Saga of The Swamp Thing

[malus]

Everything I should have learned in middle school by socializing with other children, I learned from reading SAGA OF THE SWAMP THING, instead. (Alan Moore's run- he picked up the series right about the time I hit puberty-serendipity.)

I reread the entire run this summer in digital format. I can't express how much I love this series. If you can get past the fact that Swampy, and his gal Abby, have psychedelic sex trips by sharing tubers that sprout from his back, you can really enjoy some truly beautiful comic art in issue #34. The artwork for the entire run, drawn by Stephen Bissette and John Totleben, is fantastic, a real treat for the visually sensitive.

There are a few collected trade paper editions. My understanding is that the paperback 1998 edition is printed on better stock that the more recent hardback. That may have changed since the hardback's initial printing.

1998: www.amazon.com/Swamp-Thing-Vol-Saga/dp/0930289226/ref=cm_cr_pr_sims_t

2007: www.amazon.com/Saga-Swamp-Thing-Book-One/dp/1401220835/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1348523002&sr=8-3&keywords=saga+of+the+swamp+thing

You can also find the entire series in digital format on any number of torrent sites.

This YouTube reviewer does this story more justice than I can:

[Gilberto]

This is pretty much the greatest comic of all time. A lot of people have tried to re-capture what Alan Moore did here, but no one ever has. As a kid I loved this series from the start, before he took over the book, but his writing and Steve Bissette's art blew my mind. I had never seen anything like that in a comic and haven't really since. I'm a lifelong Berni Wrightson fan and love the first series too, but Moore's Swamp Thing didn't just redefine the character, it changed the way we saw comics. Moore basically set the stage for Gaiman, who redefined comics in the same way with Sandman. This is just one of the greatest comics ever made.

The new Swamp Thing comic is pretty cool too, but no one's ever done what they did back in that book.

[malus]

Mushrooms.

Part of THE RED?

Part of THE GREEN?

Or part of THE ROT?

Help me out here.

Also- after reading RAVE, and I mean REALLY awesome reviews of ANIMAL MAN- from THE NEW 52! DC lineup, I bought the 6 issue book. While it was fun to see what they are doing with the character, there was no way the comic could live up to the hyped up reviews.

What do you guys do when you've read incredible reviews for a book, movie, etc, and the actual work is good but you still feel let down after getting worked up over the reviews?

Or are you guys not as suggestible as I am?

Leave the movie, book, etc, be for a month and then give it another go, a fair shake?

On another note:

Mushrooms: Good enough for Ur:

[Gilberto]

I bought the Animal Man collection but it didn't really grab me. I'm enjoying the new Swamp Thing, but DC's obsession with the spectrum of colors is getting annoying. First they broke the Green Lantern mythology into every color of the rainbow, now they're doing it with all their elemental characters. It's not bad, but it's a little simplistic. They're bringing back the Phantom Stranger; that might be fun.