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.

WCBR’s Top Picks

Best From The Past Week: Captain America & Bucky #622 – This was a really hard choice because the runners-up were equally high quality, but Cap & Bucky edges them out because it managed to do this in a self-contained issue.  It isn’t the beginning of something exciting (like American Vampire #19) or the middle story of a fun arc (like Amazing Spider-Man #670)…..the whole thing is here: set-up, conflict and resolution.  If you had moved away from Cap & Bucky when the present day adventures of Steve Rogers moved over to Captain America, you’re really missing out because Cap & Bucky is wonderful as it tells stories from WWII.  This particular story highlights Bucky feeling a little left out and intimidated by the other Invaders (especially a really dickish Namor), but he manages to redeem himself, save the day and earn the respect of everyone.  This issue also shows the power of art in comics.  You could have a lot of other competent comic artists draw this series and no one would care about the series.  When you put Chris Samnee and Bettie Breitweiser on the art duties, you suddenly have something very special that can win “issue of the week”.  The combo of Samnee’s intelligent use of negative space and Breitweiser’s lovely and tasteful colors is really something.

Most Anticipated This Week: The Walking Dead #89 – TWD has really spoiled us by coming out like clock-work for a LONG time, so it kinds smarts that we haven’t had an issue since mid-August.  I guess Robert Kirkman is kinda busy???  I had to reskim my review of TWD #88 to remind myself of what’s going on.  Kirkman did a very uncharacteristic job of leaving some of messy storylines hanging in the air last time, so I really want to see how he clears them up.  There’s some romance stuff going on, a plot against Rick, Carl’s recovery……and you just know it mostly won’t end well.  Bring it!

Other picks: Animal Man #2, Swamp Thing #2, Sweet Tooth #26, Severed #3, Hulk #42, Thunderbolts #164, X-Men Schism #5