Swamp Thing: The Burial

[alicemacher]

From Swamp Thing #28 (Sept. 1984). Art by Shawn McManus.


The opening sequence shows the Swamp Thing digging a hole with his bare hands and wondering how deep it needs to be. We flash back to him hanging out with Abby earlier that day and observing she's much happier than she's been in some time. He asks about Matt.









Seeing how sad the ghost looks as he turns away, the Swamp Thing has a change of heart and pleads with him to come back. He follows Holland to the ruins of the small house in the swamp where Alec and Linda had lived and worked. There he sees a vision of the couple sharing a romantic moment, and a vision of the crooks who knocked him out and planted explosives under the table. The creature first tries to stop the crooks but his hand goes right through one of them. Then he tries to rouse Alec after they leave.





The above is actually the bit I find most interesting in this issue. Is the Swamp Thing just getting caught up in the moment and letting his hero instinct kick in? Or does he realize that if it did "all... turn out... differently," if Holland had escaped the explosion and lived, he himself wouldn't exist? And if so, would he be okay with that? A moot question, of course, as he's seeing the past which he can neither interact with nor change. But interesting to ponder, especially since the conclusion of the Woodrue arc saw the Swamp Thing happily accepting who he is.

In any case, the swamp creature of course can only watch as Holland awakens too late and meets his fiery, swampy death. Hours later, out of the water comes Past-Swamp Thing (resembling how Wrightson drew him), and surprisingly...









The Swamp Thing places Holland's skeleton in the grave and uses a root from his body as a marker.





As you've probably guessed from the guest art and the "breather episode" nature of the story, this was essentially a filler issue, though given the author it's much better written than most filler.* It allowed Bissette (a great, but by his own admission slow, penciller) and Totleben time to draw the art-intensive Issue 29, which made comics history. And that's no hyberbole.

*Moore did take the dialogue, for the scene in which the criminals accost Holland and he wakes up to notice the explosives, straight from Wein's script for the original Swamp Thing #1 (Nov. 1972).

Comments

[scorntx]

That part with Abby talking about the flies, oh so very oblivious at to what's happening...
Very subtle horror going on there.

(Amazing she can actually smile at all. Waking up every morning to find flies everywhere looking for a meal they can't get to is nauseating.)

[tcampbell1000]

To your question, I'd say that Alec's getting caught up in the moment. Before and after this, he's been more than fine with leaving his human progenitor behind (and the mentions of Linda will drop off precipitously after this), but that rush of Original Alec's last memories does pull him back into his old mindset for a bit.

(And man, standards of what constitutes a "slow artist" have sure dropped since the 1980s...)

[zylly]

It always amazes me how much the commitment to “the book comes out on time” has dropped off in the industry. Even if that meant using a fill in issue. I get that reprints will no longer fly, but we’ve seen such a pattern with books and events where delays are practically just accepted norm.

[captainbellman]

Reminds me of the odd scene in "The Three Doctors", wherein the First Doctor offers guidance to his successors despite being younger and less experienced than them. An interesting philosophical quandary: how many of us might find our past selves wiser and more clear-headed?

[laughing_tree]

That’s a good question. For a lot of us, the unpleasant truth is that our past selves would have less accumulated baggage clogging up our headspace, and that could definitely allow for clearer thinking.

[icon_uk]

Yes, and it got even more confusing in "Twice Upon a Time", where we had the First Doctor being played by an actor who is much older than William Hartnell was (David Bradley was 75 in TUaT, Hartnell was 58 when he reitred from the role), and the Twelfth Doctor, a much older version of the Doctor being played Peter Capaldi aged 59.

"I thought I'd be younger"

"I AM younger"

As Obi-Wan might say "... from a certain point of view"

[laughing_tree]

I wonder if “glasshouse effect” is Moore’s mistake or Abby’s. And if it’s the latter, what’s the idea, that Abby’s not very educated? I remember one or two other scenes in the run that could be read as pushing that idea, as well, though I was never sure if I was just reading into it...

[tcampbell1000]

There are a lot of little tics in Abby's speech pattern and mannerisms that indicate she's not had much formal schooling (which seems likely to be the case, given her history). Often wise and brave, yeah, but generally not much for the sciences, though she starts to share Alec's "sense of the swamp" as the series develops.