From slarti@sidehack.sat.gweep.net Fri Mar 9 17:00:18 2001 Path: sidehack.gweep.net!slarti From: slarti@sidehack.sat.gweep.net (Chris Pinard) Newsgroups: rec.arts.comics.dc.vertigo Subject: Re: A Swamp Thing question. Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2001 06:22:15 +0000 (UTC) Organization: GweepCo in 3D Lines: 163 Message-ID: References: <3AA31C22.14D25922@earthling.net> <20010306213713.19078.00000154@ng-ci1.aol.com> <3aa6b894.2465412@news.virgin.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: sidehack.sat.gweep.net X-Trace: sidehack.sat.gweep.net 984032535 80290 204.145.148.154 (8 Mar 2001 06:22:15 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@sidehack.sat.gweep.net NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2001 06:22:15 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: slrn/0.9.6.3 (FreeBSD) Cache-Post-Path: sidehack.sat.gweep.net!slarti@sidehack.sat.gweep.net X-Cache-In: nntpcache 2.4.0b5 (see http://www.nntpcache.org/) Xref: sidehack.gweep.net rec.arts.comics.dc.vertigo:24621 X-Cache-Out: nntpcache 2.4.0b5 (see http://www.nntpcache.org/) Loz Pycock wrote: >bomb dogs comixace@aol.comxyz (Heidi MacDonald) wrote the following: >>Swampy decided that individual beauty was too precious to lose, no matter how >>painful it is. >reboot the series by saying that everything that Millar wrote about >was some ghastly mistake, that Constantine, the Stranger, Odin et al >had not been working in the interests of mankind after all? Okay, Considering that I thought that it was stated in the final issue that the whole world got a *momentary glimpse* at the cosmic interconnectedness, and that the "next phase" changes were going to take part slowly, over time, starting with Alec Holland's reincarnation? *tries to find the relevant issues amongst his collection... Ah, there they are...* *checks* Yeah, that's the idea. A "star-child" leading to an eventual new race, a moment of illumination for everyone, a religious cult springs up embracing new ideas springing from the experience. Swamp Thing becomes an elemental of the whole world and all its elements, but nothing about all life becoming an individuality-less drone gestalt slaved to Swampy's actions, like is shown in that Secret Files story. Oh, and everything tying Alec Holland to the Swamp Thing were expurgated, his shade having already passed on, and his spirit separating from World Elemental Swampy to be born as the star-child. And he and Abby had a quiet amicable departure. >actually really aware that it existed. I don't think this had to be >dismissed in order to start the new series. Indeed. The only real long term change was Swampy's shift in perspective in the fact that he could experience all the world, and the all-elements power he had as a part of being the World Elemental. >Essential Swamp Thing series, I'm hardly an expert or long term fan. I'm sort of a "long term" fan. I always thought the character was neat, from the TV show and such, and when I started getting into buying comics, which was only a couple of years ago now, I was interested in various stories that were already done and available in the back issue section of my local store, and after getting all the Sandman TPBs, I started with early Moore ST, then worked my way forward to the end of the run, and back to the beginning and into the original Wein/Wrightson/etc. run and the guest-starring issues of "Challengers of the Unknown" that covered between ST v.1 and v.2. >>Unless it's better than Alan Moore/Rick Veitch/Mark Millar, no one is going to >>like it. >C'est la vie. The problem (er, "problem") is that Swamp Thing has had long runs by such good writers for so large a percentage of its run/existence, that it raises the bar. Everyone compares to Moore, Veitch, Millar (well, not everyone, but I liked his run), because they're just so goddamn *good* and created really memorable stories (remind me *never* to question Moore's ability to capitalize on old plot points or esoteric knowledge about the world around us), and no one ever wants less than that if at all possible. >Then why were you rehashing old stories by fiddling about with the old >Swamp Thing? For me, the problems I've been having with the current series haven't been about fiddling with Old Man Swampy, or with how that series ended. Well, except for the part, which I stated once a while back on this newsgroup, where I was full well ready to throw the comic across the room and cancel my subscription ASAP if the new series undid the repentant ending given to Anton Arcane, 'cause I *really* liked that development and really don't want to see Yet Another appearance of Bad Evil Demonic Anton ever again because of it. No, my problems have been more with the changes that have been wrought upon the background universe of _Swamp Thing_ as a result of the new series, and how they don't seem to really make that much sense to me. Chief among these have been "Kudzu" and the overall change in the way that The Green works. One of the perqs of being a Plant Elemental was supposed to be sentience and a sense of individual self as a plant. Individual plants weren't self-aware in any way. One of the Alan Moore issues during Swampy's space jaunt (the one where he ends up on the planet protected by the plant Green Lantern, Medphyll) had as an integral element the abject horror to be had in the elemental manipulation of plants who were already sentient, and how this was different from Earth and most other planets. When Swampy, or Tefe, for that matter, messed with some plant matter, they were controlling and changing it, and it stayed like that, growing naturally from then on, unless they or another Plant Elemental changed it again later. When Swampy took Tefe into The Green, she experienced it in the same sense as he did. So now her "brain", which isn't even really there when she's gone into The Green, has to do the "re-interpret in a way you can handle" thing, which includes individual sentient selves for every plant in the world? Now she's merely manipulating the plants, and they'll shift back to "how they want to be" when she stops doing it? Now these self-sentient non-Elemental plants can enwrap a human and form a sentient immortal half-plant that isn't an Elemental? Huh?! If the individual plants were sentient and could band together and move/act of their own accord, why the hell do they need Elementals? If plants, as an Element that possess an Elemental, can do this, does this mean that the same is true for every other such Elements? Every fire, every drop of water, every breath of wind, every pebble and boulder? (Don't even *think* of the implications for the Captain Atom "Quantum Elemental" development.) If these implications aren't the case, then this is absurdly inconsistent, but if they are, then it's absurdly unrealistic in a way that I should think would be very dangerous to the maintenance of the illusion and suspension of disbelief, even in a comic book about Plant Elementals. Not to mention terribly, terribly inconsistent to the realities of the previous series. Which I should think would make things quite jarring if, some couple years down the line, some person's just gotten into comics buying/reading, and has always liked the Swamp Thing character concept from the TV series and the movies, and so decides to collect and read all the Swamp Thing available in the back issue boxes, through to the end of the Millar run and into the current series. I've been keeping up with the current Swamp Thing series, but I've only been half-enjoying it. It's not a matter of identification with Tefe, as I've heard other folks complaining about. As with my enjoyment of Hourman, both as a character as a whole and his appearances in JLA, JSA, and his own just-ended title in specific, I've always maintained that whether or not one can identify or relate with a character should not be a barrier to understanding or liking the stories where the character appears. Sometimes a person is just alien from the rest of us, and I think that if one finds that the character, while alien, is at least being written well and has something behind that alien-ness, some difference in perspective or senses or something beyond being bizarre for bizarreness' sake, one should perhaps take a moment to try and use one's imagination to shift perspective to see things as the character sees them. Forge an understanding and identify with the character via that understanding. I know, for myself, that Old Man Swampy was also oftentimes not immediately relateable, so I'm not quite sure how this measure of ability to identify without putting oneself in the place of the character is applied. Instead, the reason I'm only half-enjoying the current Swamp Thing series is that is scarcely seems to be going anywhere. I mean, I've a vague idea of where it's going, and I can tell that there is some progression from issue to issue, but it's not a lot, and I'm having difficulty handling that. I mean, with, for example, Frank Miller's Sin City, there's a story, and Frank bloody well takes his time with spooling out that story, taking probably twice as long as "should" have been necessary to tell, but that's okay, because even when you're reading a long monologue/narration along the side of the page, it all, words and art, *drips* with *style* that propels you from page to page, taking it all in and making you forget how many pages you're going through to get to the end. Maybe it's that I read Sin City by graphic novel collections rather than individual issues as I do Swamp Thing, but I don't find myself getting even a fraction of a sense of that from zipping through each issue of the current title. Ultimately, I'm sticking around because nothing about it has outright turned me off to it yet, and I know that the writer definitely seems to be building up to a payoff, and I'd like to see it. But with the way things've been progressing, it better well be one *damn* fine payoff. Slarti Who really should've gone to bed a couple of hours ago, instead of still writing this... -- Chris Pinard: Just zis guy, ya know? -- slarti@gweep.net Who are you? What do you want? Why are you here?