Swamp Thing: ...By Demons Driven!

[alicemacher]

The conclusion to the "Monkey King" trilogy. Warning for gore.


From Swamp Thing #27 (Aug. 1984).

At Elysium Lawns, the Monkey King grabs hold of Paul, sending him into near-shock. As Etrigan pulls the creature away and fights it, the Swamp Thing urges Abby to run with Paul to the swamp. Meanwhile, Matt isn't doing so well after his car crash.





"Damn you for making me do this on my own," says Abby. She's also losing patience with Paul for not running and for his compulsive spelling, leading her to snap at him and immediately apologize. At that moment, Etrigan comes up, elbows her aside and takes hold of Paul.





The Swamp Thing hits the Demon with an uprooted tree and the two of them fight. Abby scoops up Paul and continues to run... smack into the Monkey King. Meanwhile, the talking fly observes that Matt's finally stopped screaming.





The Monkey King attacks Abby while taking on Matt's form (she's scared of her husband's apparition-making powers) and saying, "Aaaa-beee... I... lluhv... yuuu..." Then Paul orders it to leave her alone.









Paul, now apparently cured of his compulsive spelling, third-person speaking and flat affect, bonds with the Swamp Thing as the creature escorts him back to Elysium Lawns. Abby goes looking for Etrigan, finds Blood (temporarily weakened from having just transformed back), and deduces they're the same person. Blood allows that's true, at least nowadays.





Still lacking context for Etrigan's warning (and unaware of the car accident), Abby accepts an apology and a lift home from Matt who, along with his car, looks good as new.

Next: a breather issue in which the Swamp Thing helps an old acquaintance with some unfinished business.

Comments

[tcampbell1000]

Moore loves an opportunity to rhyme,
Iambic rhyme if possible, and hey,
Pentameter's fun too: it helps keep time
In scheme abab or just aa.
The Demon did not rhyme in Kirby's scripts,
Except to summon Jason Blood, as Blood
Would summon him, but newly feline lips
In Steve Bissette's rendition spoke a flood.
The Demon soon became Moore's favorite guest,
And spoke in verse wherever he'd appear,
Until amnesiac "true fans" professed
That Etrigan had always been Shakespeare.
So much, then, for authorial intent.
Some characters dance better when they're bent.

[alicemacher]

Bravo, sir. *applause*

Etrigan did in fact speak in rhyme (apart from his summoning spell) before Moore, but not consistently. In 2012, Brian Cronin of CBR provided a thorough survey of the writers who've had the Demon rhyme, those who haven't, and where applicable their explanations, in-universe or otherwise, for their choices.

[icon_uk]

I will always remember the DC RPG Sourcebook for their magical characters, which points out that Etrigan is an amazing character to play, but only if you're up to constant extemporaneous rhyme-making.

It also suggested that in the case of playing Etrigan, success in Feat roles should be greatly impacted by the skill of the verse used. If they are tortured couplets then don't expect to do well, a sustained effort at a rhyme scheme should be rewarded and if, as the text puts it "... and if they produce verse of such quality abd power as to make grown men weep and women faint in ecstasy, that's an automatic Success roll"

[alicemacher]

I would totaly fail at extemporaneous Moore!Etrigan rhyming. At first I tried to compose my above response to T as a sonnet, but it didn't happen in the time I had available for/actually wanted to devote to it. Now having read T's work... I think maybe he could pull it off.

[icon_uk]

Well played!

[silicone_soul]

My favorite part of this story is the exchange between Swamp Thing and Paul as they're walking back to Elysium Lawns:

"Were you scared when the Monkey King jumped on you? What did you see?"

"I... saw fire... Once I... knew someone... who died... by fire..."

"And were you afraid?"

"Yes... A little..."

"That's good. I mean, y'know, it makes me feel better. I mean, if even monsters get scared sometimes, then... well, then it isn't so bad, is it?"

"No... It isn't so bad..."

[lego_joker]

That last page of Jason there... brrr...

It occurs to me that that's probably the closest Moore has ever come to making a definitive statement on Two-Face, and it's a damn depressing one. If you view the coin as a form of "bargain" between his good and evil sides... essentially, what Moore is saying that in the end, evil's gonna win every single time, solely by virtue of there being a bargain at all.

[icon_uk]

IIRC Moore makes a specific comment about Two-Face in another issue where the features Arkham Asylum.

Something along the lines of a smooth talking handsome attorney outlining his latest defence to his client as he walks to one side of the cell, and his scarred client shouting obscentities at him as HE walks to the other side.

[lego_joker]

I remember that one well, but it seemed more... gimmicky (since it was a throwaway cameo and all). This seems more profound even if it's not specifically about Harvey.

[alicemacher]

It's too bad we never got a Two-Face story from Moore. Harvey's backstory and his overall situation, even before Helfer's "The Eye of the Beholder" and the works it influenced, has always been tragic from the get-go. So Moore wouldn't have had to graft such an origin onto him as he did with the Joker. He'd have been free to build on and deepen, or subvert in some way (as Miller did in TDKR), what was already there.