Swamp Thing #2

"When It Comes A' Knockin'"
written by Scott Snyder
art by Yanick Paquette

With Swamp Thing #2, Snyder's brings his revised mythology for the rebooted series, which he began in the earlier issue, into much clearer relief.  As a defender of the Green, the power of plant life, Holland is the next in a long line of Swamp Things, warriors in a perpetual struggle to maintain balance with the Red and the Rot, the rapidly expanding threat of death and decay we saw mobilizing in Swamp Thing #1 and continuing here in its pursuit of Holland.

However, most of the issue is a conversation between a frustrated Alec Holland and the remaining consciousness of former Swamp Thing Calbraith A. H. Rodgers, who interrupted his destruction of the bio-restorative formula at the close of the last issue.  Now, this wouldn't normally sound like great comic book material, two people talking, but, as ever, Swamp Things talk so well, and Snyder's is no exception.  He is still and tall but not imposing, and in no way brutish.  He exudes patience and resolution, and as sincerely as he wants Holland to heed his warnings and follow his advice, he respects Holland's right to decide, just as he accepts fully the consequences of his own decisions.  And it is this humility and understanding, far more than any words he speaks, that calms Holland and persuades him, though feeling his inadequacy for the task, he does not yet acquiesce.

As in Swamp Thing #1, this issue offers several allusions and homages to Swamp Thing storytellers past:  Totleben's Motel, a "1971" safe combination, Abby's Bissette Motors bike, and a young Alan Moore drinking coffee at Wrightson's Diner.  None of them very subtle, but reverent to a history this new series is working both with and against.  Snyder's decision to reconstitute Alec Holland, to restore his human identity, is a potentially fruitful one, particularly in the context of the Green mythology.  Like Moore's inhuman creation, the one for whom retrieving a remembered human body was impossible, Snyder's Swamp Thing must also contend with the memories of a stranger and the inescapable sense of a far away if always immediate past, and the reintroduction of Abby Arcane, as she now calls herself, is a crucial piece of this continuity puzzle.

[December 2011]