Review: Swamp Thing #50

Last week I reviewed Dark Crisis:The Deadly Green, a one shot tied to Dark Crisis On Infinite Earths and a definite homage to the classic Swamp Thing #50 from 1986. During the review I wondered if folks not familiar with the source material might not appreciate the issue as much as someone like me, someone who knows this book by heart. 

I love this issue. It came out at just the right time for me, in the middle of my teen years when comics were suddenly akin to literature and not juvenile nonsense. It seems almost silly to sing the praises of Alan Moore's Swamp Thing or the art stylings of Stephen Bissette, John Totleben, and Rick Veitch. But if you haven't read that run, you should. It is brilliant and stands up today.

With the homage fresh in my mind, I figured why not review Swamp Thing #50 here. It is one of my favorite issues of all time and why not shed some light on why I liked Deadly Green so much.

Sit back and prepare to be amazed. Everything about this book sings. It is hard to believe but the character of John Constantine was just a year old at this point. Some of the character aftermath of this issue stuck for years, even today. The art is utterly lush. 

On to the book.

Back Issue Bin: DC Comics Presents #97

Last month I took a deep dive into the Phantom Zone mini-series, a super bizarre mini-series written by Steve Gerber with art by Gene Colan. That mini-series was a trippy look at the Zone, redefining it as an extension of a being called Aethyr, the Oversoul. Aethyr had recently been reintroduced by Phillip Kennedy Johnson in Superman and Becky Cloonan and Michael Conrad in Wonder Woman.

But I knew there was one more Aethyr appearance I needed to cover, DC Comics Presents #97. the last issue of the series! This is one of those wacky books, a pre-Crisis tale which hit the stands a full 6 months after Crisis on Infinte Earths ended. 

This is written by Steve Gerber and is clearly a sequel to the Phantom Zone villain mini-series, picking up elements of that story directly. It has serious consequences. It ends on a cliffhanger, a story which could never be followed up on given the end of this continuity. The question I have is when was this paid for. Was this sitting in a drawer? Did Gerber pitch it as a 'pretty please' vanity project to put out before the pre-Crisis universe disappeared forever? It is a 38 page doozy which makes me think it might have been held for an Annual or a Special before Crisis made all that disappear.

The pace is also interesting as the front half is a sort of re-primer of the Phantom Zone with some of this story taking place on Krypton, with origins of Zod, Kru-El, and Faora again. It is only the back half where we get back into the insanity.

The art is by Rick Veitch, someone I know mostly from Swamp Thing. The story is bizarre and horrific enough that I think Veitch is a great fit for that. 

And while Supergirl isn't in this, there is a key scene which tangentially touches her history, one I covered here before.

On to the book. Buckle in! I don't know if I can make any sense of what is happening here.