Swamp Thing 1989 #1 – Rick Veitch, Writer; Michael Zulli, Vince Locke, Artists; Trish Mulvihill, Colorist
Ray – 9/10
Ray: Easily the wildest story to come out of DC in recent years, this comic is a read almost forty years in the making. Back in the day, Rick Veitch’s iconic, divisive Swamp Thing run was cut short when word got out of a story that would see Swamp Thing travel in time and meet Jesus – and DC got cold feet. The near-completed story was kept in a drawer for so long that original series artist Michael Zulli has since passed away, but it’s finally seeing the light of day – along with the next issues to come. So how does it play out after all these years? Pretty fascinating. One interesting thing about the Vertigo of the 1980s was that it was pretty intertwined with the DCU, so Swamp Thing’s journey through time to the era where the Nazarene was starting to be seen as a magician is actually launched with the events of Crisis on Infinite Earths – and that’s not the only DC tie to be found here.
Putting a “new twist” on a Bible story is always a dicey choice, but the DCU shows up in full form here when a group of necromancers dedicated to stopping Jesus summon a demon (who eagle-eyed viewers will notice looks very similar to a popular DC character), and he possesses Marcus Aurelius just as the warrant goes out from Pontius Pilate. If this all sounds like a firestorm and a half…it is. It’s a bizarre mix of a fairly earnest Passion Play as Swamp Thing muses about its impact on humanity, with a supernatural time-travel story with plenty of demonic horrors along the way. I disagree with DC’s decision to shelve it, certainly, but I can also see how this story was designed to provoke in the way only old-school Vertigo Comics could. I also have absolutely no idea where this story is going to go next, but I’m very excited to go on this strange journey 37 years in the making.
To find reviews of all the DC issues, visit DC This Week.
GeekDad received this comic for review purposes
