawn out.
And the arc itself is also really captivating. A lot of the appeal is in how the art is coloured and juxtaposed, which is always striking, but the stories themselves are also quite fascinating.
They are obviously very strange stories though, the weirder of which tie into the existing DC universe, and which are weird exactly because they are built around these established characters that Swamp Thing can go and interact with and who'll help him to find a way that'll allow him back into the Earth's Green.
But among this strangeness there are 2 stories that stand out, both genuinely horrific in concept and execution. The first of these is the issue with the incredibly suggestive title of 'All Flesh is Grass' which is a story that Clive Barker himself would be proud to have come up with. The concept is basically 'The Swamp Thing on a world of sentient plants', and given that the Swamp Thing is built up out of plant life meshed together by a consciousness you can pretty much see how this might become a problem.
The other is my personal favourite of all of the Saga of the Swamp Thing, and it's the reason why I began the Swamp Thing Appreciation posts. I set out to just give a quick run-down how Swamp Thing got to this point and then just talk about this one single issue but it all grew way out of proportion because I found that I wanted to do a little extra for the title itself. I wanted to show that despite the ludicrous concept of a hero who was called Swamp Thing there was definitely something to be had here. A little bit of a primer for those of my friends who would scoff and never pick it up. I felt the series deserved it.
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Anyway, issue 60, Loving the Alien, is remarkable and quite unique in all of the Saga of the Swamp Thing as it's an issue that sprung from the artist's hand before it did the writer's. John Totleben drew some (or most?) of the story's art undirected, and only afterward gave it to Moore, who poured over the pages until he found a narrative presenting itself.
The story turned out to be one narrated by an alien intelligence, who's telling it to her soon-to-be-born children. She tells how, once upon a time, she was an island alone in the vast darkness of the universe, desperate for a mate, desperate to become a mother, and that she was unable to find one who could procreate with her.
And then she notices a blazing star in the dark as something alien approaches.
It's a disturbing tale, both in its imagery and story beats, the alien intelligence itself coming across as truly alien, its designs on Swamp Thing and how it goes about getting what it wants quite horrific. The brutality of what happens, the clinical detachment, the organic and metallic imagery, it all is indelibly imprinted on your memory, even though the images and language used to describe what is happening are abstract in the extreme.
You'll notice when reading that there's not a single page with individual panels to break up the art, which in some cases is even double-spread. Most of the artwork, certainly those where the story allows it, somewhere, hidden or not, the face of the Swamp Thing can be found, superimposed or part of the detail. Usually the artwork itself is made up out of individual pieces of art, all integrated into the whole, with narration to back it up and to identify what the art suggests.
And strangely enough, somehow, this all ends up being a satisfying story. I think it is unique in comics, though it probably isn't, but either way, for me this story, this experience, just stopped me in my tracks and held me spellbound and, afterwards, pretty contemplative.
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Loving the Alien takes place before Flesh is Grass, which, with its intelligent plant-life, would teach Swamp Thing how to alter himself in order for the Green of the Earth to accept him again.
And, after a few tiny missteps, he makes it back and makes it his first order of business to deal with the men who engineered his banishing from Earth.
Of course, the man who figured out exactly how to exile him, Lex Luthor, is too big of a name to kill off, and since he was pretty much just an advisor in the plot to kill Swamp Thing he isn't remarked on. But the others very much get their due.
And then, with his enemies taken care of, Swamp Thing, with flowers blossoming all around, reunites with his wife.
I've not said much about Abby Cable, and her rather shitty situation on earth, as she struggles and fails to come to terms with the death of her husband as I feel these posts have been going on for too long already, and at this moment I'm itching to be done with them. But she is a good character in her own right, with her own recurring problems to make her interesting. When I first saw her in the extra two Swamp Thing issues included in the Hellblazer Original Sins trade paperback, I though she looked ridiculous, and her function in the story seemed immensely unappealing. I never thought that I would actually come to like her, never mind that I'd be happy to see her reunited with Swamp Thing.
We end the Saga of the Swamp Thing with Abby and Swamp Thing, who by the way was called Alex Holland before he became the Swamp Thing which is why Abby and others call him Alex most of the time just thought I'd mention it here at the end, with Abby and the Swamp Thing enjoying each other's company and deciding to live together. Swamp Thing of course is in charge of constructing their new domicile and together they're about to let the good times roll.
Of course, as this is just the point where Alan Moore stopped writing Swamp Thing, leaving Rick Veitch in charge, the Saga of the Swamp Thing continued, even though Moore did end his run on a pretty satisfying and conclusive note. As I got what I came for, I won't be continuing my journey with Abby and the Swamp Thing. Or at least, I won't be continuing right now, but maybe, if in the future there'll be full and complete collections of Swamp Thing made available I'll decide to read the entire thing. I would be interested to finally understand who the hell precisely Alistair Arcane was. I'll admit he was pretty appealing, in an over-the-top theatrical kind of way.
But for the moment I'm being buried under an ungodly amount of comics anyway. I can wait.
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