SPOILER ALERT: I’m deliberately wasting your time.
So blogging brother Tim O’Neil tried to kill me with the following question:
…Is there any chance in the near future you could go into a bit more detail on all the discrepancies between pre-Flashpoint and Nu52 Swamp Thing continuity?
Well, good gravy.
I went into some detail about that here, in which I discuss the new status quo of Swampy’s arch-nemesis, but even now, it’s hard to say what is still “in continuity” and what isn’t.
Some of the big details are the same…Holland is still killed by sabotage of his lab, his memories are incorporated into a Swamp Thing that thinks it’s Alec Holland, Holland is eventually resurrected, and finally actually is transformed into Swamp Thing himself. And along the way, Swampy (the original one) has a romance with Abby Arcane.
Some of the specifics are different…Holland meets Abby and Arcane before becoming Swamp Thing, Arcane is the one who sabotages the lab and prevents Holland from initially, directly becoming Swamp Thing, necessitating the Parliament of Trees’s creation of an ersatz Holland-mind to inhabit the Swamp Thing body.
And I’m still not 100% certain how the resurrection of Holland even happened in this new post-Flashpoint continuity. I mean, Holland was brought back at the end of the Brightest Day series, resurrected by the White Lantern’s power to become the new Swamp Thing in order to defeat the old Swamp Thing, who had been corrupted by evil or…hell, something like that. I don’t know if “Brightest Day” even happened in this New 52 continuity…I guess Green Lantern continuity is pretty much as it always was, or at least recent events carried through into the new series without too many hiccups or revampings, and the White Lantern thing was tied into GL’s adventures, so maybe the Brightest Day event still happened in one form or another.
However, there’s that whole business with Holland and Swamp Thing being two separate beings at the beginning of the New 52 series, and the point of the early issues of this series was to transform Holland into Swamp Thing, so in the new continuity, I guess this is taking the place of the reintegration of Holland and Swampy from the end of Brightest Day. So maybe Brightest Day didn’t happen. Or it ended differently. Or something.
I think, as time permits, I’m going to sit down and reread all the “return of Swamp Thing” stuff from the end of Brightest Day, to that terrible Search for Swamp Thing mini, to the current series, and try to figure out what continuity “plugs” may exist to explain the new status quo that I’m either not remembering or even don’t exist in the first place. Probably should have done that before writing this post, but I started late Sunday night and frankly, I’m tired.
Anyway, I’ll get back to you on this. I’m sure you can’t wait.
In the meantime, Timothy T. had this to say about the end of Hellblazer:
I hope they give him a good sending off. But I have no idea what sort of ending would fit, he’s done so much crazy stuff that any finale will disappoint. Maybe it’d be best if they ended it like Cerebus or maybe just having a beer with his mates (or himself).
I’m hoping for a “THE DEATH OF CONSTANTINE,” which will be packaged in a black plastic bag with a big bloody “H” (or perhaps a pentagram) on the front. …And then a few months later, they can publish a comic in which a bunch of replacement Hellblazers show up, so DC can finally reuse a lot of those Constantine-a-likes that used to pop up now and again.
Or, “The Death of Constantine” could end with his dead body being stuffed, mounted and displayed at Madame Tussauds.
Even after re-reading the new run,I can’t make sense of the transitions the character went through.The narative just doesn’t flow from Brightest to Search to Snyder.Swampy got confusing and then heavily revamped,all in the same year.The differences between the character then,and now,don’t really matter.The older stuff never happened.And that’s what is pissing off us older fans.But we have to let it go and enjoy Snyder’s take on the character or walk away like some life-long fans have done (miss you Rich).I’m sure Superman fans are in the same dilemma.He’s now gay and Superboy’s a robot or something,right?
That Death of Constantine pitch is pure genius. It’s like they’ve been setting it up for decades.
Also, I’m not reading the new Swamp Thing comics; did they ever explain Arcane and Abby’s relationship in the New 52?
Casey – That’s one of the things I’m going to try to nail down in my reread…it seems like the waters regarding that were muddied a bit when Arcane was reintroduced.
I have to admit, much as I think Snyder’s book isn’t half bad, it bugs the hell out of me that even though we have a Swamp Thing, it’s just not the same character. I mean, after The Anatomy Lesson, we know that Alec Holland was never Swamp Thing – Holland was a cypher who appeared in flashbacks and briefly in a trip to Heaven during Moore’s run.
Who was *ever* attached to Holland as a character enough to care about his return? The Swamp Thing I liked has been discarded, turned into an evil monster at the end of Brightest Day and now discarded completely. Sigh.
Hellblazer: maybe they’ll give him CANCER again!