Swamp Thing #38

Reincarnated cyborg Alec Holland looks like early 80s post-punk new wave John Constantine.

If you ever wanted to ensure that the novel you're writing (oh come on! Everybody is writing one! Even if it's just in their heads and they tell their friends the plot and it's really just a five line synopsis of an unwittingly plagiarized story) never gets banned, here's a helpful tip: make sure your book is six thousand pages long and nigh on impenetrable to the average person. Most of the people that want to ban books are of average or below average intelligence. They might read popular books because they want to fit in, or they might have heard popular books discussed and pretended to have read them because they want to not be seen as dumb fuckturds, and so they'll acquaint themselves with your material. And to show they're critical readers, they'll be offended by anything that they can possibly figure out how to be offended by. And then you'll sell millions of copies! But if you don't want that to happen for some reason, do that thing I said earlier that I already forgot about because I want my book to sell a million copies too! Is the second page too early to put the scene where Jesus dick slaps Judas and then goes on a goat fucking rampage while shouting "Allaho Akbar! There is no god but the God, and Mohammed is the Apostle of God!"?

What's that? How does Jesus know about Mohammed? You want me to give away the entire plot of my book? No fucking way! Although I will say this: it's the best fucking post-apocalyptic, coming-of-age, college-road-trip time travel story ever written!

I've probably said too much! Nobody steal that synopsis to describe the novel you're working on to people whose pants you're trying to get into!

The issue begins with Swamp Thing battling Machines all over the Earth while Lady Machine and Anton Arcane reanimate Alec Holland's corpse by having a three way fuck party on his bones.

I wonder if this works for cats?

After their sex brings Alec Holland back from the dead, they all take a field trip to Louisiana to visit Gaurav the Sureen. They take over his mind with fungus and then blow up his house. I think they're trying to get his attention so that he can come kick their asses. I mean, they're not trying to get their asses kicked. Lady Machine and Anton Arcane and Missus Fungus actually think they can beat Swamp Thing. Heck, maybe this time they're right! What if Charles Soule is going to leave Swamp Thing dead when he runs off to Marvel for good?! Can he do that?!

Alec sends part of his consciousness off to battle Reanimated Alec Holland while the rest of him lays siege to The Machine's Arctic Fortress with Abby Arcane. I hope Swamp Thing got the right directions off of Mapquest or Superman is going to be pissed.

And now Abby is going to be pissed.

Sometimes I wish I were angrier. Just angry at something! Anything! That way I could write page after page after page of intensely passionate rants about the thing I was angry at. People who have reason to be angry have been given a gift. They are the luckiest people in the world, those people that are angry. When you're not angry, you have nothing to say. Well, you have some things to say. Things like, "How is the weather?" or "Do you like pizza?" But it gets boring writing those kinds of things over and over again. But people who are angry at something never get tired of writing about the thing they are angry at! Even if they constantly repeat themselves, it doesn't matter because their anger usually causes them to spit out the same thing in various ways which makes it seem like they are saying different things but they are really just losing focus and rambling because the anger has driven them crazy. I hate not being angry at things. I would give anything to be angry all of the time.

People who are angry also sound intelligent. It's like, "Whoa! Look at how much spit and passion are coming out of that person's face. What they are screaming about must be important. They must be smart enough to see something that I can't see which is driving them mad with rage." Sometimes I see a car with a bumper sticker on it that says, "If you aren't outraged then you aren't paying attention," and I think, "Geez. I really thought I was paying attention but I guess not!"

Once I thought I was really, really angry but it turned out that I was just wrong about what I was angry about and then had to apologize for yelling at a bunch of people. But I rarely ever see angry people apologizing for screaming at other people, so I guess they must all be correct in their anger. In fact, they're usually demanding that everybody else apologize for being part of the reason they're angry. I guess I should apologize now because I don't want anybody yelling at me! Sorry, hothead! I didn't mean to do that anger inducing thing! I guess I just wasn't paying close enough attention!

They're all sneaking off to pee in the green.

Have you ever noticed that when you are close to someone, they often want you to join them in their anger? And if you do not care like they do, they get angry at you! I guess they feel the passion of your anger at the thing they are angry at equals the amount you care about them and then their feelings are hurt when you do not share their intense rage at the subject. It's easier to just grit your teeth and shake your fist and say, "Yeah! Yeah! Down with that bad crap!" Then when they look at you to make sure you are just as angry as they are, you can nod knowingly and smile in your shared outrage. Then when they look away, you can check your phone to see if anybody has texted you. Then you can text them back but you should do it by angrily jabbing the screen with your index finger because you're so pretend worked up about the thing that made your friend angry.

My mother used to say, "You have to hate somebody!" That was her justification for hating Arabs. I did not understand her anger at them. I don't believe she understood her anger at them either. That probably explains why her reason behind her anger seemed to be completely random, like she drew "Arabs" out of the Hat of Hate and just shrugged her shoulders and said, "Yeah, okay." Maybe picking someone or something to hate intensely makes life more vibrant in all of its other aspects. Maybe my mother sees flowers and thinks, "These are so beautiful because they are in danger of the filthy Arabs destroying them for eternity." Perhaps I should find something to hate?

I see you all desperately trying to be the first person to leave a comment that says, "But what about Scott Lobdell?!" Oh, you silly cretins. That is like a magic trick. It's like pulling the rabbit out of the hat. The rabbit was never actually in the hat to begin with! It's all sleight of hand and legerdemain (which is the same thing so I probably shouldn't have said them both) done to entertain the viewer! Although I probably shouldn't have pointed out it's a trick! Once the trick has been revealed, it loses its luster. Now nobody is going to be entertained by my rants against Scott Lobdell because they will say, "I know how this trick works. I know the secret of this trick very well."

Oh well. Maybe some day I will feel anger. Or I will be paying attention. Some day.

Chlorine! We need more chlorine!

Once everybody pees in the Green, The Rot realizes that Anton Arcane was their man all along. Even though they chastised him and went against his plans to turn everything into a beautiful Rotworld, now they think this is a good time for him to destroy the Green. Maybe they forgot that they didn't like how successful he was because it never happened due to time travel. Or maybe they were just tired of the Avatar of the Green visiting their Avatar and making fuck dolls to fuck each other until they crumbled into dust. Anton really mucks up The Green with his rancid pee pee once The Rot decides to back him. And then Swamp Thing begins to rot away while Reanimated Alec Holland laughs on like a feeble minded zombie.

Swamp Thing #38 Rating: No change. Once Charles Soule goes over to Marvel for good, he should begin writing Man-Thing! He does like writing about big green monsters! I didn't mean to insult She-Hulk even though it's a valid description of her.