Charms and absurdities

From the introduction to Saga Of The Swamp Thing trade paperback, 1987, collecting issues #21-27.

Alan Moore: [...] The very first thing that anyone reading a modern horror comic should understand is that there are great economic advantages in being able to prop up an ailing, poor-selling comic book with an appearance by a successful guest star. Consequently, all the comic book stories produced by any given publisher are likely to take place in the same imaginary universe. This includes the brightly colored costumed adventurers populating their superhero titles, the shambling monstrosities that dominate their horror titles, and the odd grizzled cowpoke who's wandered in from a western title through a convenient time warp. For those more familiar with conventional literature, try to imagine Dr. Frankenstein kidnapping one of the protagonists of Little Women for his medical experiments, only to find himself subject to the scrutiny of a team-up between Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot. I'm sure that both the charms and the overwhelming absurdities of this approach will become immediately apparent, and so it is in comic books: Swamp Thing exists in the same universe as Superman, the same world as Batman and Wonder Woman and all the other denizens of the cosmos delineated within the pages of DC Comics' various publications.
 

As I said above, this approach has both its charms and absurdities. The absurdities are obvious: to work properly, horror needs a delicate and carefully sustained atmosphere- one capable of being utterly ruined by the sudden entrance of a man in green tights and an orange cloak, especially if as a character, he's fond of puns. The charms are much harder to find, but once revealed, can actually be rewarding. The continuity-expert's nightmare of a thousand different super-powered characters co-existing in the same continuum can, with the application of a sensitive and sympathetic eye, become a rich and fertile mythic background with fascinating archetypal characters hanging around, waiting to be picked like grapes on the vine. Yes, of course, the whole idea is utterly inane, but to let its predictable inanities blind you to its truly fabulous and breathtaking aspects is to do both oneself and the genre a disservice.
 

Imagine for a moment a universe jewelled with alien races ranging from the transcendentally divine to the loathsomely Lovecraftian. Imagine a cosmos where the ancient gods still exist somewhere and where whole dimensions are populated by anthropomorphic funny animals. Where Heaven and Hell are demonstrably real and even accessible, and where angels and demons alike seem to walk the earth with impunity. Imagine a planet where exposure to dangerous radiation granted the gift of super-speed rather than bone cancer, and where the skies were thus filled by flying men and women threatening to blot out the sun. Imagine a place where people were terribly good or terribly bad, with little room for the mediocre in between. No, it certainly wouldn't look very much like the world we live in, but that doesn't mean it couldn't be every bit as glorious, touching, sad, or scary. With this kind of perspective, the appearance in these pages of the Justice League of America or vintage DC super-villain Jason Woodrue should be less unnerving than it might otherwise have been to the uninitiated. [...]