$AUTHOR does $COMIC
Recently the blogger Lurking Rhythmically has thrown down the gauntlet: challenging bloggers and comic fans to reimagine their favorite titles as if written by some established author.
(Here's my favorite so far, Batman, as written by Chuck Palahniuk)
I can't resist a good fight. So here you go: DC Comics' The Swamp Thing as imagined by my favorite resident of Providence:
A fragment of "The Swamp-Thing"
by H.P. Lovecraft
From even the greatest of horrors, irony is infrequently absent. Sometimes it enters directly into the composition of events, while sometimes it relates only to their fortuitous position among persons and places. The latter sort is splendidly exemplified by a case in the ancient city of Baton Rouge, where I, a young gentleman-scientist from a long line of New England patricians of the family Holland, (named as so by the famous explorations of an ancestor, though my bloodline is pure English until my family's emigration to the New World) had successfully enquired for a laboratory position.
The swamps and bogs of the Mississippi Delta is populated by a host of degenerate peoples speaking a wide argot of languages - some French and some English, all a horrid diffusion of the original nobility of such ancient tongues - and yet within these swamps I was led to understand held the key to the fecundity of life itself. Imagine if you will, being able to repopulate deserts and wastelands so that they may teem with life: Hunger eradicated from this land, and vast sections of this earth reclaimed for human settlement.
This terrible secret I had been working on; sometimes up penning furious notes into the late hours, despite the misgivings and lack of attentions of my fiancee, the beautiful Linda. But more! A mysterious figure, known only as 'Mr. E______', guided many degenerates to my door, attempting to threaten me to uncover the knowledge I had gleaned. These, as any sensible scientist would do, I ignored.
I shall never forget that hideous summer only a few years ago, when like a noxious afrite from the halls of Eblis typhoid stalked leeringly through Baton Rouge. it is by that satanic scourge that most recall the year, for truly terror brooded with bat-wings over the piles of coffins in tombs of Christchurch Cemetery, and thus I retired to the lab, convinced, nay, obsessed with the idea that the dark waters of the swamp held some chance to restore life itself and bring some cure to the poor and wounded citizenry of my city.
It was on the eve of a great discovery when the weak mongrel men from the swamps attacked the lab, spurred on by this Mr. E_____, - an attack that should have taken my life. The swamp-gases that I had been working on exploded when hit with gunfire, and soon the lab was alight - and the substance, the very vital substance I had been working with, splashed upon my frail and cadaverous body, rendering me with fits of pain and agony.
Blinded by acid, choking on the noxious vapours, with that horrid elixer seeping into my noble skin, I staggered into the foul swamp, hoping to die in the dark waters, alone, alone; the dark and murky waters consuming me.
But yet, by some noble radiance, I awoke the next morning, feeling fit and healthy, though in bad need of a good bath: my skin had the texture of some squamous creature, indolent with the fecund slime and unnatural greenery of the bog itself. I stank of peat, like some ancient Pictish mummy pulled up from the English moors, draped in forgotten fineries and left for aeons. I was determined to get a shave, a nice shower, and a new suit.
I kept to the swamp, avoiding the superstitious rustics that make their home there, making my way to the estate of my fiancee: there under her nursing care I might recover and plot my revenge against E______. But when I arrived, I was beset by a most terrible plight: Poor Linda could not recognize me. When I arrived at her lawn, I caught a glimpse of her face set in icy fear, mixed with what I could only surmise was a kind of strange starry-eyed awe. Indeed, her servants also acted in considerable agitation, but while I stood dumb-struck, they fled, bleeding into the night.
I approached the house with some resignation. What had beset me over the night? I peered wonderously at the reflection of myself in the glass. And what regarded me back -- an image of myself, for it most certainly was me, Alec Holland, and yet, I was no man...
(Here's my favorite so far, Batman, as written by Chuck Palahniuk)
I can't resist a good fight. So here you go: DC Comics' The Swamp Thing as imagined by my favorite resident of Providence:
A fragment of "The Swamp-Thing"
by H.P. Lovecraft
From even the greatest of horrors, irony is infrequently absent. Sometimes it enters directly into the composition of events, while sometimes it relates only to their fortuitous position among persons and places. The latter sort is splendidly exemplified by a case in the ancient city of Baton Rouge, where I, a young gentleman-scientist from a long line of New England patricians of the family Holland, (named as so by the famous explorations of an ancestor, though my bloodline is pure English until my family's emigration to the New World) had successfully enquired for a laboratory position.
The swamps and bogs of the Mississippi Delta is populated by a host of degenerate peoples speaking a wide argot of languages - some French and some English, all a horrid diffusion of the original nobility of such ancient tongues - and yet within these swamps I was led to understand held the key to the fecundity of life itself. Imagine if you will, being able to repopulate deserts and wastelands so that they may teem with life: Hunger eradicated from this land, and vast sections of this earth reclaimed for human settlement.
This terrible secret I had been working on; sometimes up penning furious notes into the late hours, despite the misgivings and lack of attentions of my fiancee, the beautiful Linda. But more! A mysterious figure, known only as 'Mr. E______', guided many degenerates to my door, attempting to threaten me to uncover the knowledge I had gleaned. These, as any sensible scientist would do, I ignored.
I shall never forget that hideous summer only a few years ago, when like a noxious afrite from the halls of Eblis typhoid stalked leeringly through Baton Rouge. it is by that satanic scourge that most recall the year, for truly terror brooded with bat-wings over the piles of coffins in tombs of Christchurch Cemetery, and thus I retired to the lab, convinced, nay, obsessed with the idea that the dark waters of the swamp held some chance to restore life itself and bring some cure to the poor and wounded citizenry of my city.
It was on the eve of a great discovery when the weak mongrel men from the swamps attacked the lab, spurred on by this Mr. E_____, - an attack that should have taken my life. The swamp-gases that I had been working on exploded when hit with gunfire, and soon the lab was alight - and the substance, the very vital substance I had been working with, splashed upon my frail and cadaverous body, rendering me with fits of pain and agony.
Blinded by acid, choking on the noxious vapours, with that horrid elixer seeping into my noble skin, I staggered into the foul swamp, hoping to die in the dark waters, alone, alone; the dark and murky waters consuming me.
But yet, by some noble radiance, I awoke the next morning, feeling fit and healthy, though in bad need of a good bath: my skin had the texture of some squamous creature, indolent with the fecund slime and unnatural greenery of the bog itself. I stank of peat, like some ancient Pictish mummy pulled up from the English moors, draped in forgotten fineries and left for aeons. I was determined to get a shave, a nice shower, and a new suit.
I kept to the swamp, avoiding the superstitious rustics that make their home there, making my way to the estate of my fiancee: there under her nursing care I might recover and plot my revenge against E______. But when I arrived, I was beset by a most terrible plight: Poor Linda could not recognize me. When I arrived at her lawn, I caught a glimpse of her face set in icy fear, mixed with what I could only surmise was a kind of strange starry-eyed awe. Indeed, her servants also acted in considerable agitation, but while I stood dumb-struck, they fled, bleeding into the night.
I approached the house with some resignation. What had beset me over the night? I peered wonderously at the reflection of myself in the glass. And what regarded me back -- an image of myself, for it most certainly was me, Alec Holland, and yet, I was no man...