Saga of the Swamp Thing #23 -- Alan Moore's scene transitions

 

A quick (re)introduction.

In 1987, I walked into my local bookstore and found a collection of comics -- "Saga of the Swamp Thing." It was a book full of comic issues, something I'd not considered or known existed in those early years of collecting and reading comics. Amazing! After reading the first reprinted issue, #21's "The Anatomy Lesson," I was blown away and all-in on Alan Moore as a writer. Years later, after having finally read the entirety of Moore's Swamp Thing run a handful of times, I finally noticed how deftly Moore, with his artistic collaborators, would transition scenes, something I'd not gleaned in previous readings. It was a reality that stuck, like a bur, at the back of my brain. Now, with Comic Book Couples Counseling examining this run, issue by issue, on their podcast, I've finally decided to dig in and examine these transitions (while also writing a second post with general thoughts on each issue). If this is your first time reading Swamp Thing, I hope this bit of analysis will help expand your understanding and appreciation of this seminal work in western comics. If this is your tenth time reading, I hope that I might offer something new for you, as well. Regardless, I thank you for stopping by, and please feel free to add to this discussion in the comments. I realize there are likely things I have missed and would love to be apprised of those. 

Enjoy. 

Saga of the Swamp Thing #23: "Another Green World"

Transition pp. 3-4: 

Swamp Thing is traveling through the Green, in search of something he can sense has infected it. On page 3, when Swamp Thing finally comes across this foreign substance, in the form of a red growth, he muses, “There…” 

Transitioning to the real world on page 4, we have a teenager yelling “There!” as he points out the back of the station wagon, claiming he saw a guy in the darkened woods who had “leaves on his head.” 

This transition has a simple use of parallelism, with the word “There” connecting the two scenes. 

pp. 6-7: 

Moore utilizes the exact same connection, the word “There.” 

Page 6 ends with Woodrue looking up at the third teenager, who had returned to the station wagon to find his friends dead from strangulation by vines and tangled branches – activated and controlled by Woodrue – as this final boy hangs above him, killed in the same manner. Woodrue is satisfied, “There,” that he is dead and this slight detour for him is over. 

Page 7 has Swamp Thing continuing to probe the Green, examining the red mind, which is Woodrue’s mind, and commenting “There…something cold and ugly, brushing against me…” as he sees what Woodrue is doing, reading his mind, for lack of a better term. 

Simple parallelism utilizing the same word to connect the scenes, again. 

pp. 7-8: 

On page 7 Swamp Thing is trying to remember who Woodrue is, having gleaned the name attached to the red mind through his probing. Is it the man who drank a lot (Matthew)? No. “[That's] Not Woodrue.” But that man “had a wife…[with] white hair like an avalanche…A-bi-gail?” 

 At the top of page 8, we switch to a scene with Abigail driving down the road, and the caption, “Abigail,” which continues Swamp Thing’s thoughts, opens the page. 

Again, simple parallelism through the use of the same word, Abigail, to connect these scenes.

pp. 9-10: 

On page 9, Abigail has stumbled upon the dead teenagers, and in her fear she begins to run. It appears that the undergrowth is still alive with Woodrue’s influence and is stretching up to entangle her, but is this literal or figurative – it is hard to tell with this series, but that only enriches the narrative. She runs for her life and calls for a friend. “Alec!” 

Page 10 returns to Swamp Thing, where he thinks to himself, “Alec. I knew an Alec once…Was that Woodrue?” 

Simple parallelism, connecting the scenes with the same word, Alec. 

pp. 10-11: 

Swamp Thing is remembering waking in Sunderland’s building and finding the report that explained how he was no longer, and never had been, human. Reliving that memory, Swamp Thing comes to remember that “...the author’s name was…” 

“Woodrue,” as the thought is continued onto page 11, where the scene has switched to the town of Lacroix, where Woodrue has gone to terrorize and extort humanity. 

Parallelism again, but not as one-to-one as the use of the same word. This time Moore has Swamp Thing reach the conclusion of who authored the report on him without saying his name on page 10, only to continue it on page 11 with the caption, “Woodrue,” where the scene has shifted to the real world and Woodrue himself.

pp. 13-14: 

Page 13 ends with a caption, “Woodrue,” over the evil face of the Floronic Man, and this carries over to page 14, continuing the inner monologue of Swamp Thing with, “It was Woodrue’s name…his name on the notes.” 

Again, simple parallelism, with the repeat of Woodrue’s name. 

pp. 17-18: 

Swamp Thing has finally uprooted himself and returned to the land of the living, to the red world, and he has finally acknowledged that he is no longer Alec Holland. At the bottom of page 17, Abby is following Swamp Thing out of the swamp, because “she doesn’t want to be out on her own…”

This thought is continued on page 18, “...not on a night like this.” And this caption is placed over an image of the boy from Lacroix – who was forced to videotape the conflagration of his town and then bring it to the authorities – as he walks, alone, to the police station in Chenille. 

This time, Moore’s connective tissue between scenes is slightly deeper. The overarching text of not wanting to be out alone on a night like this is placed over a scene of Abby following Swamp Thing out of the swamp after experiencing the horror of being terrified and attacked because she was alone, while the boy is approaching a police station after having watched his family die and being forced to walk alone, through the night, to find help. Their horrors and solitude are paralleled, while the description is stated over the panels. 

pp. 19-20: 

Luther Galen, a police officer who watched the videotape the boy from Lacroix brought to the police station, is chopping down a large tree in his front yard because of the fear he has, after watching what the Floronic Man can, and threatens to, do. The caption at the bottom of page 19 reads, “The job took a long time.” 

This thought continues on page 20, “In fact, it seemed to go on forever.” This caption is placed over a panel of a woman yelling at the Floronic Man, “No more. Please.” She is asking for the terror to stop, for it not to go on forever. 

This connection is a bit more artistic, as both of these scenes involve the main players wishing for the terror, the fear, to end, to not go on forever. 

This issue's transitions weren't as subtle or artistic as Moore's in previous issues, but I still hope this enlightened or at least entertained. I should have some general thoughts up within the next day, and I will be back in a couple of weeks with a similar look at the scene transitions for issue 24. Until then, keep Gallivanting Through the Green with CBCC Podcast. And thanks. 

ADDENDUM: After posting this piece, I returned to the idea that Moore wasn't as subtle in his scene transitions this issue. The majority of the transitions involve using the same word or character's name, while one more involves a line of thought that leads to a character's name. It feels like Moore must have done this intentionally (though, of course, the specter of a monthly deadline could also have contributed, but this is an Alan Moore-stan account, so we go with the intentionality theory). 

One thing that readers come to understand throughout this issue is the newfound connection between Swamp Thing and Jason Woodrue, the Floronic Man, through their connection to "The Green." Part of the narrative is spent in Swamp Thing's mind as he searches for the new mind that has infected the Green, Woodrue. One way that Moore, Bissette, and Totleben highlight this connection is during a succession of two pages where the middle of one page has an extreme closeup of Swamp Thing's eyes, which stretch across the width of the page, while the next page includes a similar extreme closeup of Woodrue's eyes. In my collection, these two pages face each other, so that the connection is made eminently clear by the fact that they can be viewed side by side, at the same time. I would contend that Moore's "simplistic" approach to the scene transitions in this issue is another way he worked to accentuate the connections between characters in this issue. 

The first two scene transitions -- which shift from Swamp Thing to Woodrue and then back to Swamp Thing -- utilize the word "there" to connect each of these pairs of scenes. Just having that single word connect up scenes between these two plant beings, with each of them uttering the word either aloud or to themselves, shows, in an elementary way, how similar, or connected, they are. 
We then have a scene that transitions from Swamp Thing's inner consciousness to the real world, and Abby Arcane, and then we transition back from Abby to Swamp Things' inner monologue and journey. In the first transition -- from Swamp Thing to Abby -- the scenes are connected by Abby's given name, "Abigail." Then, when we go from Abby back to Swamp Thing, it is the name "Alec" that connects the scenes, for Alec Holland, the scientist who became Swamp Thing. These two characters, Swamp Thing and Abby, have become close since he became a swamp creature, and especially since Abby's boyfriend, Matthew, has become distant, Abby has felt more affection for Alec. Moore's use of their names being repeated over the scenes to connect is a consummate approach to reinforce their blossoming connection as characters. 
And the final transition that utilizes the same word is a shift from Jason Woodrue to Swamp Thing's inner journey. This time it is the name, "Woodrue," that connects the scene. Again, by using the simple device of a repeated word over two connected scenes, Moore -- in my opinion -- is emphasizing the connection between these two characters, and it works really well. 

chris