Pop a bottle of Champagne everybody because today you get to participate in the release of ComicsVerse’s 50th podcast! We have been through everything from Jean Grey’s role as the Dark Phoenix to Gene Luen Yang’s AMERICAN BORN CHINESE to the Greatest Couples in Comic History. ComicsVerse Podcast co-hosts Justin Gilbert Alba, Kathy Wisneski and panelists Kay Honda, Nolan Bensen and yours truly, Ms. Jamie Rice, are taking on a classic work of spectacular writing and art: Alan Moore’s run on THE SAGA OF SWAMP-THING.

READ: Where We Stand: A Look at Women in Comics using Alan Moore’s WATCHMEN through the lens of Laura Mulvey’s “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.”

Originally created by Len Wein and Bernie Wrightson, THE SAGA OF SWAMP-THING is the story of Alec Holland. A scientist working in Louisiana, Holland is working on a magical formula to restore the forest when a bomb planted by his supposed friend gives him an intense chemical burn. Holland falls into the swamp and instead of dying he becomes the Swamp-Thing bent on revenge. However, while this beginning leaves a lot of room for thrilling horror stories and situations the premise was never revealed to be as meaningful as it could be until Alan Moore got his grimy hands on it. I point this out because we did not read the first 20 issues of THE SAGA OF SWAMP-THING for the podcast about origin stories. Instead, we read the entirety of Alan Moore’s run because the origin I have related is re-imagined in dare I say it, a more meaningful and thematically valuable way by Moore.

From psychedelic panels that depict the forbidden love shared between the Swamp-Thing and Abby to heartbreaking stories of exile to a planet far far away, Moore found a way to reinvigorate this property in ways that still resonate today. THE SAGA OF SWAMP-THING is so impressive and complex that in our typical attempt to analyze characters using Susan Batson’s TRUTH, we found ourselves arguing that we may never be able to understand the Swamp-Thing’s motivation, need, public persona, and tragic flaw because we couldn’t even decide how human he was.

If you love tough questions that lead to more questions than answers then you’re totally gonna love this; So pop a bottle, and sit back with your favorite swamp creature for an hour or two of debate on ComicVerse’s 50th podcast about the origin of the THE SAGA OF SWAMP-THING.

The following members of the ComicsVerse family were a part of the panel for this podcast:

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