Swamp Thing #6

"The Black Queen"
written by Scott Snyder
art by Marco Rudy

"The Black Queen" is about Marco Rudy's dark deathscapes.  The Parliament of Trees is burning, William is absolutely convinced of the Rot's victory, and Abby is being absorbed and cocooned by the Rot's dead emissaries, but it's the visions of destruction—the victory of the Rot—that propels this issue.  Cities of bones and rotting flesh, chess queens built of corpses, and swarms of undead birds attacking Holland provide the tone for the issue, since little happens in the plot.

Emotionally, Swamp Thing hits the right notes, even if they're not particularly deep.  They try to be, don't get me wrong, and I like the burgeoning romance between Alec and Abby, the echoes of simultaneously familiar and distant feelings.  However, Swamp Thing has had neither the time nor the story to earn the kind of dramatic turn it attempts here.  However, Alec's change of mind, his regret at failing to assume the mantle of Swamp Thing earlier, seems genuine less because the Parliament is falling than because he doesn't have the strength yet to defend Abby.  His pleading to make him the Swamp Thing is for her, to mount a rescue of her from the Bone Kingdom and to keep her from the horrible transformation that apparently awaits her.  Abby's plea for death is perhaps more difficult to accept just yet, but her defense of Alec as he makes his escape is not.

[April 2012]