Berni Wrightson and Berni Wrightson ( editor ) - Swamp Thing: Reunion

I hadn't actually intended to be writing this for about another month, but you know how it is, you go to the comic shop, you see the book on the shelf and it says "Buy me buy me buy me! I don't care that it's Christmas and that you currently have an overdraft bigger than a Third World Country because you're being so generous in buying presents for your family (hey, if I can imagine a book can talk I can imagine I'm a lot more generous than I actually am too, alright?) Buy me now!" So, if I write another Swamp Thing review before the 20th of January, you can assume book three mugged me when I went to get my X-Men comics, OK?

Book Two meanwhile is 'Love and Death'. Long time comic fans may recognise it as it has been released several times, mainly as a standalone from writer Alan Moore's period on Swamp Thing. It picks up from where the previous collection left off but also contains the annual for that year, which rounds off one of the storylines.

The collection opens with 'The Burial'. After coming to the realisation that he's not actually Alec Holland, just a plant who thinks it is, Swamp Thing finds himself haunted by the ghost of the real man, forced to relive the accident that gave him life, until he can find some way to put Holland to rest. It's a simple story, beautifully told, giving new readers a heads-up on the backstory. However, the main course of the book is the four-part story that begins with 'Love and Death'. In the previous volume the drunken husband of Swamp Thing's friend Abby Cable crashed his car while driving to meet her, only to be saved from death by a pact with a strange talking insect. In 'Love and Death' it's all explained, as in 'Swamp Thing' the arrival of insects mean only one thing, an appearance by evil, twisted master magician and Abby's uncle, Anton Arcane.

'Love and Death' is truly disturbing as it recounts in flashback how Abby thinks her life is finally turning good, her husband Matt buys a beautiful house and gets a job with a local firm, 'Blackriver Recorporations'. For a while life seems okay, and they are even doing that thing that comics use ellipses to veil, but then at the library Abby finds a book about a now dead serial killer, only to find that the woman in question works with her husband. Her descent into madness as she rushes home to try and get herself clean from the knowledge she has been sleeping with her uncle, first by trying to burn her clothes, then shower, then most disturbingly, using an oven scourer on her own skin is one of the most memorable sequences in the book.

What comes after can only be a disappointment and is perhaps written intentionally so. Feeling a disturbance in the force Swamp Thing arrives at the house to find Arcane back and spoiling for a rematch. He retreats with Abby's body into the swamp, only when Arcane follows he finds he's been tricked and he's no match for the new improved Swamp Thing with added Elemental powers and is dispatched easily. He appears to have the last laugh as he has used his powers to kill Abby and send her soul to Hell. But Matt fights back and with his dying breath brings Abby back to life. However, he cannot restore her soul, so in the next issue (taken from the annual) 'Down Among the Dead Men', Swamp Thing visits the DC comics afterlife to find her soul.

It is at this point that the casual comics reader who has no knowledge of the darker side of DC comics may begin to feel lost. If you have no idea who Deadman, The Stranger or The Spectre are, then Neil Gaiman's introduction to the collection may give you a brief introduction to them, and to other characters that turn up. The artwork by Stephen Bissette is truly remarkable here, and on a later issue and it shows why most of the other issues were drawn by other artists in order to give him the time to really let loose. His visions of Heaven and Hell, whilst fairly traditional are astounding and rich in detail; Hell especially is a blackened apocalyptic wasteland as designed by H.R. Giger in a bad mood and stunning. Here Swamp Thing meets the demon Etrigan, who we met in volume one, offering a helping claw.

After this epic is over we have a couple of stand-alone issues. The first is 'Pog'. Now, I don't know anything about the character in question, but I gather it was some green, cutesy animal, 'why can't we all get along'-type comic, all about little animals flying through space in a turtle trying to find a planet where they can live happily ever after. And they land on Earth. Oh dear. Told entirely from their perspective, so we don't understand what Swamp Thing says any more than they do, this is a heart-wrenching story of how they come to realise that Earth is not the paradise they hoped for, in a most brutal way. I may be an evil, twisted monster but even I was moved by the quality of Alan Moore's writing. It may be a throwaway issue between big fiery epics but he doesn't relax in effort for a moment.

The next story, 'Abandoned Houses' is an oddity. Using a framing sequence in which a dreaming Abby Cable visits two old horror comics of DCs, the 'House of Mysteries' and the 'House of Secrets' where she meets the houses owners, the chillingly familiar Cain and Abel. There she is told a story, in which a strangely familiar swamp creature saves his former wife from a murderer. This is the original story that eventually became the first Swamp Thing comic, but Moore twists it for his own purposes, hinting at something that will be revealed in later issues. Finishing things off for this book is 'Rite of Spring' in which the sexual tension between Abby and Swampy finally breaks and they (and how to express this so as not to fall foul of epinions) 'do it'. With the regular means out of the question Swamp Thing grows a fruit out of his body that when eaten by Abby gives her access to the world as he sees it and allows her a form of communion much deeper and profound than most people are aware of, becoming one with the life force of the planet and Swamp Thing himself, in an incredible series of images drawn once again by Bissette, it is a psychedelic experience and a wonderful rendition of a simple idea.

In evaluating the book most of what was said for the first book still apply. Alan Moore's scripts are wonderful, even if a bit weak at the denouement of the Arcane storyline, and he displays a grasp of the characters which seems effortless while coming up with new twists on old situations. The sequences of Arcane's antics on earth and Swamp Thing's visit to Hell are amazing in their power and depth (DC actually withdrew 'Swamp Thing' from the regulatory 'Comics Code' so as to allow it to be published as written rather than diluted to fit 'good taste') and is genuinely uncomfortable reading. As already mentioned the artwork by Stephen Bissette is extraordinary, and the work of the fill-in artists, Shawn McManus, Rick Veitch and Ron Randall (and that of Berni Wrightson in the 'Abandoned Houses' tale taken from the original story) is an adequate replacement. However, again, Tatjana Wood's colours are a bit of a letdown, her limited palette unable to do justice to the panoramic vision of the scripts, a bit of a letdown in the psychedelic final chapter which could probably be better served by the colouring techniques available today.

If you haven't read the first book you should really get that first as it will make some of this book more comprehensible. Buy that one, then this one, then the next and the next and the next, the lets see you mock me for my lack of willpower. Hang on, I can hear the comic shop calling to me...