Source Library

The story that shows what EC was capable of, and that the Code's administrators later tried to alter.

The character Swamp Thing and Man-Thing both descend from, thirty years earlier.

Gaiman's first DC work, and a direct reading of Moore's ecology.

The loophole. Magazines did not carry the seal, so horror survived there through the Code years.

The fullest folk horror comic of the decade. Assignment 1 option.

The character outside the run that made him.

Where the DC horror revival that produced Swamp Thing begins.

The whole course begins here. It is short enough to read in ten minutes and rich enough to sustain a fifteen-hundred-word essay.

The supernatural characters returned to the superhero line as a franchise.

Where Moore's magic goes after Swamp Thing.

The twin. Reading both origins together shows what was in the air in 1971 and what each publisher did with it.

The origin the rest of the mythos rewrites, refuses or restores. Read it beside House of Secrets #92 and notice what Wein kept and what he changed.

Introduces the villain who defines the series and the bargain that defines its ethics: what would you give to be human again?

The first appearance of Abby, and the issue where the debt to Frankenstein is paid most openly.

The end of the creature's first life on Earth, and the run's most direct confrontation with the superhero world.

The run's loneliest issue and a study in what a mind does with a world it can shape.

The run's most extreme formal experiment.

The Green taken off Earth: is it universal?

The horror comic collides with the superhero universe it lives inside. What each genre does to the other is the lesson.

Moore's tour of DC's supernatural geography, and the run's Orpheus story.

Any two issues, in a legal reprint, will show you the style Wertham attacked and Wrightson grew up on.

Constantine as a tour guide to the tradition he came from.

Used here for its pages, not its ideas: how Bissette and Totleben build dread. Year Two reads it for what it says.

The funeral for the identity the Anatomy Lesson took away. A quiet issue that does the emotional work the revelation deferred.

The issue where the run's horror becomes sexual and the Code becomes irrelevant. Read the cover as a document.

The run's tenderness at its most exposed, and its saddest ending. Also the only issue in this module not drawn by Bissette and Totleben.

Moore re-reads the first story you read in ST101, and makes the whole tradition part of his mythology.

The primary text for Assignment 1 and one of the most discussed single issues in American comics.

The storyline's and Constantine's beginning.

The issue ST204 is built on; here, the storyline's turn from America to the world.

The end of the storyline and the run's theological climax.

The DC horror hosts absorbed into a new mythology, as Moore had absorbed them in #33.

The revision in action: a Code-approved comic with Dracula in the title.

Snyder, who had just written Swamp Thing, on folk horror at Image. Assignment 1 option.

The first test of the character without Moore, and the most famous cancellation in the character's history.

The cheapest legal way to hold every primary text for this module in one book.

The fastest way to stop writing opinions and start writing arguments.

Used in this module as the example of an academic edited collection: how to read one, cite one, and find the chapter you need.

The comics-scholarship reading of Moore this module asks you to engage with.

The contemporary swamp story. Read it as the current state of the tradition Swamp Thing belongs to.

Shows what Wrightson took from Frankenstein and how his line works at full stretch. Optional, but it makes the Shelley connection visible.

A man made of the swamp is trans-corporeality drawn. The introduction is the key chapter.

The wide frame: what comics were for, decade by decade, and how the industry responded to each crisis.

A working artist explaining his decisions. Read the chapters on timing and framing.

Where to look up how scholars talk about any aspect of the form.

Shows that the comics Wertham attacked were doing serious work. Essential for Assignment 2.

The book to read before you say Swamp Thing "is nature". It will make you say what you mean.

The module's central tool. Required for Assignment 2.

The nearest scientific cousin to the Green, published five years before Moore wrote it.

Your map of the tradition Swamp Thing inherits. The introduction and first chapter are enough for this module.

The bridge between this module's novels and the comics the rest of the course reads.

Written before the internet and better for it: the method is verification by hand.

Difficult, and the opening chapter is enough. It is the theory behind every reading of the decaying body in this course.

The single best description of what Swamp Thing's body is. The introduction and the chapter on the grotesque image of the body are enough.

Published the same year as "The Anatomy Lesson", and asking the same question. Part Three only.

Read at least the chapters on horror and crime comics, as a primary document of the panic, not as evidence about comics.

The book to read after Cohen if you want to argue about what a monster's body is made of.

The spine of this module. Parts I to III are required.

The fullest statement of what the writer of Swamp Thing thinks magic is.

The cleanest definition of a monster you will find. Test Swamp Thing against it.

The strongest alternative to McCloud. Difficult; the introduction and the chapter on the page are enough.

The most readable account of 1954, built on interviews with people who were there.

Useful for Assignment 2: how to write a proposal.

The vocabulary everyone uses. Chapter 3 on closure and chapter 4 on time are the core of this module.

Readable, wide, and good on how the medium handles disaster, sex and the body.

The single most useful essay for asking what a monster means. Short, and every thesis can be tested against Swamp Thing.

The one scholarly article on the run every learner can read for free. Required for Assignment 2.

The idea that non-human life has value independent of its use to humans, which is the Parliament's position.

A documented industry account, and a lesson in how explanations spread.

Useful and detailed, but not peer reviewed. Use it to check your reading, not as an authority.

Reliable biographical facts on Wrightson: born 27 October 1948, died 18 March 2017.

A reliable, free overview of the state of the argument in 2024.

Where you check an issue date or a credit before you write it down. Use it every week.

MHRA has less to say about comics than MLA does; borrow MLA's logic (writer, artist, issue, collection) and express it in MHRA form.

Reliable biographical facts on Wein: born 12 June 1948, died 10 September 2017.

A publisher's account, useful for facts about publication and for seeing how DC now frames the run.

The first adaptation, made from Wein and Wrightson, two years before Moore.

The clearest modern body horror: a transformation shown in full, with the character narrating his own decay.

The only adaptation built on Moore's run.

The primary document for Assignment 1. Read every clause about horror, crime and the words allowed on a cover.

The document that made a monster comic legal again. Compare it clause by clause with 1954.

Cosmic horror that is also ecological horror: the first great story about poisoned ground.

The Gothic house as a body, and the landscape as a mood. The swamp is Poe's tarn with the lights off.

The memory theory of identity, which is the theory the Anatomy Lesson seems to assume and then undermines.

The invader, contagion and the fear of the foreign body. Alan Moore's vampire issues in Year Two answer this book directly.

Optional. Comparing the two texts is a good exercise in how a writer rethinks a monster.

The made body, the abandoned creation, the maker who flees: the pattern behind Arcane, the Patchwork Man and Alec Holland himself.

Two selves in one body, one of them monstrous: the pattern Arcane and Swamp Thing act out across the whole mythos.

The example of an open-access thesis: how to find one, how to judge it (examined but not peer reviewed), how to cite it.

The style this course uses. Keep it open while you write.

The literary root of the type. Read it to see how much of the swamp creature was already on the page in 1940.