Saga of the Swamp Thing, Book 1

There's a lot of stories jammed in this book, all of them follow the same character. Very creepy and unsettling at times, be warned. I went into this with no prior knowledge of DC comics whatsoever and I was able to follow it fairly well. There are some great characters and thought provoking moments.

Insanely good artwork and writing. an absolute must read.

I've been wanting to purchase these 6 books for some time now. The complete Alan Moore run of 'Swamp Thing', how could I turn it down? No one, except Neil Gaiman, has the depth of Moore and his attention to detail. This collection is no different. I had an idea of what this series encompased already thanks to Wikipedia. I knew that Alan took this existing character and molded it to his own interpretations. Still I was plesantly surprised when reading it. **Some Spoilers** For those not too familier with this comic series, as I was...the comics focus in on the Swamp Thing. The Swamp Thing, a creature of living moving vegetation was once a man named Alec Holland. Alec Holland was developing a serum that would make plants extremely tuff and able to grow fast. Well his lab is blown up and he is splashed with the formula and is thrown by the explosion into the surrounding swamp. For years the concensus was that he was mutated by the formula, combined with the swamp he fell into, that's how he became the current creature he is. Well...in comes Alan Moore as head writer. Moore has a knack for taking an under-performing property and revitalizing it. He actually prefers the more obscure characters over the heavy hitters, i.e. 'Batman' & 'Superman.' Moore has this bright idea. What if the Swamp Thing was NEVER Alec Holland? What if Alec died in the explosion like any normal human would. What if the formula affected a plant in the swamp, and this plant digested Alec Holland's decomposing body. By "eating" Alec Holland this plant absorbs his memorys and "mind" and gets deceived that IT is Alec Holland. WOW!!! So the Swamp Thing for all these years has been operating under a false assumption. IT's hopes of becoming human someday are dashed to pieces. After all, IT's a plant and was NEVER a man, ever. This is quite a revelation to start his run with. This is only issue # 2 of Moore's tenure... It only gets more crazy from here. The Flouronic Man terrorizing the world with extinction. An ape demon from hell, Moore cuts loose. There some elements I was not crazy about. The issue about the Ouija Board, was to me creepy. But this is a horror comic. I personally find Ouija Boards disturbing. Elements like these are to be expected though from Alan. Moore is now a self professed "...real Magician" and is a huge follower of magic. He attempts to practice it in real life and peppers his writings quite hard with it's literary elements. In fact, his current work is pretty much centered around Magic. His older work, exp. 'Swamp Thing' and others are peppered with it, but not saturated with it. This is just something anyone who goes to read his writings past and ESPECIALLY present should be aware of ahead of time. If mystical is not your thing, you'll probably not like his work. You may like his older work, 'V For Vendetta', 'Watchmen', and 'Swamp Thing', which is not too saturated but at times does go into paranormal territory, periodically. This aside, if your looking for a thinking man's comic, this is probably for you. --Bound Volume Quality-- One reason I had to dock a star is for the quality of the hardback. If you've read other reviews, you know the paper quality of these releases is not the best. The pages will be stuck together when you first open these books and the pages will crackle a little bit at first. These are not high-gloss pages, but the cheaper kind found in lower end trade paperbacks, I believe. Is it a reason to not read or buy these releases? NO, just an annoyance. Also the dust covers are not high quality either. FYI, take if off and behold the beautiful hardback cover underneath. Why would they want to cover this awesome imprinted covers? Quality issues aside this is still overall a good buy. AND, you get issue # 20 in book 1, something not in most other 'Swamp Thing' bound volume releases. --In Conclusion-- Very happy with this purpose, quality issues aside, and I am glad I bought all 6 books at once. I am now plowing into Book 2 and will be reviewing it soon... Great read so far, makes me remember why I loved 'The Watchmen' so many years ago when I first picked it up in Books-A-Million. I knew after the first 3 pages I was reading something really EPIC. You now have a choice between hardcover and paperback. Be aware the paperbacks of this variety are just now getting released, you will have to wait for all 6 to make it to the shelves, for a while. I personally recommend the hardcovers. At the current prices on Amazon.com, you really can NOT afford to miss out on this upgrade. Thanks Alan for giving us readers such well thought out material. I wish there were more out there like you and Neil Gaiman... Well...on to Book 2.

Book 1 of Saga of the Swamp Thing definitely lived up to the hype, and then some! I was blown away by the creative storylines, breathtaking art, and sheer boldness of the whole thing. Book 1 is not an origin story of the titular character, but rather it completely reshapes and retools his origin story in a very daring, almost shocking way. Love or hate Alan Moore (this was the well known artist’s first big American comic to write for) it can never be said that he is a cowardly writer; he has never been afraid of taking huge risks with his stories, and you can see here that even in the beginnings of his career, he really went all in. These issues must have been completely mind-blowing to the loyal Swamp Thing readers back in the day - my mind was blown to smithereens and I’m not even that familiar with this IP. In addition, I’m a huge fan of the tone of horror throughout this book. A villain that appears in the 2nd half of the book is absolutely terrifying, and as this predates Stephen King’s It by about 4 years, one may wonder if King wasn’t more than a little bit influenced by these issues. In summation, if you’re a fan, of comics, horror, great writing, or good things in general, you should by and read this now! It is an absolute masterpiece and an essential part of comics history!

This volume is essential reading for comic book lovers. The stories are involving, poetic, thrilling, and often mind-bending. Moore's revised origin for Swampy is very imaginative and adds a very interesting layer to Swamp Thing's brooding internal monologue that drives the book. The art is striking, hypnotic, and usually quite beautiful. I'm not sure what work has been done to clean up the art for this edition, but it looks fantastic. The lines are sharp and dark and the colors, though often purposely muted, pop off the page. The main attraction in this volume is a brilliant story arc in which a minor DC villain, Floronic Man, discovers some startling secrets about our Swamp Thing and uses the knowledge to take total control of all of the plant life on Earth. It's really wild stuff, and it's tastefully and realistically handled by all of the artists involved. The only complaint I have about this book is that it's too short. I couldn't put it down once I started it and I was finished with it in no time at all. They've only printed the first 3 of these softcovers so far, but I recommend that you do as I did and buy all of them that are available at the time. You'll want to start the next book immediately after finishing one. It's that good.

I wanted to hate this book. For years, all you keep hearing about is how great Alan Moore's run on Swamp Thing was. How he took the title, and in effect comics in general, in a much darker direction. Even a more adult direction. I blew that off as hooey. It can't be THAT good. Damn it all, it is! Thanks in no small part to his artists Stephen Bissette and John Totleben, and very much to his colorist Tatjana Wood, Moore created a masterpiece in storytelling. First he ties up the loose ends of the previous creative team in his first issue (reprinted here for the first time), then takes us on a trip to see the true origin of the Swamp Thing, one he understandably (once you read it) does not take well. From there, we see a tale of a creature looking for its place in the world, while at the same time battling other creatures made of flora, as well as demons. Meanwhile, the supporting cast is fully fleshed out with Abigail Arcane-Cable being the person trying to most restore ST's humanity, while her husband loses his and battles demons of his own, until one tragic occurence near the end of the book where a demon wins without much effort. I can't type much here without spoiling everything. Suffice it to say the hype IS accurate, the entire book holds up exceptionally well 25+ years later. And it's reprinted on high-quality paper, so it looks beautiful too. I wanted to hate this book. Instead I love it. That's some good storytelling right there.

This is the beginning of what comic books could become. The entire Alan Moore swamp thing run was truly one giant story. And it begins here. There are some dated references that may make it a bit clunky and the pre-crisis on infinite earths heroes do not mesh with the revamped Heroes. But Without this book there is no vertigo, no sandman no preacher. So many things in this book laid the groundwork or what would come after That’s just the importance of this story. In the story itself is some excellent storytelling characters who behave like characters and not plot devices- interesting people and villains. Dialogue that sounds like people (yes a bit melodramatic) but still people talking. Horror, yup it’s in there, one of the creepiest stories in comics happens in this collection, guest staring Etrigan. In the first chapter it closes the door on the old muck monster horror trope swamp thing idea saying that old way of monsters hiding in shadows is over, there are no more room for monsters. This opens the door for a very different kind of horror and monster. Rereading these I don’t get as scared as I once did but I’m not exactly comfortable either.

I was looking for a fun book to read to clear my mind and this fit the bill pretty well. Moore is an interesting writer, and the stories are compelling, even if the character constrains some of what can be done. It’s organic and very green in the environmental sense. I’ve already ordered the next couple of collections of the series. The art, coloring, and page composition also work well with the story. I think of the early 80s as a period of reinvention in the genre with Moore and Miller and having read a few Miller texts recently and been underwhelmed, the Swamp Thing book feels like an amazingly coherent text in a way that The Dark Knight Returns wasn’t for me.

I had a chance to start collecting the original comics as they came out. I knew Alan Moore's work from his Marvel UK 'Captain Britain' strip, I knew how good he was. But as a young teenager, I was a dyed in the wool 'Marvelite' and just didn't buy DC comics. I have since collected all of Moore's Swamp Thing issues in various formats, and realized what a damned fool I'd been. These works would have lit up my adolescent brain like a firework display. It's hard to imagine how much they would have affected my thinking and dreaming and how much pleasure and delightful dread they would have given me. Eddie Campbell (the artist who later collaborated with Alan Moore on the awesome, towering work 'From Hell') wrote of Moore, the British (Northampton) writer taking the American comics world by storm something like this: 'The Americans have given us many things, like the endless coffee refill, and words for not doing very much, like "hanging out" and "goofing off". I suppose they were hanging out and goofing off, when Alan Moore landed among them like a hungry wolf.' Moore's work was a revolution. It tore down the old notions of what a horror comic could be. It gave us terrifying new vistas and possibilities. Especially starting from the second issue, 'Anatomy Lesson.' Moore's Swamp Thing shaped so much in US comics...'Watchmen' followed, but Swamp thing was first in the US, and arguably the best, if your tastes run towards horror. Moore's Swamp Thing was a major influence on Neil Gaiman's early US comics, especially 'Sandman'. So with Swamp Thing, Moore helped set the tone for the entire Vertigo line of DC comics. The artwork by Steve Bissette and John Totleben, Rick Veitch and Alfredo Alcala was also fantastic, and supported Moore's prose with a dark beauty. The first three of those artists also contributed many plot ideas to Moore, and a special alchemy happened across these issues, that is rarely seen in comics. I have read thousands of comics, and these are among the very best. They transcend the medium. The quality of writing, the visionary ideas and visuals are works of art by any standards. And not just by comic book standards. These stories can stand among works by the great horror prose writers and film makers. Buy it, buy them all, so you don't miss out like I did.

Tenia altas expectativas con esta historia, muchas recomendaciones, pero ahora que terminé supero por mucho todo lo que me esperaba. El arte es increible, a mi me pareció muy buena eleccion del papel es como si tomaras un comic de los 80s, pero lo que se lleva por mucho es la historia y narrativa de Moore, conforme vas leyendo numero a nuemero pareciera que cada numero es totalmente separado, pero mas adelante te das cuenta que todas esas partes se unen a un todo. super recomendable, ahora toca conseguir los 5 restantes

Best horror comic ever made.

libro bellissimo consigliato uno dei migliori fumetti di sempre. disegni imperdibili. storia affascinante. un vero capolavoro da avere in tutte le librerie.

This is one is known as one of the best runs ever and it's for a good reason. It's perfect.