CHILLING ADVENTURES OF SABRINA, BOOK 1 - ROBERTO AGUIRRE-SACASA & ROBERT HACK / SWAMP THING, BOOK 2 - ALAN MOORE & STEPHEN BISSETTE & JOHN TOTLEBEN

I combined these 2 since they’re both trade paperbacks of long running (in Sabrina’s case, ongoing) comics series taken over by famous comic authors, heavily influenced by EC horror comics, and I read them on the same day. There’s actually another, more subtle connection between the two. At one point, a talking serpent named Nagaina claims, “Our father is Glycon, little witch.” Glycon is an ancient Roman snake-god (albeit one with long, beautiful hair) who’s most famous ancient mention, by Lucien, calls Glycon out for being a hand-puppet and hoax. In fact, even in the next frame of the comic, Salem the cat accuses Glycon of being a puppet. This is connected to Swamp Thing because Alan Moore is certainly the most famous devotee of Glycon. I think it more than fair to say that Alan Moore is the only reason any non Classics professor has any idea who Glycon is. Those of us who follow Alan Moore, a category that certainly includes Aguirre-Sacasa knows that Moore famously “quit” comics and declared himself a Magikian and full-time occultist. Swamp Things was written long before this transformation but you can certainly see the thematic obsessions that must have been pushing him a more mystical direction. Swamp Things is constantly wrestling (sometimes physically) with questions about reality and identity and he encounters spirits and symbols and literally travels to hell (Neil Gaiman writes the intro to the volume, making it very clear where the Sandman hell episode got it’s start). In the best segment Swamp Thing uses his powers to grow a psychedelic fruit on his body and feeds it to his lover to have far-out vegetable-dimension sex. Real wizard shit. Why aren’t the getting Swamp Thing into these DC universe movies? He’d certainly make them less dull. Anyway, I thought the Glycon thing was a nice nod to Moore. 

Sabrina was better than I was expecting. It’s very Satanic, lots of goats and talk of the Dark Lord and a witches circles in the woods and all that great stuff. The general vibe is dark and campy and creepy in the correct proportions. It’s a little sad and a missed opportunity that the main motivation the villain, who is wonderfully named “Madam Satan” and who has skulls for eyes, is that a man scorned her for another woman. For something that otherwise has complicated characters, that part felt flat.The art, like the Swamp Thing art, is very indebted to those pre-code horror comics and is not what you would think you’d get from an Archie Spin-off.  I would say the both pass the most basic test of a comic book, I want to read more in these series (I think my library now has the whole Moore Swamp Thing run and Sabrina is ongoing). 333 satanic swamps.