Swamp Thing #8

"Eye of the Storm"
written by Scott Snyder
art by Marco Rudy (pp. 1-9) and Yanick Paquette (pp. 10-20)

Paquette's Swamp Thing design wins the episode.  Alec Holland emerges not as the sometimes soft (if powerful), mossy swamp foliage of most earlier incarnations, but a rough warrior armor-plated with thick, gnarly bark, masked with horned branches, and sprouting dense, leafy wings.  His rage is palpable, which is good, since most of the issue is dedicated entirely to his first real battle with the Rot.

Seethe has built a dead kingdom, erected out of bones and carcasses, festering flesh made animate by his will.  And he speaks from the rigid mouths of his dead hordes.  It is certainly a grotesque sight, and Rudy's architecture is suitably bleak, if not particularly surprising.  The layouts, often echoes of flies, a fractured vision of decay that takes a kind of insect anatomy, are intriguing and fine complements to Paquette's earlier cellular and floral patterns for the Swamp Thing's green world.

Alec's instant affection for Abby, an emotional echo of a life that wasn't his, continues to be the series' best element.  When she emerges transformed, Seethe's queen with a hardened black exoskeleton and sharp, piercing teeth, it is a blow for Alec, seemingly overmatched by his would-have-been lover, but the ultimate fate of Abby never really feels threatened here, though the mechanism for her salvation is more difficult to discern.

[June 2012]