Swamp Thing Vol. 5: Earth to Earth

I'm fully on board with this one. Total social commentary time. Sure, Swamp Thing just saved the freaking universe from the Mother of All Darkness, comes home to find that his honey has been thrown in jail for consorting with him. It's sick and unnatural, folks. She works with autistic kids. What's *wrong* with her??? Outcast, barely on bail, she runs to Gotham under a new name, gets picked up with hookers and thrown in jail and now it's a media sensation.

Now bring in the Greenie.

Greenie: Let her go!

Law: No! It's the law!

Greenie: The law is stupid, I can burst you all apart from the inside out before you can sneeze. I just want my woman.

Abs: Hey, honey, it's okay. We better not kill all of Gotham today. Let's try to work this out show more peacefully.

Greenie: Screw that. I'm gonna go all nonviolent on their asses and turn Gotham into a perfect Eden until they give in.

Batman: Uh, I kinda agree with Greenie, but he is acting like a terrorist. I better get my defoliant.

Greenie: You're an idiot. (Pounds Batman to shit.)

Lex Luthor: I've got an idea. Napalm.

Law: Wait, wait, I think we'd best just give him his woman. Someone just mentioned that this same law would apply to Superman, wouldn't it?

Other Law: Oh crap. We're so sorry. We didn't mean it. Sorry.

Lex Luthor: Fuck this. (Supersciencey harmonics napalm missile slams into Greenie's head. He's dead. Again.)

Everyone else: Oh, god, what have we done! We didn't mean it! Sorry.

Abs: (Looks at them all.) Gotham's full of morons.



Great story, no? Fantastic story. :) We even get more psychedelic stuff and a shift in the wavelength to Blue. Neat, huh? Oh, and Greenie is kinda a god now. This is the stuff I expected from him from the start, but only now get to see in all his glory. This is the awesome Swamp Thing I've been waiting for. :)

Yay! show less

This short volume is the first one where I didn't feel like Moore had a good answer to "What kind of story will this be next?", and I suspect that he just had too many irons in the fire between Watchmen and Miracleman. The plot alternates between ridiculous shortcuts (Dennis is an old character we haven't seen in a long time, and Moore feels he's a pointless dick, so let's bring him back as a total maniac and immediately kill him off) and drawn-out obviousness (let's set up a big legal issue that can't possibly make sense in the DC universe, and then after lots of conflict about it, finally Batman will point out that it doesn't make sense). But there are two things here that are undeniably great: 1. Swampy's rampage through Gotham City, show more creating a giant Godzilla version of himself and turning the city into a jungle, which the residents decide is totally fun and a good excuse to get naked, and 2. the interstellar loneliness story "My Blue Heaven", which, besides having lots of cool Rick Veitch drawings, manages to make Abby and the other human characters feel more important by taking them away.

For more thoughts, here's a blog post (includes part of previous book). show less

After volume 4's battle between heaven, hell, and nothingness, where can Swamp Thing go? The answer is, of course, within. Earth to Earth sees Swamp Thing maddened enough by a trivial human matter to mimic Woodrue's nature-force anger and throw the full weight of his newfound self-understanding against Gotham City, of all places. The result is quite epic, with a tender, emotional waltz of an ending.

I had heard Kevin Smith talk about this arc on one of his podcasts previously, but had forgotten about it until I started reading it. This volume was brilliant, and that is hardly enough to describe how great this book was. It chronicles Abby's struggle with the law when pictures of her and Swampy are captured and published in the paper. From then on out, the common citizens begin to judge her and the law steps in to declare that she's making an abominable choice by being in love with Alec in his new form. They then begin to pursue her for having sexual relations with a non-human entity, while Swamp Thing is busy dealing with his own problems with Constantine, Boston Brand, and others. The story and issues touched on in this volume were show more not only relevant when written, but are still relevant today. With the debate on same-sex marriage as popular as ever, I found that this story really hit home with some important topics. The story alone is fantastic, but when held up to reality, it's all that much better and shows the brilliance of Alan Moore's fantastic writing. show less

Nothing quite like this strange and imaginative series; unsurpassed writing by Moore, and unsettling art. Give a talented creative team room to explore and experiment in comic form, and this what you get... it begs the question why doesn't DC and Marvel encourage this more?

In this moving installment, Swamp Thing returns from saving the universe (with the help of John Constantine and others) to find that his lover is being held in Gotham on immoral conduct charges (basically, folks in her home town found out that she was in a relationship with the big green guy). What follows is an awe-inspiring confrontation, as Swamp Thing unleashes the full strength of his powers on Gotham. At first I found it a little jarring when Batman shows up, simply because the other DC characters don't show up too often in the series, but it works -- he's not just a celebrity cameo. The final story in the collection, "My Blue Heaven," is both wonderfully written and spectacularly colored. Because of the printing processes used show more then, I often find that the coloring in older comics doesn't quite do the story justice. In this case, however, Tatjana Wood's work looks truly masterful. show less

This collection seemed pretty inconsistent. I really enjoyed seeing Swamp Thing flex his muscles against Gotham, but I also felt that whole situation was a little unlikely. Batman's solution to the conflict felt like an unnecessarily easy out. Luthor's involvement felt like a bit of a cheat as well. It's great that he's so phenomenally intelligent, but for him to be able to come up with a way to defeat ST in ten minutes seems a bit much.

I did like the idea of Swamp Thing's hubris prefiguring his downfall, but for him to be taken out by radio waves and napalm ... again, I'm not buying it (he said about the comic book about a swamp-based plant elemental). The issues dealing with Abby trying to cope with her grief were nice, but since it show more was obvious that he will eventually return, it kind of felt as though Moore was just killing time. Probably really effective to be reading it as it came out.

The final chapter was the best, fortunately, and made me look forward to ST's eventual, inevitable return to Earth. show less