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Bonus 13 - The Anatomy Lesson (Patreon)

Published:
2019-05-30 21:56:22
Edited:
2020-02-17 15:07:47
Imported:
2021-07

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Content

We're talking about Alan Moore's groundbreaking work on Swamp Thing and you're all invited!

Special thanks to patron Trev Goldring for the recommendation!

Here's that Man-Thing/Swamp Thing article by Mark Engblom.

And here's that Conan O'Brien article that we mentioned as well.

Comments

Anonymous

Great show, guys! It's really interesting to hear you discuss comics. I always meant to get to Alan Moore's Swamp Thing work at some point. Chad, I'm kinda surprised you didn't mention Moore's association with Bauhaus! Under his pen name, Brilburn Logue, he wrote the "This is for When" poem that graced the album art of 1982's Mask album and recorded a reading of it to be played in their 1981 tour. "This is for when your flesh creeps and never comes back...."

Anonymous

Always nice to hear about Moore. Aside from Watchmen and the League books, he also did the only Superman story I really love: The Man Who Has Everything. He's an exceptional writer. And a shaggy, anarchistic sorceror, which is always a plus!

Anonymous

This was awesome! I read Moore's Saga of the Swamp Thing when it first came out and your show brought back so many memories. Great episode!

Anonymous

I generally have very little affinity to comic books, but I thoroughly enjoy you guys talking about them.

Anonymous

Some other books by or about comics (and really showing I just never left the 80s) What Did That Melon Ever Do For Me? The Life and Times of Gallagher Who Goes There: A Guide to Looking Constantly Astounded and Still Being The Smartest Guy in the Room by Emo Phillips Don’t String Me Up: Republicans Really Can Be Funny… Really!!! by Jeff Dunham Do not Go Gentle into That Good Night, just Scream A Little More– Remembering Sam Kinison Boy We Need You Now More Than Ever Before – Remembering Bill Hicks as well

Anonymous

Really happy you did this. I strongly resisted The Anatomy Lesson when it came out, or rather the reboot. 20 year old me thought the whole "plants just thinking they were Alex" was a red herring and then later a terrible premise. For me Swamp Thing was Bruce Banner or Ben Grimm (or so many others) on a never ending quest just to be "normal" again. A common enough trope and I suspect my own obsession with it had a lot to do to really coming out at that time, but it would be years (by way of Hellblazer) before I came to appreciate what Moore had done/was doing. Now it just seems as you said a perfect realization of a seed that was planted at the very start (had to go there at least once) and a great horror/scifi trope which has allowed for so many other amazing stories in the Swamp Thing verse. Unlike Man-Thing which I gave up on ages ago. I mean if your hero's name and one super power ("It Burns!") are just constant fodder for penis jokes, well...I wonder if Stan did it on purpose.

Anonymous
>>23238201

I'm a massive Hellblazer fan but never got into Swamp Thing. I may have to give Moore's run a try.

Anonymous

I am with Chris on this one as I have never understood why anyone would be horrified to find out that they are some sort of clone. We talk to ourselves, put ourselves down, pump ourselves up, bargain with ourselves . . . and in all other ways comport ourselves as though we are more than one individual already. To consider yourself truly singular is to believe in an illusion. So what's the big deal if one or more of your selves is made flesh? You can have all the same interactions you had before while gaining an extra pair of hands to scratch your back or be your bridge partner or provide you with an alibi.

Anonymous

Gerry Conway (Man-thing) and Len Wein (Swamp Thing) were roommates at the time of creation.

Anonymous

Your comments on memory and identity made me think of sci-fi survival horror game Soma - I won’t go into details and spoil the plot, but it definitely deals with some of those concepts to great effect. I bought it when it came out as I’m a big survival horror fan, but it’s probably pretty cheap on the various platforms by now (if you have a PS4 and PS Plus it was one of the free games a few months back as well). I’d definitely recomend it. Just a word of warning that it’s the explore/be stealthy/don’t get squished by nasty things kind of survival horror, don’t expect to be hacking, slashing and blasting at zombies.

Anonymous

I got the graphic novel of this from my library when I was a teenager and it blew my mind. I had been reading comics for a while, mostly Marvel and some Batman, but I had never read anything like this. Not to make a backhanded compliment about comics, but I think the level of sophistication of the storytelling was something so unexpected for the medium. This a finely crafted horror/sci-fi tale, and that is enough to challenge common perceptions and take the form seriously. I have been told many times that comics are basically an infantile joke, I imagine I'm not alone in that. In art school, I was told that comics are not art, so I brought in Bernie Wrightson's Frankenstein to challenge that. Moore's work is often cited to challenge the notion that comics are not literate.

Anonymous
>>23248616

I just loved that when some English lit prof would make such a snotty remark. Usually, I'd just toss down something by William Blake without comment. Of course, I was lucky as this was the early 80s when Vertigo, Moore, Miller etc were truly recreating comics (It's not a comic book. IT'S A GRAPHIC NOVEL!!!!), but I've had the opportunity to go back now and read a lot from the 40s onward and there were many a great tale.

Anonymous

Speaking of graphic novels, it never dawned on me that the general works of Junji Ito would be an excellent topic for future shows or bonus content. It’s creepy, weird, and I think Lovecraft would have liked it. Uzumaki in particular.

Anonymous
>>23250856

Junji Ito did a version of Frankenstein that I definitely recommend.

Anonymous

The worst thing about uploading your mind to a computer would be realizing that you don't get to experience the new existence. That other you gets to do that.

Anonymous

It’s funny you mention stories about cloning Jesus while talking about comics. Punk Rock Jesus is a comic with that exact premise. A company uses the Shroud of Turin to clone Jesus and builds a reality show around it. The clone eventually escapes and joins a punk band. Except the story is told from the perspective of the show’s head of security; an ex-IRA member trying to atone for his past actions.

Anonymous

Two comments that might be a little bit off topic but focus on the idea of identity: First from David Cronenberg’s 1986 movie “The Fly,” this story made me think of the quote by Brundlefly, “I'm saying I’m an insect who dreamt he was a man, and loved it. But now the dream is over...and the insect is awake.” Second of all it made me think of the 1985 Infocom interactive text-only video game, “A Mind Forever Voyaging” by Steve Meretzky In which to perfect a computer Simulation capable of predicting the future, Government scientists construct an AI and have it simulate it’s own life from birth to childhood to adult hood Before “waking it up” And letting know that it is a computer called PRISM. The idea being to accurately predict the future it would’ve had to live the entire experience of a human life as a human.

gaminette
>>23242644

This is the premise of Solaris (the Russian film - not the book or the Clooney remake). A sentient planet can read the minds of the earthling astronauts and creates clones of their loved ones. There’s a scene called “Snaut’s Birthday” where one guy cruelly says to the clone of the main character’s dead wife, “You are not a woman. You are not a human being.” And it is utterly heartbreaking. It’s one of my favorite movies ever.

Anonymous

The oldest millennials (of which I am one) are around 38. Millennials are the birth cohorts from 1981-1996. We grew up with the internet (at least in our teens) but only came to social media and smartphones as adults.

Anonymous
>>23311163

Oldest millennials are often parents. I have a few nephews and nieces fitting this category. Has some clever reddit/Daily Beast writer already coined the term for the following generation? I'm dreading it'll be post - millennials or PMs. I really don't want to call my grand-nieces that. But that generation, much more so than their millennial parents, is completely technologically saturated- good or bad, it just is so.

Anonymous

I remember when I was 7 or 8 I was sick (or probably faking it), and my grandparents picked me up from school. Sitting in the kitchen at lunch, we were watching tv, and it was the Adrienne Barbeau Swamp Thing. I remember the part where the bald henchman drinks the serum (unwittingly), and then drops under the table. Completely freaked me out!

Steve

We think we're ghosts in meat sleeves. There's not much difference between the Swamp Thing and us. We're essentially the bits we remember of the stories experience.

Jason Thompson
>>23253862

Yeah, I mean, if it’s not my subjective experience and I am just dead, what do I benefit from some A.I. Jason Thompson running around? Lame!

Kit Ainslie

While we’re on the subject of comics and bonus content, I would love to hear your takes on the works of Junji Ito. He’s been my all-time favorite author/illustrator in the vein of Lovecraft and I really feel his work would fit well on the show. Some of his stories also deal with identity in interesting ways, particularly the sorry The Long Dream, where a strange illness causes a man to perceive his dreams as lasting days, weeks, years and finally centuries of time. And of course his amazing anthology of stories about a girl named Tomie have some wonderful body horror related to (spoiler) multiple copies of the same person. Anyways great episode. I enjoy a good Moore story but haven’t read Swamp Thing yet, but you fellas have convinced me. Thanks for another enjoyable show.

Anonymous

I love Alan Moore's run on Swamp Thing. I stopped reading after his run, it has a good conclusion and I hear it declined afterwards. I think Swamp Thing and Doctor Manhattan share a lot in their origins. In a way they're both consciousness, outside of matter, trying to rebuild themselves.

Anonymous

In the same way that "Simpsons did it" was a thing for Family Guy, any horror artist runs up against the "Wrightson did it" wall whenever trying to come up with something spooky to draw. Such a master, but he makes me want to throw my sketchbooks away.

Tomas Rawlings

Loved this show!! More comic ones please!!

Anonymous

If Sunderland had spent less time crowing about wealth and paused to hire a competent information security team, he would have been fine. First of all - a single point of failure device that governs all physical security? Oh, and you have ZERO access controls on it? AND it has admin rights to change passwords, etc.? We would have set up multifactor authentication and segregation of duties right up front. But wait, I'm sure its firmware was unpatchable because that's how it always goes with IoT. Don't get me started on the lack of a vendor evaluation process! I personally would have advised against using the ex-convict as a contractor, but at least you could have set up some controls to reduce the risk!

Anonymous

I loved Swamp Thing with a fiery green hot passion! This means I actually bought some of the copies, not just read them off the turnstyle in the 7/11. House of Mystery, House of Secrets, (Not Hellraiser tho), were all so beautifully illustrated. I can still see certain panels in my mind. Alec finding out he had imprinted on some flatworms (that research has been debunked by the way) seriously freaked me out. Partly I think it was because I was very invested in him finding a way back to "happiness". Partly because HE was seriously freaked out! The whole mind and soul thing I guess. He even met Alec in heaven as a final nail in that coffin. However, it opened up the whole who and what he could become once he threw away his limiting concepts and I was right on board again. Traveling the green is such an evocative concept. Then they decided to let High Schoolers to do the illustration. It's true, some of the writing was amazing but I couldn't focus on it while the artwork bashed me repeatedly in the eyes.

Anonymous

Saga of the Swamp Thing has an extremely Lovecraftian moment. During an epic battle in Hell, which you'd think is crazy enough, a human character observes something so much crazier it reduces him to a gibbering madman. The revelation in question is one found in a few of Lovecraft's own stories, and I know Moore is a huge fan.

Anonymous

Swamp Thing is one of my favorite comic book characters and the Alan Moore era is one of my top story arcs in any comic of any era, it's truly essential.