Swamp Thing #5

"Dead Meat"
written by Scott Snyder
art by Yanick Paquette

If William Arcane's slaughterhouse beasts, the assembled parts of dead cattle and pigs, weren't disgusting enough, their evisceration by Holland's roots and trees is downright stomach-churning.  In lesser hands, Snyder's relatively sparse action sequence would have floundered as boring, but Paquette brings his lush illustration style to the grotesque party.  Details—including, for example, the boa and monkey in the opening illustration and the faces in the trees of the Parliament in the last—more than compensate for the sparse dialogue in the issue.

As before, scenes shared by Alec and Abby are periodically stellar.  The two, even when providing little more than exposition, show significant sparks, and for the most part, neither knows what to think or do about it.  Are their feelings any less real because they're somehow reliant on the memories of a dead former Swamp Thing?  Does he know her less because he knows her through another's experiences?  How much of her lover was always Holland, the consciousness Swamp Thing absorbed?  How much was not?  As Alec says, "This is a place between" (Swamp Thing #5: 6).  Either way, she remains the thing he's most willing to fight for.  Each of them, recalling memories of each other from their childhoods, before the other Swamp Thing ever was, feel certain they are warned to stay away from one another.  Perhaps their attraction is a result of each one's perverse stubbornness to resist the call of their respective dominions:  Green and Rot.  Perhaps, though, their perverse stubbornness is the result of their attraction.  Even as the Rot has invaded the Parliament of Trees and William is maniacally and gleefully certain of the Rot's victory, Alec and Abby share their first kiss, something their own and surely we are meant to see a victory, probably much greater, there as well.

[March 2012]