The Stop Button

And here’s the famous Anatomy Lesson. It’s difficult to think about Swamp Thing before this issue–Moore doesn’t so much retcon as he explains–because it immediately changes every expectation of the series.

Moore uses Jason Woodrue to narrate and it’s a nice device. It lets Moore be enthusiastic about the scientific discovery process; he even manages to make General Sunderland even worse by revealing him as willfully ignorant.

I wish I remembered the first time I read it, how it affected the reader page by page. Moore understands how comic readers work, he understands the investment and the possessiveness. He paces the revelations and the action in the issue to pay off for that committed reader. The issue doesn’t really matter to new readers; it’s just reestablishing the ground situation.

The Bissette and Totleben art is fantastic, both futuristic and horrific in the same panel.

It’s an exceptional comic.

CREDITS

The Anatomy Lesson; writer, Alan Moore; penciller, Stephen R. Bissette; inker, John Totleben; colorist, Tatjana Wood; letterer, John Costanza; editor, Len Wein; publisher, DC Comics.