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.
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