Swamp Thing (2019), we hardly knew ye

The 'cancelled before it finished production' 2019 TV show SWAMP THING is a curious sort of warning on how not to adapt a comic book (or other long-running source material).

Note that I enjoy the show and that it's mostly well-made, well-written, and well-acted. However...

It shares a major problem with the 2011 GREEN LANTERN movie insofar as it tries to throw a huge amount of comic-book 'mythology' that the original comic accumulated over decades into a relatively small package. 

So much so that the 'Big Reveal' of episode 9 took 11 years to come about in the comics -- and was thus actually a Big Reveal when we learned that Everything We Knew Was Wrong. Nine episodes in, we barely know Alec Holland/Swamp Thing. The Big Reveal is just another plot point without much tragedy or shock behind it.

The show also invents new stories for many of the main characters which are not really an improvement on the original stories.

Then, for reasons I really don't understand, it throws two non-Swamp-Thing-related DC characters into prominent roles, Dan Cassidy (aka Blue Devil) and Madame Xanadu.

Though I do love Blue Devil

And an all-new ghost story plot. And at least three completely new, major supporting characters.

Did I say ten episodes? It actually does all this by the end of episode 5. There's still half a season to go and even more mythology to process. 

Then it throws in this very odd bit in which several episodes bear the titles of Bruce Springsteen songs. If the whole thing were set in New Jersey, I could maybe understand this. But it's set in Louisiana. Jarringly, the show switches from Springsteen titles back to titles from the comic-book series with episodes 9 and 10.

I do give the series a pass on its relative lack of Swamp Thing. It's a TV show, and the budget can't necessarily handle a partially and sometimes fully CGI Swamp Thing being the star of his own show, instead of a muck-encrusted cameo in many episodes. On the other hand, if you're going to make a show about Swamp Thing, maybe only do so if the budget is there.

One last thing that interests me is that the original Swamp Thing comic series, from the early 1970's, basically followed the rubric of The Fugitive. To wit: 

• Mysterious criminals kill Alec Holland's wife and accidentally turn him into Swamp Thing when they blow up his lab and saturate him with the 'Bio-restorative Formula' Linda and Alec Holland had been working on to increase plot yields. 
• Swamp Thing (a name given to him by the media -- he actually goes by 'Alec') sets off on a cross-country journey to find the people behind the murder and avenge his wife's death. 
• The government agent who failed to protect the Hollands pursues Swamp Thing across the country, initially because he believes that Swamp Thing may have played a role in the murders. 
• Each issue pits Swampy against a new supernatural menace.

Like I said, I enjoy the show but spend a lot of time agog. Even if we assume that the producers wanted to make a mythology-heavy, arc-intensive show out of Swamp Thing, they've simply overloaded the concept with too much information and way, way too many characters. I hope that its rapid cancellation means that a different version is on the way, or possibly a more faithful movie version.

But boy oh boy. Even in original works, watch that mythology. And watch out for too many characters introduced too quickly.

Also... how did Blue Devil get into the mix? Was the writers' room drunk that day?

Hell Above, Hell Below

Hellboy in Hell Volume 1: The Descent (2015-2016/Collected 2016): written and illustrated by Mike Mignola: Mike Mignola's Hellboy series moves inexorably towards its conclusion in this, what may be the penultimate volume in the long-running series. The end of the last book saw Hellboy dead on Earth and plummeting into Hell. And now we open, on the borderlands of Hell.

Hellboy is his usual acerbic self as he fights an assortment of demons and, well, more demons. Some have personal grudges against him as he sent them back to Hell during his heroic, monster-fighting career above-ground. Meanwhile, Hell's capital city of Pandemonium is strangely empty, and Satan himself is asleep in a basement. Hellboy has help in Hell, but will it be enough to see his mission through -- if there is a mission?

Well, that's the question. Hellboy in Hell marked the return of Mignola to drawing Hellboy as well as writing it after several years of having Duncan Fegredo handle the art duties. It's a welcome return. Mignola has simplified his line, his shapes, and pretty much everything about his style. It's a marvelous, evocative evolution of cartooning that can attain startling effects both comic and horrific. 

Hellboy's purpose in Hell seems a bit vague, but some of that reflects Hellboy's own rejection of the 'destiny' the first couple of years of Hellboy set up. He's not going to usher in the final act of the Apocalypse, having rejected his demonic heritage. Why, then, does he not remember committing a major act of violence in this volume?

If you've never read Hellboy, this is not the place to start. If you have been following Hellboy, this is pretty much essential as we approach the end of a remarkable horror/fantasy epic. Highly recommended.

BPRD: Hell on Earth Volume 4: The Devil's Engine & The Long Death (2012/ Collected 2012): written by Mike Mignola and John Arcudi; illustrated by Tyler Crook, James Harren, and Dave Stewart: The eruption of Hell onto Earth-Hellboy continues in this collection of two miniseries dealing with Hellboy's former unit, the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defence. Things are grim. Monsters are everywhere. This volume contains two 'snapshots' of the ongoing conflict/apocalypse, nicely scripted by John Arcudi and possessed of a number of fine visualizations of those monsters by Tyler Crook and James Harren. 

An unusual, freaky, and disturbingly visualized Wendigo seems to owe at least some of its visual debt to Jack Kirby's white monkey of fear from his 1970's series The Demon by way of Steve Bissette and John Totleben's visual reimagining of the character early in Alan Moore's 1980's run on Swamp Thing. It's all enjoyable, though a bit light on the textual side of things. Recommended.

Horror Comix Anthologies: The Big Book of Taboo

Taboo Issue 4 (1990): edited by Stephen Bissette and Nancy O'Connor, containing the following comics: Text pieces, interviews, and bios by Steve Bissette with Jean-Marc Lofficier; Front cover by Moebius; Back cover by Brian Sendelbach; Frontispiece by Nancy O'Connor; "Dreaming And The Law" written and illustrated by Phillip Hester; "1963" illustrated by Dave Sim; Untitled written and illustrated by Charles Burns; "Babycakes" written by Neil Gaiman and illustrated by Michael Zulli; "Cholesterol" written and illustrated by D’Israeli"; "Davey’s Dream" written by Mark Askwith and illustrated by Rick Taylor; "Eyes Of The Cat aka Les Yeux Du Chat" written by Alejandro Jodorowsky and illustrated by Moebius (originally printed in France in 1978); "El Topo" written by Alejandro Jodorowsky and illustrated by Spain Rodriguez (originally printed in Europe in 1979);  "Retinal Worm" written and illustrated by S. Clay Wilson; "La Fugue {The Escape}" written and illustrated by P. Foerster;  "Blue Angel" written by Tim Lucas and illustrated by Steve White; "Morrigan Tales" written by Elaine Lee and illustrated by Charles Vess; "These Things Happen" written and illustrated by  Rick Grimes; "Neither Seen Nor Heard" written by L. Roy Aiken and illustrated by Mike Hoffman; From Hell, Chapter Three: Blackmail or Mrs. Barrett written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Eddie Campbell; From Hell Pin-Up illustrated by Alan Moore.

The fourth oversized paperback issue of the late, much-lamented Taboo contains a wealth of great horror and weird comics material. The high point is a reprint of Alejandro Jodorowsky and Moebius's 1978 collaboration "The Eyes of the Cat," a lengthy weird horror tale made up entirely of gorgeous and occasionally disturbing full-page panels by Moebius. Combined with interviews with the two, it makes for quite a treat. Spain Rodriquez's odd 'tie-in' to the Jodorowsky film El Topo completes this part of the package.

The rest of the anthology is excellent as well, from the third serialized chapter of Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell's epic graphic novel about Jack the Ripper, From Hell, to a horrifying bit of insect craziness from underground comix mainstay S. Clay Wilson. Elaine Lee writes a fascinating new-wave fairy tale illustrated by Charles Vess in his old-school, Hal Foster by way of N.C. Wyeth style. Most of the short pieces are genuinely horrific, and it's interesting to see relatively early, non-Sandman Neil Gaiman as illustrated by the fine, overlooked Michael Zulli, and very early Phil Hester writing and drawing. Taboo was very much cutting-edge horror for its time, and rewards reading now if one can find issues of it. Highly recommended.

The Big Book of the Unexplained: written by Doug Moench; illustrated by Russ Heath, Sergio Aragones, Brent Anderson, Joe Sacco, Steve Leialoha, and many others (1997): Another enjoyable entry in Paradox Press' 'Big Book of' series of single-author, multiple-artist comics anthologies from the 1990's. This foray into the world of UFO's, cryptids, and general all-around Fortean madness (indeed, a cartoon version of Charles Fort is our narrator) is fun stuff with a wide variety of artists working in a wide variety of styles to alternately creep the reader out and make the reader laugh while, perhaps, thinking a little, at least about the credulity of the human animal. Recommended.

Shiny Beasts: written and illustrated by Rick Veitch with Alan Moore and S.R. Bissette (1979-1985; collected 2009)

Shiny Beasts: written and illustrated by Rick Veitch with Alan Moore and S.R. Bissette (1979-1985; collected 2009): Back in the long-lost days just before Marvel launched Epic, its own comics anthology magazine to compete with Heavy Metal, young turks like Rick Veitch and Steve Bissette were graduating from the first classes of the Joe Kubert School for Comics Art and entering the American comic-book industry. Veitch brings together his early-career short pieces done for Heavy Metal and Epic here, and they're a dazzling bunch for such a young writer and artist.

Veitch's interests have always tended towards science fiction and satire, and this book offers a heady dose of both. However, the mostly eponymous story, "Shiny Beast", points more towards Veitch's 21st-century graphic novel Can't Get No, with its reliance on pictures to carry the narrative.

Veitch would get better, and quickly, but there's a real charge to watching him play around with various illustrative techniques. His cosmic spacescapes dazzle in a couple of stories, making me wish someone had commissioned him to do a fully painted and airbrushed New Gods story. Blackly humourous twist endings abound, a legacy of both Veitch's work with editor Robert Kanigher at DC and of the long history of twist endings in short comic-book horror pieces, going back to EC Comics.

A generous afterword offers insight about Veitch's grwoth as an artist, his influences and mentors, and his collaborators. Several of those early Kubert School graduates were a close-knit bunch, sometimes living together to be able to afford the rent, and so a lot of work contains material from whoever was able to help out on a given day. It's a short and enjoyable volume, and would go well as a lead-in to some of Veitch's longer work from the same period, especially Abraxas and the Earthman and The One. Recommended.

Cigarette Burned

Tales from the Crypt Archives Volume 2: written by Al Feldstein; illustrated by Wally Wood, Jack Davis, Jack Kamen, Graham Ingels, Joe Orlando, and others (1951-52; reprinted 2010): Another collection of horror stories ranging from good to great, from the days before the Comics Code Authority lobotomized American comic books.

It amazes me how fresh and enjoyable most of the stories in this volume remain. EC had the finest comic-book artists in America for much of its too-short existence. The stories, written for the most part by editor Al Feldstein, occasionally get a bit rote (the vengeance of the dead was always an EC horror staple, along with some truly atrocious puns), but many are clever short stories in their own right.

But the art, of course, is the thing. Wally Wood is a bit out of his depth here -- he was always best on science fiction and non-supernatural thrillers, and the two covers he assays are weirdly non-horrific. But when you've got 'Ghastly' Graham Ingels, Jack Davis, Jack Kamen, and Joe Orlando on the beat, everything's going to be fine. Davis, also a long-time Mad artist, is droll and blackly comic. Orlando and Kamen are fine, moody artists.

And Ingels remains one of the greatest horror artists to ever draw comic books. Many of his monsters are disturbingly malformed. He's the granddaddy of so many modern horror artists, from Bernie Wrightson through Steve Bissette and Rick Veitch. His grotesques anticipate both the distorted spaghetti monsters of films such as John Carpenter's The Thing and the human monsters of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Hills Have Eyes. Highly recommended.

John Constantine Hellblazer: Death & Cigarettes: written by Peter Milligan; illustrated by Simon Bisley, Guiseppe Camuncoli, and Stefano Landini (2012-2013; Collected 2013): 300 issues of Vertigo's John Constantine Hellblazer come to an end in this volume, so that Constantine can continue his adventures, in somewhat altered and youthfulized form, over in a title set in DC's mainstream superhero universe.

Created by Alan Moore, Steve Bissette, John Totleben, and Rick Veitch in Swamp Thing in the early 1980's as a sort of punk-attitude occult investigator from rust-belt Northern England, Constantine has had a long, varied, and distinguished career both in other people's comics and in his 25 years of his own title. He's even survived a completely screwy Keanu Reeves movie. And he's getting his own TV series this fall.

For me, the heights of John Constantine Hellblazer were reached early, with Jamie Delano writing the first 40 issues or so. Ably complemented by artists that included John Ridgway (understated and sinister), Sean Phillips and, in Delano's then-finale on the series, cover-artist Dave McKean doing an entire issue, Delano created a dense, kitchen-sink milieu of horror for Constantine.

Most of the humour in the title came from Constantine's sarcastic reaction to the horrors he faced. We were always meant to view Constantine through the lens of his own self-evaluation as a cursed punk, but we were also forced to conclude that he was indeed a very, very dark knight standing between humanity and the inimical forces of heaven and hell alike.

So we fast-forward here, to the end. I was gratified to discover that the Internet had as many problems figuring out just what the Hell the last three pages of the last issue mean. The whole thing ends on a note of ambiguity that may be entirely intended or may be sloppy story-telling. I have no idea.

Writer Peter Milligan gives us a 60-ish Constantine gifted with a super-hot 40-years-younger wife, a suddenly retconned-into-existence nephew who looks exactly like him, and a not-particularly imposing group of supernatural menaces to usher him out of his title. The art's generally so dark as to verge on inexplicable. Also, as some Internet wag noted, the main artists here seem to have forgotten that Constantine was visually modelled on Sting circa 1983, and not on Gary Busey circa 2013. The years have not been kind.

Stuff happens. There are a lot of sex scenes. Constantine's niece, once a capable presence when written by others, shows up as a traumatized shell of her former appearances. What's technically a demonic rape is played strictly for laughs. Did Constantine and his universe deserve better than this? Yeah. But we'll always have Newcastle. Spend your money on the John Constantine Hellblazer collections written by Delano, Garth Ennis, Andy Diggle, or Mike Carey instead. Not recommended.

Heartburst

Heartburst and Other Pleasures: written by Rick Veitch with Alan Moore; illustrated by Rick Veitch with Steve Bissette (collected 2008): This selection of Veitch's early 1980's graphic 'novel' Heartburst and a number of other short pieces from two decades is a pleasure to read.

Heartburst (really only 48 pages long and called a 'novel' when first published when, as Veitch notes in his introduction, the derived-from-the-French 'graphic album' would have made more sense) presents an Earth colony that has based its entire culture on the early American TV broadcasts that are just arriving on that world thanks to the pesky speed of light.

That Earth colony, a sort of quasi-Roman Catholic fascist tyranny, is also in the process of exterminating the intelligent natives of that planet for, among other things, being too sexually liberated.

Veitch does a nice job of playing in a very satiric, 1950's science-fictional universe, but with more sex and a little more nudity, and the quantum-spiritualism elements of the text are really quite charming. The whole thing would only be more enjoyable at two or three times the length, where certain elements (such as the travelling circus) might end up feeling more organic and a bit less forced.

The short pieces and sketches give brief snapshots of Veitch throughout his career. He's remained remarkably consistent, and as a bonus, the colours in this collection really 'pop': it looks terrific. Recommended.

Giant-size Swamp Thing

The Saga of the Swamp Thing Volume 5: written by Alan Moore, Steve Bissette, Rick Veitch, and John Totleben; illustrated by Rick Veitch, Steve Bissette, John Totleben, and Alfredo Alcala (1986; collected 2011): The penultimate collection of Alan Moore's career-making run on DC's Saga of the Swamp Thing sees Rick Veitch take over as primary penciller. As previous Swamp Thing penciller (and then-continuing cover artist) Steve Bissette notes in the informative introduction, Veitch's interest in science fiction over horror helped shift the book to a more science-fiction-oriented direction. But first Swamp Thing would travel to Gotham City for a fateful encounter with Batman. Then it was off into space for several issues for an odyssey that would conclude in the next volume.

The double-sized issue featuring Swamp Thing's battle with Batman is a doozy, showcasing as it does longtime Swamp Thing inker John Totleben's second full-art stint on the comic book. It's gorgeous: Totleben's art often looked like he was cutting his fine lines into wood or perhaps copper. It's elegant and old-school without being stiff or anachronistic. This was the time of Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns, so Batman gets a really, really big Batmobile. However, Moore's Batman is much more sympathetic and fallible than Miller's -- and reasonable, in the end, as he and Swamp Thing ultimately resolve their differences without killing each other.

Subsequent issues further develop the character of Swamp Thing's beloved Abigail Cable, reintroduce two horribly transformed characters from Martin Pasko's early 1980's run on Saga, and bring us Swamp Thing's first foray into space travel. One can see Moore straining at the chains of the endless status quo of the mainstream superhero universe here. Things may return to the baseline at the end of each seemingly world-changing event, but logically they shouldn't.

Even if DC wouldn't soon anger Moore and cause him to leave the mainstream forever, one can't really believe, reading these stories, that he would have been much longer satisfied with 'The More Things Change, The More They Stay The Same.' Highly recommended.

The Saga of the Swamp Thing Volume 6: written by Alan Moore, Steve Bissette, and Rick Veitch; illustrated by Rick Veitch, Steve Bissette, John Totleben, Alfredo Alcala, and Tom Yeates (1986-87; collected 2011): And so Alan Moore's time as writer of DC's Saga of the Swamp Thing comes to an end after four years and nearly 50 issues'-worth of adventures. When he took over with issue 20, Moore was a British comic-book writer making his American debut. When he finished, he was the most praised writer of mainstream comic books in North America.

Swamp Thing's space odyssey continues, as the muck-encrusted Plant Elemental desperately seeks a way back to Earth and the arms of his beloved Abby. Meanwhile, on Earth, Abby believes Swamp Thing to be dead and starts to gradually move on with her life. Yes, they are literally star-crossed lovers.

The move into space brings Swamp Thing into contact (and occasionally conflict) with some of DC's Silver Age space characters, most notably Earth hero Adam Strange and a couple of really jerky Hawkpeople from Hawkman's planet of Thanagar. Swamp Thing also encounters a creepy machine entity in an artistic tour-de-force for Totleben, who illustrates an entire issue in the sort of heavy-duty collage that really does have to be seen to be appreciated, an issue that also allows Moore to cut loose with a long burst of prose-poetry meant to show the alien-ness of the issue's narrator, a world-sized machine intelligence pining for love in the lonely abyss of space.

Swamp Thing also encounters some of Jack Kirby's New Gods in an issue written by Veitch, one that showcases the more satiric, blackly comic and irreverent Swamp Thing that Veitch would be writing a lot more of when he took over from Moore as Saga writer with issue 65. Bissette's first full script sees Abby back on Earth encountering a character from the very beginnings of Swamp Thing back in the early 1970's, when it was written by Len Wein and illustrated by Bernie Wrightson. And there's a Green Lantern to be met before our hero returns home and Moore's stint as writer concludes with the lovely, elegaic "Return of the Good Gumbo." It was one hell of a ride. Highly recommended.

Swamping

Saga of the Swamp Thing Volume 4, written by Alan Moore, illustrated by Steve Bissette, John Totleben, Rick Veitch, Stan Woch, Ron Randall, Alfredo Alcala and Tom Mandrake (1985-86; collected 2011): Blessedly, DC continues to go with non-glossy-coated paper and relatively muted colours for the re-collected Swamp Thing series. I still have nightmares about the candy-coloured original collected paperback of Alan Moore's run, from the late 1980's.

Herein we get the second half of Alan Moore's longest arc on the series, the "American Gothic" storyline. As Swamp Thing visits more American supernatural hotspots, John Constantine gathers his occult forces as part of his plan to stop the Patagonian sorcerers' circle The Brujeria from unleashing the original, pre-Creation Darkness on the universe in an effort to destroy Heaven itself. In between battling serial killers and haunted houses, Swamp Thing learns more about the history of plant elementals on Earth, and why they are created periodically through the years.

Occult investigator John Constantine is already his old snarky self, though less of a magician than he'd later be in his own book. Moore's tour of DC's lesser-known occult characters is a lot of revisionist fun, as is the showdown between an allied army of demons, angels and mystical superheroes and the forces of the Original Darkness (or 'O.D.' as I like to call it!). Moore seems to delight in taking the piss out of some of DC's more pompous supernatural heroes (Dr. Fate and the Spectre take quite an uncharacteristic pounding) so that our favourite plant elemental can finally save the day.

While a lot of different artists worked on these issues, a fair level of artistic continuity is maintained; the real stand-out, though, is long-time Swamp Thing inker John Totleben's full-art duties on what was issue 48. It's an astonishingly high-level debut, presaging his horrifying, beautiful work on his later collaboration with Moore, Miracleman. Highly recommended.

Comics:


Detectives, Inc. by Don McGregor, Marshall Rogers and Gene Colan (Material from the 1970's and 1980's; this IDW edition 2009): IDW is really winning my heart with its reprints of great comics from the 1980's and 1990's. This B&W collection of writer McGregor's Detectives, Inc. comic stories comes along with several prose pieces on the genesis of the detective comic, along with a piece on the filming of the Detectives, Inc. movie. My only caveat about the volume is that it's unfortunate that it couldn't be reprinted in a larger format -- the hyper-detailed art of Marshall Rogers on "A Remembrance of Threatening Green" originally appeared in a larger album size, and things do get a little squinty at times.

Still, this is a tremendous achievement both in writing and art. The world of McGregor's private detectives, Rainier and Dennings, gets the hypercrisp, hyper-detailed treatment from Marshall Rogers (best known for his Batman work in the 1970's), and the moodier, more humanistic approach from Gene Colan (best known for Tomb of Dracula and about a dozen other books). Both art styles work, and both look great in black and white. Indeed, this may be the late Rogers' greatest work. The attention to detail is stunning, and Rogers experiments with some really fascinating one and two-page designs.

Private detectives aren't all that common in comic books unless they wear costumes or have occult powers. Rainier and Dennings remind me a lot of revisionist 70's PIs from the movies -- not so much Jake Gittes in Chinatown, as Rainier and Dennings are less cynical than Robert Towne's PI, but more the characters we see in films like Night Moves (with Gene Hackman on the case) and Cutter's Way (in which non-PI's John Heard and Jeff Bridges try to solve a case). They're battered and bruised sometimes, emotionally as well as physically, but they stay on the case. McGregor invests his characters with a lot of heart -- he's one of the great comic book writers in terms of creating sympathy and empathy, at creating plausibly flawed and self-doubting protagonists, and at incorporating both sex and romance into a comic book without being prurient or exploitative. Highly recommended.


Captain Carrot and the Final Ark by Bill Morrison, Scott Shaw, Al Gordon, Carol Lay, Roy Thomas, Gerry Conway, E. Nelson Bridwell and Ross Andru (1982, 83; 2007; Collected 2008): DC's relatively short-lived funny animal superhero book Captain Carrot and his Amazing Zoo Crew! has generated love-it-or-hate-it feelings among readers ever since its premiere back in the early 1980's. DC brought the bunch back in 2007 in a miniseries to either put a capper on the whole alternate-funny-animal-universe thing or to spur interest in another on-going series. Neither has happened so far, as Grant Morrison inserted the Captain and the Zoo Crew into the final pages of company-wide crossover Final Crisis, which happened after the events collected in this book. So Captain Carrot and his friends are still out there, fighting the good fight. The powers that be really should include the pages from Final Crisis in subsequnt editions of this book -- the ending of the Final Ark miniseries, though inconclusive, does leave a bit of a sour taste in the mouth, funny as it is.

Much of the humour (or lack thereof, depending on your tastes) comes from a combination of elaborate punning and an accompanying parody of superhero conventions, though that parody was always pretty gentle. Regardless of one's thoughts on the writing, seminal Captain Carrot artist Scott Shaw has always been the main draw of the book for me -- he's a great funny animal artists who's worked on both comics and animation over the years, and this book reprints a story with the greatest page in Captain Carrot history, one in which the Crew travels to a succession of alternate Earths that are thinly veiled versions of Walt Disney cartoon, the Pogo strip, Krazy Kat, and others.

I also think it's really funny that DC chose to make Captain Carrot's Earth-C an official part of the DC multiverse right from the get-go, with Superman teaming up with the group in its first adventure and the long-time Justice League foe Starro appearing as the first villain. As it turns out, when one sticks Starro into an alternate funny-animal universe, he talks. ALL THE TIME. That's funny in and of itself, given that he/she/it never really talked all that much while battling the Justice League. I mean, it's a giant telepathic alien starfish which periodically almost takes over the world. How awesome is that, talking animals or no? DC was so protective of Earth-C that even after the multiverse 'vanished' for about 20 years, editors periodically noted that Earth-C was actually in a different dimension, and was thus immune to the vanishing of the multiverse. This even though DC neither reprinted nor did new Captain Carrot comics for nearly 25 years. DC is weird.


Mad: The Complete First Six Issues by Harvey Kurtzman, Will Elder, Wally Wood, John Severin and Jack Davis (1952-53; collected 1985): It's fascinating to read the early issues of America's most influential humour magazine. When Mad started, it was a comic book -- it would eventually go to magazine format to escape the newly created Comics Code Authority, an industry-run censorship board put in place to placate those who found comics of the 1950's to be vulgar, gruesome and unfit for children. Hoohah! Mad started off as part of the EC (actually short for 'Educational Comics' -- EC published a lot of Bible comics for children back in the day) stable of horror, science fiction, fantasy, suspense and war comics -- a lot of which is still held in high esteem today.

The first couple of issues of Mad feature stories that could have appeared in the horror or science fiction comics, along with more familiar satires of TV, comics and culture. Actually, one short, "Blobs", is a rip-off of E.M. Forster's "The Machine Stops." By issue three or thereabouts, the Mad 'style' is almost fully formed -- irreverant satire of such fixtures as Superman, the Lone Ranger and King Kong, with artist Will Elder especially pioneering the super-crowded Mad panel in which the background is populated with jokes, extra business and commentary on the action. Mad was writer-artist-editor Harvey Kurtzman's baby, and this Russ Cochran reprint includes some interview excerpts in which Kurtzman talks about the various stories, and the strengths and weaknesses of different artists (well, he mainly goes on repeatedly and at length about the strengths and weaknesses of Wally Wood). Highly recommended.


The Art of Walt Simonson by Walt Simonson, Gerry Conway, Eliot S! Maggin, Martin Pasko, Steve Gerber, Cary Bates and others (1971-81; collected 1989): DC never did another book like this -- a creator-focused collection of 'Greatest Hits', mainly from more obscure titles -- and it's too bad, as much of the material in this collection would otherwise remain uncollected. Artist and eventually writer Simonson came to prominence in the 1970's on Manhunter (with writer Archie Goodwin) and on the Batman titles before moving to Marvel for acclaimed runs on a number of titles, most notably Thor in the mid-1980's. Throughout his career he's been acclaimed as one of comics' greatest draftsmen and stylists, with an especially dizzying array of line-styles on his early 1970's material -- Manhunter alone looks like it took fifty years and a thousand different pen nibs and pencil widths to pull off.

Here, we get a few early Simonson pieces from DC's horror and war anthology titles, the two-issue conclusion to the Hercules Unbound series of the 1970's, a terrific Dr. Fate one-shot, and Simonson's dazzling five-issue run on the revived Metal Men. It's all good: the Dr. Fate story suggests that Simonson could have been really favourably matched with Marvel's Dr. Strange had someone thought of it; Simonson's short-eared, squat Batman in an early take on that character looks forward to Frank Miller's tank-like Batman of The Dark Knight Returns; and the Steve Gerber-penned issue of Metal Men managed to be fun and revisionistically grim at the same time, no small feat. Highly recommended.


The Saga of the Swamp Thing Volume 2 by Alan Moore, Steve Bissette, John Totleben, Ron Randall, Shawn Macmanus, Len Wein, Berni Wrightson and Rick Veitch: DC's new hardcover reprints of Alan Moore's first work for DC back in the mid-1980's, on Saga of the Swamp Thing, is pretty essential stuff for anyone who enjoyed Moore's 'V' for Vendetta or Watchmen. Moore and company put Swamp Thing through Hell, literally, in the main story in this collection, as our muck-encrusted hero has to save the world from a suddenly far-more-powerful old foe prior to descending into Hell to save the soul of a friend. Moore's writing is sharp and evocative, and the art throughout is terrific, whether Bissette, Veitch and Totleben's depictions of the horrors of Hell, or Shawn Macmanus's melancholy work on "The Burial" and "Pog," the latter an award-winning standalone tribute to Walt Kelly's Pogo. Highly recommended.