Swamp Thing: Protector of the Green

Swamp Thing joins DC’s New 52.

And . . . I was impressed with the results. Scott Snyder had a template he had to work with, re-introducing us to a lot of the basic Swamp Thing mythology and recurring characters while hitting the reboot button on Swampy himself. As things kick off here Dr. Alec Holland has retired from being Swamp Thing and, fully human again, just wants to go back to living a normal life.

As if!

It’s not long before that wise forest council the Parliament of Trees is getting in touch and telling him that he has to become the Knight of the Green and defend the world from an invasive force of death known as the Rot. Apparently there are three primordial powers in the universe: the Green (plants and such), the Red (animals), and the Rot (death). We don’t hear anything about the Red in this book until the end, where it turns out that Animal Man may be its avatar or knight. The main conflict is between the Greens and the Rot.

The one problem Snyder can’t overcome is the fact that you know damn well from the start that Cross is going to take on the mantle of the “Protector of the Green” and become Swamp Thing again so he can once again become “the most powerful Green Knight on the planet” and fight the Rot. The story arc, which is tried and true, was set. All that had to happen was for his girlfriend Abigail to be threatened, which doesn’t take long.

The rest of the story, though, is quite good. Abbie, it turns out, is compromised. Something to do with her Arcane blood means she is turning into an avatar of the Rot. Indeed she’s going to turn into a Rot Queen who will rule “on her throne of bent flesh” alongside her king, Sethe. And hats off to Yanick Paquette for coming up with an original look for these two baddies. A monster with a fresh appearance is hard to do when it comes to horror movies and comics, and I thought he hit a home run here with Sethe being a sort of feathered rooster skeleton with a Venus flytrap head and Abby turning into something that mainly looks like a giant mantis, though with more of an ant’s head. Also worth noting in the art department is the homage to the psychedelic page layouts of John Totleben’s work on Saga of the Swamp Thing (there are other glances to the history of Swamp Thing in the Wrightson Diner and Totleben Motel, but those are more like Easter eggs). This is a good-looking comic throughout.

I also liked how various characters and elements are brought back in rejuvenated form. The Parliament of Trees are a grumpy bunch, but after being burned down in their rain forest home Swampy manages to regrow them in his own swamp. The zombies with backwards heads from Alan Moore’s turn at the helm of the franchise are here again, and a lot of fun to see stumbling around. And of course Anton Arcane and his Un-men are back as well, being allied with the forces of the Rot. In fact, Snyder goes a step further in retelling Swampy’s origin story by making Arcane responsible for that too in an unexpected way.

In sum, I thought this was a great comic: true to the spirit of the character and history of the comic, dialing up some truly grotesque horror and solid action, and opening a tap into cosmic terrors without ever going the full Alan Moore. The New 52 was a mixed bag in a lot of ways, but they didn’t put a foot wrong here.

Graphicalex