SAGA OF THE SWAMP THING #21 -- Alan Moore's Scene Transitions

 

Saga of the Swamp Thing #21: "The Anatomy Lesson" 

This is the comic where most readers began their appreciation of Alan Moore's Swamp Thing (and, likely, Swamp Thing in general). The original trade paperback collection, published in 1987, started with this issue instead of Moore's actual first issue on the title, #20. "The Anatomy Lesson" is related to us through flashback, narrated by Dr. Jason Woodrue, The Floronic Man. Brought in to examine Swamp Thing and discover what animated him, it's a brilliant bit of work by Moore, Bissette, Totleben, et al. 

But that's for my next post. This one is about the scene transitions utilized by Moore and his artistic collaborators. Since this issue is recounted from open to close by Woodrue, it was a bit challenging to find transitions, since, unlike the previous issue, this chapter follows a single, straight narrative thread. But there are a few scene transitions to be gleaned if one looks closely enough, and Moore does not disappoint with his intentionality, in this regard. 

Transition pp. 1-2:

Page 1 sets the stage for the story Dr. Woodrue is about to tell, sharing the end, as he imagines it, before we've even got the beginning. In the final panel of this page, an old man is banging on a window and the image is almost fully red from the blood Woodrue imagines coating the glass, with the caption, "Blood in extraordinary quantities." 
Page 2 opens close in on Woodrue's eyes hanging over the entire page, his eyes blood red. 

Moore utilizes mirroring, as he does in many of his transitions, with the blood red of the window on page 1 matching the blood red eyes of Woodrue on page 2.

The scene from pages 2 through page 5 is basically an interview by Sunderland of Dr. Woodrue. He wants Woodrue to examine the corpse of Swamp Thing and figure out what animated him. It is also imperative for Sunderland to know that Dr. Woodrue is who he claims to be -- The Floronic Man. So, Woodrue uses a spray to dissolve his artificial skin and reveal the woody, mossy visage beneath. 

Transition pp. 5-6:

The final panel of page 5, on the bottom right of the page, is a closeup of Sunderland asking Woodrue, "When can you start?" in reference to his impending examination of the corpse of Swamp Thing. 
Page 6 returns to the present and Woodrue's apartment, where a caption box shares his thought, "I started the next day." 

In this transition, Moore mirrors the dialogue of "start"ing rather than mirroring the imagery, as he did on pages 1-2.

The scene from pages 6 through 9 involves Woodrue performing an autopsy on Swamp Thing's corpse. He pulls out vegetable growths that look like human organs but do not, and could not, perform the same functions as in the human body. It's fascinating and puzzling, and in six weeks Woodrue has the answer. 

Transition pp. 9-10:

At the bottom of page 9, we see a green shoot sprouting from the chest of the gray body of the Swamp Thing, as Woodrue thinks (in the final caption), "...and something strong and soft and green, thrusting through the dead and petrified grayness." 
At the top of page 10, we see Dr. Woodrue coming to Sunderland's office to explain his discovery. Woodrue is wearing a green overcoat or lab coat. 

Again, this transition utilizes mirroring, in this case mirroring the green shoot emanating from Swamp Thing with the green coat of Woodrue. 

This scene, from pages 10 to 13, is the moment where Woodrue explains exactly what happened to Alec Holland, when he raced into the swamps to die, and how it was that Swamp Thing emerged. Woodrue is excited, the ramifications are astounding . . . and Sunderland does not care. He has his answer, though he does not understand it, and Woodrue is done. Sunderland will find someone else to continue the work. 

Transition pp. 13-14:

At the bottom of page 13, we get a close up of Sunderland's teeth, his creased face, and the trail of smoke wafting from his nostril, as he tells Woodrue, "We'll sort out the termination papers when I get back." 
Page 14 opens on a closeup of Woodrue in his true guise of the Floronic Man while, in a caption over the panel, he thinks, "...and that's how the old man fired me." 

More mirroring, as we get Sunderland discussing "termination papers" while Woodrue defines it more colloquially, "firing." But this mirroring of dialogue is not the same as the previous transition in this vein, as Moore uses synonymous phrases rather than directly using the same word, as before. 

The scene from page 14 through to the end of the issue is a recounting (or imagining, on the part of Woodrue) of Sunderland discovering the ramifications of what he, Woodrue, discovered, and the terminal climax that must come from such a revelation. For the Swamp Thing is not dead. But he does understand. And his humanity is lost. And Sunderland will pay. . . 

Transition p. 23: 

Panel 3, in the top row of panels on this final page, ends the scene with Swamp Thing (and Sunderland) discovering the truth of his being. It has a closeup on the dead eye of Sunderland, with a tiny Swamp Thing walking away in the far background. Over this panel is a caption stating what Swamp Thing would do once Sunderland was taken care of -- he would, in Woodrue's mind, go "back to the bayou," where he came from. 
Panel 4 has the caption, "Back home..." continuing this idea and is overlaid on an image of the Floronic Man standing at the window of his apartment, his own home during this experience. 

Moore gets a bit more inventive with the mirroring in this transition, mirroring the captions stating that Swamp Thing would go "back home" with the image of Woodrue standing in his current, but temporary, home. 

For more thoughts on the actual narrative, along with insights into some of the added depth provided by Moore, Bissette, Totleben, et al. for this issue, check out  my next post, which should be up in a day or so. 

Thanks! 

chris

SAGA OF THE SWAMP THING #20 — General Thoughts

 

Alan Moore was doing double duty with this opening issue of his run on Saga of the Swamp Thing. Not only did he need to tell a compelling tale that would satisfy readers and spur them to pick up the next issue, but he also needed to provide enough of the backstory so that readers did not feel lost. It was a high-wire act, and I feel like he did a heckuva job. 

Certainly, there were a number of fans who had been reading this series from the start, but sales were poor at the time, when Moore started as writer for this series. Heralded by critics and fans alike, the readership soon expanded, while many more backtracked as word of this new take on a classic character became known, so that issue 20 is likely more readers’ first issue of this series than issue 1. There are more than half a dozen named characters being introduced to these new readers, and Moore manages to imbue most of them with distinct, if shallow (by dint of the limited page count in any given comic issue), characterizations. Readers get an understanding of at least some of their motivations, with the glaring exception of Abby. Despite Abby’s lack of characterization, it’s impressive what Moore accomplished, to my mind, and certainly helped to engage readers more readily. 

Most impressive to me is the fact that, though Moore is providing a lot of exposition to catch up new readers, the dialogue rarely feels forced. This, to me, has always been one of Moore’s strengths as a writer. The story flows along effortlessly, the dialogue sounding natural for the most part (his attempts at dialect and accents — as with most writers —falling flat, to my ears), allowing the narrative to wash over us as we ride it to its tragic end. 

**End verbose preamble; Begin analysis of said issue**

“Loose Ends”

WHAT IT IS: 

We enter the story in the middle. Swamp Thing has gone into the forest to see if his enemy, Arcane, did indeed perish when his ship crashed. It appears he did. Meanwhile, General Sunderland is preparing an assault on all those familiar with his and the DDI’s machinations (of which we remain in the dark), including Swamp Thing and his companions . . . Liz Tremayne & Dennis Barclay, who awake in the van that broke down the night before and head for their motel, arguing about the apparent intimacy they consummated that previous night. Liz thinks it was a mistake, a result of the darkness and horror they’ve endured, an attempt at finding some light to drive out the shadows hanging over them recently. We also meet Abby & Matt, who are similarly troubled. Matt seems able to conjure demons, though he tells Abby that Alec’s (Swamp Thing’s) warning they were controlling him is wrong; he has defeated them. Abby does not argue but needs to take a walk, to “take the air,” and get out of the shadows in their house, away from the darkness in their lives. All the while, the soldiers hired by Sunderland are setting up floodlights and fueling flamethrowers to hunt down Swamp Thing, even as other agents are hunting down these two couples linked with Swampy. At a predetermined time, Abby & Matt’s house is destroyed by a missile from a chopper (while they are out), a bomb planted at Liz & Dennis’s motel room explodes (while they are at the motel office), and floodlights bathe the forest, in an effort to flush out Swamp Thing, who has no alternative. He runs, hoping to cross the light and reach the shadows before the soldiers can capture or harm him. But it is too far, the soldiers too many, and Swamp Thing is shot down in a hail of bullets and pronounced dead. 

THEMES: 

The idea of shadows and the monsters they hide runs throughout this issue. Shadows or darkness or, conversely, the idea of light or sun, are mentioned by a number of the characters — from Swamp Thing: “The dark corners are being pushed back,” to Dennis: “…drive out some of the shadows that have gotten into our lives,” to Abby needing time away from Matthew and leaving their darkened home because she needs a walk, “to take the air…” out in the sunlight. We also get images reinforcing this idea of shadows, with Matthew and Abby being introduced in shadows or Swamp Thing skulking through the darkness of the forest, even as the soldiers set up a cordon of floodlights to reveal where he is hidden. These shadows hide the monsters, both literally and metaphorically. Though Swamp Thing is the most obvious monster in this comic, it could certainly be argued he is far from that. Not unlike Frankenstein’s creation, Swamp Thing’s ugly visage belies the strong character that lies beneath. The true monsters here are hiding in plain sight, unable to be seen because of the darkness that hangs over them. Dennis reveals a dark side when his inner monologue cheers at the idea of Liz leaning against him, “scared, vulnerable, the way a woman should be.” Matthew shows us his hidden side when, after Abby leaves for her walk, he conjures up a demon to pleasure himself, like the ones he claimed he’d banished. And the General, Sunderland, hides in the shadows of his office, remaining far away from ground zero of the assault on Swamp Thing and his companions, preferring not to get his hands dirty, because a respected gentleman who wears a suit would never be seen as a monster.

And this theme will continue into the next issue, as a revelation about Alec Holland and his connection to Swamp Thing will put things into a far different light than anyone could have considered before. 

STANDOUT SCENES & LINES (some lengthy bullet points): 

• Overall, the layout of this issue, artistically, was novel, especially for its time. And we see a lot of layouts, in general, that will show up in later works penned by Moore. Most notably, there are a number of double-page spreads bookended by the same image, whether Swamp Thing ‘holding’ the side of the page or eagles perched at the four corners of the spread, and, on occasion, the layout of the panels across these two pages mirrors each other, foreshadowing the groundbreaking fifth issue of Watchmen, “Fearful Symmetry,” which is laid out as a full-on mirror image, expanding left and right from the middle of the issue. 

• An early line, on page 2, where Swamp Thing is ruminating on Arcane’s supposed death and thinks, “I didn’t see the body, Arcane…and I’ve learned that…if you don’t see the body…then the rotten stuff…just keeps coming back,” anticipates Frank Miller’s “Daredevil: Born Again” when the Kingpin gets the report on his attempt to drown Matt Murdock in a stolen cab, and he repeats to himself, “There is no corpse. There is no corpse. There is no corpse.”

• On page 12, the soldiers discuss how the General is “…tying up some loose ends…” which obviously references the title of this issue, “Loose Ends.” This title is doing double duty for Moore. First, Moore is working to tie the narrative threads from the first 19 issues of the series so that he can start fresh with the following issue. But also, it describes what the General is doing, as noted by the soldier, as far as cleaning up the loose threads of those people who know about Sunderland and DDI.

• On page 14, Moore has the motel clerk share the ending of a movie she watched last night — prompted by the similarity between the Sunderland people who entered Liz & Dennis’s motel room and Donald Sutherland, who starred in the movie she watched. As she relates, Sutherland was walking up to what appeared to be a young child in a red cape, but when he reached the child it turned out to be an ‘ugly dwarf’ who used a cleaver to kill Sutherland. This story is told over images of a stranger helping out Liz by taking her room key, while the clerk has detained her with the telling of the story, in order to be neighborly and grab her belongings. He is walking toward a motel room he believes to be safe, only to be killed when the bomb, set by the Sunderland people earlier, explodes in his face. 

• Finally, on page 22, the overhead shot when Swamp Thing is gunned down in a hail of bullets is incredibly effective. We can see the terror on his face, while the angle also allows us to see the trajectory of the bullets more readily than if it were a head on shot. And the elongated shadow behind Swamp Thing, hearkening back to the idea of shadows and darkness and monsters, only enhances the scene. It’s a masterful bit of comic art. 

So, Swamp Thing’s dead. Guess that’s the end of the series. Oh, well. Better luck next time. 

SAGA OF THE SWAMP THING #20 -- Alan Moore's Scene Transitions

Alan Moore is my favorite comic book writer. Depending on the day, he's my favorite writer, regardless of medium. Known for his formalism, Moore has crafted groundbreaking runs of comics that upended convention and made readers and creators alike look at the medium in a new way. One of the formalistic flourishes Moore is known for is his scene transitions, and when he got the chance to write American comics, Moore came out of the gate in issue #20 of Saga of the Swamp Thing with his thoughtful approach to this aspect of comics. An aspect often overlooked by many creators.  

Something that resonates with me about Moore's "Swamp Thing" run is the fact that my first few read-throughs I wasn't even aware of the connective tissue Moore was adhering to the scene transitions within a given issue. I was pulled along by the narrative, engaging with the story without seeing the work Moore and his collaborators were doing behind the scenes. Maybe it was just me (and maybe you spotted his scene transitions from the jump), but I feel like one of Moore's greatest strengths as a writer is his ability to include these formalistic attributes in his stories but make them, and the narrative as a whole, feel natural, for the reading experience to flow effortlessly without the parallelism or the symbolism or the connecting phrases and images between scenes to ever feel out of place or clunky (to use a technical term). It's this ability to craft an engaging tale while also layering it with added depth -- that isn't necessary for understanding the story but enriches the experience if you find it -- that sets Moore apart from almost anyone else who has worked in the comic medium. And that's why he's been my favorite writer for a while. 

So, one of my favorite podcasts, Comic Book Couples Counseling, is starting a new book club where they will be reading and discussing Moore's "Swamp Thing" run, one issue at a time. That spurred me to reacquaint myself with the keyboard, and I plan to follow along and share my insights into this landmark series here, while Brad & Lisa inhabit your ears with their own perspective. My plan is to focus on these scene transitions in one post and possibly include a more general analysis of the issue in a second one. We'll see how it goes. But, for now, here are a collection of the scene transitions found in Moore's first issue of Saga of the Swamp Thing, issue #20, titled "Loose Ends." 

Transition pp. 3-4: 
At the bottom of page 3, Swamp Thing thinks, "And what...am I going to do now?"
Page 4 opens with a shadowed figure asking, "Well, General? You know where they are. What are you going to do now?"
This showcases one of Moore's transitional techniques -- utilizing parallel dialogue.

                  

Transition pp. 5-6:

At the bottom of page 5, the General says their targets (including Swamp Thing) are "in for a rude awakening..." which continues in the caption at the top of page 6, "...a very rude awakening, indeed." This talk of 'awakening' leads into panel 1 on page 6 where Lizabeth Tremayne is yawning deeply as she wakes up from a night's sleep. 
Here we see another of Moore's transitional techniques -- dialogue from one scene being paralleled by an image in the next one.

   

 

Transition pp. 7-8:

This two-page spread across pages 6 & 7 opened with the caption about Lizabeth being, "used to taking her sunlight a little more diluted." When we shift from this daylight scene back to Swamp Thing on page 8, he is thinking, "I made my way back here...to the moon," which is in reference to The New Moon Motel where some of Swampy's companions were staying for the night.
Moore uses yet another transitional technique -- that of opposites: in this case, the sun and the moon.

Transition pp. 8-9:

At the bottom of page 8, Swamp Thing thinks, "Maybe the world has run out of room...for monsters..." which continues over to the first caption on page 9, "...or maybe...[the monsters]'re just getting harder to recognize." This leads into the first panel of page 9 where a local is speaking to a soldier, saying, "[Let me] get this straight. A monster, is that what y're saying?" This local is incredulous at what he is hearing, not able to recognize that there would be a monster in the area. But the transition is doubled, since this local is looking at one of the monsters in this story, the soldier, and he is unable to recognize him for the villain he is. 

Once again, Moore utilizes parallel dialogue to connect the two scenes in this transition. 

Transition p. 9, panels 3-4:

On this page, Moore does something that isn't common in western comics -- and is something he praised highly when writing an introduction for a Love & Rockets series by one of the Hernandez brothers -- the transition from one scene to the next on a single page. Typically, American comics will transition scenes from one page to the next, not on the same page. 
The same local mentioned in the previous transition has now accepted the soldier's explanation and is all too happy to help, asking, "Say, you need a hand with those searchlights, son?"
This transitions to Matt & Abby Cable. Abby asks, "How about a little light in here, huh?" 

Again, Moore uses parallel dialogue to connect the scenes. 

Transition pp. 12:

I was unable to discern any connecting aspects for the scene transition in the middle of this page. But I include the page here, in the hopes that someone might see what I was unable to.

Transition pp. 12-13:

One of the soldiers comments that the General is "...really tying up some loose ends here today, ain't he?" A second soldier agrees, and his comment continues over to the first caption of page 13, "Every damned one." The caption is set over the first panel where Liz and Dennis have returned to the motel to pick up their belongings. This caption does double duty, because not only are Liz and Dennis two of the loose ends the General is tying up, but they are also damned because of the General's coming retribution. 

This is another example of dialogue from the first scene being paralleled with the imagery of the following scene. 

                       

Transition pp. 15-16:

Two saboteurs had set a bomb in Liz and Dennis's motel room, and the explosion left little remaining. But they need proof of their success, so one of them asks, "Couldn't we just count heads or something?" His companion says, "Great idea, Henry. You find 'em..." which ends page 15, while the dialogue continues over the page into the first caption of page 16, which reads, "...an' I'll count 'em." This caption is overlaid onto panel 1, where a soldier is counting down, "Zero minus fifteen. Zero minus ten. Minus five." 

More parallel dialogue, though not directly so. One bit discusses the act of counting, while the second has a character actually counting.  

Transition pp. 16-17:

At the bottom of page 16, the soldiers turn on a collection of flood lights, in order to find Swamp Thing, who comments, "Aren't they...going to leave any darkness..."  "Are they...going to...take away everything?" His internal monologue continues over to page 17, where the first three captions say, "Everything that's...dark...and private...and silent?" These final captions are set above the first panel where Matt Cable sits in darkness, his face half in shadows. 

Here Moore utilizes two techniques to connect the scenes. First, he has the dialogue lamenting the loss of the 'dark' that parallels Matt Cable sitting in darkened shadows. But Moore also has the visuals -- the forest awash in floodlights transitioning to its opposite of Matt in darkness. 

Transition pp. 17-18:

The main action of this page is a military helicopter that fires a missile at Abby & Matt's home, destroying it. At the bottom of the page, the pair stand at the edge of the tree line watching their home burn. The final caption on this page is from Swamp Thing (leading into his reappearance on the next page). It says, "Nowhere is...safe any more." Swampy's inner monologue continues across the first three panels of page 18: "Nowhere. Not for...anybody. Not in the...world of nature." In these three panels, Swamp Thing emerges from the shadows behind a soldier, wraps his muck-encrusted hand around the soldier's now terrified face, and tosses him away. 

Here, again, Moore connects the dialogue from Swamp Thing about nowhere being safe with the paralleled imagery in the scenes, as Matt & Abby's home was not safe from destruction while the soldier was not safe from Swamp Thing's attack. So the dialogue parallels the imagery, and just to double up, the images parallel each other without being similar.