Swamp Thing 70s :)

[Agentum]

I recently reread some of Wein and Wrightsons Swamp Thing.

I remember liking this series as a child, it vas a was a mysterious comic.

But reading it today as a trade i still like the artwork and the concept, but it's a lot of really stupid things storywise in it.

That cop Matt Cable must be one of the most stupid persons :D
He hunts for Swamp Thing thinking he is the murder of his 2 best friends he ever had.
But there is some big probles here, in issue one he don't really seems to be knowing Alec and his wife at all, they even refer to him as Lt. Cable (so much for being his best friends).
He refers to them as merchantise that can be sold and bought.
And then when Alec gets blowed up by a bomb and he is told about the mysterious people threating the Holland earlier AND Alecs wife gets shot, he thinks Swamp Thing has blowed up Alec and shoot his wife o matter that there is laying around dead crooks here and there:D

We later hear that he is the departments best detective:D

He doesn't follow up on the mysterious people lying around but follow ST to Europe when he sees him strapped on a cross outside a plane.
And he is hauling around some fleadog all over the world for no reason but for the crooks to get both hear and see whatever they do.

Later when they is stranded in Scotland he doesn't believe in monsters even that he already has seen a couple of monsters before:confused:

And the old couple living there has been bringing down planes for years as if pilots would land whatever there looks like it is a landing strip.

I think this book was better as a comic with some month in between the issues, the mood and the art is very good but the story can be so stupid that you have to laugh about it.

I know this is a classic run and i still like it for what it is, and i know you shouldn't overanalyze comics that old but reading the issues in a sitting really bring up that they probably wrote the story without much thinking.
They should have concentraded more on ST than the hunting thing, but i guess in those days it was a rule to have some kind of peabrain that was wrongly informed to hunt after the hero or monster or whatever.

[Agentum]

Well, even a more fun issue is comming up.

In this one Swamp Thing has travelled to Gotham to seek out the bad guys.
So to get information he goes into a pub and sits around.
And that pays of as a crook starts shouting about him being hired by those bad guys and that he is having the addres on a paper in his hand.:D

Then ST goes out and starts beating up bad guys on the streets for info.
Imagine this bad guy standing around and suddenly a swamp monster shows up and starts beating him up without a word.
Must be a painful experience before he happens to tell the monster what it wants to hear.

And to end the issue the bad guys big boss is having his worst day ever.
He decides to do something with the dogs tranciever so it comes running to him (the boss thinks this is intresting he says).
Well the dog drags both Batman and ST to his door, and as he is carrying around the radio equipment on him (i guess) the dog is running to him with Batman on it's tail.
Now to make himself absolutly maximum supectious he take his gun and shoot the dog in front of everybody.OOPS!
He decides to end it all by tripping on his monkey and fall to a relieving death.

[MDG]

I gotta agree--of course the art's great, and there's some well-written scenes here and there, but it seems to rely on coincidence even more than silver age superhero comics.

Maybe they explicitly planned to do a "monster of the month," (plus Batman)but the way they did it... Issue 2, Swamp thing is taken out of the swamp by Arcane. Issues 3 to 8, he makes his way back to the swamp, coincidentally coming across a "monster" of sorts at every stop, then gets back to the swamp just as Matt Cable is investigating an alien. Issue 10, Arcane is back and Wrightson's on his way out.

Like ECs, it's not a book that benefits from reading back-to-back.

MDG

[Red Oak Kid]

I think Wrightson may have had a large role in picking the settings and the type of foes Swamp Thing would encounter. I believe ST was meant to be a showcase for Wrightson's art from the get-go. Obviously, Wrightson is much more at home drawing graveyards, castles and deformed creatures then he is at drawing cars, modern city-scapes and modern fashions.

I would guess that the plots would have been more logical if Wein had been in total control of the story arc. But because he had a master of macabre art as a partner, he probably let Wrightson's desire to draw creepy stuff dictate the direction of the storylines.

Just my theory.

[Kid Monster]

Part of the fun of the awe-inspiring 1980's Alan Moore run was the way that Moore ruthlessly exploited the various plot holes and reliance on coincidence of the 70's version... "There is no such thing as coincidence, "coincidence" is the pattern of the world's bark". Indeed.

That said, the 70's Swamp Thing has absolutely beautiful artwork, and the stories really captured my imagination as a kid. It earns it's status as a classic.

[swinebread]

Bah, give me the horror of Man-Thing!