Swamp Thing #11

Swamp Thing was raped in the face by Anton Arcane. Not cool.

I feel something is missing in Swamp Thing. Growing up, Swamp Thing comics always fascinated me yet I never read them. They were a mystery. What the hell could this book be about? The guy is a giant, walking pile of swamp moss. The covers hinted at the horror within the book I never quite dared to pick up. I wasn't scared to read the stories. I think I lacked the confidence to try a comic so mysterious and different than the comics I'd been reading. But now that I'm reading Swamp Thing, some thing is missing.

The covers and the character always suggested something foreign, something strange. Das Unheimliche. That's what I want in the Swamp Thing. I want to be uncomfortable, perhaps a little bit aghast, and yet not be able to look away. Perhaps the story is doing that for some readers. The horror is tuned in just right. Perhaps I've removed myself from the material by too many degrees due to writing about it as I read it. Whatever it is, I keep coming away empty, no matter how much I want to like the book. Perhaps the feeling and the tone I need can be found if I simply read the whole series over again from the beginning? I think that's what I'll do.

I still feel I should drop some acid first.

And I've now reread the entire series sans acid. Simply put: it works really, really well when read together as a whole. And I know the main thing that's missing although only occasionally: art by Yanick Paquette. His art sets the appropriate tone of survival horror. And it is about survival. Everything in the book is just trying to scrape its way out from underneath everything else trying to survive. Alec, Abby, Sethe, The Rot, The Green, The Parliament of Trees, all of the innocents swept up in the madness. I wouldn't mind it being a bit grimmer than it is but that's just because my level of tolerance for horror was formed out of my own need for survival. No, I don't have any gruesome street stories. It's just my mom raised me watching horror movies and as a ten year old boy watching Friday the 13th on Showtime in 1981, you learn to build a hard, cynical shell about yourself so that the nightmares don't drive you crazy. I used to stave off nightmares by repeatedly singing The Flintstones' theme song in my head over and over until I drifted off to sleep. So maybe a little more horror with my horror would help to make the mood and tone feel right.

The book has its faults as well. I don't think Marco Rudy's art fits as well with modern horror themes. His stuff takes me back to (speaking as a very non-expert of this!) 1970s House of Mystery stories. Which is fitting, sure! But like I said, I want something darker!

It also feels like The Rot was set up as the huge nemesis to The Green early on. I had problems with this take as I didn't think The Rot should be portrayed as evil. I think over time this was corrected as Lemire with Animal Man and Snyder here on Swamp Thing really fine tuned the relationship between The Red, The Green and The Black so that it's exactly where I was hoping it would be. It's all about balance. And by no means does Snyder portray the Parliament of Trees as pure and righteous. Alec gives them grief for becoming too greedy. And they even state at one point that only they should rule the Earth, proving that each of the three over reaches with their ambition and each shares the blame for the war between them.

All of that previous crap should have been saved for some kind of One Year Later in The New 52 post where I sum up my feelings on the different titles. But I'm not even caught up on the current crap (still!), so I really shouldn't be thinking about off-shoot projects. So, with that said, time to read Issue #11.

I would have dropped the "what" from Anton's first speech bubble. That's me being an editor (not a DC editor, those lazy bastards!). Just trying to put my personal touch on someone else's work to claim a small bit of the creative control.

This is the initial confrontation between Abby and Anton. I like how Anton, this zombie-esque demony presence continually refers to family life with Abby. And after this exchange, all the un-men try to restrain Abby while showing their affection for her. This is good, chilling stuff. This is "Unheimlich" done right! The twisting of the familiar into something grotesque and creepy. This is the family from House of 1000 Corpses and The Devil's Rejects. It's the family from The X-files' episode "Home". It's the cannibalistic family in The Hills Have Eyes or Hotel Hell. This is what I find disturbing: family twisted and deranged but still held together by familial love and loyalty.

I feel after all of that I should make some kind of fart joke.

One of the things I missed while reading Issue #10 was that the person Anton was speaking with at the beginning, the person whose head he bashed in, was Swamp Thing. Duh. Occasionally I miss the most obvious stuff. So Anton makes off with Abby believing that he's killed the Swamp Thing. But fortuitously for Alec, he brought the essences of the Parliament of Trees to the swamp in Louisiana when he transformed into the Swamp Thing. It worked and they were able to save his life.

It's like Mad Max in Beyond Thunderdome! Or C-3PO on Endor! Or Charlie in the Chocolate Factory! Or that kid in Time Bandits in Waterloo! Except naked!

The Parliament is able to wake up the Swamp Thing and he sets off in search of Abby. And being that everyone is still in the swamp and Swamp Thing has "swamp" right there in his name, I'm betting he'll track them down pretty easily! Which he does! And then the big fight ensues.

POW! This panel and that sound effect make me wish someone would do a campy Swamp Thing sitcom in the style of the old Batman television show. "What lies in store for our mouldering mass of mossy muscle? Can he escape Anton Arcane's argyle clutches?" See, the demon Anton Arcane would wear an argyle vest and a derby. Duh.

I haven't read any more of the fight than I've scanned in here. I don't really know a lot about how the Swamp Thing fights. Does he just throw punches and make vines and brambles trip up his opponent? And what can Arcane do? Laugh evilly and create un-men? I think they just might trade punches for three pages.

Arcane sicks the un-men on Swampy who shoots out thorny tendrils, killing and disabling most of them.

Oooh! Even Swampy wants to turn this into a campy 60s throwback!

Once the un-men are out of the way, Swamp Thing and Anton do trade punches! But just for one page. The second page is when Swamp Thing rips off both of Anton's arms and punctures his chest. The third page, however, is where all of Anton's wounds become tooth filled mouths which begin eating their vegetables.

I would think the Rot's Avatar just isn't as powerful as the Red's or the Green's because The Rot just seems to settle on whoever it can fucking get.

Anton doesn't quite have all of his shit together as the Avatar of The Rot because as soon as he reveals himself as such, Abby blows his brains out. This doesn't have as mortal an effect as it might have had on a, you know, mortal. He just kind of laughs it off and threatens to be back as he descends back into the dirt. Alec is about to follow when Abby warns him to stop. It's a portal into the rot and she can see a nightmare world within it. It seems like she sees some of the same future that was shown to Ellen by Justice League Dark. Or was the future shown to Buddy by the Totems? Bah, I guess it doesn't really matter since they've both come to the swamps to help out.

I guess Cliff stayed behind in the RV with Nana.

Swamp Thing #11 Rating: +3 Ranking. Yes, I'm moving this comic up three spots. Not simply for this issue but more as an adjustment after rereading the series. If I had more time on my hands, I'd do the same for each of the other 52. And I may yet as the the first year of the New 52 ends and the Zero comics come out. It would be a good time to look back over the year and report what I believe were DC's successes and failures. I'm pretty sure I've made the failures very apparent! But sometimes the successes are harder to make jokes about, so they get passed over.