Review of 'The Swamp Thing' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
Returning to this book after a couple of years of getting further and further into comics, it really felt like I was coming home. While I've come to enjoy a lot of Moore's work, I really appreciate the quietness of this book over the flashiness of some of his other works. That's not to say that nothing happens, a lot of very dramatic things happen, but the scope here is much more limited then say V for Vendetta. There's always the potential that the world could be effected, but mostly these events are local and they are happening to everyday people.
The art in this book did take a little bit of getting used to. The shading on people's faces in particular continues to look pretty ugly IMHO, but overall the style and the vivid primary colors really do reflect the mood of the book. That said, the covers, and …
Returning to this book after a couple of years of getting further and further into comics, it really felt like I was coming home. While I've come to enjoy a lot of Moore's work, I really appreciate the quietness of this book over the flashiness of some of his other works. That's not to say that nothing happens, a lot of very dramatic things happen, but the scope here is much more limited then say V for Vendetta. There's always the potential that the world could be effected, but mostly these events are local and they are happening to everyday people.
The art in this book did take a little bit of getting used to. The shading on people's faces in particular continues to look pretty ugly IMHO, but overall the style and the vivid primary colors really do reflect the mood of the book. That said, the covers, and every time we see the Swamp Thing are extremely beautifully rendered.
Moving on to the page layouts in the book, I really loved how expressive the pages were. But what really impressed me was how easy it was to read. Even while each page is at least a little bit different they all still are mostly set up to read top to bottom left to right. Not the most important thing in the world, but props for accessibility.
Which reminds me of one of my complaints about Scalped Volume one and it's tendency to jump the story around randomly (because that's what's adult comics do man!). While Swamp Thing does a bit of this, a continuous narrative thread remains. It's not just random for randoms sake, it's all building up to something.
Another reason I prefer this story to titles such as Scalped is much more personal however. Not to say that I don't enjoy a decidedly dark story once in a while, or that I never come to the defense of those really unlikable characters, but I really appreciated the hopefulness of Swamp Thing. A lot of bad things happen, but that doesn't stop Abby or the Swamp Thing from continuing to care.
To dig a bit further into the writing and the stories themselves, I really feel like Alan Moore and I live in very similar head spaces. Not to say I can write anything one tenth as good as Moore, but there are a million little ways in which this is the creator that truly inspires me. That's why I describe reading this as coming home for me.
That said, I would have appreciated it if Abby could have done a little bit more for herself in this volume. I can't remember if the second is any better and I've never read past that, but she really is a bit of a damsel throughout these stories. Which is one of the biggest reasons I couldn't give this book a five star rating - it might sound a bit petty, but I figured it was the only way to be fair to all the other books with less then stellar lady characters that I just flat out don't like.
Although I will in no way equate Frank Miller's treatment of women in daredevil to Moore's treatment of Abby. While it would have been pretty easy to insert something for Abby to overcome all by herself, she does at least show herself to be a pretty strong willed character overall and Moore is not trying to advance some kind of misogynistic agenda. This is not to say that Moore's depictions of women are never problematic, I will certainly be talking about this a lot more as I work my way through his catalog, but I do think it's an important differentiation (at least at this point) since I do think he gets a bit more flack then he necessarily deserves.
Otherwise, as I said earlier, I really enjoyed the everyday nature of the story and its setting. The anarchy is a lot less obvious then in some of his other works, but still very important to his overall world view. The calmness and long term perspective of the Swamp Thing is really unique within the DCU, he really does personify the natural world in so many ways. This isn't just a hit you over the head kind of environmentalism, but much like the anarchy, it's just there in a very natural way.
So, overall, I've given this book a four out of fives stars. Writing this review I do realize that a lot of the reasons behind that rating are somewhat personal. But I do think that while I am predisposed to being more attracted to this sort of comic, that does not mean that this is not a particularly good example of the sort of horror comic I enjoy so the rating stands.
