The Secret of the Swamp Thing

My Swamp Thing fandom began with seeing the movies and TV series as a teenager. I recently decided to start collecting the trade paperbacks, starting with this one. The original short story is quite reminiscent of Edgar Allen Poe's works. Gothic and somber, it's easy to see why the book it appeared in sold so well. The remainder of the book's stories, taken from the regular Swamp Thing series, maintain the dark tone but add a ton of creativity and fun. Swamp Thing is relentlessly pursued by Cable (who here is not nearly as pretty as Adrienne Barbeau), and encounters all manner of strange situations and foes. The dialog is phenomenal, especially for the time period, and the art is rather sharp too. Allen Moore's take on Swamp Thing may be the best-remembered, but Len Wein's run is simpler, more action-packed, and just plain fun.

I admit I was only familiar with Swamp Thing because of the Wes Craven film, then years later I got into the Alan Moore run on the title. I was interested more recently in where the character got its start, so I picked this up. I wasn't expecting great literature compared to Moore, but I was pleasantly surprised as these stories are almost as good as Moore has gotten at times. The beginning has the very first Swamp Thing story written by Len Wein. Its basically Tales from the Crypt-lite, but its interesting to see that DC was starting to show more of a series side, which culminated years later in their "Vertigo" imprint. It was just a short story when DC gave the call for a long term title. Then it retcons the origin story to the 1970's, wherein the Swamp Thing is a former scientist who was killed in a lab explosion because of a mysterious organization. The story continues and explores many things including the occult, racism, and also continues its "horror" tradition with stories of werewolves and witches. I believe at the time DC wanted to do a "Tales" style revival of horror stories, had to abide by the ridiculous comics code (actually per other reviews they didn't but still I think couldn't push it too far), but did the best they could with these stories. People are killed, and there are some mature themes that weren't neccesarily the norm at the time (since the establishment of the comics code), so I feel that this is a groundbreaking comic in that along with a few others, it was pretty mature for the time. All in all, as much as an Alan Moore fan I am, I don't feel he "defined" Swamp Thing anymore than Len Wein, and the evidence to that fact is all contained in this book.

I remember reading some of these comics way back in the mid 70's. It was nice to re-visit some of my memories from 30 years ago. The art by Wrightson was fantastic! I give it my highest recommendation. The stories by Wein were why this graphic novel got four stars instead of five. The stories were competent but still had plot inconsistencies and pacing problems. I found the stories to be a little to hokey and fake at times - even for a comic book. All in all it was worth the money, four stars out of five usually is.

"Swamp Thing: Dark Genesis" reprints not only the first ten issues of the DC comic but also the short story from 1971's "House of Secrets" #92 that introduced the character. The key thing here is that you have in one trade paperback volume the complete run of artist Berni Wrightson, who created the Swamp Thing along with writer Len Wein. There are actually not one genesis but two in the first two stories (just like the original in fact), not to be confused with the famous revision worked by Alan Moore down the road. The first, shorter version, was about a man who was murdered and dumped into a swamp, where his body metamorphosed into a muck monster that rose up and extracted horrible vengeance upon his killer. The story was a bit reminiscent of a character called the Heap, who showed up in the back of "Airboy and Air Fighters Comics" from 1942-1953, but I do not know if that was really in anybody's mind at the end of 1972 when "Swamp Thing" #1 was produced, however, a more likely antecedent would be "Morto do Pântano", created by the Brazilian artist Eugenio Colonesse only two years before the Swamp Thing's advent. Now the man in the monster was Dr. Alec Holland, who was working on a top secret bio-restorative formula in the Louisiana bayou. The bad guys want it and when their bomb explodes in Holland's face and drives "countless unclassified chemicals" deep into his burning flesh, he dives into the bog and disappears. In the first issue Holland fails to rescue his wife in time and has to take revenge for both of them, at which point we immediately start a multi-issue story arc with Arcane, a crazy rich guy who wants to live forever. This is the plot line that eventually became the less than stellar movie version of the "Swamp Thing," so it will seem somewhat familiar to the uninitiated. The Swamp Thing even left his swamp long enough to battle Batman in issue #7 in what would be one of the few encounters with a traditional DC superhero for the supernatural star of the comic.Wein and Wrightson's "Swamp Thing" became a cult classic among comic fans because of its dark, moody Gothic style, but mainly on the strength of the artwork by Wrightson, whose style was perfectly suited for this comic. Historically "Swamp Thing" is an important comic book because it was the first horror comic to be geared towards a more adult oriented readership since the glory days of EC Comics with "Tales of the Crypt" in the 1950s. Eventually "Swamp Thing," during the Moore period, would give birth to DC's Vertigo comic book line, which was always PG-13 if not NC-17. "Saga of the Swamp Thing" would be the first mainstream comic to abandon the Comics Code Authority. These first ten stories rest primarily on Wrightson's distinctive art, but Wein does set the foundation for the character to be able to survive once Wrightson departed. If you begin with "Dark Genesis" and proceed directly to the Moore years in the 1980s (which is basically what these reprints d

It's about time! I missed out on this collection the first time around, but never again will I be without the early issues of the original Swamp Thing by Len Wein & Berni Wrightson. This trade paperback collects the very first story from House of Secrets #92 and the first ten issues of the series it inspired in the early '70s. This is by no means the elemental-fantasy Swamp Thing of Moore/Totleben; this is the horror-oriented version that is more at home in an EC comic or Warren magazine. The classic stories by Wein have some laughably expressive narration and melodramatic dialogue, but they don't detract from the superb plots, including the first appearance of Arcane and his Un-Men, the Patchwork Man, and a great "team-up" with Batman (In fact, I feel that the first 3 issues of the series make up one of the best comic stories ever written). Wrightson's textural and creepy artwork will make you feel the moss and dirt crumbling off of Swampy with every step he takes. Don't get me wrong: I love both incarnations of this character, and Moore & Totleben are no slouches, but Wein & Wrightson will always come first for me.