Swamp Thing Vol. 2: Love and Death

What elevates this volume for me is its elegant reshaping of the Persephone myth within the Swamp Thing arc. Abby’s descent to Hell during Arcane’s supernatural winter, and her ascension to Earth during natural spring, are clear parallels. Moore folds the ancient myth into a modern mythology in which Earth itself, through its elemental agent, wards off death, retrieves life from Hades, and renews itself in the consummation of spring. At its heart, this volume is a parable of panentheism, in which the new Eve eats of the new Adam’s fruit in a final rite that unveils Moore’s knowledge of good and evil: that the cosmos is all divine and all one. Life and death, love and hatred, God herself/himself, all are reversible patterns of show more the single deified reality that renews itself in an eternal cycle of horror and grace. Sure, we slogged through some purple prose and grotesque imagery to get here, but I can appreciate the artistry of cramming all this into a DC comic premised on a man turning into a plant. show less

When people talk about the genius of Alan Moore, the kind of writing in this volume is what they are referring to. He elevates his medium to a higher art both in his visual ideas as well as language. There are many ways I could gush about how fantastic this volume of work is: the story structure, the dazzling visual expressions (notably the drug/sex/nature commune scenes in issue #34), the deftly written lines of horror (is there a better example of genre writing than the Halo of Flies issue?).

My favorite spot here was actually a one-off issue involving a ship of innocent and presumably nature loving aliens who crash land on Earth and attempt to make a home for themselves. The themes Moore has been playing with all along are here. show more Life, as expressed on Earth, is violent and harsh. Humans have evolved from a swamp of horrors. That stuff is all interesting, but the way Moore is able to lighten up this one-off with comic relief despite it's grim storyline is by creating an alien language of neologisms for these marooned creatures. As a result, the entire book is filled with a strange poetry that is both playful and poignant. Here's one of my favorite passages as an example. In this section, one of the cute, alligator-like aliens is describing how they were forced out of their own planet and burdened with finding a new home:

"But there was one solitribal breed of misanthropomorphs who refused to convivicate with elsefolk. They constricted their own uncivilization, and exclucified anykind else from joining it. They were the loneliest animals of all. They took our Lady away from us... and through all the long sincewhiles we've been questering for a new Lady... with tranquatic slakes deep enough to drowse our begreavements." - pg. 12

I just love that. "Tranquatic slakes deep enough to drowse our begreavements."

I highly recommend this volume to anyone but particularly if you are a literary fiction reader and would like to know what all this comic book fuss is about. show less

When people talk about the genius of Alan Moore, the kind of writing in this volume is what they are referring to. He elevates his medium to a higher art both in his visual ideas as well as language. There are many ways I could gush about how fantastic this volume of work is: the story structure, the dazzling visual expressions (notably the drug/sex/nature commune scenes in issue #34), the deftly written lines of horror (is there a better example of genre writing than the Halo of Flies issue?).

My favorite spot here was actually a one-off issue involving a ship of innocent and presumably nature loving aliens who crash land on Earth and attempt to make a home for themselves. The themes Moore has been playing with all along are here. show more Life, as expressed on Earth, is violent and harsh. Humans have evolved from a swamp of horrors. That stuff is all interesting, but the way Moore is able to lighten up this one-off with comic relief despite it's grim storyline is by creating an alien language of neologisms for these marooned creatures. As a result, the entire book is filled with a strange poetry that is both playful and poignant. Here's one of my favorite passages as an example. In this section, one of the cute, alligator-like aliens is describing how they were forced out of their own planet and burdened with finding a new home:

"But there was one solitribal breed of misanthropomorphs who refused to convivicate with elsefolk. They constricted their own uncivilization, and exclucified anykind else from joining it. They were the loneliest animals of all. They took our Lady away from us... and through all the long sincewhiles we've been questering for a new Lady... with tranquatic slakes deep enough to drowse our begreavements." - pg. 12

I just love that. "Tranquatic slakes deep enough to drowse our begreavements."

I highly recommend this volume to anyone but particularly if you are a literary fiction reader and would like to know what all this comic book fuss is about. show less

This is less of a stand-alone thing and more of a continuation of what the previous volume started doing: blowing up the previous Swamp Thing continuity, and trying out different combinations of action, fantasy, and horror while waiting to see what the series will really be about. The horror story we get here is really pretty simple, and it's based around two characters (Anton Arcane and Matt Cable) that we never had much reason to care about, but it's very effective at evoking dread and disgust, and the Bissette/Totleben art continues to be a great fit for this material. Despite all the great monsters they like to draw, and all the well-chosen words Moore uses to tell us what a bad time Abby is having, I think the most effective scene show more in this involves just a guy sitting in a car talking to a fly. show less

Alan Moore's tenure on the Swamp Thing title is considered to be truly groundbreaking. There's massive opportunity for over-the-top farce in Swamp Thing, but Moore takes the character seriously and spins complex tales of love, humanity, evil, and ambiguity. The series is also the birthplace of Hellblazer's John Constantine, and the contrast between Constantine's smart-mouthed, "victory by any means necessary" attitude and Swamp Thing's slow-talking, moral, and fiercely loyal personality is fantastic. This series isn't for the squeamish; we're talking radioactive zombies, dismemberment, creepy-crawlies, etc., but if you like your horror to be smart, well-written, and funny, you need to check this out.

I think this was mostly better than the first volume, save for the aliens story, but it was the last one, the declaration of love between ST and Abs and their acid trip sex act that sealed this volume as something pretty awesome.

I mean, sure, when Abs dies during the awesome conflict with Arcane and ST goes to heaven and hell to get her back, that was pretty awesome, too, but I thought the last bit was most special. :)

But beyond that, the worst part of this volume was not the aliens, but Cain and Abel. What? How could I not have known that these two with their House of Mystery and House of Secrets was around long before Sandman? Why didn't anyone tell me? 1985, years before Sandman came out and had these characters running around the show more Dream, and here they are doing all the same things!

Oh the things I learn so late.

And this time, I didn't even care about their story in ST. lol show less

I liked this but not as much as the first graphic novel. I'm not really a horror person but I'm definitely an Alan Moore person. SO it came out about even. I'm not a huge fan of this kind of "sloppy" art, it shows its age. What I find really interesting is that the way Moore makes Swamp Thing cool again is to kinda leave him in the background. Many times the story doesn't really seem to be about him. He's a plant/earth elemental so not really all that exciting. That said, I'll probably stop here since I have a bizillion other comics to read.