It's October, which means all the entertainment media is gearing up for Halloween and getting in the spooky mind-set. There's inevitably a glut of horror films coming out this time of year, but horror comics often get neglected, because horror and superheroes tend not to gel very well. Still, comics have a long tradition of horror, and this is as good a time as any to take a look at some of the best they have to offer.
With that in mind, let’s look at Alan Moore's legendary run on Swamp Thing, the comic that made him a big name and catapulted him to stardom. Created by Len Wein and Bernie Wrightson, Swamp Thing had been popular for a long time but, by 1983, when Moore took over, the comic was ailing and in dire need of a revamp. And it goes without saying that Moore's reinterpretation was successful, since he turned in one of the definitive runs on a character, up there with Walt Simonson's Thor and Mark Waid's Flash.
The early issues featured the Monkey King, a demon which feeds on fear and takes on the form of whatever you're frightened of - to be sure, a fairly hackneyed horror trope, but this particular story takes place in a school for disturbed and special-needs children. You may draw your own conclusions about how frightening the monster's transformations are. (Hint: the answer is "very".)
Much of the run was dominated by the "American Gothic" story arc, which saw the Swamp Thing travelling across America at the behest of blue-collar magus and total bastard, John Constantine, in an attempt to prevent some primordial Darkness from returning to the world. His journey took in underwater vampires, zombies, werewolves and a radioactive hobo (not as dumb as it sounds).
In pretty much every case, the monster was connected to some crime or injustice of America's past or present: the zombies are of former plantation slaves, returning from the dead to have their vengeance. In The Curse, a woman's monthly transformation into a werewolf is explicitly linked to the menstrual cycle, in a violently angry story where the true horror isn't the monster, but domestic abuse.
Fortunately, editor Karen Berger - who would go on to mastermind the Vertigo imprint - decided to publish without Code approval, resulting in the "mature readers" stamp which would feature on so many of the truly great comics of the '90s. Preacher, Hellblazer, Sandman - all these have their roots in horror and would not exist if it weren't for Swamp Thing #29 screwing the rules.
It's hard to go into the details of what makes this particular issue so terrifying without giving everything away, but it's a potent mix of the undead, weird sex and a truly terrifying super-villain that easily ranks among the most twisted stuff in a mainstream DC book. Suffice to say, the story begins with Abby, the Swamp Thing's girlfriend, having a breakdown and trying to clean herself with a steel brush. It gets worse from there.