Alan Garner defines archetypes as "the elements from which our emotions are built . . . give(n) separate names . . . "23 Clearly, one of these named must be a version of the "Green Man." The writers of Swamp Thing have hit upon the emotional and mysterious impact of this archetype and have connected and reworked it into a new mythology of their own. What is remarkable about the writers who work with this theme is how neatly they tie their connections together, and how convincingly researched are their forays into the lore of other countries ranging as far abroad as China and Africa. In Swamp Thing we see the archetype of the green man and the created archetype of the "earth elemental" so intertwined with the imaginary comic world that it is hard to separate the conscious use of the folkloric from the inadvertent use of folklore based on memory and culture, or from the creative imagination.24

John Constantine, the "Hellblazer," himself represents yet another of the "elements from which our emotions are built."25 He is the Fool, the Gambler, the Trickster. Constantine made his first appearance in Swamp Thing 37, and three years later he became the main character in a "spin off" series of his own, Hellblazer. In Hellblazer, Constantine is continually referred to as "the Gambler"; he makes an easy living in betting offices and is shown winning again and again at slight-of-hand games. Jamie Delano, the script writer for most of the first forty issues, is well aware of the imagery within which he was working. He consciously makes the connection to folklore and folk religion, and even includes references to various occult works as well as to cards in the tarot deck.

The Trickster, Alan Garner writes, " . . . enters the world as a force without direction. He has no knowledge of bad or good. Through his cunning he changes the world, but his actions often appear to go wrong, so that his benevolence results in death, and his anger gives life. He is his own victim, a creature of 'bliss and blunder', but he learns, and the story ends with his coming into rebirth."26 As both destroyer and creator, Constantine is indirectly responsible for the deaths of both his parents and most of his friends. He is a brother-killer, guilty of strangling his twin with his umbilical cord while they are both still in the womb. Yet he is the biological father of the vegetation elemental who will follow the Swamp Thing and who, in the comic world, is eventually expected to redeem the world. Jung writes of the trickster, "From his penis he makes all kinds of useful plants. This is a reference to his original nature as a Creator, for the world is made from the body of a god."27 In fathering the new "plant elemental" Constantine does precisely that.

This subtle and not-so-subtle use of archetypes in Swamp Thing and Hellblazer may seem tremendously farfetched, but it is precisely what is portrayed for the readers. The deep meaning is consciously and overtly there, made plain for the interested reader, and subtly made available for the passive or uninitiated reader. Even the artwork echoes this meaning-for the mark of a successful comic book is one where the writers and illustrators work together, enhancing each other's craft, both offering insight into what makes the story a whole. Artists can take certain liberties with the comic book script, altering it as they see fit so as to enable the incorporation of their art work. An example of this use to subtly convey a theme is in Hellblazer 39, where Constantine is represented throughout the issue by different tarot cards. The episode is entitled "The Hanged Man," and although no mention of this is made in the text, on the title page Constantine is seen lying on a tombstone, upside down to the viewer, with this legs crossed in precisely the same position of the "Hanged Man" of the tarot deck.28 This tarot imagery is repeated later where Constantine is shown walking a rocky strand in the dark, carrying a lantern, like the card representing the "Hermit".29

It's just, ever since Newcastle, the last ten years,
Ever since Newcastle, I've been having these
Nightmares
Bad ones, most nights, and I wondered

If the characters in Swamp Thing and Hellblazer represent typical archetypes that appeal to Western "human unconsciousness" and appear to be popular because of this, one might expect Neil Gaiman's popular Sandman series to follow a similar pattern. This is not quite so, though the principal character, the Sandman" - alternately referred to as Dream, Morpheus, Oneiros, and the Lord of Dreams - does exhibit certain archetypal "hero qualities."30 Instead of the portrayal of the principal character as a representation of a single archetype, the entire series is a journey through folklore, myth, legend, and imagination where archetypal motifs are continually brought to the fore.

The most evident of these is that of the mother goddess: the Hecatae, the Fates, the Eumenides, the "kindly ones," the "three-in-one goddess" incarnate as maid, matron, and crone. This theme occurs again and again with the story lines of Sandman revolving around three central female characters, each one an incarnation of one particular aspect of the Hecatae. They first appear in Sandman 2. That each incarnation of the Hecatae is actually the same being is clearly illustrated in a three-panel sequence where a gargoyle is shown snatched up by the crone, stuffed into the mouth of the mother, and chewed by the maiden, as though this were one composite set of actions performed by the same character. The consistent action makes clear that the women represented are not actually shifting places, but guises. Such a trio further appears alternately as three doomed women in a diner where, though mortals, they come together and "tell the future" accurately, but misleadingly as do the Hecatae;31 they appear as Adam's three wives, the maiden (unnamed), the matron (Lilith), and the Crone (Eve);32 and in a less obvious form, in Sandman 10-16 where they appear as Rose Walker, her mother, and her grandmother. Incidentally, this motif is subtly prevalent in all three series, for example, as Lady Jane, Teife, and Abby in Swamp Thing 120 and forward. This is a different kind of archetype, relying less on Jungian interpretations and more on traditional Celtic and pagan thought as represented in Robert Graves's imaginative The White Goddess. Nevertheless, there is a definite representation and examination of the human psyche at work here. The three stages of female development are obvious and inevitable, and their portrayal alternates between ancient and Christian representation.

If Swamp Thing, Sandman, and Hellblazer share this use of archetypal creation, they also share a use of the traditional hero quest tale, that of the fall, death, and rebirth of the protagonist.33 We see this cycle continually in the character of the Swamp Thing, who casts off his body and recreates a new form afresh from the life force around him. As the green man he is a symbol of the relationship of eternity to time, a figure that is continually sacrificed, who descends to the underworld, and is then reborn. Likewise, in Hellblazer 44 and 45 John Constantine, in a last effort to fight off lung cancer, makes a bargain with hell. This bargain is engineered in such a way that his soul cannot be claimed without causing hell to destroy itself, so Constantine must undergo a curative process, and continue to live indefinitely. Here Constantine "dies," descends to hell, and is reborn. This classic Christ-like pattern or mythic quest of the hero is even more overtly played out in Sandman 1-8 where the Sandman, as the protagonist, falls from grace, passes through a number of trials (again including a descent into hell), and then come to his final victory.

If, indeed, folktales address certain needs and issues in society, then the inclusion of archetypes and versions of the ultimate "hero quest" in at least three major comic book series reveals something about the needs and desires of our society. According to the understandings of such contemporary writers, archetypes will reappear to re-balance society at different places and times independent of traceable lines of transmission because they are part of this permanent unconsciousness of humankind. So the reappearance of the "Green Man" today is, in the words of William Anderson, a " . . . rising up into our present awareness in order to counterbalance a lack in our attitude to nature"34, and the appearance of the trickster, hecate, and hero are responses of society toward chaos and control.

Separate from such unconsciousness interpretations, the current popularity of concepts of the psychic unity of humankind and a collective unconsciousness of the spirit in contemporary literature most likely relates to feelings of alienation - from governmental structures, from community, from society, and from religion - and the growing voice of discontent about one's place in the larger society within the baby-boomer generation. As this generation ages, their intellect and curiosity grows, and their tastes become more refined, and perhaps their feelings of separation and alienation increase. Comic books respond with more intricate plots that rely not only on their own created universe, but also on issues, myths, and characters drawn from the world around, tying together the world around on both a mythic and symbolic level and a concrete plane.35 Their texts possess traditional, recognizable, and familiar subjects that offer the reader a sense of shared community as world citizens, although it may be an alternate world.

As a genre that is at root fantasy literature, comic books are a safe and easy place for readers to explore parts of themselves and their sense of spiritualism and search from transcendence, and to examine and experiment with issues that worry or fascinate them. Comic book characters then actualize their reader's desires, playing increasingly important and keystone roles in the very survival of humanity and of the world, fighting off evil forces of hell, maniacs of corporate America, and aberrations of nature. The plots narrowly define good and evil in plain and simple terms, constantly address the ongoing battle between these forces. Explanations or "truths" are offered, if only temporarily, for those events that seem otherwise without meaning and without explanation. The legendary historical background of these series, furthermore, is constantly in a state of flux; each writer plays off another's ideas, intertwining his or her own story line with another's, rewriting, reshaping, and redefining past issues, all the while refining and defining the comic universe, its history, and its meaning. The writers of comic books and their readers have settled on the use of archetypes to portray the interconnection of the real and the unreal, the mythic and the factual, the worldly and the otherworldly, and through this use, they are able to define their own world a little more clearly.

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Endnotes

23. Alan Garner, The Guizer: A Book of Fools. (London: A. G. Hamilton, 1975), 9.

24. This creation as opposed to a "recreation" has reached a highly polished level in the pages of these works. Gaiman's "Tales in the Sand" (Sandman 9) appears so similar in style to the traditional folktale that scholars, students, and readers alike asked him where he had found the story.

25. Garner, 9.

26. Garner, 9. For further discussion of the trickster figure as archetype and its use in contemporary literature see M. Suzanne Evertsen Lundquist, The Trickster: A Transformation Archetype. (San Francisco: Mellen Research University Press, 1991); Shoko Yoshimoto Miura, The Trickster Archetype: His Function in Contemporary Fiction (Diss. University of California, Los Angeles, 1982).

27. Jung, 1970, 143-144.

28. Jamie Delano, Hellblazer 39. (New York: DC Comics, 1991), 2.

29. Jamie Delano, Hellblazer 39. (New York: DC Comics, 1991), 17, 21.

30. Alan Dundes, "The Hero Pattern and the Life of Jesus," in Protocol of the Twenty-fifth Colloquy, ed. W. W. Fellner. (Berkeley: The Center for Hermeneutic Studies in Hellenistic and Modern Culture, 1976).

31. Neil Gaiman, Sandman 6. (New York: DC Comics).

32. Neil Gaiman, Sandman 40. (New York: DC Comics).

33. Or as Campbell separates it, the departure, the initiation, and the return. See Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1949), Part I .

34. Anderson, 25.

35. The readers of these "mature suspense" comic books are largely older individuals from a college-educated background. See Janet McConnaughey, "Literature in Comic Books," The Tennessean (4 April, 1993), 4 ff.

Further Reading

Baker, R. L. "Folklore Motifs in Comic Books of Superheroes," Bulletin of the Tennessee Folklore Society 41 (1975): 170-174.

Bird, D. A. "Folklore in Mass Media," Southern Folklore Quarterly 40 (1976): 304.

Briggs, Cliff. "The Neil Gaimen, Jill Thompson Interview," Comic Shop News 270(Sept. 2, 1992):4-7.

BrŸggemann, T. "Das Bild Frau in den Comics," Studien zur Jugenliteratur 2 (1956): 3-29.

Daniels, Les. DC Comics: Sixty Years of the World's Favorite Super Heroes. Bulfinch Press, 1995.

Goulart, Ron. The Great Comic Book Artists. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1989.

Harvey, Robert C. The Art of the Comic Book: An Aesthetic History. (Popular Culture Series). University Press of Mississippi, 1996.

Inge, M. T. "Comics as Culture," Virginia Commonwealth Magazine 4 (1975): 6-+.

Inge, M. T. "Comic Art," in The Handbook of American Popular Culture ed. Connecticut, 1978.

Jones, Gerard and William Jacobs. The Comic Book Heroes. Prima Publications, 1996.

Kagelmann, H. J. Comics - Aspekte zu Inhalt und Wirkung. Bad Heilbrunn/Obb. , 1976.

Kempkes, W. L. International Bibliography on Comic Literature. New York, 1974.

Leipziger, W. , "Die Comics und die Marchen," Freundliches Begegnen 6 (1956): 7-10.

Lewis, M. E. B. "The Study of Folklore in Literature: An Expanded View," Southern Folklore Quarterly 40 (1976): 349-+.

Maddox, Mike. "Planet Neil," Amazing Heroes 186 (December 1990): 44-51.

McCue, Greg S. and Clive Bloom. Dark Knights: The New Comics in Context. Pluto Press, 1993.

McPherson, Darwin. "Something up their Sleeve," Amazing Heroes 185 (November 1990): 43-47.

Sabin, Roger. Adult Comics: An Introduction. New York: Routledge, 1993.

Savage, William W. Comic Books and America, 1945-1954. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1990.

Smith, G. P. "The Plight of the Folktale in the Comics," Southern Folklore Quarterly 16 (1952): 124-127.

Vance, Michael. Forbidden Adventures: The History of the American Comics Group. (Contributions to the Study of Popular Culture, No 53) Greenwood: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1996.

Veitch, Rick. "What Would have Happened in 'Swamp Thing' #88-92, Comic Buyer's Guide 803 (April 7, 1989): 20.

Waugh, Coulton. The Comics (Studies in Popular Culture Series). Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1991.

Wiater, Stan, Stephen R. Bissette. Comic Book Rebels: Conversations With the Creators of the New Comics. Donald I Fine Press, 1993.

Wooley, C. "An American Mythology," The Harvard Journal of Pictorial Fiction (Spring 1974): 24-30.

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