Swamp Thing #27 – Review

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

The Story: Alec feels he’s too young for retirement.

The Review: From the moment Soule removed Alec from his position as avatar, there was no question that Alec would inevitably get it back, just whether it would happen sooner or later.  Had it been put up for a vote, I would have elected for later.  Soule has proven so adept at fleshing out the world of the Green that having Alec roam around the place, uncovering its secrets and denizens while searching for a way back, sounds like a great idea to me.

Seems like I was outvoted.  I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised at this rush to return Alec to the physical world, what with Woodrue’s rampage against anything that doesn’t have roots.  The Wolf may tease Alec’s “terrible, innocent urgency” in wanting to stop the violence before it gets worse, but that only reveals Wolf’s own shortage of humanity.  Given the circumstances, Alec must get back as soon as possible, even if it caps any potential world-building.

Swamp Thing #26 – Review

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

The Story: What Buddy didn’t want for Christmas: a throwdown with Swamp Thing.

The Review: You don’t need to be an English major to recognize certain archetypical characters and relationships in storytelling.  For any consumer of popular fiction, one dynamic that should be particularly familiar is that of teacher-student, also known as master-apprentice or mentor-mentee.  Sooner or later, to the point of being a foregone conclusion, there’ll always be that tension when the pupil wants to know more than the instructor is willing to give.

Jason Woodrue fits very neatly into the subservient half of this age-old relationship.  His development from well-meaning, tree-hugging nerd into a manic-obsessive pawn of both the supernatural and occult follows well-worn paths of countless overeager students before him, and while Soule executes these old tropes with great credibility, he does little to set Jason apart from other desperately ambitious characters in the same class.

Swamp Thing #25 – Review

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

The Story: Which of these would-be champions will go home with the title?

The Review: In last month’s annual, it was revealed that the Parliament may not have been entirely forthcoming with Alec when they said it was his destiny to become their avatar.  Obviously, this is not exactly something one wants to hear after having given up one’s life, body, and soulmate out of respect to destiny.  The most frustrating part of all this is that after having been thus misled, there’s very little Alec can do about it.

After sacrificing so much to get to this point, there’s nothing to fall back on even if Alec wanted out of a gig he was tricked into.  So even though at this point, he’d rather not be participating in a showdown to appease those who deceived him, he has to protect the only thing remaining to him: his title.  “The avatar.  The Swamp Thing.  Let this kid take that from you, and you really will have lost everything.”

The Swamp Thing Annual #2 – Review

By: Charles Soule (story), Javier Pina & Kano (art) Matthew Wilson (colors)

The Story: Whoever knew the Green had an avatar apprenticeship program?

The Review: In light of a rather interesting article by Albert Ching of Comic Book Resources on the comeback of the annual, I must say that in comparison to most of the annuals I’ve read this year, this one is an excellent sample of the format and what it can do for an ongoing series’ storytelling.  Like Matt Fraction’s Hawkeye annual earlier this year, Soule’s crack at a Swamp Thing annual not only stands very well on its own, but advances the title’s cause as a whole.

Soule also does something with the annual that works very well and which I’m surprised other writers haven’t taken advantage of very often before.  He uses it as a fairly effective primer on the continuity behind both Swamp Thing and the Green, but more than that, he adds generously to the title’s mythos, allowing old and new readers to end the issue on fairly even footing.  Ever since this series was revived under the DC banner, we’ve been operating on a well-established understanding of how its world worked; Soule expands that understanding dramatically.

Swamp Thing #24 – Review

By: Charles Soule (story), Andrei Bressan (art), Matthew Wilson (colors)

The Story: It only takes a single seed to grow a forest—and piss off a plant god.

The Review: Creating new villains is a tricky business.  Even though the point is to give the hero someone to fight, a villain can’t exist solely for that purpose—or they can, but you wouldn’t be able to use them for more than one issue.  And when you do add some extra motivation, you have to be careful about making them too cliché or simplistic.  Criminals who are greedy, power-hungry, or just plain crazy don’t provide a lot of analytical meat to chew on.

Having seen Soule delve into the hearts, minds, and lives of three completely different villains last month, each from a different sphere of influence (the supernatural, the cosmic, and the urban professional), it’s safe to say that he has a knack for finding the thing that makes an antagonist worth your attention.  It’s not enough to make a villain evil; that just makes them predictable.  Soule knows that it’s each villain’s specific set of values that drives them to make different choices in different circumstances, and that in turn is what makes them compelling.