ST203 American Gothic

The End: #50 and the storyline as argument

The battle outside creation, its theology, and what sixteen issues have said about a country.

About 150 minutes. Sample lesson, open to everyone.

Reading for this lesson

Introduction

"The End" (July 1986) is double-sized and it is the storyline's climax: Swamp Thing, Deadman, Etrigan, the Phantom Stranger and the Spectre confront the Darkness outside creation, and each is asked what it is[1]. Etrigan says it is evil. The Spectre teaches it vengeance. The creature's own answer is the issue's, and ST205 reads it for what it says about magic. This week reads the issue as the end of American Gothic and asks the question the module has been building: what does the storyline say about America?

Botting's account of American Gothic, the mode in which a nation without castles finds its horror in wilderness, frontier, family and the returning past[2], is the frame. Sixteen issues are the evidence.

What you are studying

The climax of a long story, and the synthesis of a module.

Learning objectives

  • Analyse a climax for what it resolves and what it declines to.
  • Test the storyline against Botting's American Gothic and against Whitted and Halberstam.
  • Assess the storyline's political argument as a whole.

Key concepts

The argument of the climax

Each combatant offers the Darkness a definition and is destroyed or absorbed. The structure is a debate. Reconstruct it: what each says, what the Darkness does with it, and what the creature's answer is. Then ask whether a debate is a satisfying end to a horror story, and whether it is meant to be.

American Gothic as mode

Botting's American Gothic: the wilderness, the frontier, the family house, the returning past, the puritan conscience[2]. Go through the storyline's stops and tick them off. Then find what Moore has added that the mode did not contain: industrial waste, television, guns, a cult from the south.

What it says

A country is anatomised by its horrors. List the horrors, and list what each blames. Then ask whether the storyline has a single argument about America, or whether it is an Englishman's catalogue. The difference is the essay.

Questions to think about while reading

  • How is the Darkness drawn? What does it look like when it is not a shape?
  • What does the creature say to it, and why is that the answer the story wants?
  • What is left after the battle, and who remembers?

Things to notice

  • Three artists on one issue. Find the joins.
  • Constantine at the end. What has he lost, and does he say so?
  • The title. "The End" of what?

Reflection questions

  • Is the storyline's America a place you recognise, or a stranger's map?
  • Did the cosmic ending honour the social horrors, or leave them behind?

Homework and tasks

Draft Assignment 2: your claim about what American Gothic says about America, the four horrors you will use as evidence, and the four sources you will argue with.

Next lesson

This is the last lesson of ST203. Both assignments are open on the module page. ST204 follows: the Green, and eco-horror.

References

  1. Alan Moore (writer), Stephen Bissette, John Totleben and Rick Veitch (art). The Saga of the Swamp Thing #50: "The End". The Saga of the Swamp Thing, #50. DC Comics, July 1986.
  2. Fred Botting. Gothic. The New Critical Idiom. Routledge, 2014 (second edition; first edition 1996).