Fiction germinates
Rereading The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Book III: Century, by Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill. You read the first two books of a series and they’re about the Justice Society: Superman and Hawkman and Starman and the Atom and all those guys. You get to know them. Then book three comes out and it’s about … Continue reading
What it’s like for real people
Rereading New Statesmen Epilogue and Prologue by John Smith, Sean Phillips and Jim Baikie. There was a time, about 10 or 12 years ago, when the DC universe was dominated by a new generation of its marquee heroes. Grant Morrison’s JLA had Wally West, Kyle Rayner, Connor Hawke, Steel, Zauriel who was intended to be … Continue reading
Just another dead bird
Rereading Swamp Thing #166-#171 by Mark Millar, Phillip Hester and Kim DeMulder. The beginning of the Dark Age of comics, a phrase which refers to the adult comics stroke graphic novel revolution in the mainstream which I’m finding increasingly useful, was also the end of something. It was, approximately, the last time anyone joined the … Continue reading
I believed in a million things and none of them were right
Rereading Swamp Thing #159 and #165 by Mark Millar, Jill Thompson, Curt Swan, Kim DeMulder and Phillip Hester. Sincerity is a question that’s debated in few areas of the arts except superhero comics. Does the Ghost Rider artist believe in Ghost Rider? Do they mean it? Have they wanted to draw a man with a … Continue reading
A desire to retreat
Rereading Swamp Thing #160-#164 by Mark Millar, Phillip Hester and Kim DeMulder. We have to invent our terms, writing about comics, and revisionism is one of mine. If there’s another term that means the same then I apologise for not knowing it. What I mean when I talk about revisionism is the storytelling trick where … Continue reading
The parallel worlds you used to read about in comic books
Rereading Swamp Thing #151-#158 by Mark Millar, Phillip Hester, Kim DeMulder, Chris Weston and Phil Jiminez. “The superhero genre is like a big field,” Kurt Busiek once said, “and we’ve built this gigantic city in one tiny corner. Every now and then some visionary guy drives out of the city and goes off in a … Continue reading
Everything you once were
Rereading Swamp Thing #144 to #150 by Mark Millar, Phil Hester and Kim DeMulder. We are in Vertigo now, in Mark Millar’s Swamp Thing. The formalisation of the Mature Readers stroke Karen Berger unofficial universe hit during the Nancy A Collins years. We’re still in the first phase of Vertigo as the Morrison/Millar revamp begins, … Continue reading
A crossover and a crossover thwarted
The Family Man storyline in Hellblazer contains the second unheralded Sandman crossover in the comics I’ve covered. The first was the journey of Matt Cable from husband-in-a-coma in Swamp Thing to raven-in-the-Dreaming in Sandman which is, considering the prominence of Matthew the raven in Sandman, a pretty significant one. This one is tiny, a nod … Continue reading
Crashing into history
Rereading Swamp Thing #82-#87 by Rick Veitch, Alfredo Alcala, Tom Yeates and Tom Mandrake. Time in comics is weird, as Scott McCloud noted in his short chapter on it in Understanding Comics, because of the movement of the reader’s eye. Time is strictly linear in movies, and it’s linear in books with the option to … Continue reading
Toking down on some Kryptonese Red
Rereading Swamp Thing #77-#81 by Rick Veitch, Alfredo Alcala, Tom Mandrake, Jamie Delano and Steve Bissette. We can think of Rick Veitch’s first year on Swamp Thing as a combination of Moore’s first year and American Gothic: the creation of a new modus operandi for the character interleaved with an odyssey of modern American horror. … Continue reading
Suggested For Mature Readers 