By: Alan Moore Publisher: Vertigo Average Rating: Binding: Paperback Label: Vertigo Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 200 Publication Date: August 01, 2003 Release Date: August 01, 2003
Best of the Run Alan Moore's entire run on Swamp Thing is amazing. But his `Swamp Thing in Space' stories are my favorites as Moore switches from weird horror to weird sci-fi-horror. As remarkable and acclaimed as Watchmen is, for my money, this is where Moore penned his most ground-breaking stuff.
Graphic SF Reader This book has Swamp Thing in outer space for a fair part of it, as he encounters various other dc figures in his travels, such as those from the planet Rann, and the odd Green Lantern, and even the New Gods.
He does eventually end up back on Earth, and is a little peeved with some of the bad guys.
As The Shadow would say, if Swamp Thing is after you, 'The weeds of crime bear bitter fruit.'
Sowing the Seeds Here is the final installment of Alan Moore's tremendous and groundbreaking run on the Swamp Thing series, collecting original issues #57-64. Moore brings to a precise ending his take on the character and his breathtaking development as an elemental spirit, but with plenty of room for future writers to continue the series. We also see the apotheosis of Moore's strong horror (and increasingly, sci-fi) writing, which both resurrected and revolutionized this comic genre. At the beginning of this particular collection, Swampy's spirit is still drifting in outer space, and Moore takes him on a series of adventures that illustrate his very "fertile" imagination. Swampy restores fertility to Adam Strange's nuclear-damaged planet, accidentally mates with a lonely bio-mechanical space station (in a great example of speculative sci-fi), and accidentally enslaves a sentient plant civilization but amends his misdeed with help from the local Green Lantern associate. Moore brings his run to a close by finally reuniting Swampy with his true love Abby, as he ponders his place as an elemental god on his home world. The artwork continues to astound as well, with Rick Veitch and Alfredo Alcala handling most of the duties during this period, while colorist Tatjana Wood continues her moody and praiseworthy work. This is the stupendous ending to one of the great series in comics history, and also one of the best graphic novel collections. [~doomsdayer520~]
Reunion and Departure While the title of the final collection of Alan Moore's Swamp Thing work has an obvious meaning to it, the reunion between Alec Holland the Swamp Thing and his wife Abby, the book is also Moore's last work, so it is just as much his departure from a character he changed in so many ways, helping to create what would someday be DC Comic's Vertigo line.
The final collection features some more of Moore's reworking of the DCU with some horrifying results. Adam Strange, hero of Rann, appears, and Moore suggests that Strange may be Rann's hero, but not for the reasons he thinks he is. As Swamp Thing makes his journey home to Earth after his forced severing from the Green as seen in the previous collection, he makes a variety of stops, some of which show how his abilities and such make him one of the more powerful beings, and as such, Alec's reasoning in the end as to why he doesn't just fix the Earth's ecology for humanity makes a good deal of sense.
Of course, Moore never lets you forget Swamp Thing began as a horror book. Alec's revenge against his would-be killers for separating him from Abby for so long (which, as far as Alec is concerned, is the real crime they committed) takes on terrifying aspects as we see just how powerful someone who can control plants really is. His trip to a planet of sentient plants has similar frightening results as he inadvertantly pulls up a body made entirely of the citizens of the city and needs to be stopped by the planet's Green Lantern, but not before his presense causes internal shifts in a few of the planet's inhabitants, most for the worse, seeing what they really are as opposed to what they believe themselves to be.
Most horrifying (and somewhat confusing) is an issue recounted by some kind of alien creature which it seems is part plant, part asteroid, and part machine, and her capture and what appears to be a rape of Alec trying to get home while his consciousness travels across space.
I give this collection four stars for a simple reason, though. In the middle of the book is a single issue Moore didn't write dealing with Alec and the New Gods. Artist Rick Veitch wrote that one. It's not a bad issue, but if you buy this thinking Moore wrote every issue (which may be an impression you get from reading the cover), then you should be warned that this is not the case.
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