Swamp Thing #31 – Review

By: Charles Soule (story), Jesus Saiz (layouts), Javier Pina (finishes), Matthew Wilson (colors)

The Story: Alec should know better than to get deep into ‘shrooms before a big event.

The Review: I’m not a diehard Alec-Abby shipper by any means—I sort of felt they got together by virtue of narrative inevitability than genuine chemistry—but I was still excited by the prospect that they might reunite, even temporarily, through the human hosts provided by the Sureen. Alas, it’s not Abby residing in Miki’s inviting body. The fungi growing out of Miki’s orifices signal a different force of nature altogether, “the Mycos. Some called it the Grey.”

It’s not as dramatic a revelation as the Rot was, and Soule doesn’t play it as such. Instead, he finds surprises and twists from other avenues, mainly in Miki’s defiant rejection of her* role as avatar. Interestingly enough, this rejection goes back even to the early days of the Grey, or at least, its intersection with humanity. Alec’s brief travel through the Grey is unmarked by any parliament, suggesting that Miki is not only its current avatar, but its first as well.

As such, Miki not only suffered the same horrifying indignity of being turned into a monster as Alec did (looking at her avatar body, she says, “I hate looking at it. Horrible. I can’t believe I was expected to be in that. Forever.”), but also the particular difficulty of being a monster with no one to relate to. Alec observes from within the Grey, “It’s lonely. No one to guide you. No memories. Just this roiling, uniform, need.”

A need for exactly what, though? On top of all the other reasons why she left behind the avatar’s life, Miki adds “stupid, pointless battles with Red or Rot.” She’s onto something there. It makes sense for the Green to have an avatar, if only to defend its stationary beings from the naturally consumptive and destructive habits of other living creatures. But the Red, Rot, and Grey face no such perils; their avatars exist solely to combat the Green’s and each other’s. The avatars are kind of like the nuclear bombs of the natural world in that way; once one party gets one, everyone has to have one.

Alec conflates this point with Miki’s more unjustifiable crime of abusing her possession of human bodies, racking up a body count she lost track of back in the sixteenth century. The fact that her hosts were only “[a]lmost” all volunteers is definitely something for Alec to get worked up about, but lecturing her about how the Grey needs an avatar and she has a job to do seems a bit high-and-mighty when he’s not so clear on what the Grey needs her for.

But if the hijacking of the Swamp Thing form shows us anything, it’s that leaving an avatar body available for people to make off with is a very bad idea. Even with only rudimentary access to the Green via a highly experimental and grisly grafting procedure, the villains responsible (a German company called D.W. Ag) manage to wreak havoc on a massive scale, all for the sake of monopolizing profits. And that’s not even mentioning the damage inflicted on the Green itself, which Alec describes in terms of pain (“The Green—it’s screaming… They ripped it open.”). For all that, he seems strangely unconcerned about the perpetrators, barreling through their facility with only questions about his body and none as to who was in charge and how they even knew of the Green’s avatar. If he had shown more curiosity, maybe he too would be privy to the great twist that Wolf orchestrated the whole thing.

Of all the aspects of reality that comic book art struggles to capture, texture may be at the top of that list, yet Saiz-Pina are masters in that respect. Miki’s avatar body is a hodgepodge of various kinds of fungi, but their individual textures come through perfectly, from the barky arms and legs, to the fleshy, leathery quality of the face and torso, to the fuzzy streaks along the scalp and chest. And this is all in addition to his cinematic approach to storytelling, which gives Swamp Thing its sophisticated air. Well, that and Wilson’s incredibly realistic lighting. Certainly, few colorists understand the luminescence of candle and torchlight the way he does.

Conclusion: A deeply fascinating read, though not always logical, with some superb art to boot.

Grade: B+

– Minhquan Nguyen

Some Musings: * I say her, but it’s worth pointing out that the Grey avatar body is male when Miki first shows it to Alec, and she’s deliberately cagey about her original gender. Hm…

– Having built a body out of bread mold, Alec muses, “I almost want to say it out loud. ‘You’re the disease, and I’m the—’ No. Might undercut my credibility. But I can think it.” Bravo, sir. That’s some remarkable restraint when it comes to punny superhero banter.

– So we can now add Guarav, the last Sureen, to the cast. That should be fun!