Saga of the Swamp Thing, Book 6 by Alan Moore
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Thus ends Alan Moore’s run on Swamp Thing.
There were times when it was a bit of a slog. When things got a little cosmic and everything was connected and yadda yadda.
But when I finished, I felt like this comic is one of the Classics, by which I mean it’s long and there are parts that are hard to read, but the compounded joy of finishing it is damn well worth it.
It’s pretty incredible to read this book and be put in the shoes of a god. Which is truly what happens. And as Swamp Thing wrestles with his new life and what to do with his powers, you get all these great answers to questions that SHOULD show up in books like Superman (“Why don’t I save the continent of Africa?”) or Silver Surfer (“What sorts of things are out there in the universe that we haven’t even conceived of?”) or lots of other books that dredge up these questions and don’t make a lot of attempts to answer them.
And when I finished this book, I had a little bit of an epiphany about comics and fandom.
With the mainstreaming of comics, we’re in a really different comics environment today than we were in the 80’s when this run happened. Today, any property worth a damn is snapped up to be a big tentpole movie. And some pretty stupid franchises too. Today, you can go to Wal-Mart and find Spidey slapped on just about everything. Towels, garbage cans, fruit snacks.
When I was a whippersnapper, this was not a thing. I promise you. You could not find cool shit like this in a regular-ass store. You had to mail away or go to a comic book store.
That’s not the bad part. That’s not what I’m complaining about. I like my Spider-Man garbage can. I’m 32, just in case you’re curious.
When you complain about comics changing, people will be quick to brand you a stupid fanboy. Someone who doesn’t want to see characters change or diversity or whatever. Which isn’t what I’m complaining about either.
What I’m complaining about is the emergence of comics that feel very much like they’ve been written by committee. That don’t take risks.
In 1986, Swamp Thing had a girlfriend who was brought up on, basically, bestiality charges. And she’s taken to Gotham, which pisses off the Swamp Thing to no end, and he enacts some pretty Biblical vengeance.
It’s 30 years later, and I have a hard time believing a story like that would happen today. Or that it would be handled in the interesting, character-driven way it was in Swamp Thing. I have a hard time believing that the Alan Moore of today would get access to a known character and be trusted to make him great again.
Moore was free to pick a character up off the cutting room floor, where he was left after Wes Craven’s movie flop, and actually do some interesting shit. The Comics Code Authority rejected the proposed issue #29, and DC went ahead and published it anyway without CCA approval, and they continued to publish the series without approval. Since the 50’s, the CCA had been the overseer, the censor of comic book stories. The CCA kept comics squeaky clean and, frankly, made them a bit boring for adults. Moore and DC told them to go fuck themselves, and I think the results speak for themselves. It turns out that writers of comic books know what’s best for stories. Censors don’t.
When I worry about the mainstreaming of comics and comics culture, what I worry about is the money. What I worry about is whether creators will be able to take the same chances, and to be able to take those chances with great characters. Because when Captain America: Civil War is about to premiere, how risky do you want to get with any of its main characters? How likely is it that Black Widow will be brought up on bestiality charges for banging the Hulk?
And without risk, I wonder if we can still find reward.
There are some great, mainstream-ish books that I love right now. Squirrel Girl is awesome. Howard the Duck is some of the funniest shit I’ve read in forever. Dan Slott, in my conspiratorial opinion, has managed to write a great Spider-Man despite Marvel letting the character lie fallow while they didn’t have the movie rights.
What you’ll see about these characters is that they are ones that people don’t care about, or ones that the company didn’t care to see succeed.
So I wonder. Will companies like DC and Marvel continue to take risks like they did with Swamp Thing in the 80’s? Or will we see an acceptable but homogenized version of the comics we loved for their brashness, their willingness to go strange places?
Will interesting stories still happen in mainstream universes, or will we all take a lesson from Guardians of the Galaxy and say that every story is a potential blockbuster, and therefore has to play it safe on the page?
Will every version of Ant-Man make him the most likable quasi-criminal of all time, or will someone be able to stomach making him a character that’s done some bad shit?
Will a money-making outfit become a more money-dependent outfit, and therefore risk-averse?
I hope not.
But that’s what I worry about. That’s what I wonder about when people ask about the mainstreaming of comics culture. I don’t have the answers. And that’s why it’s a worry. Because I don’t know.
It’s not the t-shirts, it’s not that you can pick just about any Marvel or DC character and find a Halloween costume hanging up in Target now. It’s the money those things bring in. And where there’s money, there’s always someone saying, “Family-friendly, make it for kids, make sure kids understand it and parents approve of it.”
Where there’s money, there’s always a group like the CCA taking their pound of flesh and their handful of cash.
And where there’s money, there’s all-too-often a big ass yawn from yours truly.
I want to be wrong. I hope I’m wrong. But part of me is also looking forward to the comics backlash. Part of me is ready to read the next Alan Moore. Most of me wants that way more than I want the next 6/10 movie with great visual effects and not much else.