Saga of the Swamp Thing, Book One – (1983-1984)

Writer:  Alan Moore

Artists: Stephen Bissette and John Totleben

My only exposure to Swamp Thing, before reading this first collection of Alan Moore’s famed run on the DC comic starting in 1983, was the 1982 Wes Craven film.  Images of Dick Duron tramping around the Virginia jungle in a rigid plastic monster suit saving a sweaty Adrienne Barbeau from falling out of her torn white top reinforced my prejudice of a trashy comic book conceit only a step or two above the ludicrous Toxic Avenger.  Little did I know that Moore was able to take an aging character (Swamp Thing was created in 1970 by Len Wein and Berni Wrightson) as far away from Troma stupidity as the comic book medium would allow.  While Saga of the Swamp Thing is a piece of horror fiction and therefore subject to the strange flights of fantasy only edible with a healthy dose of suspended disbelief, Moore’s integration of the plot into the fibers of his characters makes reading Saga a powerful delight nearly thirty years after it was created.  Ramsey Campbell, in his introduction to the 2000 edition of the collection, writes, “Here as elsewhere, Moore’s language and imagery is simultaneously comic and horrifying, as is the way with horror fiction.  Horror fiction at its best is in the business of pushing back the barriers, of risking the absurd in order to reach the sublime, just as Jason Woodrue does by eating a tuber of Swamp Thing’s.  By this stage no reader can doubt that here is a story prepared to go to the end of itself, whatever it may find there or on the way.”

Closer in content and aim to Watchmen than Moore’s later work in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Moore’s run on Saga (which began with issue # 20) starts with a gritty paranoid vision of the military exploiting the Swamp Thing and the monster realizing his place in the world is shrinking.  Through the research of Dr. Jason Woodrue, the Floronic Man, we see the true nature of the Swamp Thing in the brilliant issue # 21, The Anatomy Lesson.  The Swamp Thing is not, as was believed before Moore’s tenure on the book, a reincarnated and plant-reinforced Dr. Alec Holland, but a completely vegetable entity that thinks it’s Alec Holland.  What’s so thrilling is Moore’s ability to make such a strange and unbelievable conceit so emotionally and ecologically devastating.  It’s nice to see Moore use his considerable storytelling talents to tell such a gritty, anti-capitalist tale of environmental rage.  The Floronic Man’s hatred for mankind manifests as a raging terrorism, a hypocritical stance that could only be taken by someone who was originally human.  Here, only the Swamp Thing truly speaks and acts for the benefit of the planet.  Even a later enemy, Satan himself, manifests to the Swamp Thing and his world as an ecological condition – autumn.  The creature’s ability to reason in a moral fashion wins out over his pure physical prowess, which is almost never employed.  He’s a Frankenstein’s monster who knows restraint, who shows readers the kindness and compassion manifest in the grotesque.

Bissette and Totleben created a dark, restrained look for the book.  Their influence is seen in later 80s books such as Sandman and then pops up again in some of the quirkier titles in the 90s.  I can’t imagine Sam Kieth’s dreamlike The Maxx without the precedent of Bissette and Totleben’s Saga books.  Their panels flow organically through the story, and they never worry about wasting space for the emotional tableaux so necessary to create a superhero comic which can be enjoyed on levels other than muscle and breast worship.  In a particularly memorable series of pages, the Swamp Thing chases a billionaire industrialist through a vast office complex, while Dr. Jason Woodrue narrates the set piece he has orchestrated.  “And will there be blood?  I don’t know.  I don’t know if there will be blood.  It isn’t important.  It won’t spoil things if there is no blood.  The blood doesn’t matter.  Just the dying.  The dying’s all that matters.”  You’ve got to see these pages to believe the power of Moore paired with Bissette and Totleben.  They created a pop-art language that is much underused, even in today’s glutted comic book market.

While the environmental message of Saga of the Swamp Thing can easily be overstated, it should not be neglected.  Like other late-70s and early-80s American art, Saga tackles the excesses of an empire reaching its manifest destiny – to exploit not only the natural resources of its land, but the very fabric of nature, the forces of the universe.

Related Links:

1. Grovel Review

2. Pads and Panels Review

3. Wired Review

4. IGN Review

5. Blather Alan Moore Interview

My Brain is Hanging Upside Down by David Heatley (2008)

The first of David Heatley’s stories I read was part of an anthology published about four or five years ago.  I can’t remember if it was one of those Best American Comics books or the hardbound issue of McSweeney’s filled with indie comics.  One thing I do remember is what the story was about.  In a few sloppy panels, Heatley told about living with his father after college, sitting on the toilet and wondering what it looks like when he wipes his ass after pooping.  Not all of us wonder what this looks like, but I’m sure more of us wonder than would admit it, and Heatley’s honesty immediately struck me as both hilarious and heartbreaking.

In his 2008 full-length graphic memoir My Brain is Hanging Upside Down, Heatley brings this intimate and odd tone to broader subjects.  Whether he’s showing us a record of every woman and man he’s had even the most fleeting of sexual encounters with, or if he’s reviewing every one of his favorite hip-hop records, Heatley’s innocence and appreciation for life is always evident.  He is our generation’s Harvey Pekar, somewhat more socially well-adjusted, but a singularity just the same.  His stories are all realistic and never flinch from sharing the emotional content of everyday life, with all its painfully happy and awkward moments.

Portrait of My Dad

My Brain is Hanging Upside Down is divided into five sections, each very focused on its topic, and all with some overlapping threads of family, sex and music.  The first section, Sex History, depicts all of Heatley’s sexual experiences with blinding honesty.  His simple, almost childish art makes the graphic sexuality innocent and endearing.  Heatley’s panels are like manic sketches of the most intense moments of his life.

Each of the five sections begins with a number of dream stories relating to each topic.  The second and fifth sections, Black History and Family History respectively, stick to the format of Sex History, with literal laundry lists of experiences and personalities.  Only in sections three and four, Portrait of My Mom and Portrait of My Dad does Heatley allow himself to become expansive and relate separate stories to one another in a less linear manner.

In most of the other sections, Heatley comes off like a typical 80s kid.  He’s enamored of hip-hop culture, yet never fully comfortable with it.  His sexual freedoms and experimentation seem quaint and almost old-fashioned.  Was he ever worried about getting AIDs when he was screwing all these girls and guys at college?  He doesn’t tell us.  But in the two Portraits we see Heatley’s strange and contradictory parents in a way that helps us understand his paranoia and obsessions in a whole new way.  His mother is the reformed hippie who doesn’t know when to stop trying to relate to her kids on their level and just try to be their mother.  His father is a bitter hermit who builds train sets in his basement and smiles bitterly at a world that left him behind.

Heatley's New Yorker Cover

So, I’m a fan of all types of comics.  I dig Alan Moore and Frank Miller as much as Harvey Pekar and R. Crumb.  However, if indie comics aren’t your thing, Heatley is going to seem juvenile and artless.  His drawings are all flat, with very little detail.  They look like they were scrawled off on notebook paper by a stoned high school kid during study hall.  If you’re not into Chris Ware or Kim Deitch, if you prefer Will Eisner’s superhero stuff to his brilliant The Contract with God trilogy, you’re probably not going to be into Heatley.  He’s not interested in the fantasy and exploitation of most mainstream comics and though his memoir is certainly for Adults Only, it will not satisfy your little boy prurient interests.  Still, it’s fun and funny enough in its weird, jaded way.

The other half of The Bent Spine, Mark Rooster, has been writing surreal autobiographical comics as long as I can remember.  His style and sense of humor reminds me of Heatley.  If you like My Brain is Hanging Upside Down, be sure to check out Mark’s site, www.markrooster.com. 

 

Related Links:

1. High-Low Review of My Brain is Hanging Upside Down

2. The Daily Cross Hatch Review of  My Brain is Hanging Upside Down

3. GraphicNovelReporter Interview with David Heatley

4. David Heatley's Site