Traditionally non-verbal and alien consciousness characters present comic creators with a unique creative license with regard to how they tell those character’s stories. The modern reader is receptive to more exposition and internal monologue within these narratives because the characters in question think and relate to the world in a wildly different way. One of the most bizarre and entertaining examples of this creative license is Alan Moore’s reimagination of the Swamp Thing. This second incarnation of the character, more vegetable than man, is acutely attuned to the “Green,” Moore’s construct of the interconnected natural world, and consequently sees and interacts with the world as an extension and advocate for that “alien” worldview. Not only does this allow for a uniquely leafy interpretation of the character’s adventures in a visual sense, with series regulars John Totleben and Stephen Bissette running wild with organic artwork, it allows Moore’s narration, internal or otherwise, to inform the visuals establishing context rather than falling into the category of over-narration. 

In order to understand the context for and implications of the bizarre violation that takes place in Swamp Thing no. 60, processing the events and explorations of Moore that led him to that issue is very important. We must have an understanding of Swamp Thing’s intimate, sensual relationship with Abby Arcane, the effects of his death and disconnection with the Green, but we also need to acknowledge the unique interplay between visual and prose language unique to Moore’s Swamp Thing which makes the bizarre success of no. 60 possible.  

This analytical journey must begin 26 issues prior to the events of issue 60 where Alan Moore and artist Stephen Bissette first explore the comic book language of Swamp Thing’s psychedelic and sensual intimacy with the love of his life, Abigail Arcane. In one of the sweetest and most sex positive issues in comic history, Abigail and Swampy Thing discuss their inability to consummate their intimate relationship physically because of their physiological incompatibility. Both understanding that the kind of intimacy that a healthy physical relationship contributes to can be achieved without the physical component, Swamp Thing offers up a Green world alternative. He produces a fruit from his body that once eaten allows Abigail a window into Swampy’s consciousness. She is able to perceive the natural world through Swamp Thing’s connection with the Green, and serves as translator and interpreter for us the audience through this beautiful, alien, and intimate encounter. 

With a human intermediary between the audience and Swamp Thing’s Green World perspective Moore simultaneously familiarizes and alienates said audience as Abigail fails to find the language to express the overstimulation indicated by Bissette’s artwork. As an audience hungry to understand the internal perceptions of our favorite Swamp themed hero (Man-Thing and the Heap notwithstanding) we don’t resent Abigail’s at times confused and effusive narration as Moore dances beautifully between casting light and shadow on how the Green one thinks. The balancing act allows us just enough insight to understand the intimacy of the experience afforded to Miss Arcane, but the language used is just poetic and metaphorical enough to express to us that this is how the experience is being interpreted, there being inadequate language available to accurately describe the situation. These passages and their metaphorical prose are brought so much closer to realization with the interwoven visual story elements of collage and cacophony courtesy of Stephen Bissette. Somewhere between the wash of visual foliage and Abigail’s musical internal monologue (right) is how Swamp Thing actually perceives the world, and we’re so much closer to an understanding of that point of view because of the unique contrast and combination of the comic book form.

By the time we get to issue 56 the intimate security and status quo of issue 34 has changed dramatically. Swamp Thing was thought to be destroyed following his siege on Gotham City when his connection to the Green was severed and he was burned alive. Alone, terrified, and completely untethered from the elemental world of Earth, Swamp Thing was flung across the void of space until his consciousness sprouted on a completely different world. A world whose guiding organic elemental force was blue instead of green. 

Moore’s examination of the interaction between Swamp Thing and the Blue as opposed to the Green adds a layer of nuance to the audience’s understanding of the character’s perspective but also of Swamp Thing’s biological imperative. Using the familiar fish-out-of water narrative frame for Swamp Thing’s navigation of the Blue, Moore, Rick Veitch, and Alfredo Alcala work in unison to convey the alienation experienced by our hero as the fabric of his being is rearranged into his adopted body of blue. We are grateful for Moore’s effusive narration (left), “My killers dislocated my electroskeleton...bent the clear note of my being out of pitch...out of harmony with the Earth.” as Swamp Thing conveys his isolation, the strangeness of his disconnect with the Earth, and the alien (even to him) experience of being made up of blue organic matter instead of green. This quality of the Swamp Thing consciousness, the germ-like instinct to envelop and be reshaped within the existing organic material and structure of an alien environment is a concept uniquely captured by the comic form and affords us further understanding of Swamp Thing. As we progress from our experience of his communion with the green through our human narrator, Abigail Arcane in issue 34 to Swamp Thing’s internal monologue detailing his communion with alien organic matter in issue 56 we come to better understand the otherness of his experience. By this time the poetically surreal prose of Moore narration is firmly established, not as over-narration, but necessary context, the vital bridge between the Green one’s organic instincts and our human understanding. This proves invaluable as we turn the pages of our main focus, issue 60 of Swamp Thing. 

“Loving the Alien” chronicles another of Swamp Thing’s consciousness “jumps” through space and the beautiful, painful, and nearly inscrutable meeting between his consciousness and the mecha-organism Technis. Its visual language is uniquely abstract and bizarre as artist John Totleben abandons panel structure for almost dadaist collages of pipes, organic matter, clockwork, and data. The organic, mechanical, and alien consummation, or sensual fusion of Swamp Thing and the mech-a-womb alien makes necessary the interruption of familiar and rectangular narration by virtue of its strangeness and indecipherability. We are comforted by the familiarity of the narration even though Technis herself is our narrator because Moore has trained us in issues 34 and 56 to trust his context framing prose. Though our narrator is alien, her narration is our guiding light in the darkness of her womb. The regularity and rigidity of the narrative panels in this issue violate, puncture, and interrupt the surreal imagery the way Swamp Thing and Technis, violate and interrupt one another.

Note how uniquely alien John Totleben’s artwork seems when Technis’ internal monologue is removed (right). This is stark and unusual even within the context of the Swamp Thing visual language. There is a skeletal vaguely Swamp Thing shaped figure in the bottom left emerging from some blackened ekg near-forest but the minimalist collage of calculator and Technis herself is indecipherable without context, to say nothing of the link between the two within the issue. In issues 34 and 56 there was enough visual context to give the reader at least a vague sense of what was taking place, but in issue 60 Moore has taken the combination of surrealist prose and wild visual cacophony to its very extreme as neither the visuals nor the narration function or enlighten without the other.

With Technis’ narration reintegrated (left) there’s almost an audible sigh of reader’s relief, as the shape if not exactly the true nature of the techo-organism and greenworld germ’s fusion and violation become more clear. In Technis’ own confusion and search for the correct terminology to describe their interaction we are welcomed into her worldview and her perception of Swamp Thing, though her vocabulary of chrono-organic processes would serve to confound us further. But thanks to Moore’s training we understand the language of the alien internal monologue; because we understand Swamp Thing’s biological imperative and integration of the lome of his newly discovered environment from issue 56 and the sensual visual language of his communion with Abigail Arcane in issue 34, we understand the kind of violent intimacy Technis and Swamp Thing are experiencing. We also understand that the language of Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing series is a tool for approaching understanding, but not necessarily clarity; that the cognitive space between the strange abstract visual style and Moore’s dreamy surreal prose is where we might closer perceive the world the way Swamp Thing and Technis do. 

“Loving the Alien” is not a difficult issue to read, but its comic book language, its particular combination of visual and prose elements, is unique to Alan Moore’s vision for the series and could therefore, alienate and confound its readers. However, with the foundation laid in issues 34 and 56 Alan Moore teaches his audience how to better understand the vegetable consciousness of the Swamp Thing and the alien interactions between him and the vegetation and mecha-organisms in outer space. Issue 60 stands as an attempt to transcribe alien consciousness through the lens of the reader’s understanding of a more familiar, though no less strange consciousness, and it’s success is a testament to the power of the series’ hybrid language of prose and visual elements. 

One of the first titles that came to mind when I began constructing this series was Matt Kindt and Marco Rudy’s 2013 mini-series Marvel Knights: Spider-Man. This arc, titled, “99 Problems…” is one of the most challenging, exhausting, and difficult stories in comics but I return to it time and again, and I cajole my friends into reading it again and again, because it is a unique triumph in comic book storytelling. 
 
These issues present a sort of accelerated and agitated stream of conscience as Parker spirals under the relentless pinging of his spider-sense, the hallucinatory poison he’s been exposed to, and the gnawing effects of exhaustion. Naturally the visual representation of these traditionally understood altered states are made even more complex and intense by the super-human perception facilitated by the spider-sense. The result is a dizzying combination of narration, dialogue, and one of the most headache-producing visual cacophonies I’ve ever experienced. The panels, such as they are, hurt to read and as Spidey loses time and jumps from villain to villain, and the audience must resign themselves to pulling back and letting the art happen to them in order to avoid getting lost in the dizzying spiral created by the art. 
 
This miniseries constitutes another prime example of comics actively resisting scholarship by their very nature. These pages are so visually dense and include such intricate and unusual “panel” layouts that including them in their original form here constitutes a cut and paste nightmare. Panel has been deliberately put in quotes to indicate that “panel” is not an accurate description of how Rudy has divided up his work. Rudy’s style of layout is more akin to a snapshot collage than the way “traditional” comics are organized. It’s almost inaccurate to analyze these issues as being divided up into individual pages as the number of 2, 3, and even 4-page layouts work together and at odds with one another to maintain the overstimulated narrative frame over the course of the 5 issues. I also wanted to include another quick note about the difficulty of quoting and researching within the comic genre; I have had to make use of my individual physical issues of this series, my digital version through Comixology, and my trade paperback (TBP) edition to confirm the original layouts and page groupings for this discussion. This needed to be confirmed in the first place because of the inclusion of advertising pages in the original single issues. The TPB version of the series made use of a few intentionally blank pages in order to present the splash pages and 2-page spreads accurate to the original release, while these spacer pages were not included in the digital edition. While this arrangement in the TPB edition serves to accurately present these 2-page sections, reading the original single issues, you quickly realize that some of the pages are isolated and presented on the left page because of an advertisement rather than being on the right as they are in the TPB version. This contextual accuracy and understanding of the limitations and compromises involved in laying out a comic script raises some questions as to the “most accurate” vs the “most accessible” version of a comic book arc which further complicates accurately citing and analyzing the comic book genre. 
 
The story of 99 Problems begins with Peter Parker on his way to a dodgy freelance photography gig that he’s agreed to shoot to make ends meet, and Rudy uses the image of unspooling and damaged camera film throughout the series perhaps as a metaphorical representation of his rejection of the traditional panel form but also as a commentary on its limitations. This is perhaps most dramatically implemented on the first page of issue 3 (below). 

Though Peter’s internal narration informs us that the images presented within the individual frames of film in the unspooling roll are how the World War II veteran processed his near death experience, the visual metaphor (here reinforced by the narration) extends and applies to Peter’s own simultaneous internal and external experience of his heightened state of perception. The repetition of these film roll sections of art in the previous 2 issues and their purpose as representations of Peter’s experience are brought into focus by his meditation on meeting with the WWII veteran. On this page Spider-Man is simultaneously above and below the film and we can link up this spool of film with the previous examples of this imagery projecting that Spidey is also in the frame of those photographs as well.

​Rudy’s use of the camera film spool is perhaps his most palatable technique used within this 5-issue arc. Rudy’s layouts and what take the place of panels twist and morph with each new threat that presents itself to Spider-Man and they often take their shape from the particular villain who’s entered the fray or the new environment the web-slinger has found himself in. In issue no. 2 the film roll portions are depicted in the style of air safety procedure cards with bright color schemes and simple and clear figures (right).

In issue no. 3 as Spidey crosses webs with Carnage and Venom the stringy sinews of the symbiotes twist and coil around the borders of the action sequences, culminating on a page (left) where it appears that all the brawling occurs between the eyes and teeth of the symbiotes. ​

In issue 4 the pages framing Peter’s avian adversaries Leland Owlsley (The Owl) and Adrian Toomes (The Vulture) are beautiful 2-page spreads (right) whose borders make up almost hieroglyphic outlines of birds. 


Finally, in issue 5 there are 4 pages whose layouts are contained within the outline of the massive body of the Kingpin, the mastermind behind the madness Spidey has been battling. These pages present Fisk’s head as the sinister moon looking down upon the carnage he’s created and these images culminate in a breathtaking 2-page spread (below) laid out like an Aztec temple with Fisk’s head above the utter chaos of limbs, bruises, and violence of Parker’s final stretch of villains. ​

​It is not my position that the easiest to read comics are the most effective. It is my claim that a Comic is most effective when the artwork and script are so well balanced that if the comic is difficult to read it is not impossible to do so and the complexities that make the comic difficult to read are put into place purposefully, deliberately. What I mean to model through the example of this Marvel Knight’s Mini-series is that “99 Problems” is visually dense and difficult to read, but there is indeed a method, or in this case multiple methods, to the madness. Within the frame of a sensorily bombarded Spider-Man story, not only does the seemingly manic organization of the art contribute to reinforcing that frame but it also shifts and adapts to the subject matter as it progresses. Rudy’s collage style of layout while exhausting and fatiguing to read is clever enough to realize that the visual language of the Spidey-sense going haywire continuously over a 5-issue arc could be written off as repetitive and unimaginative. These adjectives could never be applied to Rudy’s work on this arc.

Comics are not central to the discussion of literary criticism and perhaps that makes sense. Comics seem to actively resist scholarship, even from the elementary stages of annotation and bookmarking the quality of the individual issues’ paper is often too fragile, or too cheap to support a good highlighting and tab session. Even quoting a comic book becomes difficult as pulling dialogue and describing the artwork is ineffective and even disingenuous as the visual context is necessary, essential to understanding the effect of the dialogue. But comics resist scholarly investigation because of their content as well and it’s not in the ways you might think. The comic book is still considered by many to be a children’s medium but the storytelling is by no means juvenile. If anything, Comics resist scholarship because of their complexity as a medium, their nature as individual components in a massive shared narrative, and their necessary combination of two very different storytelling methods: graphic and written narratives. 

Effective lettering and panel layouts, at least to Romance and Germanic language readers, understand the reader’s desire to read right to left across a comic books’ panels, strategically placing speech bubbles and panel borders to accentuate the art in subtle and effective ways. Take this two panel section from issue 9 of Joe Henderson and Lee Garbett’s series from Image Comics Skyward (2018):

As the reader moves from the first panel to the second across the page left to right revealing the bound and gagged Roger Barrow their eye is drawn back to the the left where that second panel’s dialogue begins. Then you pass over the bound figure once again as your eye finishes reading the panel, art work included on the right side. 

This diagonal trajectory of the the eye is the quickest and most subtle device used here but it is also the most important. By the time you have finished reading these two panels for the first time, you have effectively “read the art” 3 different times. 
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Understanding the logistics of drawing the eye to a specific point is a necessary skill in the artist’s tool belt but in comics the script writer and the letterer must be aware of and able to manipulate these focal points in order to effectively incorporate dialogue and exposition to lead the eye of the reader where it needs to go. 

Now if we look at a full page of the same issue of Skyward where the same creative team seems to contradict the trajectory of the eye in the first two panels I showed you we can discuss how we read that page differently:

​Now on this page the dialogue bubbles seem to divert you around the bulk of the second panel’s art and down to the final three. 

But if we pay particular attention to what the dialogue in that second panel reveals to us, that Willa Fowler’s pursuers are wearing jetpacks, our eyes are drawn to the left side of that panel to investigate that revelation before returning to the next bit of dialogue. 

In this way every component of the comic, all of the creative team, contributes to how your eye passes over and processes the images in front of it. And take note that Willa’s line, “Jetpacks?! Well that’s unfair.” would seem to be more expositional than might be necessary until we look at that panel again to discover that Garbett’s thugs are wearing backpacks of some sort, but Willa’s line tells us that they are in fact jetpacks. Without this line, we can’t be sure that they are wearing on their backs because of the perspective from which Garbett chose to draw them. 

Skyward is an example of a comic whose core concept, a world without gravity, lends itself to visual exposition perhaps better than most comics but it also serves as a model for the shared universe shorthand that has developed in Marvel and DC comics throughout their publication history. In Skyward you don’t have to be reminded panel to panel that the effect of gravity has been reduced because you know the context of the world from the beginning. Gold and Silver Age comics had a knack of over-narrating from panel to panel, seeming to constantly remind the reader of the context, or the world in which the comic was taking place. 

Take this panel (right) from page 18 of Fantastic Four (1961) no. 1 in which Reed Richards (Mr. Fantastic) spells out exactly what he is doing to combat the three-headed monster the Fantastic Four have found guarding Monster Isle. Not only does Reed describe the actions artist Jack Kirby has brought to life, but he also tells the audience his name, reminding them of the moniker “Mr. Fantastic.” This repetition and over-narration throughout the Gold and Silver Ages of Comics served to firmly establish a character’s identity and power set so that anyone picking up the odd issue for the first time was quickly brought up to speed. But even at this early stage there was something to be said for the showing vs telling method of comic book scripting. 

In this panel (left) from the very same page of Fantastic Four no.1 Kirby’s depiction of Johnny Storm’s impromptu use of Reed as a parachute is allowed to speak for itself as Stan Lee’s narration in the previous panel firmly established that Mr. Fantastic is able to stretch his body like a rubber band. 

Even as early as Batman’s first appearances in Detective Comics circa 1961 this tendency to over-narrate even with as dynamic and captivating a figure as the Batman was in full effect. If we look at the  third panel (below) from the first page of Detective Comics no. 31 we see that the narration of that panel, while atmospheric and foreboding, is ultimately superfluous as the the information we’re given by the artwork is exactly the same. 

Now in present day comics, we don’t see Silver Surfer’s internal monologue which tells us he must summon his power cosmic to match might with the thundering hills of Ego the Living Planet. But I believe this tradition of over-narrating and over-monologuing throughout the years has made it easier for our modern superhero comics to lean on the presumption that the audience knows a hero’s power set. Because of the nature of comics’ shared universe narrative structure and the self referential shorthand which is facilitated by that structure, comic readers have been trained to account for gaps in continuity and to side-step crossover exposition and character appearances as they move along the narrative within a single issue. The audience understands that the shared comic book universe has numerous storylines progressing through the lenses of it’s other characters while the events of their own book are unfolding before them. It is this awareness and acknowledgement of the shared continuity of the comic book universe which has contributed to the move away from overly expositional narration and dialogue in today’s comics. We now understand the visual queues of Superman’s X-ray vision showing him dangers out of sight, we understand that the comic specific onomatopoeias “snikt” and “thwip” mean Logan’s popped his claws and Spidey’s about to swing into action, and we know the shimmering energy coming from Norrin Radd’s hands is his Power Cosmic with no added context. I believe we know these things so intimately because of their repetition, because of how comics have trained us to bridge issue and fictional world continuities as we read, and because the visual elements of comic books are so rich in content that they are the most efficient tools for filling in narrative gaps.​

To illustrate how effective the combination of art, text, and shared narrative shorthand can be take this panel (left) from Peter Parker: The Spectacular Spider-Man (2017) no. 309. This panel’s entire context can be drawn without any outside clues because of the strength of the shared universe narrative and the combination of its text and art. Every element in this panel is necessary, the tiny red hand, the squiggly grey rope connecting the hand and the building, the building itself, the swirling tornado of sand, and finally the onomatopoeic clincher, “Thwip.” The “Thwip” is so important in this panel because of its function as Marvel Universe shorthand, identifying the tiny red-gloved hand as Spider-Man’s, the grey rope as webbing, and simultaneously informing us that the sand tornado is the work of William “Flint” Marko aka Sandman, a known foe of Spidey. But this single piece of text doesn’t just tell us who we’re dealing with, it tells us where we are, or where we could be. Without knowing that red-glove belongs to Spider-Man and that the swirling vortex that’s swallowed him up is Sandman, for all we know that could be a red-gloved cowboy caught up in a sinister dust storm in the middle of a frontier town in the wild west who’s managed to lasso a nearby building and is holding on for dear life. But because we know “Thwip” means Spider-Man, and Spider-Man lives in New York we know where we are, and we reinforce who we’re dealing with, because Sandman is a New York City villain. This nonsense word despite being nonsense carries with it the weight of the comic book universe that created it, the universe without which, it would not exist and it’s inclusion in a panel as rich and dynamic as the one we’ve been discussing radically effects how that panel is interpreted and I would argue that it is able to do so because of the Gold and Silver Age tendency to over-narrate the actions of its characters. 

In this series I aim to examine individual issues and specific runs from several comic publishers to analyze how the interaction of visual art, text narration and dialogue, and shared universe shorthand produces effective and entertaining comics, challenging but rewarding comics, but also how unbalancing those 3 elements can produce comics that miss their mark.