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?