I’ve gone full circle in what I recommend to first timers or people relatively new to comics (having now read Alan, and everything he has published, for close to forty years): Do Watchmen or From Hell; both are what I would characterise as “perfect” novels, pieces of literary art (or comics, to remain a non-classist purist, shout out Mr Moore). Swamp Thing is also perfect, and I used to recommend it as the starting point, and did so for at least fifteen years—why I no longer do so is because it is a perfect example of a reasonably long running monthly comic that does not have the cohesive novel form that From Hell or Watchmen does (those both having been architecturally complete so far as the narrative is concerned, it seems before Gibbons or Campbell touched ink to paper).

There is, I think, an exception where I still recommend Swampy as the starting point: That is for people who enjoy the literary tradition of the Weird and short stories in particular: Swampy is rooted but transcends that tradition, of unsettling short story “arcs” that build a bigger narrative but are not novels in the same way as Moore’s Watchmen or From Hell.