Swamp Thing Is Coming Home

According to Rich Johnston's Bleeding Cool website, DC Comics is about to return the Swamp Thing to the DC Universe. If you don't follow comics, then you might be scratching your head right now and wondering just where he's returning from.

Well, in the 90s, DC created the Vertigo imprint as a place where they could publish more mature stories. Neil Gaiman's Sandman, the post-Alan Moore Swamp Thing, Hellblazer (John Constantine), Preacher, Y The Last Man, and many other sophisticated, non-superhero titles have been released under the Vertigo banner in the past two decades.

Because DC wanted to avoid sending young readers of the DC Universe titles off in search of (theoretically) unobtainable "mature readers" Vertigo offerings, there's been a standing order, pretty much from Vertigo's creation, that characters not cross back and forth between the DCU and the Vertigo line. Thus, for example, Swamp Thing has not shown up in any mainstream DC title since the early 90s. That sort of separation has always made sense to me. In fact, though, even under the Vertigo umbrella, Swamp Thing has been virtually invisible of late, which was probably a conscious decision by the powers that be. Sidelining the character was presumably done to prepare him for a return to the all-ages domain of the main imprint. (Something similar was done with the Doom Patrol characters, who went from DCU to Vertigo, then disappeared for awhile before finding themselves back with an all-ages DC Comics title several years ago.)

Considering that no writer after Moore ever really seemed to get as much mileage out of Swampy as the British madman did, I guess this is a reasonable move. There's nothing about the character that precludes him from being used in more traditional stories... I just hope they aren't planning to undo all of the great work that Moore wrought upon him. It should be interesting to see. For years, I suspect that DC wouldn't have done this for fear of pissing off Alan and providing another reason for the writer not to come back to work for the company. By now, though, there probably isn't a person working at DC Comics who still believes Moore would ever contemplate such a move for even a heartbeat. Which means that DC really has nothing to lose in this matter. Of course, if they handle Swamp Thing's return as clumsily and artistically-poorly as they did the Doom Patrol's, they also probably have very little to gain by it.