Swamp Thing: The Anatomy Lesson

[alicemacher]

"This story was the first hand grenade thrown by what you might call the British sensibility in American comics. [...] Miracleman predates it, but this was the first time a [world]wide audience in modern comics had been shown a character they knew well, and told that everything they knew was wrong. Now, it's a cliché. Then, it was explosive. Structurally, it's untouchable. Perfectly paced, a complete short story, powered by hate and Moore's sudden grasp of the possibility in the 24-page form. As a British writer, he'd been restricted to the 6 to 8-page form before now. It was like seeing a clever piccolo player suddenly get access to an orchestra."
--Warren Ellis, quoted in Magic Words: The Extraordinary Life of Alan Moore


First off: lego_joker commented, on my previous post, that the original, murky colouring (by Tatjana Wood, incidentally) was more fitting for this comic than the bright digital recolouring of the latest trade editions. I agree, so from this post onward I'll be presenting scans from the old, monthly issues. I'll do my best to make the occasional white-on-black lettering legible while respecting the integrity of the original. Now on with Issue 21 (Feb. 1984; pencils by Stephen Bissette and Rick Veitch, inks by John Totleben)!

Two weeks after his men seemingly shot the Swamp Thing dead, and cryogenically preserved his body, General Sunderland secures the release of Dr. Jason Woodrue, the Floronic Man, and hires him to dissect the creature at Sunderland's Washington headquarters. The general wants Woodrue to determine why exposure to Alec Holland's bio-restorative formula turned him into a plant monster while having no effect on his wife Linda (whose body Sunderland's people had exhumed and studied).





After six frustrating weeks, Woodrue comes across an entry on planarian worms, and everything falls into place.





Woodrue suggests that by the time Holland, post-explosion, landed in the swamp, he was in fact already dead. The plants within the swamp, growth spurred by his formula, began to eat Holland's body and thereby became "infected" with his consciousness, which still believed itself alive.





Sunderland says, over Woodrue's protestations, that he doesn't need a scientific background to understand the gist, just as he doesn't need to understand how the technology behind his staffless, fully-automated headquarters works in order to use it. Nor does he need Woodrue's services any more. He steps out for a moment, leaving his central computer console alone with the vengeful Woodrue, who knows exactly how it works. The scientist uses it to thaw out the Swamp Thing down in the freezer.





Later that evening, Sunderland drops by the lab and finds the swamp creature missing. He rushes back to his office.







At home, Woodrue reflects that Sunderland shouldn't be in much danger, given that the Swamp Thing isn't known to have intentionally killed anyone. Not as long as the creature hasn't read his notes on him.







Woodrue imagines that the Swamp Thing, having dispatched of Sunderland, would head back to the Louisiana bayou. He resolves to follow him there in hopes of learning more about his own part-plant self.

Comments

[informationgeek]

I don't really like or enjoy most things Moore writes, from Watchmen to Tom Strong to his underaged porn he made with his wife, but I think this is the second best thing I've ever read from it. It was a good buildup with such a powerful conclusion...

...shame I don't care for the rest of the Swamp Thing run, but what are ya gonna do?

[zylly]

I do have to admit, I'm not generally a fan of "everything you know is wrong" style retcons... but this one's pretty brilliant.

[beeyo]

"Underage pork with his wife"


What

[beeyo]

Oh god the typo made it worse

[informationgeek]

Lost Girls.

[tripodeca113]

Oohhh.

Shame that worm experiment has been debunked in real life.

[alicemacher]

Correct. It turned out that the second group of worms had simply been following the slime trails the first group had left behind in the maze.

[laughing_tree]

A lot of people talk about how 'everything you know is a lie' has become a cliche, but is it really that common? I can't think of many instances. The only ones besides this example that come to mind right now are Miracleman and Marvel's Darkhawk, though there are probably a couple I'm forgetting.

[lizard_of_aus]

Try most of modern comics nowadays. Pretty much every major hero has had one attempt at an earth-shattering revelation thrust upon them. Ben Reilly, Romulus, Snap Wilson, the Crossing, the list goes on.

[strejdaking]

Then again, it turned out Floronic Man's theory was wrong too, so you could argue it worked itself out.

[tcampbell1000]

Some have stuck better than others, but yes. And it's still part of the scene, from the new villain in Man of Steel claiming, "I killed Krypton! Climate change, geological catastrophe? Nah, it was all me!" to the new Avengers opening with the idea that there was some proto-Avengers running around before there were even proper people on Earth, defending the Homo antecessors.

You could argue that those revisionist spasms aren't the same as saying "Everything you know is wrong," but for all the love this story justly gets, it's not really saying that either. Swamp Thing remains a horror series about a guy who's a plant in the swamp, not a spy thriller about a woman eating bacon in Hoboken.

[icon_uk]

Possibly also helped byt the fact that this was one of the very first "Everything you know is wrong" retcons.

[icon_uk]

Agreed, this is definite horror, but it's also about acceptance and growth. Almost, and I may be speaking out of turn here, dealing with a chronic disability.

Once Alec realises he can never achieve his dream of becoming human again, he makes peace with that, and though regretful accepts his new reality and sets out to discover what that means.

[icon_uk]

Along with the others, one of the biggest would be "Jean Grey returns from the dead, oh and she was never the Phoenix we'd seen"

[jmacq1]

And let's not forget X-Men: Deadly Genesis.

On second thought yes let's forget X-Men: Deadly Genesis.

[tcampbell1000]

That's a really good point.

[zylly]

The other big thing was that it wasn’t just done for shock value. This was actually recognizing that the old status quo was just wheel spinning and attempting to move forward in new directions.

[thatnickguy]

What works for me with this particular "everything you know is wrong!" is how carefully Moore worked to make it fit. I think it works because it still honours Len Wein's original creation.

[kamino_neko]

Swamp Thing remains a horror series about a guy who's a plant in the swamp, not a spy thriller about a woman eating bacon in Hoboken.

Nor about a drug addicted jazz critic who ISN'T radioactive.

(Sorry, that line in connection to Alan Moore pretty much required that reference...)

[silicondream]

Other examples from DC in the 80's: Superboy turning out to be from the Pocket Universe in Legion of Super-Heroes, Niles Caulder turning out to have engineered the origins of the Doom Patrol, Animal Man discovering his own fictional nature. But those were, indeed, all a few years after Moore wrote this.

I was trying to think of a good example from the Silver or Bronze Ages?

[doodleboy]

Honestly I like Alan Moore's Swamp Thing run more than Watchmen. Also, man I miss John Totleben's art.

[lego_joker]

The closest I can think of is "Oh yeah, Bruce Wayne's dad came up with the ORIGINAL Batman costume (for a costume party) and also Bruce made the original Robin costume for himself when he interned with a cop (or something)."

Oh, and the whole ~revelation~ that Joe Chill wasn't a random thug but a guy deliberately sent by a mob kingpin Bruce's dad had pissed off.

[lego_joker]

Awwww yeah.

(Also holy crap how did I miss this for four days? I didn't realize to check for it until I saw you post #22.)

Someday I'll probably get into the nitty-gritty of Moore's oeuvre and not just the parts everyone's read, but even then I doubt I'll like any story - in isolation or as a whole - as much as this one. The pacing, the dialogue, the atmosphere... it's not just a powerful modernization, but a truly astounding homage to the classic "asshole messes with supernatural powers beyond his ken, asshole gets exactly what he deserves" plots of '50s EC comics.

(For just one small shred of the sheer artistic genius on display here - check the page where Swampy smashes the General's desk. Notice something funny about the Newton's-cradle?)

I've admitted this before, but I've no problem admitting it again: pretty much every fanfic project I've began and abandoned in the last five years has tried to channel this story in one form or another. One day I might even be able to capture 1% of the magic...