Swamp Thing #23.1: Arcane – Review

By: Charles Soule (story), Jesus Saiz (art), Matthew Wilson (colors)

The Story: A place so pleasant and perfect that it could make you scream.

The Review: Having already professed my helpless admiration for Soule’s work, I’ll spare you something similar here, lest I ruin my credibility entirely.  But given that we’re now dealing with the title that’s made his name, I think a little extra eagerness is warranted, don’t you?  Besides, this issue features Anton Arcane, a twisted figure whom Scott Snyder put to good use as a villain, but who was rather shallow a character otherwise.

That’s the nature of inherently sadistic people.  We’ve become so accustomed to the notion that evil is a product of circumstance and upbringing that it’s hard to process that someone may just be born that way.  Yet that’s exactly the theory Soule takes with Arcane, showing the madman as a young lad stumbling upon a decomposing corpse of a slain rabbit in the woods: “I had never seen anything so beautiful.  New feelings churned up inside me.  Excitement.  A young boy’s excitement…”

Swamp Thing #18 – Review

By: Scott Snyder (story), Yanick Paquette (art), Nathan Fairbairn (colors)

The Story: Abby and Alec find the fuzzy areas between dead or alive.

The Review: When DC first announced Swamp Thing as one of the ongoing titles included in its New 52 initiative, I think I fell into the category of people who thought it was an interesting idea, but also had some doubts as to the execution.  Snyder and Paquette blew those doubts away from the first issue, so forcefully that it took several months of underwhelming issues to break down my faith at last.  It’s a shame that our creators depart with less favor than they started with.

I’ve already covered my dissatisfaction with the Rotworld arc in my review of #17, so I won’t beat that dead horse now.  Instead, I’ll just say that Snyder seems as eager as we are to put that mess behind us and simply end on as high a note as possible.  Remarkably enough, he does so, delivering an issue that goes through several major twists which result in a steep, enduring cost to our heroes.

Swamp Thing #17 – Review

By: Scott Snyder & Jeff Lemire (story), Andrew Belanger (art), Tony Avina (colors)

The Story: This time, Alec and Buddy jump into a mysterious hole with both eyes open.

The Review: If Animal Man #17 hasn’t already made it clear that this crossover has lost its legs and, with all honestly, has done so for a while now, then its sister issue in Swamp Thing definitely seals the matter.  Somewhere along the way, whether it was good ideas that didn’t quite pan out, interference from the editorial powers that be, or a case where Snyder and Lemire got overburdened with work and lost their focus, Rotworld stopped being special.

When I say that, I basically mean the story’s gotten predictable, which is always deadly, no matter how well the writer pulls it off.  As long as two months ago, you could guess that the presence Alec’s been sensing all along wasn’t Abby herself but those clones she discovered in Arcane’s castle.  This is a case where knowing more than the hero can be a major downside; while Anton gleefully explains to Alec the details of his horrific experimentations, you yawn and flip the page, hoping something will actually shock you further on.

Animal Man #17 – Review

By: Jeff Lemire & Scott Snyder (story), Steve Pugh (art), Timothy Green II (pencils), Joseph Silver (inks), Lovern Kindzierski (colors)

The Story: Animal Man and Swamp Thing—reunited, and it feels so good.

The Review: The most disappointing thing about Rotworld has been the fact that at the end of the day, it’s another apocalyptic scenario with humanity on the brink of doom and a bunch of undead shambling around.  Granted, there’s plenty of stories that can be gleaned from that premise, but this title in particular hasn’t done much with it except feature a bunch of those shambling undead in superhero outfits.  Not quite the groundbreaking crossover we hoped for.

Another disappointment was the choice to separate Alec and Buddy, forcing them to find their way back to each other on their own.  Although Alec has accomplished a great deal during his time sojourning the world alone, Buddy, despite his company, has done little to help the war effort by comparison.  This series has already made it clear that Buddy, in the grand scheme of the Red, Green, and Rot, is really a second banana—but did they have to reduce him to sidekick in his own book?

Swamp Thing #16 – Review

By: Scott Snyder (story), Yanick Paquette (art), Nathan Fairbairn (colors)

The Story: Just because you’re going Green doesn’t mean some growth supplements can’t hurt.

The Review: I seem to be writing a lot of these commentaries on superhero as a genre lately, but you know what they say—so I won’t even bother saying it myself.  Anyway, something that sort of hit me as a revelation while reading this issue is the idea that superhero can be considered a sub-category of story within the adventure genre.  After all, isn’t the point of adventure simply to generate excitement and let characters tackle any number of physically stimulating challenges?

I think that’s why, ever since we started the Rotworld arc and Swamp Thing started rubbing shoulders with more superheroes, the pure horror of this series has faded and a much more adventurous spirit has come out of it.  This change will probably bother purists, since it takes the titular character away from his roots, placing him in a more mainstream arena.  I don’t belong to that particular group of fans, and even if I did, Snyder makes Swampy as adventure hero so much fun that it’s hard to resent him for it.

Swamp Thing #15 – Review

By: Scott Snyder (story), Marco Rudy (art), Val Staples & Lee Loughridge (colors)

The Story: For once, Gotham’s got some competition for worst place in the world.

The Review: An interesting difference I’ve noticed between Animal Man and Swamp Thing is that each hero, despite their common enemy, doesn’t have the same amount of purpose as the other.  You know how in Lord of the Rings, all the action centered on Aragon and his last company, but it was Frodo who had any chance of making a difference?  That’s the sense you get out of Buddy and Alec’s respective parts in this storyline.

Undoubtedly, Jeff Lemire will give Buddy a crucial role in toppling the Rot, but at the end of the day, you just know that it’s Alec who really holds the fate of the world in his hands.  Buddy fights the Rot out of duty, both as agent of the Red and as guardian of its avatar.  Facing the Rot is more like a part of Alec’s destiny; whichever way the battle turns out, whoever else lives or dies in the process, Alec must reach the point where he can confront the enemy.

Swamp Thing #14 – Review

By: Scott Snyder (story), Yanick Paquette (art), Nathan Fairbairn (colors)

The Story: This isn’t quite like Huckleberry Finn, but it’s as close as you can get in Rotworld.

The Review: I won’t deny that I’ve been less than thrilled with the first chapters of Rotworld, which seems astonishing as we’re talking about a highly anticipated storyline from two extremely fine writers working on two very compelling characters.  It’s hard to pin down why exactly the last few months’ issues have failed to elicit the expected excitement.  Somehow, the plot just seemed way simpler, more predictable, and even duller than you anticipated.

It’s to my great relief that Snyder turns that trend around in a big way here.  Now that we’ve gotten past the obligatory briefing on the world’s status, we can now focus on taking some action.  Now surrounded by the enemy, with few options and little hope of success, Alec faces the ultimate test as the Green’s avatar.  It seems appropriate, then, that his powers just keep getting bigger and bigger, quite literally so in this case, making quick work of the Rotted Titans and their minions using one carefully placed step.

Swamp Thing Annual #1 – Review

By: Scott Snyder & Scott Tuft (story), Becky Cloonan (art), Andrew Belanger (pencils), Karl Kerschl (inks), Tony Avina (colors)

The Story: What’s more romantic than a historical tour of a village on a barren mountain?

The Review: If you’ve noticed nothing else about Snyder’s work in the last few years, you’ve at least realized by now that he’s had big ideas for the DCU ever since he started working on Detective Comics.  As amazing as his work has been, though, only lately has he begun to stretch his legs and take command of the material like his own.  He now sees much more comfortable taking the familiar characters and twisting them to his own vision.

You might be thinking that he’s always done this, which is true, but you have to admit he’s become quite a bit more radical in the last few months.  The early issues of this series displayed a huge amount of knowledge and respect for the Swamp Thing mythos, retaining as much of the preceding authors’ continuity as possible.  In #0, you saw Snyder muck with Alec’s origins in a pretty significant way, and here, that mucking turns into full-on historical revisionism.

Swamp Thing #13 – Review

By: Scott Snyder (story), Yanick Paquette (art), Nathan Fairbairn (colors)

The Story: Some people would consider a Garden of Eden in the sky kind of romantic, Ivy.

The Review: I gave Animal Man’s counterpart to this issue a thorough thrashing in my review the other day.  This arc has been one of anticipation ever since Snyder and Jeff Lemire’s collaboration was announced, and for it to start with less than a bang makes you feel a bit cheated.  Rotworld leaves our heroes with only one inevitable choice of action: go back and reverse what has been.  That inevitability saps the arc of its thrill almost from the start.

This issue doesn’t do a much better job of convincing you any other option is possible.  With the world laid waste, its very geography altered (“This ‘desert’ is Louisiana, Holland,” Ivy informs him bitterly), and everyone dead and grotesquely deformed, even if Alec and Buddy somehow manage to defeat Arcane and the Rot by themselves, what would be the point?  I can only see a way back if the Red, Green, and Rot all work together to put things right—which isn’t a bad possibility, come to think of it.  I just take issue with the predictability of the story’s direction.

Swamp Thing #12 – Review

By: Scott Snyder & Jeff Lemire (story), Marco Rudy (artist), Dan Green & Andy Owens (inks), Val Staples (colors)

The Story: Time flies when you’re dying, apparently.

The Review: I may never have the evidence to prove it, but I strongly suspect it was not Snyder and Lemire’s original intention to write a two-issue prologue to their crossover event.  With the #0 issues coming up, I think they wanted to ensure the body of their story didn’t get cut off right in the middle by a sudden “secret origin” tale.  To that end, I think they adapted their prologue to leave us at an exciting, but not crucial, juncture of the arc.

Otherwise, the prologue in itself isn’t all that interesting, certainly not enough to merit two whole issues.  Most of the action involves the characters mindlessly cutting their way through the endless tide of Rot minions, and this kind of thing feels more suited to a superhero book than the usually tone and concept-focused Swamp Thing—or Animal Man, for that matter.  If all this bloodiness helped demonstrate some of the characters’ skills or powers, it might be worth the time spent, but there’s nothing new here, so it mostly feels like a way to eat up extra pages.

Snyder and Lemire also spend an inordinate amount of time summing up points from previous issues.  As in Animal Man #12, this benefits potential bandwagon-jumpers (and I tend to question how many of those there are), but no one else.  Most of us consist early fans already know all the basics by heart: who belongs where in the hierarchy of the Rot, the Red, and the Green, how the three natural forces interact, and the strength of the enemy in question.  Hearing it all again just makes you impatient, especially when the characters start treading over information introduced in the same week’s companion issue (“It’s as we said in the swamp.”).

The only real useful bit to come out of this issue that also has the value of being new information is Abby’s questioning of Anton Arcane’s return.  Initially, I thought it seemed natural that the avatar of the dead would have the power to return from death as often as he pleased.  Didn’t he say in #10 that he’s sired a ton of offspring?  That gave me the impression he’s been kicking it over and over in this world for ages, but then Abby claims, “Once an avatar dies, there should be no bringing them back.”  So what power is the Rot tapping into to contradict such tradition?

Then you have the even more confusing task of figuring out what exactly happens at the end of the issue.  Spoiler alert—Alec and Buddy eventually find themselves back in the real world after a surprisingly brief sojourn in the Rot, only to discover a year has passed (announced by Anton in a sing-songy, “She’s been dead for twenty-five years!” kind of moment) and the Rot has already won.  But is this the real world?  If it is, that means we’ve not only skipped over a huge chunk of time, we’ve also missed two major plot threads somewhere in there: Cliff’s ultimate fate and Abby’s attempt to make contact with the Rot’s Parliament of Decay.

I haven’t missed Yanick Paquette to much since Rudy started taking over so many issues, but this time I desperately wished Paquette had handled art duties.  Rudy starts off strong, but as the issue goes on, his lines grow looser, his composition more generic, and his paneling less dynamic.  By the last few pages, Buddy’s face, with its flat, oversized eyes and unusually wide bone structure, is practically unrecognizable from what he looks like in the opening.  Rudy also skimps on the action, suggesting rather than showing the characters’ movements.  For example, what exactly is Maxine doing during the battle with the Rotlings?  It looks uncannily, if inexplicably, like she’s shooting Starfire-like energy blasts from her hands.

Conclusion: All in all, a less than spectacular first outing on one of the most highly anticipated storylines of the year, but it has plenty of potential to redeem itself—once September is over.

Grade: B

– Minhquan Nguyen

Some Musings: – Call me crazy, but it feels like the Red is definitely working at a disadvantage in fighting the Rot, doesn’t it?  How is an agent of the Red supposed to maintain a tether to the surface world like Swamp Thing can?  As Alec remarks, a preternaturally long tail “would be…disgusting,” as would a giant blood vessel, as Buddy pitched in Animal Man #12.

Animal Man #12 – Review

By: Jeff Lemire & Scott Snyder (story), Steve Pugh (art), Lovern Kindzierski (colors)

The Story: Animal Man and Swamp Thing do their best Starsky and Hutch impression.

The Review: And so it begins.  Hokey and overused, yes, I know, but the line seems apropos here, considering we are talking about an event long in the works and which every fan of DC’s “Dark” line of books has been looking forward to for months.  We have here two of the biggest hotshots in the wake of the new DCU working together on two of the biggest figures of DC’s counter-mainstream culture—for a mainstream book.  That is also popular, of all things.

So excitement definitely feels deserved in this situation.  That said, the meeting between our two heroes doesn’t have quite the punch it did in Swamp Thing #11.  Buddy finds it necessary to brief his new partner on everything that’s happened to him in the last ten issues, which might be handy for readers hopping aboard the Animal Man hayride for the first time, but a dull exercise for us longtime fans.

Swamp Thing #11 – Review

By: Scott Snyder (story), Marco Rudy (art), Val Staples (colors)

The Story: Who knew Swamp Thing had his own potent brand of kung fu?

The Review: Can you believe it’s been nearly a year already?  This time last year, none of us knew how this DC relaunch would play out; some people thought it’d be a game-changer and others thought it’d tank and of course, the truth turned out somewhere in between.  But I think by the most important standard, this has been a win for DC, and I’m talking about this storytelling environment where Swamp Thing is a mainstream hit, not just a favorite for the cultists.

The success has been even more impressive considering how underwhelming the return of Alec Holland and Swamp Thing to the DCU was at first.  Once the initial surprise fizzled out, no one seemed to know what to do with these characters, now that they were available.  Jonathan Vankin wrote a horribly misguided mini which painted Alec as a helpless victim, the material from which S. Thing arose from, but otherwise a minor figure in the monster’s life.

Swamp Thing #10 – Review

By: Scott Snyder (story), Francisco Francavilla (art)

The Story: Abby’s just another person with a father who’s proud of her for all the wrong reasons.

The Review: Now that all the gushing about Jeff Lemire is out of the way, let’s start it up again in favor of Snyder, easily the other hotshot spearheading the latest generation of DC writers.  Whereas his pal and peer romps across the sci-fi genre, shedding big ideas behind him, Snyder has given the DC mystery a good name again.  To be perfectly fair, his concepts aren’t quite as audacious, but his execution is so well-crafted that his product is no less weird and wonderful.

When it comes to mysteries, execution is pretty much everything.  In nearly every story of that kind, all the major elements remain the same: the crime, the criminal, the victim, the detective, the suspects, and the clues.  Nowadays, audiences have gotten so savvy that they can pick out the conclusion before the story is halfway over.  So to some degree, mystery writers have given up trying to shock the reader with the “Whodunnit” question and instead poured their efforts into making the journey to that answer as gripping as possible—it’s “why” versus “what.”

Swamp Thing #9 – Review

By: Scott Snyder (story), Yanick Paquette & Marco Rudy (art), Nathan Fairbairn & Val Staples (colors)

The Story: Abby hasn’t learned that it’s rarely a good idea to trust canned food of any kind.

The Review: One thing that’s become obvious about Snyder’s writing is he loves to take his time.  I don’t mean his pacing is slow; I mean that every issue feels like a clear stepping-stone to the next, and all of them together form a path through the woods to some great destination only Snyder knows about.  In short, Snyder is very much a student of the decompression school of comic book writing, which is not a bad thing if you’re diverted enough along the way.

Snyder’s sprightly writing ability will keep you occupied most of the time—how can you not appreciate lines like, “You like the way the foxfire makes the bayou glow at night”?  But great prose can’t always disguise the fact that there’s not a whole lot going on.  This series has always struggled to fill the pages with its tiny cast (with only two regular characters and perhaps the same number of recurring ones) and its one plotline.  Unlike the hive of activity over in its sister title, Animal Man, you rarely get an opportunity to break away from the main event.

Swamp Thing #8 – Review

By: Scott Snyder (writer), Marco Rudy & Yanick Paquette (artists), Nathan Fairbairn (colorist)

The Story: The Badlands—now, with even fewer reasons to visit!

The Review: Both Jeff Lemire and Snyder have explored the notion that the Rot, for all its grotesque manifestations, is simply a force akin to the Red or the Green.  All three have their place in the natural world (though the Rot signals the ends of the others), and all three have an innate desire to spread and conquer the earth as far they possibly can.  In some ways, this has made the Rot less intriguing as an antagonist, because it’s simply doing what it’s meant to do.

Lemire and Snyder always manage to cover up the Rot’s less-than-subtle villainy by making it not so much the driving point of interest in the story, but rather an interesting context for their heroes to work through some common conflicts.  For Animal Man, that means the pressures of weighing family versus duty; for Swamp Thing, it’s more of a Romeo and Juliet-type situation: boy and girl from opposing forces fall in love and encounter tragedy for it.

To be honest, Snyder has been a little less successful in his choice of core relationships than Lemire.  While Alec and Abby shared a bond and weight on their shoulders, the romantic attraction between them always felt a little forced, a lingering obligation from their “past” association than genuine chemistry.  From a storytelling point of view, their pairing is logical, poetic, and ripe with tension, but somehow unearned, destined rather than natural.

That’s why it feels a bit unconvincing that Alec would go so far to save this woman, to the point where he literally flies, solo, into enemy territory to free her.  You have to admit, though, it makes for some majorly high stakes, especially for Alec’s first official outing as warrior-king Swamp Thing—which sounds catchier to me every time I say it, I must say.  The bulk of the issue involves Alec tearing through Sethe’s seemingly endless army, and it looks quite as bloody and epic as anything you’d expect from such impossible odds.

Swamp Thing #7 – Review

By: Scott Snyder (writer), Yanick Paquette (artist), Nathan Fairbairn (colorist)

The Story: From the ashes he’ll rise again—yes, I said “he.”  Look for Phoenix elsewhere.

The Review: I know as a reviewer, I should approach everything with as much of an open mind as possible, but I’m only human; I get affected by biases and prejudices as much as anyone else.  Though I like to think I’m pretty forgiving when it comes to this stuff, once a writer has lost my faith, it takes a lot more to earn my good opinion the next time around.  Conversely, a writer who impresses me gets some leeway, even when he’s not at his best.

That’s a foreboding intro if I ever wrote one, but don’t get too worried; I’m not saying Snyder has fallen off the clipper ship of quality he’s been steering for the past six months.  It only feels like this issue doesn’t quite break new ground for the story, even in spite of the dramatic ending.  If anything, Snyder spends the bulk of the issue going over the same plot points he’s been emphasizing and re-emphasizing all along: the Parliament of Trees’ martyred accusations of Alec’s betrayal; their I-told-you-so’s about Abby; the notion of the plant world as being more hostile than peaceful; the value of human restraint to Swamp Things.  Without exception, we’ve covered this territory quite thoroughly before.

But that’s the kind of thing that separates a skilled writer from one who’s merely competent.  Snyder’s one of those few storytellers who can deliver every bit of exposition he’s thrown at you before without coming across as redundant, boring, or stale.  If you want to lock it down, that gift comes from the rhythm of his writing, something that can only be honed over years of literary experience.  The Parliament describes their end to Alec thusly: “We are dying, the Parliament of Trees.  Having stood for thousands of years, we are dying.  You will watch us die from here, from inside the Green, while your body is protected by us…so you can know our pain, feel it as we do.  And then you, too, will die.”  Not to get my English major on, but the use of conduplicato in that passage is a thing of beauty.

Swamp Thing #6 – Review

By: Scott Snyder (writer), Marco Rudy (artist), Val Staples & Lee Loughridge (colorist)

The Story: Getting schooled by a kid a third your age—you’ve really hit a low, huh, Alec?

The Review: It takes a certain skill to build up comic book tension convincingly.  Plot twists and cliffhangers can get the job done, in a rough kind of fashion, but use them a too liberally and pretty soon they roll off the reader’s back with little impact.  At a certain point, you just become too aware of the “twist” or “cliffhanger” as literary devices, rather than part of the story.

Probably the best way to keep the suspense going is to keep the odds consistently against the hero, while giving him enough victories and moments of hope so that both he and you don’t despair of success.  So far, Snyder’s done just that on this series.  By last issue, he had made out the Rot as such a hulking menace that Alec and Abby’s capture of William Arcane felt like a very underwhelming triumph; they essentially only succeeded in preventing an impossible threat from becoming more impossible—that is, until the Parliament of Trees receive a direct attack in the heart of the Amazon.

The point is Snyder always laid the groundwork to these wrenches in the plot before setting them in play, so they felt natural to the flow of the story.  This issue is the first where he pulls the rug from under you and makes you stumble, compared to the smooth tablecloth tricks he’s done up till now.  The revelation that it’s—spoiler alert—Abby the Rot wants, not William, works, but has the sense of a last-minute plot change.  We’ve spent a long time putting our expectations in this twisted little boy, only for him to turn around and contradict us.

Anyway, it doesn’t seem like the general direction of the title has veered off course by more than inches.  Although William refers to her as a “queen” (accompanied by all sorts of disturbing expressions of admiration), and she does exert some control over their minions, her brother continues to act like he calls the shots and has the most knowledge of what’s going on.  That kind of relationship fits with his whole spiel about playing chess and missing the most powerful weapon: William as the game-master, Abby as his prize piece.

Swamp Thing #5 – Review

By: Scott Snyder (writer), Yanick Paquette (artist), Nathan Fairbairn (colorist)

The Story: People really need to take those “Save the Amazon” slogans more seriously.

The Review: In my review of Animal Man #3, I talked about our instinctive fear of the unknown.  I think that’s why we tend to be on the lookout for clichés and signs of the predictable in horror movies; it’s a coping mechanism to limit the fear that comes from surprises.  A canny horror writer knows the only way to make his story work is to trick the audience into thinking they have a grasp on what’s going on, only to pull the rug from under them when least expected.

Case in point: last issue led you to believe that although a confrontation between Alec and Abby with William Arcane was inevitable, they still had some time on the road before that happened.  You have no reason to think otherwise as this issue gets going, as you see the odd couple stocking up on supplies for their presumed journey ahead.  And then little Billy himself appears right outside the abandoned storefront, riding on a herd of undead cattle and hogs.  Without fanfare or blinking an eye, he attacks.  Talk about your sudden twists.

The nice part of this unexpected attack is that it puts both Abby and Alec through a kind of trial by fire, forcing them to think and act fast, and allowing us to see what they’re made of.  Despite her edgier haircut, leather jacket, and guns, Abby’s not exactly an Amazon, and she attempts to reason with her brother rather than attacking him directly.  As you can see, she gets nowhere, proving that whether Billy’s possessed or truly deranged, it’ll take a lot more than well-intentioned words to move him.

Probably the most critical development of the issue is when Alec manages to exert his power over the Green and dispatch Billy’s Rot-driven minions with admirable finesse.  In fact, he disarms the boy so easily that you begin to wonder if perhaps he was right all along and he doesn’t need to become a monster to work as an avatar for the Green.  Still, a herd of ravenous beef and pork is, as we well know, only the tip of a titanic, undead iceberg.

Swamp Thing #4 – Review

By: Scott Snyder (writer), Marco Rudy (artist), Sean Parsons & Michel Lacombe (inkers), David Baron (colorist)

The Story: Swamp Dinosaurs versus Zombie Dinosaurs.  For real.

The Review: Honestly, once Snyder and Jeff Lemire made the connections between the Red and the Green, they were a conceptual hop, skip, and a jump away from developing a force for the non-living.  The Rot may be fairly intuitive as an idea, but its development both here and in Animal Man has been insidiously slow and steady, much as you’d expect any rot to be.  From the shock reactions it produced in the debut, the Rot has become ever more disturbing and darker.

Last time, we saw Billy put his rather nefarious powers to very effective, if gruesome, effect.  But watching a person choke on their own lung would be little more than a gross visual without context, and Snyder’s morbidly poetic explanation of Billy’s abilities leave you with a bit of a bitter taste in your mouth: “Everyone has a little death inside them.  A rotten tooth.  Dead skin cells, shattered veins…  Whatever death is in you, he can make it bloom.”

The real question is how much of this is really Billy’s doing.  Initially, he projected a sad, preyed-upon air, which only turned twisted after giving in to the insistent voices he heard in his head.  Seeing him ask for a vanilla milkshake here (only to wreak bloody havoc after the cook mistakes his order for chocolate) makes you think somewhere, Billy’s personality still exists.  So is he taking a back seat to inflicting this horror, or does he have his hand firmly on the wheel?

Most likely, Billy may have no control in all this.  The Green considers Abigail’s succumbing to the Rot as all but inevitable, even though she’s putting all her effort into making sure that never happens.  But Abby herself hinted that when push comes to shove, she may be unable to resist the fate that awaits her, which means a very ugly confrontation for Alec should he insist on sticking with her.  Right now he may think of her as “the closest thing I have to home,” but she won’t seem so homey once she pulls the same shenanigans as her brother on Alec.

Swamp Thing #3 – Review

By: Scott Snyder (writer), Yanick Paquette & Victor Ibáñez (artists), Nathan Fairbairn (colorist)

The Story: This time, Alec has a legit reason for barely remembering making out with you.

The Review: As recent issues have shown us, the world has become a much more dangerous, disturbing place, even for superheroes.  So it goes without saying that Alec, who still resists his supposed destiny as the Green’s greatest savior, will find himself in dire straits before long.  Unwilling to heed the warnings and calls of the plant kingdom, he’ll need a reliable guide he can trust if he wants to survive long enough to make the most of his second life.

Enter Abigail Arcane.  She may not have all the answers to what’s happening, but at least she can fill in the necessary blanks for Alec and for us, and thus serves a vital role to giving the series some direction, instead of letting events push the plot around.  Her know-how comes from her own connection to one of the world’s primal forces, the Rot, which fits in the grand scheme of her continuity (and explains her attraction to the prior Swamp Thing beyond a foliage fetish).

Although her experience and take-charge attitude will prove to be an invaluable resource to Alec, you learn that even in his non-monstrous state, he’s not as helpless as you might think.  Even so, it’s hard to tell if the exercise of his “green thumb” is something he innately controls or if it’s the Green going out of its way to protect its only hope against the Rot.  But even if it turns out he can wield this power over flora at will, that alone won’t overcome the powers he faces.

Swamp Thing #2 – Review

By: Scott Snyder (writer), Yanick Paquette (artist), Nathan Fairbairn (colorist)

The Story: Watch Alec become one with nature.

The Review: Swamp Thing has a vast, complex history, written by some incredibly brilliant, but also ambitiously complicated folks: Alan Moore, Grant Morrison, Mark Millar.  What you wind up getting is some incredibly rich, spellbinding stories, but also ones that take quite a lot of explaining for the reader completely new to the character.  The Parliament of Trees alone deserves its own Wiki page—and actually does have one.

So it should come to the surprise of no one that Snyder uses this issue as one massive info-dump, narrated by none other than Swamp Thing himself, albeit the one preceding the Swamp Thing we all know and love.  Even though his narration does effectively gives us most of the necessary mythology behind the boggy “knight,” it’s also incredibly long, rather wordy, and somewhat rambling, making you wonder if all this exposition could have been handled a little differently.

During S. Thing’s speech, Snyder uses a fancy bit of retroactive maneuvering to tweak the character’s origins over so slightly, just to explain Alec’s current status and connection to the Green.  He continues to play with the idea of Alec as fated to be the greatest of all Green avatars, a kind of messiah with foliage.  All very mystical and foreboding, and of course Alec resists the idea with the usual “Why me?” bit, but not much meat to sink your teeth into, plot-wise.

Snyder’s no fool.  Instead of relegating the whole sequence as a series of talking panels, he also takes the opportunity to revisit the enemy at hand, one with just as much abstract history as either the Red or the Green.  Named Sethe, this baddie’s army has grown pretty quickly from the three unfortunate archaeologists of last issue, and unlike his earlier, disease-focused visits to humanity, the carnage he leaves and draws in his wake are far more animated and dramatic.