Alan Moore's run on Swamp Thing turned a somewhat notable comics protagonist into the star of one of the seminal horror comics of the decade. When Peter David was offered the chance to novelize the Swamp Thing movie that came out post-Alan Moore, he jumped the chance.

Then he read the script.

"By a third of the way through, I was having intestinal cramps. By the end of the script, I was bleeding out my eyeballs."

So he threw out craploads of the script and decided to make the best one-shot self-contained novelization of the Alan Moore-style Swamp Thing he could.

There's characters rewritten to have actual motivations. There's a much more accurate Swamp Thing than every saw the silver screen. There's comics in-jokes, including a Superman reference that made me laugh out loud. There's Alan Goddamn Snake-Worshipped Moore himself in the middle of everything, smugly playing almost a Rod Serling role as the owner of the Wein Hotel in the middle of things.

There's even a new ending.

And, most importantly, there's a romance between a moss-encrusted mockery of a man who used to be a scientist and the daughter of his mad scientist arch-nemesis.

Big damn fun.

The only thing the movie has on the novel? An opening sequence of Swamp Thing covers set to Creedance Clearwater's "Born on the Bayou." Seriously, I worn out my VHS copy rewatching that part. To a ten year-old, that was high art.

I'll quote DC executive Bob Greenberger: "Skip the movie. Read the book." ( )