Huge thanks to Sally of Mordant Airhead for directing me where to find a copy of Book IV, which is currently retailing for about $150 on Amazon. Thanks!
In April of 1985, in the fifty-first year of the existence of DC Comics, there began a maxi-series entitled Crisis on Infinite Earths, implicitly designed as a reboot to clean up fifty years of continuity madness among DC's various intellectual properties. The series, written by Marv Wolfman and penciled by George Perez, addressed and solved this issue with the grace of a sledgehammer by compressing every one of DC's myriad plot threads into one simple, easy-to-handle universe, starting over from square one. That here we are 28 years later and DC has rebooted itself three more times since then isn't an issue for today, this little introduction is a question of dates: not only did our friend Mr. Moore pen the final Superman story before the Crisis in Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?, which we'll get to...eventually, the dates that Crisis was running, April '85 to March '86, coincide well with the fourth book of Swamp Thing, entitled A Murder of Crows. In it, Moore will lend his pen to the Crisis in his own idiosyncratic way, and create an arc that has been hinted at since Book III and considered by many to the the absolute apex of the whole novel.
But not in the first chapter. We start off with 'Windfall', which barely features Swamp Thing himself at all. The protagonist when we first crack open Book IV is Chester Williams, an aging hippie who would be more at home in San Fransisco than Baton Rouge. Chester finds one of Swamp Thing's psychedelic tubers on the ground (not a fruit, like I had thought before) and, in giving a slice to acquaintances of two different temperaments, discovers that its effects serve to amplify that which is already present within each person emotionally: a kindly cancer patient is filled with the warmth of life and love, leading to the novel's second psychotropic sex scene which comes across as surprisingly tender, the cancer victim passing away during the waves of love and ecstasy, dying in the rain in her husband's arms. The second imbiber, an overweight cretin with a bad combover who basically bullies Chester into giving a slice up, descends into a hellish 'bad trip', lighting aflame and becoming a swamp monster himself while ghouls taunt and harass him until he runs in front of an 18-wheeler. Chester himself, unsure of what his true colors are inside, abstains from trying the tuber as the chapter ends. It may be setting up for something (we don't see Chester again during the events of the book) but even if it's just a one-off it gives Moore and his artists a chance to explore Swamp Thing's physiology and his effect on the human psyche. Even if Chester doesn't return, the lessons he learned will.
Swamp Thing returns, along with Bissette and Totelben, with chapter two, 'Boogeymen', continuing the one-and-done nature of Book III though thankfully without the heavy-handed moralizing that typified that unfortunate volume. In the next couple chapters Swamp Thing and Constantine take on serial killers and ghosts, fighting back against the darkness encroaching that is setting the whole world insane. Monitor, the protagonist of Crisis on Infinite Earths, summons the heroes of the world to his fortress, and in Swamp Thing we see that includes our street warlock and his verdant pal, giving Crisis fans a different angle of the events that they would already be familiar with from that concurrent volume, and giving Moore fans some more wonderfully evocative prose in his always-entertaining captions:
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, and it was all of them at once./It was the end.../...And in the end, there were not words enough to encompass it."
But even Swamp Thing among the shattering timelines of Crisis is not the main event, and the chapter moves on without Kal-El, or Monitor, or Barry Allen or any of the main players of that continuity-shifting saga, and it's there that Constantine reveals what he and Swamp Thing have been working toward since Book III, the Brujeria, a coven of male witches, are awakening the primal Darkness to smash the throne of heaven and usher in a world free of life. And with that begins the second half of Book IV, with Constantine recruiting DC's mystical movers and shakers, including Zatanna, The Spectre, Deadman, Mento, Etrigan (again!), Sargon the Sorcerer, and a score of others, to beat back the Darkness and save the universe. Let me say that the buildup to this confrontation is awe-inspiring, with Swamp Thing and Constantine each dealing with their own circle of friends, Constantine especially calling in favors and making deals, his character showing its fast-talking power convincing these uninterested warlocks to band together for a common cause. The forward momentum is tangible, I was unable to stop reading as Moore gives us his own Crisis, using these characters who didn't get anywhere near Monitor or his space station, very Swamp Thing allies moving to destroy a very Swamp Thing enemy. The battle itself is entirely collected in the oversized chapter fittingly titled 'The End', and if the chapter isn't quite as good as 'The Anatomy Lesson' it is broader in scope and it probably the novel's greatest moment of pure epic bombast. The battle shifts back and forth between Swamp Thing and his allies on the front lines, with Constantine and his allies observing the action telepathically in some kind of superhero seance. The Darkness removes Etrigan, Dr. Fate, and The Spectre from the action, Zatanna's father bursts into flames as the Darkness asks the assembled beings questions on the nature of evil and existence:
"And what of the tortured eons I endured, unable to broach this maddening brilliance and quiet the pain it woke in me? Do they not demand retribution? Little thing, you have taught me only vengeance.../Be gone that I might savor it in solitude."
In the end it is only Swamp Thing, entering into the Darkness by his own will, floating in the endless void, that can give it a satisfactory answer: that darkness begets life, that the fallen tree provides nutrients so a young sapling may live, that Darkness can not exist without Light. And with that, a golden, glowing hand of Light clasps the Darkness like a forgotten brother, and they depart. All of this before before Watchmen, before The Long Halloween, before Kingdom Come or Starman or Hellboy or The Invisibles or anything that we could regard as one of the Greatest Graphic Novels Of All Time (with the exception of The Dark Knight Returns, which started concurrently but ended a little earlier). The message is one that has been done to death by now, the darkness and light need each other, but in a comic series just coming out of Crisis on Infinite Earths this is amazing stuff and once again Swamp Thing shows how much comics have matured since the days of The Joker making his own utility belt full of gags to stop Batman.
Thus ends the most beloved book of Swamp Thing, and it's easy to see why there are those out there who think A Murder of Crows represents the best moments in the saga: the excitement is palpable, the danger is limitless, and the band that Moore chooses to defend the universe are fleshed out and damn interesting: I would read a hundred stories about Team Swamp Thing and Team Constantine if they existed, much quicker than I would read about Superman defeating Luthor yet again. Personally I still find the sweeping epic romance of Book II to be the untopped moment, but Book IV's apocalyptic designs, which sees the undervalued contingent of DC's pantheon joining together to stop a force of utter nihilism, is a close second.
And of course it's not the end of the story, no matter what the title of the last chapter is: just before Swamp Thing goes out to save the world from Darkness itself, a sleazy photographer catches Abby Cable in the embrace of her shrubby love and sells the photos to the local newspaper. And it seems the residents of Lousiana in 1986 are not quite as understanding of alternative couples as comic readers are.
...
Best quote: "I have helped...one community...destroy another...because it was different...and because it posed a threat.../And afterwards...I thought...did history's vilest butchers...do any worse?/Is evil...unavoidable?"
Up next: Swamp Thing vs. Batman? in Swamp Thing Book V
Glad to help! Fine review as always!
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