May 2, 2008
The Monsters of Swamp Thing: Dark Genesis
In the original Swamp Thing, which I am enjoyedly re-reading in the Swamp Thing: Dark Genesis collection, Len Wein, in some combination with his editor Joe Orlando and his artist Berni Wrightson, came up with a pretty excellent conceit for the series. Wein leads Swamp Thing through a tour of the classic horror/SF elements. Moore would revisit this to a certain extent in "American Gothic".
I've included #11-13 in the list based on summaries from Roots of the Swamp Thing. I think I've read the issues (I may even own them, packed away in a longbox somewhere), but I certainly don't remember them on my own. Excluding them from Dark Genesis is probably a mistake; in writing and story, they certainly form a continuum with their predecessors, and Nestor Redondo is a talented artist on his own merits.
- Swamp Thing's origin.[1]
- Mad scientist (Arcane).[2]
- Frankenstein's monster.
- Werewolf.
- Witch.
- Robot. (Side order of German clockwork maker.)
- Superhero.[3]
- Extraterrestrial Lovecraftian horror.
- Alien.
- Ghost. (Side order of return of the supervillain nemesis.)
- Lovecraftian horror again, this time from the time before humans.
- Time travel.
- No real thematic content, as Wein resolves his ongoing conflicts.
Images © DC Comics; art by Berni Wrightson, words by Len Wein. Fair use asserted.
[1] Swampy's origin is quite comprehensively informed by the superhero genre origin paradigm, particularly in its initial telling. I've argued before that Swampy is a superhero, or at least that Swamp Thing is a superhero comic, which may be different.
[2] A classic supervillain nemesis for a superhero comic.
[3] See? Superhero comic.
I've always been impressed with the way Wein gave Swampy's adventures that extra bit of thematic structure; it made them feel a lot more substantial than run-of-the-mill adventure stories.
A single word about Berni's art, which has been justifiably praised by many more people than me: I see Linda Holland's hair in quite a few of Alan Davis's female characters.
Posted by Greg at May 2, 2008 9:59 AM
All well and good, but did Swamp Thing ever encounter Zuvembis?
It's always been fascinating to me the way DC and, even moreso Marvel, approached monster comics in the 70s. They were very much structured not as horror stories, but as super-hero action adventure stories. Dracula as soulless bloodsucking murderer is scary; Dracula as Dr. Doom analog is something else. Something fun to read about -- don't get me wrong -- but something different from what you think when you hear the word "vampire."
The ghosts in #10 had some zombie characteristics, actually. And Swampy encountered for-sure zombies in "American Gothic".
The monsters-as-supervillains approach had the virtue of being Comics Code-acceptable at a time when that mattered, I think.
Zombies are not the same as zuvembies!
OK they are, but in my childhood mind I always thought there must be some difference, else why give them a different name. The answer, of course, is that the Comics Code didn't allow one to say "zombie" in a comic, but I didn't know that back then.
Speaking of the Comics Code (as you just were, Greg), you are no doubt correct that the Code shaped the way Dracula, Werewolf By Night, and all the rest were portrayed. At the same time, it's worth noting that DC was doing bona fide horror in House of Secrets and House of Mystery, so it would have been possible to actually do a real horror story instead of the "superheroes disguised as horror" that we mostly got. Not that I didn't love my superheroes disguised as horror, mind you.
Well, one could easily make the argument that "zuvembie" refers only to zombies raised by voodoo, and that "zombie" is a generic term for any walking corpse. All zuvembies are zombies; not all zombies are zuvembies.
In a post-Romero world, that's a distinction that is potentially useful, which is a necessary condition for the development of lexically separate terms.
I know we're wandering a bit, but didn't the term "zuvembie" originate in Robert E. Howard's story, "Pigeons From Hell?" (Which explains Roy Thomas' choice when Marvel needed a "zombie" synonym.) I'm pretty certain REH had a very specific definition for it, seperate from a run-of-the-mill zombie, but I haven't read the story in years. Anyone remember?
I don't know why the Comics Code didn't crack down on zuvembies. The original Code banned the "walking dead," not just the word zombie. In fact, the Code was all about limiting the various horror concepts rather than vocabulary:
Scenes dealing with, or instruments associated with walking dead, torture, vampires and vampirism, ghouls, cannibalism, and werewolfism are prohibited.
The revised code from 1971 eased up to allow some literary horror tropes, but the walking dead were still out.
Scenes dealing with, or instruments associated with walking dead, or torture, shall not be used. Vampires, ghouls and werewolves shall be permitted to be used when handled in the classic tradition such as Frankenstein, Dracula, and other high calibre literary works written by Edgar Allen Poe, Saki, Conan Doyle and other respected authors whose works are read in schools around the world.
So unless zuvembies weren't really dead (because we certainly saw them walking), they should've been just as forbidden as zombies.
Hmmm, this makes me want to pull out my copy of Secret of the Swamp Thing and reread it. I also just read The Un-Men Vol. 1: Get Your Freak On, which has an introduction by Wein where he discusses the monsters he had Swamp Thing encounter during the original run. John Whalen isn't Len Wein, but it's still a decent read, particularly if you've got a Cranius jones.