Year 2: Alan Moore and the Green

ST206 Cosmic Swamp Thing and Moore's Legacy

Moore's last year: Abby arrested for loving a plant, Gotham overgrown, a funeral with Batman in attendance, exile across the galaxy to a blue planet, a war world, a machine world and a world of plants, and a homecoming. How the run ended, what its final year did to the form, and what Moore's Swamp Thing left to everyone who came after.

6 lessons 6 units 2 assignments

Introduction

After "The End", the run had eighteen issues left and no villain. Moore used them to test everything the first thirty had built. Abby is charged with crimes against nature for her relationship with the creature; she flees to Gotham and is arrested; the creature grows over the city until it lets her go, and Lex Luthor's experts find a way to kill him (#51 to #53). Gotham holds his funeral (#55). His consciousness, thrown from Earth, grows bodies on other worlds: a blue planet where he builds a home for a wife who is not there (#56), the war world Rann (#57 to #58), a living machine (#60), a planet of sentient plants (#61). Then a homecoming (#63) and a last issue (#64, September 1987) that hands the character to Rick Veitch.

This module reads the final year as an experiment in form and a statement of what the character had become. The Gotham story is the run's most political: a city's law against love. The exile issues are its most formal: each planet lets Moore and his artists reinvent the page (Totleben built #60 from metal scraps and photographs). And the last issues are its most tender, and its most aware that a writer was leaving a character he had remade.

The module ends with legacy: what Moore's Swamp Thing did to DC, to horror comics and to the idea of what a mainstream comic could be, read through his 1985 essay on the craft and the scholarship that followed. ST301 takes up the runs that came after; ST302 the wider DC horror line. Here the question is what Moore's run was, now that it is over.

Learning objectives

  • Narrate #51 to #64 accurately and analyse the final year's structure.
  • Read the Gotham storyline as political horror about law, love and the nonhuman.
  • Analyse the exile issues as formal experiments, with #60 as the limit case.
  • Assess Moore's departure and the handover to Veitch as a moment in comics history.
  • Use Moore's own writing on craft to read his practice.
  • Argue a position on the run's legacy using scholarship and the primary texts.

Lessons

Unit 1: Week 1: Crimes against nature

The Gotham storyline: law against love.

  1. Crimes against nature: #51 to #53Abby prosecuted for loving a plant, a city overgrown, and the superhero world's answer to the creature.150 min

Unit 2: Week 2: Earth to earth and my blue heaven

The funeral and the loneliest issue.

  1. The funeral and the blue planet: #55 and #56Gotham buries the creature; his mind, thrown across space, builds a home for no one.150 min

Unit 3: Week 3: Rann and Technis

The war world and the machine: #57 to #60.

  1. Rann and Technis: #57 to #60Adam Strange's planet at war, an issue without the creature, and the machine world Totleben built by hand.150 min

Unit 4: Week 4: Return of the good gumbo

Homecoming and the last issue.

  1. Return of the Good Gumbo: #63 and #64The creature comes home as light, settles accounts, and Moore says goodbye.150 min Sample

Unit 5: Week 5: Writing for comics

Moore's craft, in his own words.

  1. Writing for Comics: Moore's craft in his own wordsThe 1985 essay, written mid-run, read against the pages it was written beside.150 min

Unit 6: Week 6: What Moore left

Legacy and the synthesis essay.

  1. What Moore leftThe run as a whole: what it did to the character, to DC, to horror comics, and to the idea of the mainstream.150 min

Core texts

Secondary reading

Assessment

Two assessed pieces. The first is a close reading of one exile issue (#56, #60 or #61) as a formal experiment. The second is a research essay assessing Moore's run as a whole, requiring at least four secondary sources.

ST206-A1: Close reading: one exile issue as a formal experiment

Choose #56 ("My Blue Heaven"), #60 ("Loving the Alien") or #61 ("All Flesh Is Grass"). How does the issue use the form of comics (colour, layout, materials, repetition, silence) to represent a mind in exile, and what does the form say that the words do not?

Length
2000 words (1800 to 2200)
Sources
Primary source plus optional secondary research. Primary source plus optional secondary reading. One issue, read on the page.

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ST206-A2: Essay: what was Moore's Swamp Thing?

Assess Alan Moore's Swamp Thing (#20 to #64 and two annuals) as a body of work. What did it do, to the character, to horror comics and to the idea of the mainstream comic, and what did it cost? Argue a position using Moore's own Writing for Comics, at least one scholarly book or chapter on Moore, and at least two further credible secondary sources.

Length
3000 words (2700 to 3300)
Sources
Research assignment, minimum 4 secondary sources. Research assignment. Writing for Comics plus one scholarly source on Moore plus at least two further credible secondary sources; MHRA with page numbers.

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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 scholarly book or chapter on Moore and Moore's own Writing for Comics.