Swamp Thing excited a lot of people when it started seven months ago. Part of it was the creative team – Scott Snyder is extremely buzzy at the moment, and Yanick Paquette just seemed like a perfect choice to draw Earth’s elemental. A lot of that excitement has worn off, though, at least around Ground Zero. A lot of that likely has to do with the fact that, until this issue, Swamp Thing wasn’t really in Swamp Thing. Up till now, we’ve been dealing with Alec Holland, his sort-of alter ego (depending on which version of the character you prefer), rather than the jolly green giant himself. Frankly, that has to account for most of the books decline in popularity, because the book has remained uniformly excellent – more so even than its sister book, Animal Man, which started off stronger out of the gate.
Obviously with (Spoiler alert, kiddies!) Alec becoming the Swamp Thing in the last panel of # 7, this issue marks a huge paradigm shift in the book. No longer simply running from the forces of the rot and trying to make heads or tails of what’s happening to him, Alec (can we even call him Alec anymore?) has finally taken the fight to the rot, and take it he does. This day, death flies to the desert on wings of moss, and slashes his foes with blades of Oak. It’s pretty freakin’ cool. Paquette brings some pretty drastic additions to the visual concept of Swamp Thing with his full introduction this issue. I say additions, because he’s essentially the same ol’ Swampy underneath, but he’s crafted for himself wings made out of moss and assorted greenery, and is using the wood that makes up a large portion of his body for considerably more destructive purposes than we’ve seen him do in the past (at least to my memory – though my knowledge of the character is hardly encyclopedic). It all works pretty well, though, and the fight scenes in the desert make for some great, highly visceral stuff.
Scott Snyder’s portion of the issue is considerably less impressive than in previous issues, but then, he’s shouldering a much lighter load on Swamp Thing this month. The plot of the issue is largely just a vehicle to introduce readers to the new incarnation of Swampy, and to get him from point A, the Green, to point B, face to face with Sethe, an avatar of (or perhaps the incarnation of? The book is vague on that point) the Rot. Swampy gets to tear a lot of new holes into Sethe’s various minions along the way, but that falls on the shoulders of Paquette and partial fill-in artist Marco Rudy, who has done excellent work throughout the series matching up with Paquette’s distinctive style. I’ve never been able to notice unless I knew ahead of time whenever Rudy was drawing the book instead of Paquette – somebody seriously needs to give this guy a cookie.
All in all, Swamp Thing was one of the best books to come out of the relaunch, and 7 months in, its still one of the best books DC is putting out. If you skipped out on it, either because you weren’t familiar with the character, or because previous incarnations got a little too weird for you, or if you’ve dropped the book since it started because of its lack of actual Things from Swamps, please, do me a favor, and do yourself a favor – put this book on your pull list. I mentioned recently how another book in DC’s stable has just not been able to live up to its potential thus far – the absolute inverse is true of Swamp Thing. Whatever potential the book may have had has long since been outstripped by the excellent narrative being spun each month for our enjoyment.
As published on examiner.com
http://www.examiner.com/dc-comics-in-dallas/michael-seigler
