THE OBSESSIVE-TRANSGRESSIVE PT. 2

 Looking back at Part 1, I don't think I mapped out the relationship of the differing forms of cathexis with respect to the Bataillean concept of transgression.

First, I wanted to specify that cathexis in both forms, syndromic and casual, could apply to any sort of "interest," such as one's sympathy toward, or antipathy to, particular foods or music. However, I should also specify that even if an artist has a syndromic obsession with a particular food or musical composition, said obsession usually won't mean anything to the consumers of whatever work the artist works his interests into. If a given director really likes bananas and works them into all his films, most consumers won't even notice. Those that do notice will either like or dislike bananas-- but that favorable or unfavorable feeling won't have any impact on those consumers' perception of the films, because who cares if the director likes bananas?

Sex and violence, however, are transgressive by nature, as shown by my previous example of Russ Meyer. Some consumers will like Meyer's fetish for big breasts, while others will not-- and both attitudes arise from social codes about what is or is not appropriate in sexual relations. The same thing is true for the ways in which Meyer associates sex *with* violence, so Meyer shows syndromic cathexis with respect to both sex and violence.

Now, simply *depicting* lots of sex and violence may not be syndromically cathexis. Producer/director Roger Corman is just as strongly associated as Meyer with scenes of sex and violence, but I would tend to rate most of Corman's scenes as examples of "casual cathexis." Corman puts routine scenes of sex and violence into most of his movies because he knows that's what a lot of viewers want. 

However, in Part 1 I gave the example of William Read Woodfield as one creator whose oeuvre as a whole doesn't display syndromic tendencies, but who managed to "amp up" and produce a syndromic work, THE HYPNOTIC EYE. Possibly Woodfield was consciously or subconsciously emulating the popular works of Alfred Hitchcock and that may be the only reason he succeeded, even if he later downgraded his own accomplishment. And in Corman's case, a full analysis of his "Poe cycle" films probably would reveal his syndromic interpretation of the sexual codes in Edgar Allan Poe. I won't examine the whole Poe cycle here but will confine myself to what has been termed his "Poe knockoff" THE TERROR. In my 2017 review, I wrote:

TERROR's pre-twist plot might be considered a standard Gothic scenario, fraught with an Oedipal theme. Usually, when a young man penetrates the lair of an older one and steals away a beautiful woman, the woman is the older man's daughter. Here, the woman's youth is an illusion brought about by a old witch, and in terms of the generation into which the fictional Ilsa is born, she's closer to being a "mother-figure" to Duvalier than being a "daughter-figure" to Von Leppe. Technically, though Ilsa is sort of both, since in life she's explicitly said to be the Baron's second wife. (I would guess that this detail came about because the actor playing Von Leppe was over seventy years old.) The original script is built upon the notion that Von Leppe was responsible for the deaths of his wife and her lover, though it's still rather confusing as to why Katrina, who appears to be a quite powerful witch, would wait eighteen years after her son's death and THEN finally conjure up the ghost of Ilsa to take vengeance upon the Baron. It's also pretty fuzzy logic as to why it takes Ilsa a full two years to break down the Baron, who isn't exactly having a lot of laughs during his golden years.

Corman's last-minute twist is that Eric, the former lover of Ilsa, was not killed in the struggle that took Ilsa's life. Instead Eric took Von Leppe's life and was so traumatized by the deed that he convinced himself that he was Von Leppe. Symbolically, the twist does have the effect of making Eric and Duvalier virtual doubles, since both are young men trying to steal an older man's wife.

So this Freudian take on Poe demonstrates Corman recycling a very standard Gothic scenario, which he and others made up on the fly-- only to undermine the scenario with something very like Freud's "primal scene," but with the traumatized child transformed into an adulterous adult who, despite sleeping with a figurative "mother," is driven mad by his act of killing an equally figurative "father," to the extent that the adulterer *becomes* the father. 

In my 2017 review I said that I didn't think Corman was trying for any great profundity with the twist ending; that he just wanted something that would cause moviegoers to recommend the film to other patrons and thus result in positive box office. However, I'd modify that statement today. Corman certainly wanted the positive word-of-mouth, but he like Woodfield had certainly seen the impact that raconteurs like Hitchcock had upon the filmgoing market with "Big Reveals" like the one Hitchcock channeled from Robert Bloch's PSYCHO into the cinematic medium. So when he realized that he could "soup up" a dull-seeming picture by channeling some of his private thoughts about Poe and Freud, he did so. And I have little doubt that Corman improved his movie by thinking about sex in a syndromic manner, even though the vast majority of his productions, both before and after THE TERROR, demonstrate only the "casual cathexis" of giving a predominantly male audience what it wanted in terms of "T and A."         

            

THE OBSESSIVE-TRANSGRESSIVE

 I'll probably never use the titular term "obsessive-transgressive" on a regular basis, for the phenomenon I'm addressing would be better called "syndromic cathexis," as opposed to its opposite, "casual cathexis." This opposition of the syndromic and the casual was first cited in my essay SADISM OF THE CASUAL KIND, and the proximate inspiration for that essay was to point out the gross fallacies of Wertham and Legman as they accused comic books of engendering millions of proto-sadists with their sexy/violent content. However, my argument-- that "cathexis," the process of investing any perceived phenomenon with mental/emotional energy, takes both casual and syndromic forms-- was grounded by an observation of Plato in the PHILEBUS:

I take the position of Plato's PHILEBUS, which asserted that the "soul" could experience many affects in the course of its "owner's" life, and that some would have transitory effects while others would permanently "make their mark," so to speak.

Now, cathexis in either manifestation is not confined to a given subject's response to sex and/or violence. On this blog I've tended to concentrate on the literary versions of those two real-world phenomena both to (1) refute Wertham, Legman, and similar faulty thinkers, and to (2) explore the writings of George Bataille on the subject. But clearly any subject can display varying levels of cathexis toward any phenomenon, such as (to cite an easy example) food. If I like a given food but can do without it for long periods of time. then my liking for that food is casual cathexis. If it's a food that I keep indulging in repetitively, possibly not only for reasons of gustatory enjoyment but also for self-esteem issues, then that would be syndromic cathexis.

Bataille's ideas about transgression probably got their greatest application to literary matters in his collection LITERATURE AND EVIL, which I explored here. Rather than summarizing Bataille, I'll confine myself here to his influence on me: "EVIL did greatly influence me to consider that every conflict in a fictional story involved a transgression against someone or something." However, Bataille's concepts seem largely applicable to what I've termed "confrontation narratives," and are not that much help in dealing with their opposite, "accomodation narratives." I discussed both of these forms to some extent in the essay ACCOMODATING ACCOMODATION. Accomodation narratives may begin with some transgression but they end with a resolution that usually eliminates the source of the transgression, at least temporarily.

While I am stating that syndromic cathexis can apply to any perceived phenomenon, be it food or sports or music, I did begin these ruminations as I sought to justify why some narratives about sex seem more "obsessional" than others. To take an obvious example, director Russ Meyer's devotion to big-bosomed women goes IMO beyond the level of simply trying to appeal to filmgoers of similar tastes. He clearly loved photographing such women, almost without exception, over specimens of more modest dimensions. And his cathexis was repeated so often that no one could seriously doubt that his feelings toward the tit-monster phenomenon was syndromic in nature.

I may explore one or two other examples of such syndromes in future. The works of Jack Cole seems like they would make an interesting subject, partly because he seemed to be cathected to almost any type of violence, not just violence with some sexual connotations, as was the obvious case of the Marquis de Sade. However, I'll close by noting an anomaly: that it's possible for a given creator to *simulate* a syndromic cathexis in just one work, yet not show any dominant trend toward such a cathexis in his other work, whose cathexes, if any, would be more casual in nature. The creator-example I have in mind is one William Read Woodfield, whose example of a syndromic-seeming work I discussed in my review of THE HYPNOTIC EYE. I quoted Woodfield in that review as saying that EYE was just a "wacko idea" that did not result in a "good movie," and that he later went on to "better things"-- a verdict with which I disagree. Admittedly I haven't seen his other metaphenomenal TV-movies in some time, such as the 1971 EARTH II and the 1975 SATAN'S TRIANGLE, but I don't think that these, or any of his genre-TV episodes, would rate that highly. (He did invent the LOST IN SPACE antagonist "Lorelei" in the episode "Wild Adventure," but I didn't detect any syndromic currents in that fairly simple rendition of the "Sirens" myth.) So if I'm correct that HYPNOTIC EYE is the only syndromic bolt to come from Woodfield's quiver, that would indicate that certain creators can work themselves into a "syndromic mood" that lasts only so long as he/she is working on a particular narrative.        

               

CATFIGHT AT THE P.P. CORRAL

 In my review of ONE MORE DAY, I said:

I also heard that this retcon came about because editor Joe Quesada-- who also furnished the art for DAY-- didn't like the status quo of Peter Parker being married to Mary Jane. Unlike many of DAY's critics, I didn't have strong feelings about the marriage. I found it mildly pleasing that Parker should enjoy a measure of domestic contentment, not least because the post-Silver Age Parker wasn't, in my opinion, ever likely to generate scads of romance-subplots.

What I should have said was "scads of GOOD romance-subplots." Even though I ceased keeping track of SPIDER-MAN continuity by the end of the nineties, I was aware that there had been various attempts to give Peter Parker girlfriends aside from Mary Jane Watson. I've forgotten most of them, except for the Black Cat, who was a lot of fun but not any real competition for Mary Jane, any more than any of the others.

This thought, however, did send me down a new rabbit-hole. Why did it work, the schtick of Peter having two beautiful glamour-queens courtesy of John Romita? Obviously, editor/writer Stan Lee wanted to promote the idea of "Peter the Swinger," and I was far from the only one who liked it, since SPIDER-MAN's preteen/adolescent audience embraced the change. 

To be sure, it wasn't totally out of left field. Parker started out with just one prospective girlfriend, secretary Betty Brant, but within a year or so Lee and Ditko gave Betty competition in high-school vixen Liz Allen. Throughout the Ditko years Parker dressed and talked like a square, but since he was good-looking, the idea of two pretty-but-not-glamorous girls competing for him was not far-fetched. 

However, in ASM #25 the creators decided to further tease the romance-loving readers by giving them an on-camera sample of a third source of competition. Up to that point Mary Jane Watson had only been referenced by name a few times, as the niece of Aunt May's friend. Mary Jane finally appears, but cagey Ditko doesn't allow readers to see her face. Lee's dialogue, however, established that when Betty and Liz lay eyes on her, they think she's movie-star gorgeous-- which was clearly meant to be a joke on Parker, since he had been avoiding any introduction to MJ, on the supposition that she was a dog.

The Mary Jane situation was dropped for the next year, during which time the decision was made to write out Liz and to officially kill Parker's relationship with Betty. However, both Lee and Ditko weren't intending at that point to leave their hero pining away, for at college Parker had his first encounters with Gwen Stacy. As abrasive as those encounters were, there could be little doubt that Lee and Ditko meant to promote Gwen as the new love-interest. Presumably Ditko didn't forget Mary Jane entirely, but when he quit the book in 1966, any plans he might have formed became null and void. Lee was thus responsible for resurrecting Mary Jane, partly in the knowledge that John Romita would be perfect to depict the red-haired gamine.

Surprisingly, given Lee's history with romance-humor strips like MILLIE THE MODEL, it took a long time for Gwen and MJ to become rivals, particularly in comparison to the rapid declaration of the Betty-Liz hostilities. Since Gwen's introduction, Parker hadn't dated Gwen or even asked her out, but he clearly fancied her. As for Gwen, in her less demanding moments she defended Parker against the attacks of Flash Thompson, whom she did apparently date (though one presumes he was always kept at arm's-length). Gwen seems indifferent when Parker starts dating MJ, but in issue #48 it finally becomes evident that the two girls are fully aware of one another's hot-titude, and that a subtle feminine gauntlet has been thrown.

                       

 With ASM #53 the duel begins in earnest. Gwen, despite not having pursued Parker before this, wangles an invite to accompany Parker to a science exhibit on the excuse that she's a "sci major." This may be the first and last time she or anyone else makes such a statement until the character shows up in the 2012 AMAZING SPIDER-MAN movie. Flash Thompson gets drafted during the time-period and it seems that Gwen makes him no promises about not sitting under any apple-trees with other suitors.

Once Flash is out of the way, the duel morphs into an ongoing set of skirmishes, in which it's obvious that Gwen and MJ are both warm for the same form, and they compete with assorted putdowns and catty remarks. At the same time, it's interesting that even though there was a superficial attempt to make Parker seem less square, Lee did not keep the two competitors in an endless Betty-and-Veronica dance. Even during MJ's earliest appearances, Lee took pains to show Gwen as the "good girl," while MJ was "the good times girl." That said, in the SPIDER-MAN universe neither lady would have slept with anyone out of wedlock, so both were essentially "good girls" in practice. But Gwen's affections were the "hard get," and so she got the editorial nod of preference.

In due time, though, once the feud was over and Gwen won the field, it became readily apparent that if Parker had a permanent girlfriend, that boxed in the hero romantically. And so when Roy Thomas and Gerry Conway proposed killing off Gwen Stacy, Lee-- who was no longer writing the feature anyway-- enthusiastically agreed, according to Thomas's assertions. Presumably all of them knew that this would necessitate moving Mary Jane back into romantic prominence. And though I'm no fan of the Gerry Conway SPIDER-MAN overall, I must admit he did a decent job of elevating the "good times girl" into respectable sweetheart material.

Shuttling back at last to my main point, why did the Gwen-MJ competition work in its day? Certainly Parker was more charismatic than average shlub Archie Andrews, who also managed to become the quarry for two females who looked like professional models. But I find it interesting that while Lee could have tossed Gwen and MJ into competition right away, as he and Ditko had done earlier with Betty and Liz, Lee played out the rivalry for close to a year's worth of stories until it finally took shape. Was Lee just drawing things out because he'd allowed Ditko to plot the feature for the last few years of their collaboration? Lee may have wanted to take more time with the soap-operatics, particularly if it was the case that his main collaborator Romita needed more script-guidance than Ditko had. But for me at least, the rivalry of Gwen and MJ succeeds because the two females decide of their own accord to compete over Parker. They certainly did not do so in response to his propensity to be any sort of "ladies' man." As presented by Lee and Romita, at least part of their motivation is to see whose glamorous light shines more brightly.

        

A GOTHIC ANCESTOR

 I'm still working, perhaps just for my own amusement, on my book re: the superhero idiom, and decided to elide this example of what I'm currently calling "the supermundane."

_________

Since Sumerian literature remains fairly obscure, I can better contrast the two supermundane modes with examples taken from the better-known culture of archaic Greece. For most persons, Greek mythology is a major source of the Greater Supermundane, thanks to the Greeks’ adaptation of even their most obscure myths into drama and poetry. The exploits of figures like Heracles, Jason and Odysseus hardly need to be outlined here. But a few stories anticipate later developments in the Lesser Supermundane. In Gothic fiction, one major trope is that of deceivers who use devices to fake ghosts or demon-hounds, and this trope is loosely prefigured by the tale of King Salmoneus. The monarch conceives that he is the earthly avatar of Zeus, and he tries to emulate the Thunder-God by flourishing torches for “lightning” and using noisemakers to simulate “thunder.” The story doesn’t mention whether Salmoneus fools any of his subjects. In any case, the real Zeus disapproves of the imposture and wipes out both the king and his city.

THE INFINITY CRUSADE (2000)

 

Technically, in my system the two-volume TPB INFINITY CRUSADE-- made up of a same-titled 6-issue series plus an assortment of crossover-books-- qualifies as a null-myth, a work in which the potential for mythic discourse has totally gone down the tubes. But CRUSADE isn't really worth a detailed discussion. It's just another of a crossover-type that I'm now calling the "clustermuck," designed to bring together twenty or more franchise-characters for the delectation comics-fans who like such assemblages.

Despite the name, there are some good clustermucks in terms of mythic discourse. The 1986 CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS, despite some narrative problems, is the best of the bunch. And when Jim Starlin first began to "keep on clustermucking," he executed a decent outing in INFINITY GAUNTLET, which as most fans know was one of the main sources for the two-part conclusion of the MCU AVENGERS film-series of the 2010s. However, the very next clustermuck Starlin executed right after GAUNTLET was so mediocre, I don't even remember what it was called. Thus my working term "clustermuck" doesn't automatically signify that the work MUST be bad. But the more moving parts the author has to operate, the greater the chance that the story-action will devolve into a "muck" of cameos and posturing moments.

CRUSADE is mostly just that. A quickie description: Warlock once separated two of his soul-selves off from him. He fought one of them, The Magus, back in the 1970s. For some reason, the other one, a female entity called The Goddess, held off taking any action until year 2000. She has a complicated plan to remold the cosmos to her liking, and she enlists a few dozen heroes into her service. She's only able to mesmerize heroes who have some religious sensibility, which Starlin never defines. His humor is terrible and the action, supplied by an assortment of other artists, is ordinary except for a few battles, like one involving Thor and Drax the Destroyer.

The only thing that interested me about CRUSADE is that even though Starlin's dealing with several dozen heroes, most of them are subordinate ensemble characters. In GAUNTLET Thanos is the only superordinate character. Here Starlin puts all of his narrative emphasis upon the ensemble of Thanos and his old enemy Warlock, and everyone else is secondary to their machinations to defeat the menace of The Goddess. Some of their dialogue is okay-- certainly better in terms of characterization than all of the other Marvel manikins-- but the upshot is that CRUSADE might even be worse-written than one of my oldest unfavorites, SECRET WARS.

MYTHCOMICS: SWAMP THING 1989 (2026)

 

So, the only vote is in, and all four stories of SWAMP THING '89 make the "mythcomics cut," unlike all previous 23 issues of Rick Veitch's run on the regular SWAMP THING comic.

This was not necessarily a foregone conclusion. I suspected, after reading just a few pages of the first of the four installments, "The Morning of the Magician," was fully concrescent, and so I easily could have written only about that story and dismissed the others as "near-myths." But in point of fact, Veitch does succeed in pulling all four installments into a larger theme of spiritual rebirth and resurrection that is as close as a work of popular culture can get to the Christian doctrine of salvation (or, for that matter, to any religious doctrine). Not that there aren't "literary works," from PILGRIM'S PROGRESS to THE SATANIC VERSES, that are as poorly conceived as any bad comic book. But I digress.

There are still flaws. Veitch never really furnishes readers with a decent answer to his gimmick of having the monster-hero propelled through time-eras by a chunk, or chunks, of amber, and I would have thought that before his run was suspended, the author should have had that particular plot-device worked out. To be sure, the gimmick isn't used in "Morning," though.

In any case, at the end of the 1989 issue known as SWAMP THING #87, Swampy is banished from Arthurian times by an amber talisman. However, this time he's pursued through the corridors of time by one of Arthur's paladins, The Shining Knight, who becomes one of the more consequential guests in Veitch's version of SWAMP THING TEAM-UP. At any rate, while ST is once more tripping the light temporal, in ancient Judaea things are coming to a head. A trio of necromancers-- loosely compared to the Three Wise Men-- summon the hell-demon Belial, to rid them of the "magician" Jesus. Belial sends his "only begotten son"-- and yes, the demonic parody is intentional-- to possess the Roman centurion Marcus Tiberius. (Marcus was one of three DC characters to have his own feature in the first incarnation of THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD, initially launched as a title featuring historical adventures.) Note that here Veitch has Marcus cohabit with prostitute Mary Magdalene, thus following the popular confusion between the Biblical woman of Magdala and one or more prostitute figures.

Swamp Thing manifests in the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus's disciples have fallen asleep and Jesus sits alone with the vessel that will later be called The Holy Grail. Veitch doesn't explain why Jesus -- not explicitly said to be divine here-- brought the vessel along, given that the Last Supper had ended. The cup's presence gives ST the chance to offer the Messiah a soothing drink, though Jesus is too distracted by his mystic communion to quaff the drink. Then the possessed Marcus arrives with Roman soldiers. Swamp Thing appears to battle Etrigan, but Jesus sends Swampy back to the time-stream and exorcises Marcus. Jesus then endures all the rigors of the Passion and perishes. A greybeard, implicitly the non-Biblical character Joseph of Arimathea, is shown holding the Grail, and from somewhere he also obtains a shard of amber, which he places within the Grail, all the better to maintain continuity with the Camelot issue. ST continues his backward journey, meditating on Jesus' perfect sacrifice.

"Time Upon a Once" alternates between ST getting trapped in an earlier era by the super-villain Chronos, only to receive succor from The Shining Knight, and John Constantine's attempts to suss out the muck-monster's fate, with help from such figures as Jim Corrigan and "The Hairies" (from Kirby's "Fourth World" cosmos). Also, pregnant Abby is due to give birth, so naturally she does so in a stable in the swamplands. ST is once more sent into time by an amber talisman, and this time he seems to disappear into "The Big Bang," where even the Knight cannot follow him.  

However, Swampy encounters another Kirby Kreation, signaling that the Kirbyverse is closer to being the metaphysical heart of the monster's world than any religion's concepts. The "moving finger" of The Source counsels Swamp Thing to attempt reincarnation through "the shared collective spirit that binds reality." This entails ST's "sacrifice" of his conscious memories, and so he next appears as a sprout upon a primeval tree, "Yrgsll" (patently an ancestor of "Yggdrasil). After many centuries as an unthinking plant, ST encounters primitive humans, including that DC cave-boy Anthro. The exposure to humans reminds ST of his 20th-century incarnation, just in time for him to come to life and repel hostiles who attack the primitives. Readers get a very shaky rationale for the "amber gimmick" here, in that as a sapling, Swampy weeps "tears of amber sap" when wounded. But is there a conistent reason why exposure to amber talismans caused ST to jaunt through time? Not so much.

Meanwhile, Swampy's arch-nemesis Arcane has got paroled from Hell on the promise of his expunging John Cosntantine, but he proceeds to the stable, hoping to wreak havoc upon his niece and her child. However for some reason Constantine joins the fight, wielding an amber talisman-- and for some dubious reason, ST in the primeval past is able to reincarnate into the amber, because at that time the swamp-hero placed some of his essence in the amber chunk. Further, Swampy doesn't need to battle Arcane this time, for thanks to his exposure to the Prince of Peace, no hate abides in the elemental's heart, and Arcane cannot harm him or anyone else. Back to Hell goes the villain, while ST, Abby and their newborn child get to depart to a sort of figurative "heaven" where no one will trouble them. This wasn't the first or last time a creator sought to impose a sense of closure at the end of his comics-run-- even knowing that the character's adventures would go on under other hands-- but Veitch's closure is not without a certain rough appeal. And at least he saved the best parts of his tenure for the last.  

NEAR-MYTHS: "WILD THINGS," "TIME UPON A ONCE" (SWAMP THING #65-87 (1987-89)

 

My proximate reason for re-reading Rick Veitch's 23-issue run on the artist's run on the regular SWAMP THING was to remind myself of the setup for the conclusion of Veitch's storylines. As Veitch himself observed, that conclusion became the medium's most famous "unfinished story," since DC refused to publish Veitch's conclusion, resulting in his refusal to work with DC Comics again. DC for its part simply enlisted another raconteur to finish the Veitch storyline and went on publishing SWAMP THING comics. But now, after 30-plus years, DC decided to publish the Veitch conclusion, with the storyline unaltered though of course new art had to be produced and paid for. It's my intention to review this storyline in the next few days in a separate essay.

DC's moratorium on the conclusion did not prevent the company from packaging the Veitch SWAMP THING run-- as well as some ancillary materials I did not examine for this essay-- in three hardbound volumes, respectively titled "Wild Things," "Synchronicity," and "Time Upon a Once." Whatever the reasons for these divisions, I'd say the 23 issues break down into two distinct plotlines, and the titles "Wild Things" and "Time Upon a Once" are as good as any to denote those two stories.

Of the two, "Time" is easier to discuss, and the more pleasurable, so I'll deal with that one first-- even though it's the part that was left without a proper conclusion until recently. According to this interview, Veitch anticipated that DC's 1988 summer crossover event, INVASION, would oblige him to orient the SWAMP THING feature upon the "invading alien hordes" storyline. Instead, Veitch devoted two issues to setting up the contrivance that before the aliens could invade, they had to get rid of Swamp Thing due to his plant-based powers. So the aliens send the spirit of the muck-monster careening down the corridors of time-- which also gave the author the chance to revisit an assortment of DC characters set in other time-periods. As Veitch said:

“I figured if I got Swamp Thing off the planet and out of our time zone, then Swamp Thing comics could just be about that and they wouldn’t have to be a part of whatever that crossover was. The other aspect of the time-travel sequence was there were a few DC characters at the time who hadn’t been staked out by various creative people who wanted to retcon them. The richest vein of available characters were all in the past. The cowboys and the cavemen and the gladiators and the knights and all of that kind of stuff. I was really attracted to that, that I’d have that in my little sandbox and be able to play with all of them.”

Here's how the crossovers broke down.

#82-- ST interacts with DC's most famous war-hero Sergeant Rock in the closing years of WWII, as well as with an earlier incarnation of ST's enduring enemy Anton Arcane. With minor appearances by the Unknown Soldier and (in modern times) Jason Woodrue in his regrettable NEW GUARDIANS phase.

#83-- ST flashes back to WWI, and to the Germany of Hans Von Hammer of ENEMY ACE fame. He also meets a younger Arcane, who's been diddling his sister and almost kills his mother. 

#84-- ST takes a back seat to his girlfriend Abby as she deals with her dying husband Matt Cable, and also manages to host crossovers with Adam Strange, Morpheus and John Constantine.

#85-- It's "Go West, Young Thing," as Swampy is enslaved by a Native American wizard, and becomes entwined with such luminaries as Jonah Hex, Bat Lash, Johnny Thunder and his wife Madame .44, Hawk Son of Tomahawk, Firehair, El Diablo, and that short-lived savage superhero, Super Chief. Also, The Demon makes a cameo.

#86-- My favorite of the bunch. as ST jaunts back to revolutionary times, and meets DC's long running frontier paladin, Tomahawk. There's also another encounter with The Demon, and with the once and future Batcave, complete with a giant bat--which gets more or less explained in the ensuing issue.

        

#87-- Swampy witnesses the Fall of Camelot, as well as interacting with Merlin, his demon Etrigan, the villainous Morgaine LeFey, and the Shining Knight. A couple of background figures look like Prince Valiant and Hal Foster's version of the knight Gawain. The issue ends with the Shining Knight in modern times, informing Abigail of his interaction with the time-dispersed swamp-spirit, and then swearing to locate Swampy again-- at which point the tale ends.  

So "Time Upon a Once" is a great read, with the story being told backwards as the monster-hero keeps getting flung further back. It's fun but there's no epistemological pattern uniting the continuity, just playing in the DC sandbox.

"Wild Things" is harder to suss out. Given that Alan Moore changed the parameters of the SWAMP THING feature by importing a wealth of metaphysical concepts, Veitch was a good choice to follow Moore, since Veitch was at least equally invested in mystical matters as his English colleague. Veitch pencils many fascinating visuals depicting ST's journeys into the higher realms. Yet though I appreciated the intent, I found a lot of Veitch's design-work static. Just as a brief personal comparison, six years before Veitch's ST run, I remember being mesmerized by Marshall Rogers' vivid rendition of the DOCTOR STRANGE cosmology.

The title "Wild Things" references the storyline's main conceit: that due to ST's absence from Earth during an extended Alan Moore arc, Earth's plant-consciousness "The Green" generates a new spirit destined to merge with a dying human and to become a new Swamp Thing. ST would like to give up being Earth's elemental protector and let the "new guy" take over, but for some reason all the candidates prove inadequate and just die without hosting the new swamp-spirit-- and this repetitiousness drains whatever mythic grandeur might have informed the proceedings. On top of that, ST and Abigail get the idea to let "the Sprout" inhabit the body of Abby's unborn child, at which point they stop talking about the matter of the new Thing having to die violently. My overall feeling is that Veitch let the story's complexities get away from him.

Lastly, while Moore was no shrinking violet about his Liberal beliefs during his ST run, Veitch was twice as heavy-handed. I even remember being turned off by Veitch's political asides even though I was dominantly Liberal in the 1980s). The nadir of this virtue signaling appeared when Veitch took the old character of Roy Raymond (a know-it-all 1950s TV detective) and turned him into a conservative douche who got trapped for several issues in a car being driven by a mindless New Swamp Thing clone. There are certainly some weak moments in the Alan Moore, but as a reader I felt that he had a better control of the overall narrative.  But I must admit, at his worst Veitch's follow-up was better than 90% of similar follow-ups.