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Comics Bronze Age

Monthly (Comic) Book Club - August - Swamp Thing by Alan Moore18113

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Monthly (Comic) Book Club - October - Frank Miller mini-series





Ronin #1-6 and Robocop vs the Terminator #1-4

Week 1 (9/5-9/11): Ronin #1-3
Week 2 (9/12-9/18): Ronin #4-6
Week 3 (9/19/-9/25): Robocop vs The Terminator #1-2
Week 4 (9/26-10/2): Robocop vs The Terminator #3-4



Discussion topic ideas:

* Thoughts on the story or artwork
* Details in the story, artwork, or presentation
* References to outside events or other works of fiction
* Making of/Behind the Scenes details
* Editions you will be reading from
* Items in your collection pertaining to this week’s selection
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#26 turns up the tempo as the monkey king attacks the sanitarium. I feel like a step was missed though. Abby and Swamp Thing feel that something is weird, so they run to the children? Animals are dying and birds are falling out of the sky? I don't have any particular reason to expect a slow burn but I guess I feel like there should have been something between the previous issue and this. But on the plus side, we get Etrigan to do some rhyming for us. I wonder if that gets tiring for writers?
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#27 wraps the monkey kind arc and has something happen to Matt that will presumably carry forward some amount of time. Abby needs a break.

I had wondered at the beginning how Moore the series writer would differ from Moore the miniseries writer. I guess the difference is that he just tells a story. Watchmen had some certain themes going through it and a specific point of view, and I feel the same way about V for Vendetta and some of his other works. Swamp Thing could have been heading that way with the idea about if he was Alec or not human at all, but that seems to have fallen away. That doesn't make it a bad or ineffective story. This arc had a certain lack of blood (not that I'm voting for violence with children) but the horror atmosphere still pervades.
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#28 right after I commented on Swamp Thing's turmoil over his humanity dropping off, they bring it back. We get a retelling on his origin to serve Swamp Thing finding Alec's bones so that he can bury them and have some closure. His anger over Abby calling him Alec might be a bit too strong though, maybe a case of protesting too much.

There's a different artist for this issue and I think it shows. Some of the expressions are exaggerated and the shapes a bit more square. It isn't bad but compared to the previous team I think it's worse.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by dielinfinite
Monthly (Comic) Book Club - October - Frank Miller mini-series





Ronin #1-6 and Robocop vs the Terminator #1-4

Week 1 (9/5-9/11): Ronin #1-3
Week 2 (9/12-9/18): Ronin #4-6
Week 3 (9/19/-9/25): Robocop vs The Terminator #1-2
Week 4 (9/26-10/2): Robocop vs The Terminator #3-4



Discussion topic ideas:

* Thoughts on the story or artwork
* Details in the story, artwork, or presentation
* References to outside events or other works of fiction
* Making of/Behind the Scenes details
* Editions you will be reading from
* Items in your collection pertaining to this week’s selection


Look forward to this one. I have the Ronin Deluxe edition that's next on my reading list followed by the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Omnibus.
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So yeah, issue 25 starts a new arc. It seems to set up several plot lines and introducing some new characters.

I gotta admit, I chuckled a little when Paul’s parents were killed just because it seemed a little over the top that you spell camera wrong and then a furry little monster comes out to kill you. I know there is probably more to it that will be revealed, Jason Blood seems to suggest there is significance to the words, but from the angle of “you gotta spell things right pr you’ll die,” I thought it was kind of funny.

I’ll admit, I’m not too familiar with Etrigan aside from a few appearances in other books/shows so when he introduced himself as Jason Blood, I thought it might be Brother Blood, the Teen Titans villain.
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I can see what you mean by feeling like the story missed a beat in issue 26. For me I felt we could’ve/should’ve seen more of Abby’s first day of work. I gwt that the Monkey King’s attack the night before left all the children severely agitated the next morning but it doesn’t quite follow that she now needs to spend the night.

Maybe it would’ve been enough for Abby to mention the smell of fear sometime earlier before she’s sprinting full bore back to the house where she supposedly smelt it.

I’ve kind of gotten a feel for Abbey’s character but I haven’t quite landed on her husband yet. He and Abbey obviously have a bit of a strained marriage. He has some control and abandonment issues on top of some kind of power or visions but I don’t know if Abbey is aware of them.

Given how long it goes on for and the fact that it’s Moore, I’d say he’s indulging himself with Etrigan’s rhyming speech. Swamp Thing himself plays a rather minor role in the issue. I don’t think he utters a word and is just kind of around for the Monkey King attack.
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Issue 27 is mostly a brawl between Swamp Thing, the Monkey King, and Etrigan. The Monkey King constantly reshapes itself to the fear of those it is attacking. When it attacks Abby it takes the form of her husband Matt, further hinting at the instability of their marriage.

Etrigan wants to defeat the Monkey king by killing its anchor into our world, the boy Paul. Swamp thing is mostly around to protect Abby and Paul. Paul eventually overcomes his fear of the Monkey King, which weakens and shrinks it until Etrigan can simply eat it like a snack.

Some fly or vision seems to come to Matt as he’s dying after his car accident. It seems to possess him to save his life and repair the car so that will probably lead to something else in the near future. Etrigan also leaves Abby with a mystery suggesting that she was somehow involved in the conjuring of the Monkey King. As far as I know she doesn’t have any kind of specific powers save maybe an enhanced sensitivity to the paranormal. Maybe Matt was somehow unwittingly involved.

What Moore’s take on the Swamp Thing ongoing series feels like to me is something akin to an anthology series. He’s telling standalone stories but reusing the same pool of characters. I’d say Swamp Thing himself has actually plays a rather minor role in the stories so far.

The first arc did center around Swamp Thing but it was mostly about Woodrue’s obsessions and Swamp Thing played a smaller role in this story.

I also wonder what Moore’s issue commitment to the series was at this point. I know he ended up writing Swamp Thing for a few years but was he writing these stories with a years-long commitment in mind or was he going one arc or issue at a time?
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Quote:
Originally Posted by dielinfinite
I know there is probably more to it that will be revealed,


*narrator voice* there was not more that would be revealed
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@xkonk
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#29 brings back the regular artists and steps back more into horror as opposed to monster fights. Whatever happened to Matt starts to pay off. He's acting different and mysteriously has a new job and house. We know something will take a turn because of the framing of the story, and it turns out that Matt is working with/for a bunch of dead people including at least one murderer. If the reference to "say uncle" means that Anton Arcane is still alive, that's another murderer (I assume, having only seen the character when he died at the beginning of our reading).

While not explicitly saying what's going on, I think the imagery/metaphor gets a little heavy-handed. @dielinfinite mentioned how Swamp Thing seems to play a minor role in his own series; here he's basically here to say that dead things look alive because they're full of bugs. I think that came across without him.

It's a minor quibble. It's a little odd for the title character to be second fiddle but I think the storytelling and art is still effective. I can see why this run is well-regarded.
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So I decided to watch the first episode of Swamp Thing and it is pretty good with some amazing moments!



**Spoilers Ahead**

So the first episode is very much an origin episode. It’s played out like an Outbreak-type movie with a mysterious disease popping up in a small swamp town.

Abby, missing her trademark white-hair but we’ll see if that comes in later, is a doctor for the CDC and is called in to help. The town happens to be where she grew up and so she has a lot of baggage waiting there.

It’s at the hospital where she meets Alec Holland, a bit of an outsider scientist who has been researching something that may be linked to the disease. He’s discovered some type of genetic accelerant in the swamp that causes the plant life to grow incredibly large incredibly fast.

To see if there is a connection, Holland joins Abby for an autopsy of the father of one of the victims where we are treated to some gruesome body-horror worthy of The Thing, albeit CG-generated.

Afterwards, they meet with one of Abby’s reporter friends that tells them locals, including their autopsy, have been hired by unknown people to go out into the swamp at night for reasons unknown. Abbey and Holland investigate and find the remains of a boat, it’s cargo of a mysterious fluid with an underwater release mechanism, and a laptop with drop off locations.

Holland learns that the fluid is a concentrated version of the accelerant he’d discovered and goes out to retrieve the other drops. While he’s doing so, he is shot by a mysterious assailant and his boat exploded. Abbey hears the explosion and goes out to investigate. She finds the wreck and is attacked by vines. As she tries to escape she finds Alec’s body entangled in the vines as a mossy creature begins to emerge from the swamp. Abby flees into the swamp.


The episode doesn’t feel like outright horror, as I’d mentioned, it feels a lot like an outbreak movie but is punctuated with some great horror moments. Aside from Abby and Holland we also meet from the books Avery Sunderland, which I believe was the old man hunting Swamp Thing early in the arc. Here he’s a rich local who funds scientific research and had previously employed Holland. Matt, Abby’s husband in the comics makes a brief appearance and Doctor Woodrue appears in the trailer, but not this episode.

That fact that Swamp thing was seen separate from Holland’s corpse suggests they might be going with Moore’s retcon in that Swamp Thing isn’t Alec transformed but a separate, plant-being, that has taken on Alec’s memories.

Again, the first episode was solid and I’ll definitely be watching the rest of the series. It’s sad it only got a single season, assuming it retains the same level of quality.
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28 feels very standalone and self-contained. Swamp Thing is literally burying what remains of Alec Holland seemingly signaling a final break between the two. Holland is dead and Swamp Thing is not Holland. Of course that leaves the open quest of who Swamp Thing is.

I agree the new artist doesn’t work as well as the previous. The style is a bit more exaggerated and cartoony which diminishes the story of Swamp Thing burying his past and moving on.
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29 does a great job building an uneasy atmosphere. It very much feels like a horror movie where we start off with good news but none of it feels quite right. Totelbein’s art also does an excellent job portraying the creepy sinister smile from Matt and the skin-crawling unease that’s overwhelming Abby.

After reading Sally’s background I went back to the image of the zombies in the office. Sally has a bullet through her forehead, since she was shot dead by police. Gus is smoking on an electric chair and I can’t make anything specific out for the last two.

I wonder if they’d all met a similar fate as Matt. Did some malevolent insect spirit come to them near their time of death and take possession. Judging by Swamp Thing’s observation, the insect didn’t save him. Matt is dead but full of bugs.

I think the reason Swamp Thing is somewhat secondary in this series is because the horror of the story comes when the human element encounters the paranormal and Swamp Thing is more on the paranormal side of things. He’s basically a monster himself, practically invulnerable, and wrestles with even having a connection to the human world at all. Abby on the other hand is very human so it is easier for the human audience to experience the horror through her eyes.

The stories with Swamp Thing as the protagonist tend to be the more introspective where he’s trying to define who and what he is. That is certainly understandable but he often concludes that he’s not human which doesn’t work as well for conveying horror. It’s difficult to see Swamp Thing cowering in fear. So it’s harder to see something as horrific when our anchor to this world barely flinches at its appearance.
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Issue 30 reveals it is indeed Arcane who now possesses Matt’s body. Apparently after his death his spirit clawed its way back i to the mortal world and he waited, gently influencing events until he could take possession of Matt and exact his revenge.

Not being very familiar with the character I don’t know exactly what to expect but he seems to produce a paranormal signal the level of Trigon or the Spectre and it’s driving sinister and madmen from miles away to Abby’s house where he has set up. I don’t know if he was always this powerful or if this is something new.

He then uses Abby to lure Swamp Thing to the same house. When he finds her, Abby is apparently dead. However in comics in general, and in this arc specifically, dead doesn’t necessarily mean dead.

The issue builds great atmosphere but the story itself doesn’t move very far. Most of the issue is recounting how Arcane’s spirit returned to earth and most of the rest dealing with the effects Arcane’s reappearance is having across the United States and the kinds of horrible people he is reaching out to.

Swamp Thing, again, plays a very minor role overall though I do wonder how Swamp Thing will defeat such an overpowering figure.
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Heads up! The Swamp Thing Annual comes after issue 31

Anyways, issue 31 kind of emphasizes why I don’t think Swamp Thing himself is the best character to experience horror through.

The issue begins with Arcane playing some head games with Swamp Thing. First saying it’s not Abby but a copy he made using Matt’s powers and that Swamp Thing should rip its head off in defiance but Swamp Thing realizes it is Abby. Arcane then tells Swamp Thing that he’s so powerful now that he’s taken Abby’s soul.

Swamp Thing carries the body into the swamp where Arcane insists he now holds dominion. Swamp Thing tells Arcane that he is of the Earth whose power even Arcane’s is no match for. Then Swamp Thing just beats Arcane down in an epic-one-sided pummeling.

It certainly works and there’s nothing wrong with a good old fashioned beat down but it shows why I think Moore used Abby, not Swamp Thing as the vehicle for the book’s horror elements. Swamp Thing is just too powerful for anything to be scary around him. The challenge is more in finding what needs to be pummeled which I do think Swamp Thing could be more involved in. Though making him too much of a presence might dilute the horror.

Anyways, Swamp Thing weakens Arcane enough that all his manifestations begin to dissolve and Matt is able to exert his will and expel him, banishing Arcane back to the afterlife. Matt’s wounds from the car accident reemerge and he uses his last bit of strength to try to being Abby back to life. He manages to save her body but is unable to rescue her soul.

Also nestled in the book and building on the cutaway from the previous issue, it’s revealed the watcher observing the events from space and hidden in shadow is the Monitor, who would reappear a few months later in Crisis on Infinite Earths. Judging by publication months I think our reading will end just as Crisis on Infinite Earths is starting. I wonder if we will see Moore make certain storytelling decisions knowing that a big reset is coming or how else he may take into account the major event that is coming, if at all.
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picking up on the missed reading from last week...
#30 tells us how Arcane came back from the dead. 'How' might be a little generous, at it seems he just decided to not have his spirit go to the afterlife and instead decided to possess dead/dying people. He apparently had his eye on Matt for a while due to his power, then orchestrated the accident that let him possess Matt and use the power.

Not knowing exactly what Arcane or Matt could do makes it a little tough to know how bad things are, so the description from the watchtower and from events elsewhere in the state is helpful. Apparently it's pretty bad. And to top it off, it appears Abby is dead.
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#31 finishes the battle with Arcane somewhat anticlimactically. Swamp Thing basically beats him up until some portion of Matt comes back and forces Arcane out of his body. I found it underwhelming for a villain who can change reality. It does provide a bit of redemption for Matt's character, but unfortunately he can't completely save Abby. She's alive but apparently soulless.

I agree with you that Abby is a better window for the reader than Swamp Thing. I've found her issues to be more effective (and affective) than Swamp Thing's issues at least. I think they could still tell horror stories from Swamp Thing's perspective but maybe it would be more forced since he generally is just hanging out in a swamp all the time. Having a person out in the world, interacting with other people, certainly gives more options.
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Annual 2 tells the story of Swamp Thing rescuing Abby's soul. I'll start with a complaint (as is my style), which is that Swamp Thing's powers are woefully underdescribed. Connecting to the Green makes sense since he's a plant, but how did he get himself into the realm of the near-dead? How did he beat up Arcane, who has some kind of supernatural powers and was possessing (and healing) dead bodies? It's a small complaint because I'm actually not much a fan of super in-depth explanations of how a character's powers work. It becomes limiting and just ends in contradiction at some point. But some amount of definition is useful so that characters don't become magical plot devices. I've been thinking about this recently since I was watching Stranger Things; Eleven basically seems to be able to do (or not do) whatever the plot requires. It lets writers put themselves in a corner and then just snap their fingers to get out of it, which I find lazy.

That aside, I liked the story (much as I still enjoyed Stranger Things). We got a bit of Dante's Divine Comedy with a few of DC's famous supernatural characters as tour guides. It's also sort of a tour of Swamp Thing history in terms of characters we see along the way. We got a pretty clear confirmation, if we didn't believe it already, that Swamp Thing and Alec Holland are different beings. The bad guys are in hell being punished. And we get Abby back so that we can continue having a human presence in the book and a tie between Swamp Thing and humanity.

This kind of slightly-long, mostly self-contained story is a good fit for annuals. X-Men had a similar one (Uncanny annual 4) where Nightcrawler is attacked and the team has to go into a magical replica of Hell to rescue him. That was much more directly based on Dante but the overall idea is the same.
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#32 is a standalone issue similar to 28, but while 28 was related to Swamp Thing's internal life he is again the secondary character in 32. The story is from the perspective of aliens who land on Earth looking for a new planet to live on. They find conditions here no better than the world they left. I think it was a fun aside that fits into the environmentalist theme of the book.

While there's an artist change here like there was on 28, I think it's more suitable this time. The story is on the humorous side (at least to me, for the most part) so it isn't missing the Bissette/Totleben combo. I also appreciated that the alien language was understandable but clearly different (and the source of the humor for me). It allowed for some fun words like describing Swamp Thing as a 'guardiner'.
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#33 uses Cain and Abel from the Houses of Secrets and Mysteries to reframe the original Swamp Thing story. Abby has a dream where Abel reveals that there have been other Swamp Things, and Alec Holland (more or less) is the latest in the line.

Having not read the original story I don't know if the pages are republished or recreated, or if they've been changed at all. The art credit is for Wrightson so maybe it's a direct republishing. Given that the actual point of the issue is so brief, it's a fair use of the material. It certainly gives the feel of a filler issue though. I wonder if there was any discussion or thought over switching this with the annual.

Similar to the previous issue, this one has a different artist (for the new material). It's a different artist and I think more in line with the typical pair.
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#34 seems like a good place to wrap our reading as it ends the run of Abby and Swamp Thing dancing around each other. It's a trippy issue, as Abby eats part of Swamp Thing and gains his (sometimes) perception of the world.

I wouldn't say this is a bad issue, but certainly weird. Abby and Swamp Thing acknowledge their love for each other, Swamp Thing reasonably questions how that's going to work, and the first thought goes to sex? I suppose that's reasonable but there's a whole host of issues they're going to have as a couple. Swamp Thing segueing that into having Abby eat part of him is also very weird. Having it turn out to be a way for them to commune was nice but I'm going to just keep saying weird.
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I also really liked the Annual, in part because I really like the style and themes of the Divine Comedy so a good adaptation or homage will pique my interest (What Dreams May Come is probably my favorite)

I agree a bit with your criticism of Swamp Thing’s power set. Personally, I do like to see a bit more definition in a character’s powers and then seeing a story make creative or unexpected use of those powers or their logical limits. For example in Venom’s first appearance, Spidey defeats him because Venom used a ton of webbing to tie him up. Since the symbiote is obviously not creating webbing out of nothing, it must be making it from itself and in making so much webbing, it had to have depleted and weakened itself.

Still, the story was good and we get a bit of a tour of DC’s afterlife which we’ve seen a little of in Sandman.

I’m guessing Arcane’s warning about Swamp Thing not wanting Abbey when he finds her was more about what almost happened to her as opposed to what has happened to her. She didn’t seem much different when we find her. Maybe it’ll be something that reveals itself later on now that Abbey has cheated death?
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Issue 32 was fine. The aliens’ way of speaking kind of wore thin for me after a while. It had some fun turns of phrase here and there but it was more something I put up with than really enjoyed. I do see what Moore was going for. They are alien creatures so they speak differently but I don’t feel it added more to the story than was lost in its ease of reading.

The design of the aliens combined with the art style felt like something out of Looney Tunes. Maybe the Gremlin but I think there may be another character even closer in appearance whose name evades me.


While the first mate’s death was sad, I also think that Swamp Thing’s retaliation against the alligators may have been a bit disproportionate. There is the argument that humans are consuming/destroying the planet but the gators were just being gators like they have been doing for millions of years before humans were even a thing. I don’t think they deserved to be mercilessly pummeled for it.

Also, while the comic predates it by a couple of decades, the concept of the issue and the hazards the aliens encounter reminds me of the video game Pikmin
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I think Swamp Thing 33 can be considered a reprint of House of Secrets 92 as it does seem to be the original pages, unchanged





Moore’s framing story recontextualizes it as part of the new mythology Moore is building around Swamp Thing. Swamp Thing seems like he started as an anthology monster where Moore is turning him into an avatar of the Earth itself.

I thought it was interesting that Moore chose to revisit the character’s anthology roots as I’ve thought his run felt a lot like an anthology series, though with stories often spanning several issues as opposed to having several stories in one.

I thought the use of Cain and Abel was done well and it showed how much Gaiman would borrow from Moore early in his Sandman run. Even the use of the wider DC roster feels similar.
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The crux of issue 34 is that Abbey and Swamp Thing love each other; sort of a beauty and the beast type romance I’d guess.

The idea of these two characters in love does have echoes in Doctor Manhattan and Silk Spectre in Watchmen. Granted, we meet them at different points in their relationship but how we experience the Green through Abbey feels similar to Doctor Manhattan describing the world (and Silk Spectre) in terms of quantum mechanics and causality.

While the issue is pretty much a psychedelic acid trip, it does call back to Woodrue eating the tuber and having a similar, mind-expanding experience. Granted we only saw his trip over a single page, I think, and not extended for most of an issue. I did appreciate the concistency.
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Some final thoughts on the run. Alan Moore is obviously a very talented writer Nd it’s easy to see why this run is thought so highly of. Not being familiar with the run before Moore, I’m guessing the book may have been a bit more of a straightforward Monster/Villain framework like say the Hulk. Swamp Thing himself being apart from humanity but still fighting monsters and villains.

Moore seems to want to expand the world of Swamp Thing. Its still confined mostly to the swamps but Swamp Thing himself is more of an ethereal being and an avatar of nature. He’s now crossing i to different planes of reality and facing threats with global and multi-planar consequences.

Just to reiterate what has been mentioned before though is that Swamp Thing very much feels like a supporting character in his book. In many of the stories he might make only a brief appearance and it is rarely him driving the story forward. I think the most Swamp Thing-driven issue was the first one that wrapped up the prior storyline. We get more looks into his thoughts, see him making decisions, and taking risks until he’s shot “dead.”

After that we get Woodrue driving some issue before the story settles primarily on Abbey as our window i to this world. Even the final issue we read is essentially Abbey describing her feelings for most of the issue. Does the breadth of his connection to the living Earth awe Swamp Thing? No idea but we got like a dozen pages of Abbey describing how it blows her mind.

Apparently this was Moore’s first long-form comic work after having worked on shorts in a variety of British comics. I think some of that mentality comes through. Stories seem to bounce around from supernatural to horror to cute almost parables. This is in contrast to Moore’s limited series like Watchmen or League of Extraordinary Gentlemen in which each issue feels like a piece of a grander puzzle and he can focus more on his themes and really drive them home over the course of six or twelve issues.

I think it’s worth pointing out that our reading this month ended the month before Crisis on Infinite Earths began. I’m definitely curious to see how that even affected Moore’s Swamp Thing. I’m not expecting Swamp Thing to be replaced with Earth 2 Swamp Thing or something in the next issue but surely something happened, right?

The Absolute Edition includes a lengthy afterword by Stephen Bissette (who apparently did most of the pencils in the book with Totelbein mostly doing inks) that seems like it’d be an interesting read. Bissette also appeared on a podcast a couple of years ago to discuss his work on Swamp Thing and specifically the final issue we read

Finally, apparently the cover art and final story page for issue 34 were stolen out of the DC offices at some point and are still at large
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