With the first book of Swamp Thing, Alan Moore proved that his handling of the ancient Marvelman story wasn't simply a fluke; he could take characters, whether they hadn't been touched for years or had been used as recently as the month before, and turn them into something far greater than the sum of their parts. Len Wein and Marty Pasko had made the Swamp Thing a misunderstood beast, a throwback to the pulp comics trope of the good-natured but reviled giant (beginning with Frankenstein's monster and echoed by another big, green comic book hero, The Incredible Hulk) and Moore took all of one issue to turn it into something poetic, something subtle, something intelligent. In his hands, Swamp Thing became a greater tragedy than ever before, a creature who thought it was human and only later discovered it wasn't, it never was, it could never be, and of course it was more human than ever for that very reason. And the most incredible thing was that, after such a home-run, Moore was just getting started: at six books, forty-four chapters, and 1,208 pages, Swamp Thing is among Moore's longest novels, and if each additional book builds on the previous as well as Love & Death does, Swamp Thing may even end up topping Watchmen and From Hell as Moore's most accomplished, greatest work.
That being said, Book II starts off strangely with the first chapter, "The Burial". In it, Swamp Thing digs a metaphorical (and literal) grave for the man who he never was, Alec Holland, the final act of freeing himself from his misplaced humanity and embracing his role as a nature elemental and protector. As he digs, he experiences flashbacks/hallucinations of Holland's last days on Earth, finally tossing the long-preserved skeleton into the grave and closing that chapter of his life forever. Sounds like a meaningful, well-drafted chapter, right? Subtle and exploratory, it could almost be the equal of "The Anatomy Lesson" in terms of Moore's grasp on the medium, so what's the problem? The problem is in the art: Stephen Bissette and John Totelben were unavailable to work on "The Burial", so the work went to DC workhorse Shawn McManus. Shawn has a long career in DC/Vertigo, working on Sandman, Tom Strong, Fables, and plenty more, but his presence feels amazingly out of place in the contemplative darkness of "The Burial". McManus' work makes for great action scenes, all bold gestures and declarations, but it wouldn't be hyperbole to say that there is not a single action scene in the entire chapter, and his exaggerated, rubbery style so clashes with Moore's Shakespearean ruminating that it turns what could be a chapter awash in pathos into something that doesn't quite click the way it should. Luckily, this is the only chapter in which the usual artists are away (with one exception, see below), and Bissette & Totelben jump right back into things for "Love and Death".
"Love and Death" kicks off the remainder of the book's first arc, which gives us the return of Swamp Thing's nemesis, Anton Arcane, back from beyond the veil and wearing the thoroughly-posessed shell of Abby Cable's husband Matt. More than any other arc so far, Arcane's return and the subsequent battle with Swamp Thing wears the series' horror roots most proudly on its sleeve; as admitted before I haven't read the previous writer's takes on Swamp Thing, but here at least Arcane seems to have command over what can be broadly termed corruption: he summons hordes of insects, rotting corpses are his puppets, and his presence increases the evil in mens hearts throughout the country, increasing acts of depravity and malice. To this author, at least, this is an absolute goldmine of an idea: Arcane comes off as both wonderfully eloquent and disgustingly powerful, DC's very own Lord of the Flies in a most literal sense. He is also Abby Cable's uncle, something that I don't think was mentioned in the first book, but increases the disturbing quotient greatly (it's highly implied that he had sex with his niece while wearing her husband's skin). Even though the showdown between Swamp Thing and Arcane really only lasts a few pages, the tension is incredible, with the narrative moving into the past and back again, hints of Arcane's return brought up way back in Moore's first few issues coming to full bloom, small things behind the scenes that seem twitchy and decomposing coming to the forefront, all leading up to Arcane literally plucking his niece's soul from her body and throwing it to Hell, making sure that even if Swamp Thing wins the battle (and he does, of course) he loses his lady love.
It's with the stage set thus, Abby Cable alive but unthinking, her uncle seemingly destroyed for good, that Swamp Thing becomes something even greater than it was before. What was Moore's take on the slow-moving, contemplative Hamlet adds some Orpheus and Dante to its belt as Swamp Thing quite literally descends into the pits of Hell to rescue Abby's soul from the legions of the damned. The story suddenly becomes widescreen, its pulp horror augmented by an epic fantasy that other authors could only dream of, with Swamp Thing meeting more members of DC's fantasy pantheon: Deadman, The Stranger, and Etrigan all take turns playing the part of Virgil leading this Dante in reverse, from the lush gardens of Paradise (where Alec Holland is finally happy in an eternity with his wife) to the writhing walls of Pandemonium. There he witnesses the final fate of Arcane (which is really very satisfying) and quite literally carries Abby's immortal soul back to the surface. The arc is gorgeous in every way, and it shows that Moore can make his plots as grandiose as he can deconstruct them, ending with a single-panel page of a newly-revived Abby, clueless as to what her vegetable beau just did for her, questioning Swamp Thing's tears of happiness amidst the swamp in the dead of winter. It's short and sweet and a perfect way to end an arc that changes things up just as much as Moore's first few issues did.
The book ends with three remaining chapters, two of them fairly slight, and one of them anything but. Shawn McManus returns first for "Pog", an environmental fable set up as a sci-fi version of Walt Kelly's Pogo, for which both McManus and Moore won the Jack Kirby Award and I can't possibly imagine why. The plot is slight, and what little there is is hackneyed (aliens in the style of Pogo's swamp-dwellers land on Earth and are repulsed by humankind's polluting tendencies), and while McManus' art is certainly better suited for the slapstick of "Pog" than it was for "The Burial", honestly the whole story feels so out of place after Arcane's return and Swamp Thing's journey to Hell that I can't help but feel the book wouldn't have been any worse off if it wasn't included. They left Swamp Thing's goofy team-up with Superman out of the main narrative, they could have done the same with "Pog", even collected them together into their own book. After "Pog" is "Abandoned Houses", where Abby is visited in her dreams by Cain and Able of DC's old House of Mystery and House of Secrets anthology books, in which they retell Len Wein's very first issue of Swamp Thing and give a rather startling revelation: not only is Swamp Thing NOT Alec Holland, but there have been several Swamp Things before him, Moore giving the character a legacy to live up to and giving both himself and future writers nearly unlimited range to make Swamp Thing anyone and anything they wish. It's a clever twist, even if the chapter itself isn't anything terribly exciting.
Finally comes "Rite of Spring" which had to have been radical when it came out: it's an extended psychedelic sex sequence between Abby and Swamp Thing. She eats one of the fruits growing off of him and the art gets wild while the two lovebirds consummate their newfound relationship in ways that we humans couldn't possibly conceive. It's shamanic and paganistic, love of the Earth in the most literal sense. It's pretty damn weird, but it elevates Swamp Thing and Abby 's relationship past what we normally get from superhero comic love; like the birth scene is Marvelman it shows that Moore can take chances and make issues that would absolutely flounder in the hands of lesser writers, but that fit perfectly into the clockwork plots of his grand designs. And no doubt the love that Abby Cable (Abby Arcane? Abby Holland?) shares with her shambling swamp man will become a deeper plot later on.
...
Best quote: Cheated by a pawn, a cypher, a thing no more signifigant than the most despised of beetles.../This bug, this worthless speck, had with his death displaced deathless Arcane.../Condemning me to the dusk latitudes.../To the cobwebbed lands.../To the dismal region of the bodiless men."
Up next: A girl and her vegetable in Swamp Thing Book III
Swamp Thing, Book I: Saga of the Swamp Thing (1984)
As noted last time, Swamp Thing is Alan Moore's second attempt in a row of taking over a pre-existing storyline in the middle of publication, picking up Marty Pasko's story starting on issue #20. When Moore attempted this in Captain Britain, the results felt rushed and awkward, introducing too many ideas in not enough space and not giving them any time to resolve, so how did he fare trying the same trick twice? The result, I'm happy to say, were better than ever could have been expected, and the first book of Alan Moore's Swamp Thing feature his best work since Marvelman, possibly even eclipsing that incredible work. In Moore's extremely capable hands, Len Wein's Swamp Thing goes from a pulp-ish 'monster vs. monster' style hero to a tortured, troubled soul, rife with interior monologues and a plush poeticism, finally proving that the comparison I made to Shakespeare way back when I started this was not only founded, but impressively accurate.
Unlike his attempt to wrap things up at the beginning of his Captain Britain run, here Moore's first issue taking the reins from Marty Pasko (humorously called 'Loose Ends') is fairly simplistic and easy to follow, yet still bursting with imagery and creativity; the only thing you need to know going into it is that the dead body Swamp Thing is mourning on the first page belongs to Anton Arcane, long-time nemesis. On Moore's first page he kills off the character's main villain, and it's done with so much grace and poetry that it works perfectly, Swamp Thing giving a soliloquy wondering what his enemy's death means for him that is some of the best writing I've ever experienced in the medium. Since Swamp Thing is already dealing with the same tropes Captain Britain did, only with more maturity and grace, it should come as no surprise that Moore utilizes the same shock ending: issue 20 ends with Swamp Thing's death, gunned down by agents of the Sunderland Corporation to collect for research. All this leads into issue 21, the breathtaking 'The Anatomy Lesson'.
Sometimes you find a piece of art that defies all expectations, where everything fits together like clockwork, and no matter how many times you experience it you feel the same sense of awe and wonder as the first time. Beethoven's 3rd symphony, the Zeal arc from Chrono Trigger, Savage/Steamboat at Wrestlemania III, Akira Kurosawa's Ran, Roy Batty's death soliloquy from Blade Runner, and Algernon Blackwood's 'The Willows' all give me this sense of perfection, and now we can add 'The Anatomy Lesson' to that list as probably the best single comic I have ever read. The comic is told in flashback by Jason Woodrue, the Floronic Man, a D-list DC villain I had never heard of before reading this, who was hired by General Sunderland to do an autopsy on the recently-deceased Swamp Thing. Woodrue gives reams more poetic monologues throughout the chapter, all of it with the same sense of muted despair we got from Swamp Thing's thoughts in the first chapter, through the lens of a madman:
"I'm here in my apartment. I'm watching the rain/...And I'm thinking about the old man./He'll be pounding on the glass right about now.../...Or maybe not now./Maybe in a while./But he'll be pounding and...and will there be blood? I like to imagine so. Yes, I rather think there will be blood./Lots of blood./Blood in extraordinary quantities."
Woodrue discovers that Swamp Thing was never scientist Alec Holland at all, as Len Wein and Marty Pasko had taught us since 1972. Instead, it is some sort of verdant elemental spirit, infused with Holland's memories at the moment of his death in the swamp all that time ago. Naturally, you cannot kill a plant by shooting it in the head, and so Swamp Thing revives, and its grappling with its newly-discovered inhumanism is the crux of the conflict in the first book. Swamp Thing battles The Floronic Man, driven insane by the whispers of 'The Green', the plant world, and later assists Jack Kirby's awesome demonic character Etrigan to destroy a being that feeds on children's fear. It's similar to the situations Swamp Thing was in before, but the creature has taken on the qualities of a verdant Hamlet, spouting off interior monologues about the nature of humanity and what it means to be human (a guilty pleasure topic of mine if there ever was one), all the while defending the humanity he has become detached from. There to keep that link to humanity alive is Abby Cable and her husband Matt, and while Abby struggles to assist Swamp Thing and protect the children she was charged to watch, the couple's marriage dissolves before our very eyes into a nightmare of arguments, drinking, and regret, a very real tragedy in the middle of this supernatural maelstrom. Even as Swamp Thing and Etrigan stop the fear-devouring Monkey King, Matt crashes his car and, to save himself, makes a pact with something that's sure to be a very, very bad idea.
Moore is joined by the art team of Stephen Bissette and John Totelben, the latter of whom you may remember last appeared on this blog as the artist of Moore's superhero Ragnarok in Marvelman issue #15. Though the colors may feel washed out for readers of today's sumptuously-shaded comics, the art itself is rough and ragged, as befitting Swamp Thing and his legion of deranged adversaries. Swamp Thing most certainly has its roots (ha!) in pulp horror stories, and one look at the disturbing imagery of the Monkey King or the Floronic Man's reign of vegetable terror will let you see that Moore's own love of pulps has helped propel this story even further.
I can't recommend Swamp Thing Book I enough. The prose is hauntingly beautiful, the lead speaks with such grace and elegance, and the villains are both disgusting and despicable. 'The Anatomy Lesson' is arrestingly well-written, and the rest of the book manages to keep up that high level of quality that Moore's previous work, no matter how good (and it's all been good so far) couldn't yet hit. Swamp Thing Book I is the zenith of Moore's first years in the industry, and indisputable proof that not only was he the best writer of his time, but he has yet to be topped today.
(Caveat: As of this writing, there are two different printings of Swamp Thing Book I readily available, and the older of which, with a 1987 copyright date, is missing the first issue Moore wrote for, starting up with 'The Anatomy Lesson'. 'Loose Ends' is an excellent chapter and I couldn't possibly imagine why DC/Vertigo cut it for the original trade, but the more recent pressing, which came out about 2009/2010, restores the issue to its rightful place.)
Best quote: "I had to come, Arcane. I had to be sure./Oh I know I saw your ship...falling and burning. I know I saw it...drop like a wounded sun...exploding beyond the mountains. I know you couldn't have survived./But I didn't...hear the rattle in your windpipe. I didn't see...the glaze crawl over your eyes. I didn't see the body Arcane.../.../So it's true./You're dead./Really dead./I don't think I realized before...How important to my life you were, Arcane. I don't think I really understood...before this moment./You were my opposite. I had my humanity...taken away from me. You started out human...and threw it all away. You did it deliberately./We defined each other, didn't we? By understanding you...I came that much closer...to understanding myself./And now...you're dead./Really dead./And what...am I going to do now?"
The very first thing to keep in mind when you crack open Captain Britainis that it's Alan Moore's first time taking over a pre-existing
series from another writer (not counting Marvelman, but since no one had touched that property in 20 years when Moore got to it, I give it a pass). Captain Britain was created by writer Chris Claremont and artist Herb Trimpe back in 1976, and thus Moore had six years of character development and plot arc ahead of him when he took the reins in 1982. This may
explain the disorienting feeling you get reading the first couple
issues, where things are happening at a rapid-fire pace and someone who
hasn't read the previous work might be totally overwhelmed. Characters are introduced and you get the distinct feeling you should really know who they are, but Moore is too busy moving forward to make any concessions for those of us who feel lost, and by the time you realize that this breakneck pacing isn't going to let up, it's too late. Moore's time on Captain Britain focused the good Captain and his friends hopping through parallel dimensions, and the threat posed by two villains who are really the draw of this whole story: reality-warping mutant (a la X-Men) Mad Jim Jaspers, and his pet 'cybiote' robot/killing machine, The Fury. The story starts up on Earth-238, far away from Eath-616, the dimension where the Marvel stories usually take place. The problem is that you would never know that if you weren't already reading Captain Britain because the story never tells you. Moore's writing is as strong as ever (his captions regarding The Fury's unstoppable quest to kill all superheroes are especially well-done) but there's no substance at the beginning. Mad Jim shows up and it's heavily implied that the reader should be shocked that the evil mutant is behind Earth-238 warping and breaking down, but I didn't even know who the guy was, and so the meaning was lost. Luckily Moore does pick up right at the end of the Earth-238 arc, when The Fury, who had previously killed several of Captain Britain's companions, shows up (in a graveyard, no less!) and vaporizes the good Captain himself. Two issues in and the title character is dead. Shocking as Captain Britain's death is, Alan Moore proves he really DOES lead the comics industry by predicting the whole kill-off-a-character-and-then-bring-him-back song and dance that DC does every six months now, by having the shapeshifting alien Merlyn (again, not introduced before this scene) literally rebuild the Captain from his component molecules, sending him back to Earth-616. A verbose and surprisingly well-done issue, even though I was clueless about Merlyn and his daughter Roma, Moore managed to get his point across in a way that made me think maybe I was being too hard on Captain Britain. And after all that, right on cue, Moore tosses a bunch of unconnected one-shot superhero fights for about 3 issues. In a book where space for scenes and characters that could use exposition are at a premium, this feels unforgivable to me; the time that Captain Britain spent fighting Slaymaster could have been used to explain just who the hell Jim Jaspers or Saturnyne or any of the relevant characters were. The story does pick up eventually, but by then it's too little, too late. Jaspers' descent into madness happens off-panel: you expect to watch his mind coming unhinged slowly, but instead we go from Lord James Jaspers to a goofy lunatic in-between issues. There are too many heroes jockeying for pagetime in a story that already feels rushed; why kill off Captain Britain's erstwhile buddies in the first issue if you're just going to clog the pages with Wardog, Fascination, Captain Britain's sister, Legion, and a bunch of others? Moore seems like he's on the right track by introducing a bunch of alternate Captain Britains from the parallel universes (with punny names like Captain England, Captain Albion, Captain Airstrip-One, Captain Commonwealth) which would have made a GREAT team to take down Jaspers and The Fury, but then they get action for maybe 2 or 3 panels, tops. The story does end with a bang once Jaspers finally makes his move and starts warping reality, the effects are a ton of fun and artist Alan Davis is allowed to cut loose and make some gorgeous psychedelic splash pages, but by that point the story's already 3/4 of the way finished. The climactic final battle is even better, with The Fury turning on his creator (because the Mad Jim who built him is Earth-238 Jim, not Earth-616 Jim, and so he's a superhero that needs to be exterminated and...eh, just go read it) in an 8-page brawl which has Jaspers warping everything into strange weapons and animals to destroy the indestructible Fury...but again, it doesn't even take up a whole issue. In the end, perhaps Captain Britain would have been more tolerable if it were 100 pages longer, bringing it in line pagecount-wise with Watchmen, but what we're left with is a book fertile with great ideas and not enough time to execute them. Read
it for Lord Jim (the final battle is everything
Marvelman vs. Gargunza should've been) but don't be surprised if Moore's
breakneck storytelling leaves you confused.
... Best quote: "Fury. Cybiote. Mechanical half-steel, half sinew. Logic of a computer, intuition of a dog/It looks at the grave. Logic says Captain Britain is dead. Intuition says otherwise/It will have to think about this, and when it has thought, it will have to do something/It never gives up/Never." Up next: Swamp Thing, Alan Moore taking over yet another pre-existing series...uh oh.
I have to admit, I wasn't
looking forward to "Skizz" when I picked it up. I had never even heard of
it prior to doing this read-through, and my little bit of research told
me it was Alan Moore's attempt at writing E.T., with the same basic
starting premise (I have heard that the plot for "Skizz" was written entirely from seeing the first trailer for E.T. though I'm unsure if that's hyperbole or not. It wouldn't surprise me). For most I suppose this wouldn't be a problem, but get out the torches and pitchforks because I loathe E.T. and always have; when all of my young peers were fawning over the biggest thing in sci-fi since Star Wars, I found it to be incredibly boring, and nowadays I see it as one of the
most pure examples of the cinematic 'cheap shot' that goes for histrionics and emotion while skimping on the actual depth. So I went into "Skizz" with pretty low expectations, fully expecting this to be the first of Moore's work that was flat-out bad. With that being said, "Skizz" turned out to be a pleasant surprise, leagues better than its inspiration and proof that, at the time at least, Moore's dialogue could buoy even the feeblest of plots.
"Skizz" was originally presented in the pages of seminal British boys comic 2000 AD, home most notably of "Judge Dredd" as well as some minor works from Neil Gaiman, Grant Morrison, and obviously Alan Moore. Alan had written for the publication for a while prior to "Skizz", usually working on the 1-or-2-page "Future Shocks" which were brief sci-fi tales that usually had punchy gags as final panels. "Skizz" was different though: an ongoing story that stretched nearly 25 issues of 2000 AD, the plot concerns itself with the interplay of interstellar interpreter Zhcchz dealing with punks and pipefitters of lower-class Birmingham in the early 80s. Skizz' answer to Elliott is 15-year-old punk girl Roxy, who comes off as impulsive, defiant,
strong-willed, but ultimately good, and who I probably would've had a
crush on, had I been that age in 1983. The dialogue is great,
surprisingly funny given the nasty setting, Moore's world populated by surprisingly fleshed out characters like Roxy's parents and Lennie Small-esque giant-with-a-heart-of-gold Cornelius. The whole story exudes the same kind of class struggle Moore had begun in V for Vendetta but on a smaller scale: there is no fascist junta, no heroic anarchist. There's just an obsessed government agent and a teen girl trying to keep her new friend from being exploited or worse. Jim Baikie's art is sort of
angular but passable, considering most of the deck that came out in the
issues of 2000 AD, and while he's no John Totleben or David Lloyd or Alan Davis, the characters, especially Cornelius and Skizz himself, exude personality that meshes with Moore's dialogue to create a very well-done minor work in the canon. Moore does commit the ultimate comic writer sin of
denying pathos by bringing back an apparently-dead character with the
ol' "he's alright after all!" line, but then the same guy gave us
Marvelman and Watchmen so I'll cut him some slack for now.
"Skizz" doesn't reach the heights of Moore's work prior, and no doubt there will be plenty other works in the coming months that surpass it, but I was legitimately surprised that this small work, one that I had never even heard of before starting this project, was not only passable but actually pretty good. "Skizz" doesn't have characters spouting iambic pentameter like Ahab or Iago, but it has heart and soul, a perfectly slight tome to enjoy with a roaring fire and a cup of coffee. All in all,
Skizz is weaker than anything else I've read of Moore's, but I still
have a whole lot to go, and the dialogue is written well enough that you
might be surprised by it. I certainly was. ... Best quote: “They were cruel and ugly. There was so much hate and despair…and so
much love…/…some of them have style…/…and some of them have their
pride… / and some of them…/…some of them are stars.”
Up next: The Mad Hatter and the unstoppable cyborg killing machine in Captain Britain
V for Vendetta (1982-89) V for Vendetta was one of the Alan Moore stories I had read prior to starting this read-through, and when I first read it about 5 years ago it was the one I was least impressed with. The message is a good one of course, that security is not worth the price of freedom is something we should all remember. Mostly I was disturbed by how people latched onto the character of V, a somewhat superhuman anarchist, without worrying that he is a rather disturbed, vicious man who slaughtered innocents wholesale while he was freeing his country from fascists. I've softened my stance since re-reading the book though...while V for Vendetta is far from Moore's best work, it is an excellent start in the pulp genre that will take over so much of his latter-day projects, and as the average public's first proof that he can work outside of the superhero sphere and still craft a nuanced, gorgeously-written, impactful story.
Unlike Marvelman, V for Vendetta is readily available at the time of this writing, and considering Moore's celebrity, it's doubtful that will change anytime soon. As such I'll make this review a little simpler, mainly going through what works and what doesn't work in the story. The most obvious thing that words is David Lloyd's artwork, his use of color is incredible, soft, haunting watercolors give the book a dreamlike quality, as if the whole work is just a fever-dream of a Britain that might have been. It instantly distinguishes itself from contemporary work, even many comics put out today can only hope to emulate it.
For all my earlier complaining, V himself is another high point. He speaks like a Shakespearean in a book populated by beaten-down modern-day Britons, an enigmatic, flamboyant swashbuckler who speaks every line like he's on a stage. V is brutal and uncompromising, but that's the point and the beauty of his character: he's not someone to emulate, he's a dark mirror of Adam Susan, the leader of the fascist party ruling Briton during the events of the book. Both men do what they do because they must, for the good of the people of the country they love. The story wouldn't work as a simple good-vs-evil parable, in fact when you read between the lines it is V who does all the reprehensible things during the course of the story; Norsefire themselves are left to simply observe the populace, paranoid and ready to fall at a moment's notice. V for Vendetta isn't here to give us answers, it simply presents choices and leaves us to figure out what we want to get out of it.
The one thing that still doesn't work, even after the re-read and reevaluation of the material, is the 'real' protagonist of the story, Evey, though this might surprise some who haven't read far into the story. Evey is the surrogate for the audience, the young girl who is saved from a despicable fate by V early in the story and is gradually worked into his plans. She exists to ask the questions we would ask if a masked lunatic wanted us to pretend to be an underage prostitute for a lecherous man of God, and toward the end of the book she has an extended sequence where V tortures her to show her what Norsefire is capable of. It's easily the best moment of the book, uncomfortable enough to make your flesh crawl, and you feel for both Evey and V for having been put through this harrowing journey. Outside of the obvious problem, whether it's ever justified to torture someone until they see your ideology, it's what comes after that ruins her arc for me: Evey as a character becomes pretty uninteresting once she loses all her
emotional baggage (a plague that effects most Final Fantasy heroes as
well). She goes from a character we can relate to to essentially another V, seemingly unconcerned that this man just starved and tortured her for what felt like ages. I know that it was setting up that V's power was in planting ideas of change, and that he is a symbol which can't be killed and others could take up, but Evie herself loses the endearing qualities she had and simply espouses V's rhetoric for the small remainder of the story. It does pick up in time for a pretty explosive final issue, but
between V and Marvelman I'm starting to get the feeling that Moore had
trouble with middle sections of his early work.
In the end, V for Vendetta comes off as a very accomplished second work, showing that Moore was far from a one-trick pony and could deconstruct the pulps as well as he could Silver Age superheroes. Even with the lackluster middle section the book is still a home run and simply cements Moore's reputation as a comic writer who could do new things with the medium. Best quote: "Noise is relative to the silence preceding it. The more absolute the hush, the more shocking the thunderclap."
As our inception post of Sound'a'Roundus, I present to you 13 albums deemed the greatest by Christopher Bollweg of the blog Recycled Hot Air. The albums are in chronological order and each cap off with a Youtube link of his favorite track off the album. Chris has a long resume of musical projects, from industrial (CiRCLE No. 5) to punk (Not Will Porter) to showtunes (A Screaming Comes Across the Sky), all of which can find their beginnings in these 13 records. In retrospect I should've fashioned this like an interview, but it's too late this time...
1. Miles Davis - Kind of Blue (1959)
I've always, "liked jazz", as
much as the next American who doesn't knee jerk say it sucks on
principle. When I joined Jazz Band in high school, I didn't know shit
for shit about jazz music except Kenny G tried to claim he made it, I
just wanted an easy A for playing bass. A friend passed me off a
vinyl dubbed cassette of this album and it was one of the first times
I listened to an album. I don't mean putting on some music and simply
enjoying, I mean the only activity I was doing was listening to Miles
and crew belt out some bluesy jazz.
This is an easy choice due in part to
its broad acceptance as one of the greatest recordings of all time,
Jazz or otherwise. While 'So What' is often pointed to for a shining
track, I've always been partial to 'All Blues'. It's the type of song
that's seen pain and knows it's coming back around again. I can
identify with that.
The Velvet Underground - The Velvet
Underground & Nico (1967)
Everything that can ever be considered
a splinter/sub/subsub genre of Punk, Alternative and Indie Rock music
can be traced back to this album. Anyone who made a CBGB's band had
this album. Michael Stipe, Stephen Malkmus, and Kim Deal all have
this album. The Velvet Underground's first album could be a greatest
hits album if they ever got any air play. Instead, the distorted
beauty of this avant garde, out of tune, pop rock disaster went on to
infect the minds of a bunch of disenfranchised youth with nothing to
do but sit inside and make a bunch of loud noise of their own. The
Velvet Underground + Nico is so good because it's four junkies and a German model junkie that recorded such a complex album that makes the
listener think they can do the same thing.
The Beatles hid behind their personas
and invented tales of other people who went and played about in rock
& roll music land while they were getting high on 'cid. Lou Reed
sold his ass for a gram of smack before playing a show to twelve
transvestites and wrote his next album about it. The Velvet
Underground were The Beatles of the heroin art chic of NYC's gutters
while all the hippies were moving to San Fran to smoke pot and fuck
each other till world peace happened. You don't listen to ...& Nico to
escape, you listen to ...& Nico to feel.
Led Zeppelin - Houses of the Holy
(1973)
Led Zeppelin is the greatest rock band
ever and Houses of the Holy is their best album. Following that
logic, that would make Houses of the Holy the greatest rock album
ever, which is objectively true. Houses of the Holy is so amazing,
even Spider-Man feels inadequate around it.
On HotH, Zeppelin plays with genres
like toys, bending them to their will. Even 'The Crunge's' foray into
funk makes itself fun as the bridge it keeps on trying to find from
the jangled folk hard rock of 'Over the Hills and Far Away' into the
slinking boogie of 'Dancing Days'. 'No Quarter's dark psychedelia
always reminds me of coming down from ecstasy only to be ramped into
'The Ocean', which has the greatest guitar riff ever written. Houses
of the Holy from start to finish is satisfying and just so, damn,
good. Unfortunately, IV will probably continue to outshine it
for a good long while simply on the weight of Stairway, but whatever.
Metallica - Master of Puppets (1986)
Master of Puppets was the first time I
had ever heard Metallica. Sure, my folks loved Sabbath and Zeppelin,
but that was 70's dinosaur rock. It was 1986 and it was time for a
musical revolution, baby! Not even being school age yet, I didn't
know jack about music. I picked up my 14 year old uncle's Walkman and
examined the case of the loaded cassette. The cover was a field of
unmarked tombstones beneath an ominous red sky and a pair of hands
descending upon them to pull their strings. Instead of being
repulsed, I hit play in the middle of 'Damage Inc.' and was blown
away. It was turned up loud during the, "We chew and spit you
out! *jiggajuggaWAH* We laugh you scream and shout! *jiggajuggaWAH*,"
part and I was never the same after that. Metallica is woven into my childhood in
the same way that Star Wars is and Master of Puppets is my Empire
Strikes Back.
Everything about this album is so dark
and heavy. While Ride the Lightning pushed the limits of their speed
metal attack, when they slowed it down for jams like 'The Thing that
Should Not Be', 'Leper and 'Welcome Home (Sanitarium)' Metallica
showed that it didn't matter what their tempo was, they could still
melt your face off with a cannon blast of metal up your ass. Cliff
Burton's thundering bass gallop, James Hetfield's lyrics about
eldritch abominations and how the rich wage war, Lars doing more than
sloppy double bass and Kirk Hammit's furious shredding came together
to make the album that cemented Cliff in the echelon's of Heavy Metal
Mythology before his death on this album's tour. May guitar stores
ring with the opening riff of 'Master of Puppets' to the chagrin of
their clerks forever!
Pixies - Doolittle (1989)
You know those albums where it can come
on at random and you think to yourself, "oh, I'll change it when
a bad song comes on," and you end up listening to the album at
least three times? That's Doolittle. From the opening bass of
'Debaser' to 'Gouge Away's' fade out there is not a bad note in it.
Doolittle is one of the few albums I would describe as perfect.
Everyone making rock music these days who doesn't steal from The
Velvet Underground is stealing from the Pixies. Doolittle is to
modern rock as Alan Moore's Watchmen is to modern storytelling. It's
a watershed moment where everyone who was influenced by it has
already had their generation with it, its revival and now the album's
impact has been woven into the fabric of the cultural memoriate.
Start-stop/loud quiet loud dynamics have existed at least since the
17th century, but David Lovering dropped some sweet backbeats to the
same methods in 1989. 23 years later, Doolittle sounds just as fresh
and new as the day it was released.
Wu-Tang Clan - Enter the Wu-Tang (36
Chambers) (1993)
I'm from LA, I grew up steeped in
G-Funk, I was in a Gangsta Rock band that venerated the collected
works of N.W.A. and its crew. Dr. Dre is who I go to when I have
Chronic pain. But beat surgeon or no, if there's one album that
stands head and shoulders over every Hip Hop album to this day, it's
those cuts from the RZA, tha RaZoR.
Tha Wu-Tang Clan truly ain't nuthin' ta
fuck wit on this raw and dirty album straight from the slums of Shao
Lin. The Wu-Tangs three most deadly weapons lie in RZA's hard jazz
beats (versus Dre's smoothed out West Coast funk style), Old Dirty
Bastard (who answers the question, 'what does it sound like to rap on
crack?') who ain't got no father to his style and a whole lotta
illegitimate children trying to claim his lineage, and M-E-T-H-O-D
Man with his street smart rhymes that are a playful counterbalance
with just a little hint of that hard ass motherfucker hiding behind
those bloodshot eyes. Even with those three, you can't forget Raekwon
the Chef, by far the most solid of the Wu, cooking up something in
most of the tracks on Enter the Wu-Tang.
The world of Wu-Tang is dark, scary and
surreal. They dare you to try and keep up with them, Word-Fuing up a
lyrical body count unheard of on the streets of Compton. Chronic 2001
set up the paradigm for party rap from 1999-2009, Wu-Tang set up the
paradigm for everything else back in '93. If N.W.A. is the Beatles of
hip hop (and they totally are) then Wu is The Velvet Underground.
The Smashing Pumpkins - Mellon Collie
and the Infinite Sadness (1995)
Billy Corgan is many things, and
incredibly talented is one of them. Mellon Collie was the first CD I
ever owned. I bought this double album it for 25 bucks, when CD's
were $11.99-$14.99, at Tower Records. I've listened to this album
more than any other, and have dissected, ignored, loved, hated and
felt every other emotion that a person can feel because of a silly
piece of music all because of this album. People joke about wearing
out cassette heads and needles or tapes and vinyl from playing a
single album too much. I did that with this CD. I played it so much
that both discs were scratched to hell from travel and play.
Mellon Collie is the final summation of
the first half of the 90's. A large sweeping opera that tells the
story of disenfranchised struggle that no one wants to listen to
because we're all living it. It's that beautiful baton handing off
point from extended adolescence to adulthood, or in Smashing Pumpkins
musical sound, teen angst to bald angst. Released in '95, a year
after Cobain's death, everyone's album had a sombre tone to it that
year. At least there's points of ecstasy mingled in with all those
sexually frustrated teenage songs.
Fun fact: The alternate vinyl track
listing makes it more of a cyclical story beginning en media res.
The Flaming Lips - Zaireeka (1997)
I just set up two computers, an iPod,
an Xbox and busted out with a fine bowl of sensory enhancement and
decided to listen to this masterwork as I write this article.
Zaireeka is a Four disc album born from what's been dubbed 'The
Parking Lot Experiments' in Flaming Lips canonical lore.
Basically, band leader Wayne Coyne recorded a bunch of music onto
cassettes, got 100 people together in their cars in a parking garage
and conducted each person when to play their tape. This blew Mr.
Coyne's mind and it pained him that traditional audio as we knew it
in 1996 was inefficient to capture the massiveness of sound as it
should be.
What The Flaming Lips produced was four
CD's each with a section of the full album on it. Each song's
instrumentation and arrangement was sectioned off and spread to be
simultaneously played on four separate sound systems simultaneously
to hear the album as it should. The reality behind this being that no
two sources will ever be in sync, so each disc/medium has some drift
and every playing is different. You can listen to each song in any
combination you like and the combinations of effect are limitless as
everything in the environment and the listener effects the event.
Now the important part, because of the
experimental nature of the songs, it's allowed the Flaming Lips to
craft some of the most powerful sonic expressions in the career of
the band. This album is the literal representation of its title's
meaning–a melding of anarchy and genius. Words really do fail to
describe what it's like to experience listening to the album as
intended, it's very akin to a
meditation/effervescence/psychedelic/orgasm experience. People have
come to deep understandings about themselves in front of my eyes
while listening to this album. If that's not what music is all about,
I don't know what is.
I'm so glad that The Flaming Lips are
the Pink Floyd of my generation (and as such, why there's no Pink
Floyd represented on this list except the specters of their
influence.)
Nine Inch Nails - The Fragile (1999)
This is what it sounds like to fall
apart. Pink Floyd's The Wall was a world of cold isolation of the
world beating its way inwards. This is what happens after you go
'Outside The Wall'. The world is harsh, over expectant and doesn't
give a shit about your latest tragedy because you're a rock star so
you should be grateful as you laugh on the way to the bank.
The Fragile sprawls two discs on its
journey to nowhere. Held together by two intertwining musical themes,
The Fragile explores nothing cheery. Tainted sex, death, suicide,
failure of self-actualization, loss of hope/friends/family,
frustration, and stagnation all rear their heads through instrument
and voice. Trent Reznor's meticulous production adds a claustrophobic
feeling to densely packed songs such as 'Somewhat Damaged', 'No You
Don't', and 'Complication' while the sparseness of 'The Frail', 'Even
Deeper', and 'I'm Looking Forward to Joining You Finally' makes you
wish there was anything to hide behind.
The Fragile is not a party album, it's
a headphones album. Another album where something new can be
discovered with every listen, where instead of a cluster of
verse/chorus/verse Industrial Rock songs you get two hours of
textures laid upon textures upon song components. Still heavy and in
your face while on the next track you end up in a room with no
windows and something breathing a quiet breakdown into your ear. It
welcomes you 'Somewhat Damaged' and leaves you 'Ripe (With Decay)'.
Daft Punk - Discovery (2001)
Two robots from France made an awesome dance record back in the beginning of the Millennium. It was part
story, part party album and all grooving. As a straight up House
album, it falls flat and that's why it's great. Daft Punk already
proved they can make a standard EDM album with Homework. With
Discovery, it asks the listener to approach it with a childlike sense
of wonder, to step out of your zone of cool. 'One More Time' could be
an embarrassing song to be caught listening to if it didn't make
everyone want to jump up and move till sweat's beading all over your
skin. 'Something About Us' is a tender love ballad that wouldn't be
out of place in a porn movie. Sampling 'Harder, Better, Faster,
Stronger' made Kanye West seem relevant after the world got bored of
Late Registration.
Every song on this album has been, can
be, and will continue to be dropped or reworked by DJ's around the
world. Discovery's scope is wide and pulls you along for the ride
before you even realize it's been an hour and 'Too Long' has been
going on for "too long" (after all, you felt it after the
first few, "Can you feel it"'s).
Coupled with the DVD Anime Interstella
5555 it makes for a full audio/visual epic story about being a
hijacked Alien pop star. Worth the watch as well as a listen.
Explosions in the Sky - The Earth Is
Not A Cold Dead Place (2003)
If the world ever gets upset enough at
Texas to try and wipe it off the map, Explosions in the Sky would be
the only thing worth saving the state on this weight of this album
(sorry, Richard Linklater). 'First Breath After the Coma' opens the
series of 5 songs that never dip below 8 minutes in length, creating
a sweeping and fluid connection of music for 45 minutes. Explosions
In the Sky's post-rock offerings are always a full experience. They
don't just have series of songs, they write movements much in the
same vein as Richard Strauss' tone poems of the late 1800's.
Dynamically shifting from settled to storm, from liquid fluidity to
bombastic chop, chiming out with sustained harmonics and
unconventional instrument sounds from a standard rock band set up.
Each song is a long sprawling movement
of beauty, bringing smiles just as easily as tears of joy and sorrow.
It almost makes you believe that The Earth isn't a cold and dead
place just by virtue of this album being.
Queens of the Stone Age - Lullabies to
Paralyze (2005)
It's easy to paralyze yourself by
snapping your neck. It's easy to snap your neck by nodding your head
in agreement with how much this album fucking ROCKS. Queens of the
Stone Age has been an outlet for awesome hard rocking since their
debut and Lullabies to Paralyze is by far their best offering. Song
for song, especially in the context of the full album, very few other
albums can contend with how well written, produced and performed LtP
is.
Plunking out a pretty melody on a toy
piano, crooning in a gravely falsetto, carving out chunky low end
power chords to rattle your bong, then shredding a psychedelic solo
all in the space of the same song is the norm for this album. From
heady whisky blues soaked hard rock, to wailing guitars and staccato
groove metal, and even some fun little bits tossed in at the end to
round out the flavor, Lullabies to Paralyze keeps itself firmly
planted in greatest album territory.
Kinetic Stereokids - Kid Moves (2009)
This is the album I imagine the least
amount of people have heard and that's really fucking sad.
Kinetic Stereokids is a band that I'm
not sure is together anymore, but when they were they made some of
the most amazing music I've ever heard. Their mix of Alternative,
Rap, Folk, Electronic and Experimental forms of music meld together
in an odd melange. It's like if Beck didn't take himself so seriously
and did a Pet Sounds or Piper at the Gates of Dawn mash up cover album
while he was supposed to be writing Odelay. Or Animal Collective if
they had distortion pedals, turntables and less goofy lyrics.
Kid Moves is a schizophrenic mix of
complimentary conflicting genres. 'Have a Nice Day' stomps like a
southern Baptist church revival junk blues. 'Twisted Thoughts'
samples old personal development records on top of a trip-hop beat
and melancholy guitar leads with catchy lyrics laid on top. 'Assisted
Living' is an acoustic, high energy, power pop song that bleeds into
its partner track 'Convalescent Feelings', which turns the tempo on
its head and cranks the reverb up to 11 with the eerie chanting of
"Convalescent feelings take me away". Their second, rappin'
vocalist, takes the lead on tracks like the palm muted 'Proper
Etiquette' and psychedelic 'Drugs is a Drag' with the majority of the
vocals being a somewhat frail, sometimes warbled, but always aching
in its beauty.
Overall, Kid Moves is the most playful
and unpredictable of this list. Twelve songs of incredible
composition that is little like anything else that came before. In
the whole musically dark decade of the 00's, Kid Moves by Kinetic
Stereokids is a capper to the whole awful mess of new jacks smeared
in white foundation and running mascara that makes it all worth the
drollness of the mainstream music scene we had to share.
(This isn't actually the song Christopher picked, but 'Planes With Teeth' doesn't seem to be on Youtube.)
That's the list! Read it, learn something new, maybe find a new jam or two. Don't forget to follow Christopher at Recycled Hot Air! V for Vendetta coming soon!
Well, now that Marvelman is all done, and V for Vendetta is well underway, it's time for something different to whet our appetites both intellectual and scatological. As sort of a thread connecting us here with Klen House Radio I'm happy to announce the imminent arrival of new column Sound'a'Roundus: Top 13 Album lists from bloggers, musicians, film-makers and whoever else from around our lovely web. We kick off soon enough with Christopher Bollweg, he of Recycled Hot Air, and what should be an enlightening set of records. Dig it!
