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?

Animal Man #16 – Review

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

The Story: This time, the Green Lanterns are really going green.

The Review: I generally don’t approve of internet speculation about the whys and wherefores of publishing or writing decisions, but I do love trying to predict what’s coming up next in a story.  With the former, my belief is unless you have a firsthand account of the business, you really have no basis for your theories.  With the latter, your basis is the story itself, as well as the vast ocean of comic book continuity that serves, in legal terms, as both evidence and precedent.

So I was mightily impressed by Ghost of Mars’ theory on my last review of Animal Man that the Lantern trapped beneath Metropolis was Driq of Criq.  For one, I just had to give props for Ghost’s knowledge of the Green Lantern mythos, and for another, considering Driq’s undead nature, it made a lot of sense for the story.  In fact, I could’ve been fairly disappointed by another choice of Lantern, had Lemire not used an even better one.

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.

Animal Man #15 – Review

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

The Story: So it seems like the monster has become the master—of the monsters.

The Review: Being an ardent follower of both Animal Man and Swamp Thing can be, to use a well-worn cliché, a double-edged sword.  The sharp, shiny side is you have a plot enriched by two titles working together.  The dull, blunted side is dealing with moments where the two books cover the same terrain.  And let’s face it: if you’re reading either one of these series, you’re probably reading both.

That meant dealing with a lot of the same kind of exposition for the early issues of this arc.  Animal Man particularly suffered because Lemire doesn’t have quite the fleetness of language that his writing buddy does and he hasn’t been quite as aggressive with the pacing as he could have been.  Last issue felt like an especially low point for this series as a whole, burdened with more talk than action, and only the barest exploration of what’s left of the Rot-infested world.

Animal Man #14 – Review

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

The Story: And just when your ruined world can’t get any worse, enter an evil sorcerer.

The Review: I’ll let you in on a little secret: I actually dislike reviewing issues that are mostly fighting sequences—actively dread them, really.  Unless the superpowers involved are fairly spectacular and innovative, I find it very hard to say anything about them.  They tend to reveal more about the artist’s strengths than the writers, and they rarely do much to inform the story, unless of course the characters engage in some awkward exposition in the middle of it all.

And I’ve already made plain my general dissatisfaction with the Rot horde as enemies.  As mindless, one-note creatures, they serve as nothing more than pure cannon fodder, stuff for our heroes to mow down indiscriminately.  Even the Rot-infestees don’t seem all that different from the normal type of Rotling, except for the fact that they wear clothes.  Since they pose so little challenge, it doesn’t take that much effort from Buddy and his gang to slaughter them, and leaving little for me to comment about on the issue’s first act.

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.

Animal Man #13 – Review

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

The Story: Buddy discovers his world can cross its overpopulation problems off the list.

The Review: One complaint everyone pretty much has about Events from either of the publishers, one I join wholeheartedly on, is how many titles they end up invading.  Sometimes—who am I kidding?—almost all the time, there’s no actual reason to squeeze them into the plot.  But you can’t deny that there’s no better way to give a storyline an epic, important feel.  When one title has a world-spanning conflict no other title notices, why should you do any different?

Such is the rock and hard place we have in Rotworld.  I’m rather charmed that Lemire and Scott Snyder continue to claim that this dystopia their stars have entered is anything more than an alternate reality, as if there’s even a chance none of this grimness will reverse course after several issues.  Can we truly believe that once this arc ends, we’ll have other heroes sitting around, reminiscing about the time Hawkman turned into a deformed, flesh-eating zombie?

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.