To this day, it’s still the creepiest, scariest, most horrifying thing I’ve ever read in a comic book. Hands down.

It’s a shame that Rick Veitch’s run on Swamp Thing doesn’t get the props it deserves. He had the hardest act to follow since the new staff writer at The Globe took over when Shakespeare left, and he was brilliant. Swampy’s trip through time was great, great stuff. If it didn’t exist in Moore’s shadow, I think it would have made the Top 100 list.

What I predicted this list would ultimately become had Moore’s Swamp Thing @ # 4 and Miller’s Daredevil @ # 5. I think the two got flip-flopped.

I predict Frank Miller’s Dardevil will be the # 4 run. It made my # 7 and I loved it back when it was coming out and still love it. I’m shocked to hear people say they’re not blown away by it and that they don’t think it’s all that. At one time it was even Marvel’s number one selling title.

I’m glad to see Rick Veitch mentioned. I think anyone would have had incredibly huge shoes to fill following the Moore / Bissette / Totleben run and Veitch did a great job with no drop in quality as far as I’m concerned. I’d still love to see the original Christ issue and DC refused to print and eventually caused Veitch to leave the title, but that’ll never happen. If DC were smart, they’d print it in an exclusive super deluxe edition. They avoided it to avert any potential firestorm, and I can understand that, but now, 20 years later, I think they could profit from it and not have the negatives they thought that they might. It has Swampy at the crucifiction but other than that nothing sacriligious that I’ve ever heard. It was all part of his time travel storyline IIRC.

10. Mysteries in Space – “We Earthmen may not be much for the 6 principles of aerial inertial combat–but we *are* complete bastards.”
9. Rite of Spring – I still read it and go, “Wow!”
8. Parliament of Trees – Passages from this story resonate in every issue before and after. There’s such a dreamlike quality to it. I always wished Bissette and Totleben got to do this one.
7. The Anatomy Lesson – plus the next several issues, which introduce the Green, and wonderfully showcase Woodrue, one of my favorite villains. Great ending!
6. A Murder of Crows – No one does the descent into nightmare better.
5. “Pog” – I’m getting misty just thinking about it…
4. Fish Story – My favorite American Gothic story. Perfect marriage of metaphor and scariness that marks the best of horror fiction. And it still give me the absolute willies.
3. The End – Not only does Moore take on the Crisis, but also pays off the entire American Gothic storyline with the biggest bang of all. Possibly the most epic scene he’s ever written, right up there with “I did it 36 minutes ago”, the murder of London, and “–Welcome to England”.
2. My Blue Heaven – A tour inside the mind of a writer.
1. The Garden of Earthly Delights – Impossibly beautiful–and a longtime fantasy of mine come true. Totleben’s inks are astounding; this one almost seems written for him.

You should add as a bonus the two page spread from the DC sampler comic from ’84 that has that incredible prose piece from Moore with a Bissette/Totleben illustration (“This is the place”). One of the greatest text pieces ever published in a comic.

It’s true, he still has a heck of a time getting a date to the prom, even though he gives the best corsages.

But Moore’s Swampy also was the first DC book to completely drop the Comics Code sticker permanently (as opposed to just for a single issue)

And Swamp Thing established a DCU version of Christian Cosmology that became the default afterlife in both the mainstream and vertigo universes…

And yeah, pretty interesting that a relatively minor appearance of the JLA in this comic has been so influential. And this comic gave us John Constantine. And Vertigo. And also the notion of the retcon that completely redefines everything. Interesting also that the Swamp Thing character himself hasn’t become popular.

James Owsley’s Conan the Barbarian!

I liked it.

I’m sure that the Doom Patrol thing is no coincidence, also. Crawling From the Wreckage can be read as a love letter/meditation on Moore’s first year on Swamp Thing, chock full of deliberate references and dialog lifts to cue the attentive reader…

A sweeping generalization…. Marvel are far more shrewd in judging which series should be available in what format.