Swamp Thing #1

"Raise Dem Bones"
written by Scott Snyder
art by Yanick Paquette

As for many of the New 52 runs, a significant portion of issue #1's task is to establish its character in the continuity of its comic past as well as its place in the current DC universe.  For Swamp Thing, this is no small feat, especially since Snyder re-establishes Alec Holland as Alec Holland, not yet the hero he may become but with the memories of a Swamp Thing he wasn't, not entirely unlike the sentient plant creature of Moore's imagination with the memories of a human he never was and never could be.  This convoluted mythology makes fairly good sense, even if it does not yet explain Holland's mysterious reappearance.

Swamp Thing has always been somewhat incongruous with comic hero expectations, and Snyder doesn't shy away from his unusualness.  Immediately, Holland is juxtaposed with Superman, Batman and Aquaman, full-time defenders of their respective cities, professionals, and costumed superheroes.  Holland, the wayward Ph.D. botanist, is a blue-collar construction worker in Louisiana, a far less intuitive if no less deserving locale for a superhero home, living out of a motel and doing his best not to be exceptional and not to be found.  His conversation with the concerned Big Boy Scout is for these reasons delightful.  Despite his explanations, Superman does not seem ever to understand how being a hero might not be the most satisfying choice Holland could make, how helping could dangerously upset a delicate balance.  Though newly reborn or reappeared, Holland is the wizened sage, replete with understanding gleaned from some other creature's experiences, and Superman is the naïve, if well-intentioned, schoolboy.

As an introduction to the series' villain, the sudden and simultaneous deaths of birds, bats and fish is unnerving enough, but the reanimation and recombination of dead corpses is truly creepy.  And Paquette's illustration of the revivified monster is all the more so for its piecemeal depiction, never once showing it for what it is and allowing the reader to imagine the rest.  Paquette's artwork is, in fact, exceptional elsewhere as well, and particularly adept as scenes of lush vegetation, such as Holland's newly Edenic hotel room.

The finale of issue #1 is suitably momentous, and the appearance of a Swamp Thing other than Holland decently surprising, emerging from the foliage to warn Holland, "I wouldn't do that if I were you," a stern but subtle reminder of their similarity.

[November 2011]