Swamp Thing #3 – Review

By: Scott Snyder (writer), Yanick Paquette & Victor Ibáñez (artists), Nathan Fairbairn (colorist)

The Story: This time, Alec has a legit reason for barely remembering making out with you.

The Review: As recent issues have shown us, the world has become a much more dangerous, disturbing place, even for superheroes.  So it goes without saying that Alec, who still resists his supposed destiny as the Green’s greatest savior, will find himself in dire straits before long.  Unwilling to heed the warnings and calls of the plant kingdom, he’ll need a reliable guide he can trust if he wants to survive long enough to make the most of his second life.

Enter Abigail Arcane.  She may not have all the answers to what’s happening, but at least she can fill in the necessary blanks for Alec and for us, and thus serves a vital role to giving the series some direction, instead of letting events push the plot around.  Her know-how comes from her own connection to one of the world’s primal forces, the Rot, which fits in the grand scheme of her continuity (and explains her attraction to the prior Swamp Thing beyond a foliage fetish).

Although her experience and take-charge attitude will prove to be an invaluable resource to Alec, you learn that even in his non-monstrous state, he’s not as helpless as you might think.  Even so, it’s hard to tell if the exercise of his “green thumb” is something he innately controls or if it’s the Green going out of its way to protect its only hope against the Rot.  But even if it turns out he can wield this power over flora at will, that alone won’t overcome the powers he faces.

Those powers are embodied in another individual with a connection to the Rot, a young boy with an allergy to chlorophyll (a clever piece of foreshadowing on Snyder’s part) who survives via a Bubble Boy existence.  William, much like Abby, shows little enthusiasm for his grim heritage, and as the issue goes on, the maddening whispers he hears proves too much for a kid who already has plenty of social dysfunction to begin with.

His problems aren’t helped by Drew et all, three other young patients at the hospital where William resides.  Judging from Drew’s bald appearance, these kids presumably have chronic conditions too, making their cruelty (“Going to burst your bubble tonight, freak.”) all the more shocking.  You wonder if they, like Judas might claim, are driven by greater forces to jumpstart William’s path towards his destiny.  But this is probably naïve speculation; the truth is kids can be exactly that cruel.  If William does become an “unstoppable force of death,” as Abby predicts, it may be he has no reason to see life, particularly human life, as worth preserving.

A team-up between Paquette and Ibáñez (whose work I’ve praised lavishly in Zatanna #16 and The Spirit #14) can only produce a combo of star proportions equal to that between Paquette himself and Snyder.  Besides their visually similar styles, they also deliver the same lush level of detail.  Just think of the time Ibáñez had to put in to convincingly draw all those fish trophies on Dr. Durock’s wall.  And certainly he holds his own against Paquette in the horror department; seeing a man suffocating on his own lung is probably one of the more shudder-inducing images you can think of.  With art this strong, Snyder wisely scales back his expository text, which really grew burdensome last time, and the issue flows more smoothly and engagingly for it.

Conclusion: Snyder brings his usual A-game of mixing rich, storied plot with superb character work, always with a ripple of enticing uncertainty throughout.

Grade: A-

– Minhquan Nguyen

Some Musings: – This issue once again rings home my puzzlement at the appeal of keeping animals as trophies.  To quote Ellen Degeneres: “I think my mother’s beautiful, but I have pictures of her.”

– If anyone can positively identify all the fish Dr. Durock has on his wall, you will definitely earn my eternal admiration.