Swamp Thing #55 or, This Funeral Looks Familiar

[madbertha]

Links fixed... have no idea what happened. Enjoy!
#55 of Swamp Thing--basically, everyone thinks that Swamp Thing has died, napalmed in Gotham, and the city holds a funeral in his honour. I love this for the way it depicts Abby's grief, and this is the main reason I'm putting this up, however, Watchmen fans may want to have fun playing spot the similarities in the following pages. For a bit of background, the relevant issue in Watchmen is labelled October 1986, and this issue of Swamp Thing is December 1986. It's debatable which was written earlier, because publication dates don't necessarily indicate this.



Page 1, Alan Moore's prose, narrating from the perspective of Abigail Holland nee Arcane. I thought this conveyed some of the feelings of bereavement very well:



Page 2: Note the batmobile. Also, is that the Chrysler building there?




Page 3: Page splash showing writing and art credits. Note that it always rains during funerals in the Moore universe.





Page 4: Something very familiar about Jim Gordon here...





Page 5: Shift to flashback at the bottom, and Moore's device of linking different scenes ("Sharp enough to cut").




Page 10: There's always people on the periphery of a funeral. In this case, because these are my favorite Swamp Thing regular guest stars of that time, I'm including this page because I CAN:




Page 17: The Rose ;_;





The last few pages of this issue show 'zoom out' again showing the Earth receding and a blue Swamp Thing appearing on what is clearly a planet far far away, bookending the start. I would have liked to include these, but, you know, 7 pages!

I'll be putting up occasional scans from my comics collection. I know that Swamp Thing's available in collected volumes, so I'll probably just select stuff for comment/enjoyment rather than put them up sequentially. Comics I'm planning to scan include early Hellblazer, Miracleman, Demon. By the way, this is my first scans-daily post, and it was tough because my issues of Swamp Thing are very yellow and took a bit of work cleaning up!


Comments are very welcome!




 

Comments

[icon_uk]

Sorry to say, three of your images have been moved or deleted by the host, and there's an odd photograph of someone holding a goldfish in the mix too.

[zordboy]

Yeah, the goldfish image was a little trippy.

[icon_uk]

To be fair, in an Alan Moore Swamp Thing story, that might just have been part of the story.

[madbertha]

Fingers crossed, I've fixed it. Some nice pages there, would be a shame if they were lost :)

[madbertha]

I have no idea how that goldfish got there... Perhaps it was raining too hard.

I'll have a look into it soon.

[nezchan]

It was a friggin' monsoon by the end, so it's possible.

[rainspirit]

Absolutely beautiful.

It's a shame that Alan Moore isn't better remembered for this than he is for Watchmen and V for Venddetta.

[silicone_soul]

This is true. Swamp Thing is my favorite of all his works.

[madbertha]

It is mine too. Mind you, Miracleman was pretty special too.

[madbertha]

I tried to sound flippant (re: Watchmen correlations), but, yes, I loved this issue.

Maybe it's harder for people to pick up the Swamp Thing stuff because of the volume of work--Watchmen and V for Vendetta are in convenient single volumes (in terms of reprints). Also, Swamp Thing is probably already on the periphery in comic terms, it fits less comfortably in the superhero slot. I don't know, the logic of fame and popularity eludes me ;)

Still debating whether I should junk the Constantine and Phantom Stranger page and put up the page with the world receding away again (but then I figure most people can imagine it from the way it began).

[fifth11]

Psssst stick with the pages you've got. I enjoyed them :)

[theanswer]

To be fair, he has become a bit of a dick.

[madbertha]

In what ways?

[halloweenjack]

You can definitely tell that Constantine's a magician, because he's smoking a cigarette in the rain without a hat or umbrella.

[madbertha]

It's actually the same cigarette throughout the series and into Hellblazer, it's where he gets his magic from.

Good spotting :)

[cmdr_zoom]

Those are some amazingly great thoughts on death in the first two pages.

[madbertha]

Aren't they, though? I admit I reread that page when my grandmother died :(

[kirke_novak]

I had no idea that one of the Swamp Thing's powers was the ability to speak with his crotch.

[madbertha]

HAHAHAHA, thanks XD

Theoretically, he can place his vocal chords ANYWHERE HE PLEASES.

However, being able to speak from the crotch is not a Swamp Thing only gift, I suspect.