By: Scott Snyder (story), Francisco Francavilla (art)
The Story: Abby’s just another person with a father who’s proud of her for all the wrong reasons.
The Review: Now that all the gushing about Jeff Lemire is out of the way, let’s start it up again in favor of Snyder, easily the other hotshot spearheading the latest generation of DC writers. Whereas his pal and peer romps across the sci-fi genre, shedding big ideas behind him, Snyder has given the DC mystery a good name again. To be perfectly fair, his concepts aren’t quite as audacious, but his execution is so well-crafted that his product is no less weird and wonderful.
When it comes to mysteries, execution is pretty much everything. In nearly every story of that kind, all the major elements remain the same: the crime, the criminal, the victim, the detective, the suspects, and the clues. Nowadays, audiences have gotten so savvy that they can pick out the conclusion before the story is halfway over. So to some degree, mystery writers have given up trying to shock the reader with the “Whodunnit” question and instead poured their efforts into making the journey to that answer as gripping as possible—it’s “why” versus “what.”
With Snyder, he often doesn’t even bother disguising who the ultimate villain is. At times, his villains don’t even have much more sophisticated a motivation for their misdeeds than the fact that they’re crazy—but what vivid, stimulating visions of crazy they are. Just as James Gordon Jr. makes no apologies or offers no explanation for his sadism, neither does Anton Arcane.
Simply put, Anton loves death; he sees the beauty of it the way some of us see beauty in plants or animals (for me, it’s Italian pasta). The only time he sound and human is when he talks about death, which is what makes him so disturbingly fascinating. You shudder as he rapturously boasts about his daughter: I remember the first time I saw it myself—the glimmer of something exceptional. Something beautiful in her. She was only a few months old. She had only just killed her mother.” So paternal and affectionate, and yet so wrong.
In a lot of ways, this issue is more about Abby than her father. Experiencing his twistedness firsthand, and seeing her own grief over being bound to a force of nature she hates, you can’t help feeling sorry for her. Her very presence perverts everything, no matter how innocent (i.e. the decapitated deer on the road lifting its head to gaze at her). And when Alec, while she’s struggling with despair, offers her a silent gesture of unconditional love, you immediately connect with her gratitude and joy.
Speaking of, Alec continues to assert his everyman voice from beneath his monstrous hide (as Abby observes his injuries: “You…should…see…the other guy.”), almost as if to prove this is the real guy we’re dealing with, no spiritual copy. Along with this, he’s been demonstrating a very human stubbornness, calling the shots even when he’s not so sure what he’s doing, like preserving the essence of the Parliament of Trees in the swamp, though it’s clear he can’t guarantee his own safety there. This take-charge Swamp Thing is quite different from the runaway scientist he started out as, and I have to say, I like the change.
Francavilla might not be exactly your first thought for a series with such overt mysticality. His strengths lie in gritty tales of urban gothic, more suited to the Bat-family of books than anything else. But from the moment he starts drawing, you almost forget even illustrious names like Yanick Paquette. With Francavilla’s powerfully dramatic style of POV and pacing, and his art deco colors, the union between Vertigo and mainstream DC seems complete, and this issue is its remarkably beautiful offspring.
Conclusion: Don’t be surprised if you find yourself pinching yourself every few pages, wondering if this is really a mainstream DC comic you’re holding in your hands. Sure seems like an original masterpiece to me.
Grade: A-
– Minhquan Nguyen
Some Musings: – After being a mutated queen of the dead for a few hours, it must be a weird feeling to be driving naked in a broken-down pick-up.