Len Wein and Bernie Wrightson lay a terrific foundation that Alan Moore would one day build off of. The Swamp Thing comes across Anton Arcane and his Un-Men in the second issue. He comes across the paths of witches, werewolves, Patchwork Men, elder gods and Batman during his travails from the Balkans back to the swamps of Louisiana. Bernie Wrightson's art is sublime. It's got this classic EC look to it. He really makes creatures like the Un-Men look horrific while giving Swamp Thing his iconic l...

This book collects the first three issues of Swamp Thing, written by Len Wein and illustrated by Berni Wrightson. It's printed in mass-market paperback format, and was published by Tor in 1982 in conjunction with the release of the first Swamp Thing film. There's a tendency to dismiss all of the non-Alan Moore Swamp Thing work as inferior, which is an injustice. Wein and Wrightson created the character, and their first ten issues of the book were superlative. This one is printed in black-and-whi...

" . . . something sudden disturbs their repose. . . something that claws its way out of the grasping mire. . . and into the light once more! Something that pulls itself upright on unsteady legs, searching its cloudy mind for a fragment of memory . . . then pauses, studying its gnarled, misshapen hands. . examining the clusters of root, the crumbling chunks of moss. . . and in that frightening, mind-shattering second--knows what it has become! A muck-encrusted, shambling mockery of life. . . a tw...

This is one of my favorite comic runs of all time, right up there with Miller's Daredevil and Claremont/Byrne X-Men. Berni Wrightson is probably my favorite comic artist of all time (along with Neal Adams) and this is some of his best work. Len Wein's writing on this series is every bit as good as the art as well. This series is horror comics done right.We have basically a gothic horror story featuring a heroic but tragic monster, almost in a Frankenstein type way. The series itself was publishe...

3.5 Great to see where this all began. There's a simplicity that's deeply appealing. Wein is flexing his literary chops in the narration in the best way and the stories sit beautifully in a Universal monster tradition. Bernie Wrightson art is some of the best ever.

Very much a product of its time. That is, the Silver Age of comics. Stilted dialogue, superfluous scene descriptions, questionably shallow character motivations, contrived meetings, cheesy government conspiracies. It's technically right on the cusp of the Silver and Bronze ages and its flirtings with body horror is a good example of the growth comic books were going through at the time, but as an overall story, it's still stuck pretty firmly in the same trappings as a lot of Silver Age comics. T...

I mainly read this because I want to start reading the Alan Moore Saga of Swamp Thing series, and figure I ought to get the background. After all, my only run-ins with Swamp Thing up to this point are the two awesomely bad movies, the first episode of the '90s TV series, and his brief appearance in the first Hellblazer volume.What can I say? Comics have come a long way since the '70s.The origin story from "House of Secrets"(which is immediately retconned in the first issue)is a nice simple horro...

This is good solid 1970's horror comics. Not the works of art in mystical and theological horror that the later Alan Moore books would be, and not the shocking gore of the classic 50's horror comics, but somewhere in between. Len Wein gives solid scripts on what feels for much of the book like the classic runs of the Incredible Hulk where the green monster guy runs into bad situation after bad situation on the road (and to be honest I had not seen the 'kidnapped in issue 2 and brought to central...

some of the art is great, but the prose is self important and awful and I had to skip huge chancks.I choose to read it before the alan moore run. even the early 70s DC has better comics to read, like dead-men, super-man's sandman saga and batman's ras al ghoul saga.the overarching plot of an agent that want to revenge the swamp thing because he thinks it killed his friends (alec holland who became the swamp thing and his wife) achive virtually nothing, and actually the swamp thing is following h...

DC's enduring muck monster, co-created by writer Lein Wein and illustrator Bernie Wrightson, Swamp Thing: Dark Genesis reprints the first ten issues of the misunderstood hero's series debut and his 1st appearance from House of Secrets #92. Scientist and environmental activist Dr. Alec Holland is transformed into a living, breathing, plantman. Replete with super strength, regenerative healing powers, and the ability to take massive damage, the Swamp Thing battles human villians, a sorcerer, genet...

After having read Alan Moore's entire run of Swamp Thing, I went back and read the creators', expecting something less than Moore's writing, but still great nonetheless, given all the wonderful characteristics of the title character.I was disappointed to find most of the stories filled with purple prose, the various characters' voices sounding like either one of two polarities: slow intelligence or fast-acting stupidity. I see where Alan Moore took cues from Wein and Bernstein's themes of violen...

Decent comic with some good moments but definitely a product of its time. Each Issue has a self-contained story which starts and ends within 22-pages. This leads to pulpy adventures with a tinge of darkness. Some of the stories still hold up pretty well, my favourite being the Patchwork Man. The art is pretty good for something this old and the gloomy, lumbering figure of Swamp Thing was never drawn better. Len Wein’s Run ended on Issue #13 and he does bring some closure to the series with Swamp...

Swamp Thing has had many incarnations but this is where it all began. Dark Genesis collects the original ten comics from the early 1970s plus House Of Secrets #92, which introduced the character. The series is considered a classic today based on the strength of Len Wein's creepy storytelling and Bernie Wrightson's macabre illustrations. If you like graphic novels and prefer bizarre horror over superhero bravado, you'll want to check this out.

Thank God for Alan Moore is all I have to say, because some of Len Wein's storytelling is just utterly ridiculous, even for the 70s. He's too verbose for one thing. We don't need a description of the scene; that is what the illustration is for. Why would you take a dog - even that of your best friend - overseas on an international investigation? Only to allow the Conclave to track your moves, but then they don't actually do anything while Swamp Thing fights werewolves and apparently travels back...

This is my first exposure to the pre-Alan Moore Swamp Thing, and I was very struck by how much the groundwork for many of Moore's "modifications" is already in place. You see Swampy get his arm chopped off and his entire body crushed, but he regenerates time and again. Also, in many of these stories, Len Wein is also clearly channeling a particular EC Comics horror vibe. It might not be as sophisticated as Moore's EC-inspired tales, but Wein clearly takes pleasure in contrasting Swamp Thing's mo...

Swamp Thing is a character which has been described as someone with no bad runs to me one on occasion or another. I don't know if that's true, I've really only touched on Moore's Saga of the Swamp Thing, but that is truly one of the best run of comics if not the best. But how do we treat the origins of the character? Quite well apparently. I think perhaps overly wordy it might be, Wein's Swamp Thing manages to be quite good. I had to pause for several months after an underwhelming first two issu...

I can only imagine that I arrived at this book in the same way everyone else did: I'm a huge fan of Alan Moore's work on Swamp Thing and I wanted to see how my favorite elemental got his start. After reading this volume, it became even more clear what a sea change Moore's run on Swamp Thing was.Dark Genesis is not a bad book by any means, but it's certainly a product of the 70s. There's a general thread running through the book--Government agent Matt Cable is on a quest to track down Swamp Thing...

This run is a campy masterpiece. It is truly something to behold. "...pulling the shaggy stalker into the air as a mother lifts her child----but without a mother's tenderness..." That line is pure genius and if you can't understand that then I pity you. You never know what's going to happen next in this series. Swamp Thing keeps ending up in one ridiculous situation after another. Now this book I think has two issues. I'll start with the smaller one. Swamp Thing throughout the series is being pu...

Like a lot of people, I first got acquainted with Swamp Thing in the 80s when the older stuff was hard to find. Catching up with it now, it seems like something from way more than 10 years earlier, old-fashioned in both good and bad ways. The good: Wein had a solid grasp of several pulp genres and hit on a premise that could be adapted to any of them, while also being perfect for morbid young people who felt like monsters, and Wrightson's art (though it's sometimes a little clumsier than I expec...

I think you should read the book if you like action books because there is a lot of fighting. A man and his wife are in a lab when it explodes and chemicals go everywhere the guy lands in swamp water creating The Swamp Thing and The Swamp Thing is put up against a lot of enemies in the process of trying to become human again. I think the book was good it was really exiting and just fun to read.