ST202 Love, Sex, Bodies and the Nonhuman

Introduction

Having told the creature what he was, Moore spent the next year working out what he could feel. The issues in this module run from "The Burial" (September 1984), in which the creature digs up and buries the skeleton of the man he thought he was, through the return of Anton Arcane inside the body of Abby's husband, Abby's death and the descent into Hell to recover her, to "Rite of Spring" (March 1985), in which a woman and a plant make love and the comic invents a visual language for it.

The subjects are the ones in the title. Love between a human and something not human, and what consent, desire and the body mean when one partner is made of vegetation. Sex as it appears in a comic that, from #29, no longer carried the Comics Code seal. Bodies possessed, buried, burned, eaten, and remade. And the nonhuman as a partner rather than a threat, which is the turn that makes Moore's Swamp Thing different from every monster in ST102.

Theory comes from where you have already been (Kristeva, Alaimo, Bakhtin) and from one new place: the ethics of care and the question of how to love what is not like you. The assignments ask you to read a love scene as closely as you read a dissection, and to argue about whether the comic earns its tenderness.

Learning objectives

• Analyse how Moore's run handles grief, possession and death across a multi-issue sequence.
• Read "Rite of Spring" as a formal achievement: how a comic represents an experience it cannot depict directly.
• Discuss love, sex and consent between human and nonhuman partners with critical precision.
• Apply the body theory from Year One (Kristeva, Bakhtin, Alaimo) to intimacy rather than horror.
• Assess the significance of a comic abandoning the Comics Code seal, using the object as evidence.
• Write a research essay that engages with published criticism of these issues.

Lessons

Unit 1: Week 1: The burial

Grief for a self that never existed.

1. The Burial: grieving a man who never wasThe creature buries Alec Holland. What mourning means when the mourner is the grave.100 min

Unit 2: Week 2: Love and death

Possession, violation and the seal that disappeared.

1. Love and Death: possession and the end of the CodeArcane inside Matt Cable, the horror of the familiar body, and the first issue without the seal.120 min

Unit 3: Week 3: Down amongst the dead men

Hell, and DC's supernatural map.

1. Down Amongst the Dead Men: the descentAnnual #2, the Orpheus story, and how Moore used DC's supernatural characters to draw a cosmology.120 min

Unit 4: Week 4: Pog and the abandoned house

Two standalone issues: tenderness and tradition.

1. Pog and Abandoned HousesA homage to Pogo that ends in grief, and the 1971 origin retold inside Moore's mythology.100 min

Unit 5: Week 5: Rite of spring

The love scene, read closely.

1. Rite of SpringHow a comic represents an experience it cannot show: the tuber, the light, and the water.150 min Sample

Unit 6: Week 6: What love is for

Synthesis and the essay.

1. What the run does to loveFrom burial to rite: the arc as an argument about loving what is not like you.120 min

Core texts

• Required Saga of the Swamp Thing Book 2 Alan Moore, Stephen Bissette, John Totleben and others

  Holds the module's issues.

  BuySource requires verification
• Required The Saga of the Swamp Thing #28: "The Burial" Alan Moore (writer), Stephen Bissette and John Totleben (art)
  Buy
• Required The Saga of the Swamp Thing #29: "Love and Death" Alan Moore (writer), Stephen Bissette and John Totleben (art)
• Required The Saga of the Swamp Thing #30: "A Halo of Flies" Alan Moore (writer), Stephen Bissette and John Totleben (art)
• Required The Saga of the Swamp Thing #31: "The Brimstone Ballet" Alan Moore (writer), Stephen Bissette and John Totleben (art)
• Required Swamp Thing Annual #2: "Down Amongst the Dead Men" Alan Moore (writer), Stephen Bissette and John Totleben (art)
• Required The Saga of the Swamp Thing #32: "Pog" Alan Moore (writer), Shawn McManus (art)
  Source requires verification
• Required The Saga of the Swamp Thing #33: "Abandoned Houses" Alan Moore (writer); reprints the House of Secrets #92 story by Len Wein and Bernie Wrightson within a new frame
  Source requires verification
• Required The Saga of the Swamp Thing #34: "Rite of Spring" Alan Moore (writer), Stephen Bissette and John Totleben (art)

  Assignment 1.

Secondary reading

• Recommended Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection Julia Kristeva, translated by Leon S. Roudiez
  Library
• Recommended Bodily Natures: Science, Environment, and the Material Self Stacy Alaimo
  LibraryBuy
• Recommended Rabelais and His World Mikhail Bakhtin, translated by Helene Iswolsky
  Library
• Recommended Alan Moore and the Gothic Tradition Matthew J. A. Green (editor)
  LibraryBuy
• Recommended Alan Moore: Comics as Performance, Fiction as Scalpel Annalisa Di Liddo
  Library
• Recommended The Groundbreaking Horror of "Swamp Thing: Love and Death" DC.com editorial
  OnlineLink
• Recommended Silber Linings: Remember that time Swamp Thing had sex? The Comics Beat
  OnlineLink
• Recommended "Rite of Spring": Alan Moore's Swamp Thing Issue #34 Sequart Organization
  OnlineLink

Assessment

Two assessed pieces. The first is a close reading of "Rite of Spring" as a whole issue. The second is a research essay on whether Moore's run makes the love between Abby and the creature ethically and aesthetically credible, requiring at least four secondary sources.

Source requirements

Assignment 1 is primary source plus optional secondary reading. Assignment 2 is a research assignment: at least four credible secondary sources, including at least one work of theory from the Year One list and at least one piece of published criticism on Moore's run.