Swamp Thing Vol. 4: A Murder of Crows | Alan Moore | Did I mention the deity nature of Allen...

Swamp Thing Vol. 4: A Murder of Crows | Alan Moore | Alan Moore on the Crisis

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Swamp Thing Vol. 4...

	Swamp Thing Vol. 4: A Murder of Crows Alan Moore Vertigo, 2001 - 192 pages average customer review:based on 11 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

How did the DC character most noted for simplicity handle thehyper-complexity of the Crisis on Infinite Earths? In the ever-able hands of Alan Moore, Swamp Thing: A Murder of Crows rises above the mid-1980s corporate reorganization to grant our hero his apotheosis into his current plant elemental form. Fans of John Constantine will eat up the smart-aleck astral con man's performance throughout, and the central struggle--uniting good and evil against something much bigger and older than either--is classic Moore. The art is bold and beautiful, organic by necessity, and contributes as much to the reader's suspense as the script. It seems that Moore et al. have spent so much time transcending their medium that they may have created a new one of their own. --Rob Lightner

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Did I mention the deity nature of Allen Moore?...

This book is no exception. "Murder..." continues the story started in "The Curse." Crisis was a cheesy, albeit necessary, method of fixing the many continuity errors that had developed in the DC Universe. Leave it to Moore to take this complicated plot correction and turn it into a significant development for the soon-to-be Vertigo line.

Alan Moore on the Crisis

This book is a consolidation of everything that is good about Alan Moore's run at the Swamp Thing series. He once again takes a standard superhero-type occurance from the DC Universe, in this case the famous Crisis on Infinite Earths, and gives it his special spin. Swamp Thing is an American fairytale, a superhero book, and an epic piece of literature all rolled in to one. If you've never read Swamp Thing, I urge you to jump in where Alan Moore takes over. Comic book fans will not be disappointed and those who aren't familiar with comics will find a new medium of art to enjoy. Highly recommended!

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The mother of all battles...

...is the apex in this Fourth Volume of the Alan Moore helmed issues #43 - 50 of D.C. Comics, 'The Swamp Thing.' But before this battle occurs some interesting things take place. For starters we get an imaginative hallucinatory ride as two people under different circumstances eat servings of the Swamp Thing's 'yam fruit,' and experience vibrant psychedelic journeys that change their lives in one way or another. The Swamp Thing also does battle with a serial killer, faces a legion of ghosts in a Winchester Mystery House-esque haunted mansion, stumbles into violent chaos when parallel worlds collide, learns some new Elemental tricks while meeting his ancestors, and finally faces off with the ancient tribe of Warlocks - the Brujeria - who are bent on unleashing an ancient evil that will destroy Heaven itself. From this point, the last few chapters build up too a whopper of a climax in the ultimate battle between dark and light that the universe has ever seen.

Definitely a great volume in this series as it offers fans everything that they've come to expect while taking it to new metaphysical heights and thus gearing readers for some intersting twists to come.

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A Foundation of Veritgo Comics; Sophisticated, if not Suspenseful

After following the manipulative John Constantine to several incidents of evil, Swamp Thing begins to develop doubts about his place in the universe. But before he can deal with that, he must participate in the Crisis on Infinite Earths, and an evil cult's plan to attack Heaven after the Crisis is resolved.

"Swamp Thing: A Murder of Crows" is the fourth volume of Alan Moore's work, and in many ways is the most eclectic. The central focus is Swamp Thing's role in the overarching approach of a truly horrendous threat, standing alongside a group of the DC universe's greatest sorcerers and supernatural characters. But there are some interesting small stories, as a few people experiment with roots grown from Swamp Thing's body, and experience life in a new way; a serial killer stalks his prey in the swamps; and Swamp Thing discovers something about the nature of swamp elementals.

While Moore almost certainly didn't intend it, "A Murder of Crows" is a foundation stone for what eventually became DC's Vertigo line. Various writers, chief among them Neil Gaiman, picked up many of the ideas Moore threw into the Swamp Thing pot and ran with them in other books, and certainly the existentialist approach to super-heroics Moore brought to Swamp Thing has been a common thing in all super-hero books since (for good and for ill).

As to the merits of this volume: the overall quality is good, but the presence of the rest of the DCU tends to deflate some of the strong horror elements that Moore had incorporated into the series in previous volumes. The dark threat is tied into the Crisis, however indirectly, and so the overall tone is far more the conventional adventure story. The art, by a collection of top notch talent, is still surreal and just a tad creepy, which is generally a good thing, except for scenes depicting the gathering of super-heroes, where it looks out of place.

While this volume is sophisticated, it's not the suspense the old cover blurb promised. Rather, it's an adventure novel with suspenseful undertones. Moore and company provided excellent storytelling that changed the industry, mostly for the better. Read here to see the prototypical Vertigo.

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Graphic SF Reader

Coming up to the fiftieth issue of Swamp Thing, and also the time of Crisis On Infinite Earths.

This time, Swamp Thing needs some help, and he ends up in an alliance of a whole bunch of the groovy magical and supernatural characters that DC has floating around, including The Phantom Stranger and Deadman. Magic vs Magic to keep Heaven intact, that sort of thing.

There are trippy bits here, too, as eating bits of Swamp Thing can do odd things to your mind.

reviews: page 1, 2, 3

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