Swamp Thing #8

Finally. The Swamp Thing on the cover when he's supposed to be on the cover.

Now that Alec Holland has finally become Swamp Thing, he's headed to the Home of The Rot in the Deadlands to rescue Abby Arcane. The first six pages of this issue show how much of the western United States has been taken over by The Rot. They've built a home for themselves made of rotten creatures and bones misshapen beasts. And they are preparing to fight the Swamp Thing as he flies toward them, a path of flowers and green grass sprouting along the path beneath him.

Sethe, the leader of The Rot, assures his minions that they can defeat the Swamp Thing because "beneath his shell, he is just a man. Nothing but a man." They see this as his ultimate weakness. But it is his humanity that gives him his incredible strength. As we saw last issue, he convinces the Parliament of Trees to give him back the power because of his human need for independence and his need to consult his conscience before taking action.

Can I talk about Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? again? This is the same kind of theme that was going on there. The Rot see humans as weak, just mortal flesh and blood. They don't see the strengths humans have in their desire and passion and emotion. These things are foreign to them, so they don't consider them as assets. The same thing happens with the Replicants in DADoES. They don't understand empathy and thus they can never understand empathy. No, no. That makes sense. Throughout the book, the Replicants try to use empathy and emotion to manipulate the humans. They know how it works, text book wise. If a human has a pet goat and you kill that pet goat, the human is sad and horrified and angry. But they don't understand he connection between the human and the goat and how powerful that is. The Rot, like the Replicants, cannot plan against human emotion because they don't actually know how it works and how it makes a human feel. So the Swamp Thing is only human. It could be worse.

Swamp Thing lands and begins to tear into The Rot's minions, wading through them as he searches for Abby. He can feel her near. He can also feel that she's being changed.

But he arrives too late.

Someone start planning the wedding!

And then she picks him up and is about to bite off his head when this issue ends. I'm guessing Swamp Thing won't die. Although he could! He may pull a Maxine and disappear into the Green to regrow his body in a small dandelion somewhere nearby.

This issue was lacking in plot movement but the writing was well above the average for the New 52. The narration building up to the confrontation was the bulk of what this issue was about and it was well done. It's a bit hard to judge these comics from month to month when the story really feels like it's being written toward the graphic novel. In those cases, single issues just don't feel complete. It definitely sucks when reading monthly comics but I guess that's the way the business is now. Especially seeing as how DC already has advertisements in their Issue 8 comics for the Graphic Novels of every one of the 52 titles. Yes, they want people to buy them all in collected format. They're even going to try to get people to purchase Green Arrow and Captain Atom! Really, DC? Have you no shame? Those comics are awful! How about collecting the complete run of Suicide Squad or Green Lantern: Mosaic before putting out this awful shit?

Well, at least I can hopefully warn some comic readers away from the worst of the worst here in this blog. You can't say I didn't warn you! Well, you can. But you'd be a big fat liar.