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.

At that point, will Alec continue to avoid his own destiny?  Here’s one point in favor of the Green and the Parliament of Trees: they may be pushy and not a little bit martyred (“You talk to us of sacrifice?!”), but in the end, they let him choose whether to take up the role they offer him.  Still, their prospects of success without him seem grim; they convey a strong hopelessness about the forthcoming battle: “We will do our best to fight without our king, when the time comes.”

Considering it’s just Abby (who may turn traitor at any time) and Alec (who has no conscious control of whatever powers he might have) versus the very capable William, at some point Alec will have to become Swamp Thing.  In fact, the title would be a misnomer if he doesn’t.  But Snyder has the technical chops to make that inescapable outcome a thrill, nonetheless.

Rudy does an admirable job emulating Yanick Paquette, evoking the same lavishly floral style of paneling and surpassing himself in the double-page timeline showing the war between Green and Rot.  In fact, thanks in large part to bold inking from frequent Paquette collaborator Lacombe, you can sometimes lead yourself to believe Paquette is at the helm, like the page of Abby and Alec sleeping on the ground, surrounded by waste and lush greenery, respectively.

Conclusion: We’re still baby-stepping our way to this first arc’s climax, but with our heroes about to confront their necrotic-empowered foe in a slaughterhouse, events will spiral out of control very quickly.

Grade: B+

– Minhquan Nguyen

Some Musings: – How long does a scuba tank last, anyway?  Billy’s managed to live off the one, it seems, walking fifteen miles from the hospital to the diner.

– You know, since Billy killed everyone off before they could make his drink, that means the milkshake he’s sipping afterward is one he made himself.  Odd, to say the least.