Swamp Thing #8 – Review

By: Scott Snyder (writer), Marco Rudy & Yanick Paquette (artists), Nathan Fairbairn (colorist)

The Story: The Badlands—now, with even fewer reasons to visit!

The Review: Both Jeff Lemire and Snyder have explored the notion that the Rot, for all its grotesque manifestations, is simply a force akin to the Red or the Green.  All three have their place in the natural world (though the Rot signals the ends of the others), and all three have an innate desire to spread and conquer the earth as far they possibly can.  In some ways, this has made the Rot less intriguing as an antagonist, because it’s simply doing what it’s meant to do.

Lemire and Snyder always manage to cover up the Rot’s less-than-subtle villainy by making it not so much the driving point of interest in the story, but rather an interesting context for their heroes to work through some common conflicts.  For Animal Man, that means the pressures of weighing family versus duty; for Swamp Thing, it’s more of a Romeo and Juliet-type situation: boy and girl from opposing forces fall in love and encounter tragedy for it.

To be honest, Snyder has been a little less successful in his choice of core relationships than Lemire.  While Alec and Abby shared a bond and weight on their shoulders, the romantic attraction between them always felt a little forced, a lingering obligation from their “past” association than genuine chemistry.  From a storytelling point of view, their pairing is logical, poetic, and ripe with tension, but somehow unearned, destined rather than natural.

That’s why it feels a bit unconvincing that Alec would go so far to save this woman, to the point where he literally flies, solo, into enemy territory to free her.  You have to admit, though, it makes for some majorly high stakes, especially for Alec’s first official outing as warrior-king Swamp Thing—which sounds catchier to me every time I say it, I must say.  The bulk of the issue involves Alec tearing through Sethe’s seemingly endless army, and it looks quite as bloody and epic as anything you’d expect from such impossible odds.

Aside from pure action, the issue also offers a few notable developments.  One that should prove crucial over the long-term course of the series is the fact that Alec as the warrior-king Swamp Thing still has a human body at the core of his woodsy, monstrous exterior.  This seems fair; if he’s meant to be the most powerful avatar of the Green yet, then some new vulnerabilities (plus the absence of the Parliament) should make it so he can’t crush his way through everything.

The other important point is the fate of Abby, who emerges from her chrysalis quite as deformed and not at all appealing as any other minion of the Rot.  Happily, Snyder doesn’t indulge in the hand-wringing, “Fight it, Abby!” sort of scenes that usually pop up here.  If we’re to believe Alec’s changes are pretty much permanent, why not believe the same of Abby?  I’d almost prefer it if Snyder has the guts to make Abby unsalvageable; at the very least, he should make good on the time he’s invested into getting her to this position, and make her salvation a distant point in the future, if it ever comes.

Rudy makes an solid second offering to Paquette, but he simply suffers by comparison.  Not by much—his lines are just ever so slightly less confident, his paneling less innovative, his figures less convincing.  Conversely, Paquette can give even the most gruesome scenes a kind of horrific beauty, if that makes any sense.  His vision of Swamp Thing, bearing a woody shield on one arm and a massive blade on the other, his leafy wings outstretched, charging into a stream of mutated and disfigured corpses of all kinds—in any real context, it would be disgusting, but Paquette makes it look nothing short of amazing.

Conclusion: Not quite as compelling as its companion title in Animal Man, but engrossing in a more abstract way, not to mention more lavishly rendered by two terrific artists.

Grade: B+

– Minhquan Nguyen

Some Musings: – Since the Rot has chosen the American Southwest for its ground zero of operations, if this was real life, I’d be the woman screaming, “They’re inside!  They’re inside the house!” right about now.  Chilling thoughts, to say the least.