Swamp Thing #5

History

Carlsen Verlag GmbH had been issuing Alan Moore's Swamp Thing run in German translation since December 1990 under its mature-readers 'comicArt' imprint, with Andreas C. Knigge serving as editorial supervisor (Lektorat) and Uwe Anton handling translation duties across the series. Issue #5, cover-dated June 1992, collected the 'Love and Death' sequence — Saga of the Swamp Thing #29–31 and Swamp Thing Annual #2 — following the same arc-by-arc packaging strategy the series used throughout, mirroring how DC itself had already collected this material in the 1987 trade paperback 'Love and Death.' Carlsen's broader DC programme at the start of the 1990s was part of an expansion into superhero and mature-readers American comics that ran alongside the publisher's established Franco-Belgian catalogue.

Trivia · 8 facts

• German title: 'Der Gestank des Bösen' ('The Stench of Evil'); published by Carlsen Verlag GmbH under the comicArt imprint, cover-dated June 1992.
• Reprints Saga of the Swamp Thing (Vol. 2) #29 ('Love and Death'), #30 ('A Halo of Flies'), #31 ('The Brimstone Ballet'), and Swamp Thing Annual (Vol. 2) #2 ('Down Amongst the Dead Men') — the complete 'Love and Death' story arc by Alan Moore.
• Primary artists for the collected material: Stephen Bissette and John Totleben, with contributions from Shawn McManus, Rick Veitch, and Alfredo Alcala.
• Saga of the Swamp Thing #29 — one of the key issues reprinted here — was the first issue of the series to be published without the Comics Code Authority seal of approval, after DC refused to resubmit to the CCA following rejection; issue #31 subsequently added the cover tagline 'Sophisticated Suspense' in place of the code stamp.
• The arc's storyline centres on Anton Arcane possessing the body of Matthew Cable, the psychological and physical torment of Abigail Cable, and Swamp Thing's journey into Hell to recover her soul — with Phantom Stranger, Deadman, Etrigan the Demon, and the Spectre appearing as guides.
• Issue #31 of the source material also dropped the long-standing 'The Saga of the' prefix from the series title, rebranding it simply as Swamp Thing.
• Editorial supervision of the Carlsen series was handled by Andreas C. Knigge, who oversaw Carlsen's entire comic programme and coined its mature-readers 'comicArt' branding; Uwe Anton served as German translator across the run.
• The 'Love and Death' material has since been reprinted in multiple collected editions worldwide, including DC's own 'Swamp Thing: Love and Death' trade paperback, the 'Saga of the Swamp Thing: Book Two' paperback (with an introduction by Neil Gaiman), the Absolute Swamp Thing by Alan Moore hardcovers, and a Panini Deutschland German-language edition — confirming the arc's enduring canonical status.

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