With his seminal run writing Swamp Thing for DC from 1984 to 1987, Alan Moore set the stage for the complete reimagining of American superhero comics in the 1980s.
Revitalizing a character once seemingly doomed to the annals of comics history as one of the better-forgotten horror oddities, Alan Moore transformed a shambling mass of vegetation into one of the most thought-provoking and intellectual heroes ever written.
Tackling sophisticated and heady topics such as the problem of evil, the corruptive nature of power, the essence of humanity, and the re-examination of the definition of a monster, Moore took comics into realms of thought hitherto untrodden–employing the unsured talent of his artistic collaborators to collectively make comics history with some of the most innovative and challenging issues of comics produced to date.
Issue #34, "The Rite Of Spring"
In "The Rite of Spring" Moore delivers what Neil Gaiman describes as a "prose poem", providing an exquisite literary accompaniment to John Totleben and Stephen Bissette's visionary, medium-transcending artwork.
Roughly halfway through the issue, Abby Arcane eats one of the Swamp Thing's psychotropic fruits and effectively enters into communion with his consciousness; this results in the complete restructuring of the layout and page orientation, with sprawling two and one-page spreads created by turning the comic on its side dominating the rest of the issue.
These compositions are nothing short of extraordinary, depicting hallucinogenic visions replete with extravagant use of color, abstract geometries, surrealist imagery, and multi-media artwork to create the impression of an exuberant encounter with nature akin to that of the protagonists'.
Issue #40, "The Curse"
As part of Moore's incredible Keroac-esque saga "American Gothic", "The Curse" is one of a series of episodic tales in which the eponymous hero must confront a supernatural horror whose past belies a moral or ethical failure of American society.
"The Curse" takes the pop horror fan-favorite character of the werewolf and uses it and its associations as an allegory for the uncaged fury of the American woman, confined for too long by a society that has subjugated them and pigeonholed their roles for centuries.
Crafting an utterly astonishing feminist fable, Moore tells his story through parallel narration, conflating the practices of the Pennamaquot Native Americans who would temporarily banish their menstruating tribe to an elevated dwelling known as the "red lodge" with modern, consumerist forms of female enslavement–targeted advertising playing up the importance of body image, relegation to serve as housewives, etc.
Using the repetition of a trigger-phrase–"their anger, in darkness turning, unreleased, unspoken, its mouth a red wound..."–to continually recall the tale of the women, Moore repurposes a Hollywood b-movie monster and turns it into a symbolically saturated conduit through which to deliver one of the most searing feminist critiques of western society to ever grace the comics stand.
Issue #53, "The Garden Of Earthly Delights"
Featuring the Swamp Thing's first introduction to DC's headliner, Swamp Thing storms into the city on a war-path and quickly puts Gotham in a viridian stranglehold by overtaking the buildings and streets in a massive, spontaneously grown urban forest paradise.
The issue is at once triumphantly fun and self-indulgent, allowing the Swamp Thing to, for once, cut loose and demonstrate the full, sheer ridiculous extent of his powers (at one point incarnating himself in a several-hundred-foot-tall redwood monster and threatening to instantly eradicate the entire population of Gotham by manipulating the floral bacteria in the human digestive tract).
For as outlandishly over-the-top as it is, "The Garden of Earthly Delights" nonetheless contains gripping, thoughtful dialogue and narration that considers the ancient human values that were lost when the forest dwellings gave way to the metropolis and the nature of prejudice against the most outwardly alien elements of a society.
Issue #54, "The Flowers Of Romance"
"The Flowers of Romance" holds a privileged position among Swamp Thing issues by virtue of its not only being supremely disturbing but also based entirely on actual events.
Alan Moore's inspiration for the issue comes from what he describes as the "sickening true story" of a relative of his, who, after the death of her husband, was discovered to have not left the house in over twenty years after being thoroughly psychologically manipulated by her late spouse into believing that she possessed the competency of a child.
All of the most shocking and abjectly morally depraved elements of Liz Tremayne's gaslighting in the issue are taken from actual s of Moore's relative given to him by an aunt–from the fears of sitting down and drowning in a bathtub to the stitched towels substituted for underwear.
In "The Flowers of Romance", Moore reclaims the story of his victimized relative by finally giving her the justice she deserves–putting her in the driver's seat of a Tarantino-esque revenge fantasy in which the repugnant husband stand-in, Dennis, is eaten alive by alligators.
Issue #56, "My Blue Heaven"
Published simultaneously in the early months of 1987 alongside Moore's seminal Watchmen, "My Blue Heaven" reads like a strange, horrific trial run of the character Dr. Manhattan–a blue-colored god banished to live a solitary life on an alien planet where he creates for himself a massive edifice by transmuting matter alongside clones of himself.
Moore's Swamp Thing tale, however, released from the narrative pressures exerted upon an issue in a limited series such as Watchmen, takes time to explore the implications of the traits that Swampy and Manhattan share–with a whole section of the comic devoted to describing the experience of controlling two or more bodies at once, complete with several visual examples intended to allow the reader to experience it for themselves.
The issue, like so many in Moore's run on the character, is equal parts beautiful and horrifying, as the reader watches Swamp Thing descend into a tragic form of self-deception whereby he tricks himself into believing the faux, blue world he has created to ease his boredom and loneliness is real–a mistake that culminates in the disturbing, enraged destruction of the animated vegetable clone of his lover.
Issue #60, "Loving The Alien"
"Loving the Alien" remains to this day, even in the wake of masterpieces by such pioneering masters as Dave McKean and David Mack, perhaps the single most visceral act of artistic experimentation to ever see publication in a mainstream comic.
Its title an homage to a 1985 David Bowie song, the issue loosely tells the story of the Swamp Thing unwittingly impregnating a sentient alien space station, narrated in florid, unhinged, and strikingly poignant poetry by Alan Moore.
John Totleben crafts the visuals for the story using a cornucopia of artistic techniques–photographs of a sculpted model of Swamp Thing made from plastic and vegetation, actual bits and pieces of micro machinery and wristwatches pasted onto illustration board, lithographic prints, and photographic artifacts–all combined with abstract and absurd pencils, inks, and coloring to create a truly alien visual landscape.
Issue #62, "Wavelength"
Two years after Jack Kirby returned to his Fourth World Saga with the stunning and wildly visually creative graphic novel Hunger Dogs, the "Avatar of The Green" was introduced to the colorful world of Kirby's creation in the pen-penultimate issue of Moore's tenure on Swamp Thing. Though part of Moore's canon of stories, the script, dialogue, and pencils for "Wavelength" were, in fact, penned by Rick Veitch.
The issue finds Metron, the scientist-scholar of the New Gods, surfing the outer reaches of reality and exploring the bodies of the giant, frozen celestials so familiar to fans of Kirby's original series, when he is visited by the Swamp Thing, incarnated in some samples of plant matter Metron had collected. Together, the two voyage through the most bizarre and remote reaches of existence and encounter an "aleph", or a point from which all of time and space are visible, which Veitch brilliantly represents as a massive two-page spread featuring 41 tiny s displaying everything from football games to pterodactyls to Adolf Hitler and the Big Bang.
Taking inspiration from Kirby's hallmark artistic flourishes–such as quasi-pointillist backgrounds and psychedelic collagework–Veitch pens a contemplative and powerful work that honors the characters it co-opts by turning to the theological and reflecting on the unity of the created order.