Annotated 9-8
So here’s the other end of our Swamp Thing parallel. Like “Metagaming,” “The Anatomy Lesson” begins with a plutocrat CEO, General Sunderland, explaining things to an impressively educated confederate, Jason Woodrue, as they walk together to a secret part of the CEO’s office building, which serves to hold the main character(s) in seeming death and actual suspended animation. And yet, even though the CEO appears victorious and in control, nagging questions still need answering.
After this point, the pacing of the larger superstories– Moore’s run on Swamp Thing and our run on Guilded Age– will diverge sharply. In both, the CEO’s confederate will come to see his bullying side and have a hand in his demise, but HR’s demise won’t happen until the climax of Guilded Age, whereas Sunderland won’t even survive another twenty pages.
In both, the hero or heroes will discover their nature and use that knowledge to unlock incredible powers. But by the end of “The Anatomy Lesson,” Swamp Thing will know everything Sunderland and Woodrue have discovered. Our heroes, though, will remain clueless about what “Metagaming” reveals to the reader almost to the end. And while the Swamp Thing will embrace that larger self-concept over Alan Moore’s run, evolving from a moss-covered linebacker with oaken muscles to basically the god of plants, our heroes will largely reject the idea that they have a dual nature and continue their mortal lives. Moore wanted Swamp Thing’s world to keep growing ever outward; we were trying to argue for the solidity and importance of the world our heroes already occupied.
Finally, Sunderland has little patience for the details of what he and Woodrue discover, an ignorance that dooms him in more ways than one. Even Woodrue is only interested in the Swamp Thing as a path to learn more about himself. But HR is all about the details, and that makes him the kind of adversary who can go the distance.
“Yes… I have read… the file…”
“…Like it?”
Moore’s glory days.
Heh heh… my favourite line from that issue. (Well, that and “You can’t kill a vegetable by shooting it in the head.”) And yes, “The Anatomy Lesson” is one of the best single issues Moore ever wrote. Indeed, it’s arguably one of the most important single issues of a mainstream American comic, ever. I didn’t realize it was an influence on Guilded Age, but it doesn’t surprise me because I know from his scans_daily comments that T’s a close reader of Moore’s Swamp Thing run.
It is…shall we say…strongly implied near the very end that the five have died in the tubes. I wonder, are they really still alive at this point, or is HR already lying about that?
At this point in the story, I would say the bodies are still alive, likely in a state similar to an induced coma. But the… (mind? soul?) essence, yes the essence of who they are have been fully transplanted to Arkerra.
Later in this chapter we see him make another failed attempt at bringing them back out.
The important thing is, when does his plan change from “bring them out” to “follow them in”?
That’s a good question. I feel like he was still trying to get them out, at this point… But already saw the potential. Maybe hoped to better understand the other side in the process of pulling them out.
I commented on that particular change in H.R.’s motives several pages back, as the fact that (and manner in which) it occurred was one of my sole problems with the comic – although not substantial enough to make me dislike the story at all, for sure.
On that note, we will eventually see Carol realize too late that she missed her chance to do anything to stop it – which is tragic, on a personal level, but is more or less an isolated event for her. With that, she missed her chance at a wake-up call that could have put her in a position to end things better for (almost) everyone – even if some other event might have complicated that effort.
Meanwhile, we missed a chance for H.R. to introduce us to some of the more interesting aspects of Arcanometry. For a villain, there weren’t many characters he interacted with outside of his immediate subordinates, and the few times we saw that happen, he treated all but Carol as less than livestock. There wasn’t anyone remotely on his (wizardy) level, which makes (especially the source of) his relative mastery of magic rather… not well-explained. So certainly, he lost enough humanity at some point to make the change,
Those were really my only beefs with this plot in sepia world, though – and it’s not as if it wasn’t still compelling.
Ergh, this is why I don’t normally post when I’m on the phone.
To continue my unfinished sentence: “… but we didn’t get to see how it happened, and there’s plenty of evidence to suggest he started out with more of it than that. So that’s also puzzling.”
HR could also simply be WRONG, misinterpreting the readouts in the same way Carol apparently was, later on.
In fact, I think lying is the least likely – if he knew they were dead on this end, I don’t think he’d be so sure that he could pull them out, which is what his plan initially was.
So, either they were, in fact, still alive at this point, or he was wrong.
What if he’s fooling himself, too? Trying to dodge the guilt of getting people killed?