The Unsuccessfully Repressed Past in Alan Moore’s “Swamp Thing”

A few years back, after reading Qiana J. Whitted’s essay, “Of Slaves and Other Swamp Things: Black Southern History as Comic Book Horror,” I knew it was time for me to finally grab a few issues of Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing run from the 1980s and read them. So, I started with volume #3 which collects issues #35-#42. I chose this volume because issues #41-#42 take place in South Louisiana, and they focus on the past and the present colliding as a television crew films an “historical” antebellum series on a decaying plantation.

Over the next couple of posts, I want to look at these issues and the Gothic elements that appear within them. In his introductory note to volume 3, artist Stephen R. Bissette points out that issues #37-#42 constitute an “American Gothic” arc that explores various issues in the nation, and the concluding two issues directly address the vestiges of racism and slavery on America. Writing in 2010, Bissette comments on the issues I will discuss: “The plantation setting and gothic scenario Alan [Moore] created for our two-part story were fueled as much by the fresh memory of those cinematic extremes [Blaxploitatian films] as by the shameful American history behind them.” This is an aspect of “Southern Change” and “Strange Fruit” that I will tackle in the next post.