Batman and Robin Eternal #25

I hope when I bleed out on the street someday, my blood will spill out in the shape of a dick and balls.

Rating: Rank 11 of 51 DC Comics. I guess. I can't wait for rebirth so I can change this whole system of ranking DC's comic books against each other. Mostly I can't tell anymore what books are better than others because so many of them are bland and mediocre. I should just have three categories without rankings. They can be comic books worth reading because they're written well, comic books pretty much only worth reading if you're into the title character, and comic books worth reading if you love train wrecks. This one probably falls slightly in-between written well and reading if you're into the Bat-kids. It's hard to really judge a weekly comic book on its writing merits because the writers change so often.

• I just reread my bullet points on Batman and Robin Eternal #24 to get caught up before reading this issue and found about a dozen typos. So you should probably expect the same kind of quality writing this time too!

• At the end of the last issue, Harper was thinking over Mother's offer to kill Cassandra and I was rolling my eyes so hard that I could hear a clicking sound in my head.

• The battle to bring down the towers receiving Mother's Icthys Virus has been going on for way too long because this comic book has to go 26 issues. So, you know, it's still happening.

• Dick and Azrael don't so much fight as philosophize. It's the same old bullshit about whether or not killing the person destroying the world is right or wrong. Is a country's arbitrary justice system a better way to go than just putting the person threatening the world in the ground? It seems like a shaky argument to make but since comic book heroes have to measure up to some kind of code, the "no killing" thing seems to be a decent measuring stick. It's just that it's so Jesusy! The only reason not to kill somebody like, say, The Joker is because by killing them, you're killing their chance at redemption. But what if The Joker has never shown any sign of redemption? Ever? How many times do you allow him to return to killing innocent people? When does Batman become responsible for all of the people The Joker kills because Batman keeps insisting that The Joker not be killed? I realize that Batman will never, ultimately, be responsible for The Joker's victims. The Joker makes the decision to kill and Batman makes the decision not to kill. There's a scene in the new season of Daredevil where The Punisher gives Daredevil a gun. Then The Punisher points a gun at some scuzzball hitman and tells Daredevil that if Daredevil doesn't kill The Punisher before The Punisher kills the hitman then Daredevil is responsible for the hitman's death. That's obviously bullshit because everybody is ultimately the choices they make. Daredevil choosing not to kill even if somebody else is going to be killed doesn't make Daredevil responsible for the person who gets killed. But let's say The Pnnisher has lined up hundreds of people and is killing them one after the other while Daredevil has a chance to kill The Punisher. At what point does Daredevil become complicit in the murders of the hundreds of people? After the first killing? The second? The thirty-first? At some point, a person has to realize that their ability to say "I have never killed anybody" is the only thing they're really protecting. The argument should never be so black and white that Batman or Daredevil or Dick Grayson can say they will never kill. You've got to allow for extreme situations that arise where killing somebody will absolutely make for the greater good. Although in Batman's case, I think if he ever kills anybody, he's going to get a taste for it! So he should probably just keep Red Hood's phone number close at hand and let him do any killing that needs to be done.

• Let's not be so hasty! Why should Azrael choose Batman's terms, hunh? And what if the terms he thinks through and chooses just happen to be similar to Mother's? Is that truly wrong?

• Mother continues to badger Harper about killing Cassandra. I'm not sure why she thinks her arguments will sway Harper since they're all really arguments for Harper to save Cassandra! I guess maybe Mother's arrogance is blinding her to reality. It's like when somebody on Facebook tells a story that's meant to show how big of a jerk somebody they dealt with that day was but it actually reveals how much of an asshole they themselves are? It's like one of Robert Browning's dramatic monologues! But not as subtle.

• Cullen Row uses Midnighter's Door technology to transport to Midnighter all of the mini-orphans battling the Bat-family. You know, so Midnighter can kick their asses.

• While Mother and Harper argue inside her base and Dick and Azrael argue outside Mother's base, Mother's Icthys infected children all over the world are finally cured by the Bat-family with Midnighter and Cullen's help. Also the other heroes who aren't technically part of the Bat-family. Like Black Canary and Katana and Red Hood.

• Dick finally reaches Mother so he can stop her without killing her. I think he just likes sending criminals through the bureaucracy and humiliation of the American justice system.

• Next issue is the final issue, right? Please be right.

Swamp Thing #40

The Swamp Thing to Alec Holland's right is Uncircumcised Swamp Thing. To his left, 90s Swamp Thing replete with dozens of chest pouches.

Good bye, Charles Soule's Swamp Thing! I will say my goodbyes by being completely bitter, hurt, and mean-spirited in today's commentary! Fuck you for leaving me, you asshole.

The issue begins with Alec Holland putting the past Avatars back in their places. The little snots still think they know better than Alec Holland even after being on time out for several months. And even if they do know better, just shut up! Nobody wants to be told that they're doing something wrong by a bunch of old failures. Let's say, hypothetically, that their experiences and the wisdom gained from those failures could help Alec to be successful against Anton Arcane. Do you still think the young upstart Alec Holland would still listen to him? Of course not! People often bring up that stupid saying about how nothing is certain except death and taxes. Fools. A lot of things are certain! Like you can be certain that youth will resent and ignore advice from experience and then proudly walk off of a cliff because they just had to learn it for themselves. Fine, maybe the lesson sticks better when you experience the failure yourself but wouldn't it have been nice not to have actually walked off of that cliff?

"And shut your fucking mouths because we're doing this my way even if that way is the same exact fucking way that got all of you killed! Fucking old pricks! It's my turn!"

What are Swamp Thing's teeth made out of? They can't be Alec's real teeth since Baby Alec still had his teeth which he used to eat Swamp Thing last issue.

Swamp Thing raises a volunteer army which will head up to the arctic to lay siege to The Machine's demesnes. The first volunteer is Jason Woodrue, The Seeder (previously known as The Floronic Man because comic books used to be stupid). Swamp Thing accepts him hoping that others will follow his lead but we all know (that includes Alec himself) that The Seeder is just using this as a chance to escape into the real world and become a future Swamp Thing supervillain.

At least ten ex-avatars (including The Seeder, mentioned so previously that I'd be amazed if you'd forgotten) join with Swamp Thing to risk their lives by leaving the Green. They meet Baby Alec Holland at the exit to the portal from the Green who tells them the big fight will take place in the Gobi Desert. She must want to battle there because plant heroes generally don't do very well in that climate. Just look at how Ranger Ruben tried to camouflage the Galactic Hero Corps from an ambush composed of all of their supervillains but he accidentally disguised them as Pacific Redwoods and nearly the entire team was killed. But from the ashes of that disaster, Grunion Guy was given a chance to save the world and writer novels! Mostly write novels! Unless the definition of novel does not extend to stories scribbled onto the back of an envelope.

Throughout the battle, a narration is taking place by Charles Soule or some other outside source. It's speaking directly of stories and the difficulty of ending them.

Some endings aren't as difficult as others.

I covered this whole difficulty of ending a story thing in Chapter 26 of my, so far, unfinished Goggles Novella. Proof that endings are difficult: I still have nine chapters left of the Goggles Novella. I know how it's going to play out, and eventually end, but I just need more uninterrupted free time so I can concentrate on getting it right. Not that most of the people reading this blog care since it has never really been about the comics and was just a story I decided to write during September because September has become DC Comics' throwaway month. Just as the year before I inserted a minor story into Villains Month where I was taken over by an alien entity for many of my commentaries. But I need to finish Goggles' story before the end of the year. I highly recommend it but then I wrote it for myself. I suppose if it doesn't have ties to any fandom, the number of people on Tumblr interested in it probably nears zero.

Swamp Things flees from the battle in the Gobi Desert to give the avatars that remained behind time to heal the Green. Of course as he flies away, he winds up crashing into a library in Philadelphia. That's practically right next to the Gobi, right? It's at this point that Swamp Thing decides to enter a book because its made from dead plants! Also, the library is like the anti-machine! He's going to defeat The Machine Kingdom with outdated modes of archiving!

By outdated, I don't mean that there's no need for them! Libraries and printed material should never be seen as obsolete. We should always be using a number of back-up methods to store knowledge or we're just asking to lose it. If only there had been a group of people memorizing the works held at the Library of Alexandria, we'd have saved the knowledge lost when the place burned. At least with books, the only device needed to access the data is a working pair of eyes. And just fingers if they're in Braille! When the massive solar flare hits and burns out all of electronics, we're going to lose a lot of shit that's currently just stored in servers or in the cloud. Luckily, most of it is useless, time wasting garbage.

Once in the book, Alec finds himself in a new kingdom. I guess it's the Kingdom of Art. Or Kingdom o' Fart as all the other kingdoms refer to it.

How about gifting him more issues, you jerk?

Swamp Thing returns to the battle where the tide turns in The Green's favor. The Seeder kills the avatar of fungus but dies as well. Etrigan joins the battle with an army of demons because he doesn't have anything better to do in the DC Universe at the moment (except defeat Morgaine over in Batwoman although I think that story has already happened since it's been flashback for three or four months). Anton Arcane flees because stories in comic books never actually end no matter what the Avatar of the Arts says. He'll be back because he's always back because comic books just keep going and going and going. And then all that remains on the battlefield are two lone warriors: Alec Holland and Lady Weeds. I mean, I guess Gaurov is there somewhere as well but he's not important anymore.

Swamp Thing defeats Lady Weeds easily and then hires the Justice League Cleaning Company to dismantle Rithm Headquarters in the Arctic. Superman is happy to see them go because property values were really plummeting since they moved into the neighborhood.

I hope A Calculus's personality survived.

Alec's story ends in the swamp hanging out with Abby and Gaurev while reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez's 100 Years of Solitude. I wish I could remember anything about the book which I read about twenty years ago! I bet the themes interweave with Swamp Thing's themes! Then Swamp Thing looks at you and the comic book is over.

The thing I missed most during Charles Soule's run of Swamp Thing was the horror. Perhaps he was telling a horror story of a kind but it wasn't one that spoke to my fears. But that's the only complaint I have about his run on this title. I loved this character. Soule's Swamp Thing was likable and kind and thoughtful. The final page I scanned speaks to the generosity, confidence, and wisdom of Alec Holland at the end of his journey. He chooses not only to not destroy the Machine Kingdom but to give it autonomy and free will. He allows it to make its own decisions but knowing that there will be consequences if the Machines decide to act like Anton Arcane again. He's encouraging the Machine Kingdom to grow and to learn instead of forcing it in some kind of captivity or limbo where it would only learn hatred and bitterness. It's not often you see a character mature this much. He's gone from being a rock star to the plants to being a nurturing, peaceful caregiver. And hopefully Abby lost enough of her rot power that they can still fuck from time to time.

Swamp Thing #40 Rating: +3 Ranking. I don't know what the future will bring for Swamp Thing but for now, I'm content with his story. It was as satisfying as a San Diego Comicon selfie with a non-digital camera.

Me, Supergirl, and Upright

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.

Swamp Thing #31

How is Alec supposed to get his mind back in Swamp Thing's body and does it involve a pee hole?

Last issue ended with Alec in Pistil's body on a date with a goopy gross avatar in the body of Miki the Greek Hot Tamale. I thought that maybe Abigail had arranged to do a little Sureening to take advantage of Alec's new penis but it turns out Miki is actually the Avatar of the Grey.

This whole Avatar of the Gray thing is a bit confusing since The Rot is called The Grey over on Earth 2.

Since Fungus plays such a huge role in decomposition and is also kind of a plant (or is it more like an animal? I'm no fungus scholar!), does this mean there are subspecies of Avatar that straddle two realms? Or maybe The Gray simply squats over all three realms? The Red sort of implies creatures with blood, so would smaller creatures like bacteria and viruses fit in somewhere lower on the taxonomic chart of The Red? And do some of these subcategories contain creatures that also exist in the taxonomy of The Green and The Rot? And do they all need separate Avatars based on Kingdom and Phylum and Genus and Species?!

The reason nobody ever talks about The Grey (at least on New Earth!) is that Miki opted out of that whole Avatar life where you're constantly comparing dicks with the other Avatars. Plus she says the smartest thing I've ever heard an Avatar say: "Fungus can take care of itself." You know, I think that's true! Our world is doing just fine without Avatars! I think. We don't have Avatars, do we? I've never seen one! But then I've never seen the Easter Bunny either and I'm not ready to deny that that god exists. I bet none of the Avatars are actually needed. They're probably just a form of entertainment for long dead assholes that made up this stupid Battle of the Realms in the first place.

"I want to fuck it."

Alec is a bit squeamish about how Miki the Fungus had to basically kill every person that volunteered their body for her use. So he's not ready to kill lots of innocent people simply to exit the Avatar game and spend his life with Fungus Face over here. So it looks like he's going to commandeer the Avatar of the Gray and use it to steal back Swamp Thing's body.

Miki used to be a fun guy! Ha ha!

Once Alec transmigrates into Spore, his ex-human host regains consciousness and instantly spills all of his secrets and bowel contents. Now Alec knows where his body is and that they're using it to help people! Although at a premium price, so it's not the kind of help many people can actually use. But Alec will probably stop them anyway. We've already seen in The Seeder story arc that Alec doesn't like people helping other people.

While traveling through the stark desolation of the Fungi Kingdom, Alec senses that the residents of The Grey want some kind of organization. They long for it. This causes him to rethink how he cut The Green off from the Parliament. Damn. He's getting soft! Although if he does bring back The Parliament of Trees, it should be on his terms. So they'll be more like pets than authority figures.

Spore quickly defeats the evil Pharmaceutical Company by inflicting everybody with Athlete's Foot and Crotch Rot.

He gathers up his things and declares that he's going home.

It might be a bit too late though. The company already decimated 40% of the cropland across the world because they were going to use the Swamp Thing body to create seeds resistant to the pretend plague that just decimated grain across the world. Hopefully Swamp Thing will notice before half the population starves. Or maybe it would be better if he only noticed after half the population starved? What do I care? I eat junk food that was never grown in a field ever! I'll be okay!

Once Spore returns to the Sureen, he decides to finally fuck Miki.

Not in a sexy way. Sorry if you thought you were going to get to see Alec spore all over Miki's face.

Swamp Thing convinces Miki to, begrudgingly, take back her old role as Avatar of the Gray. I'm sure she'll be back to try and kill him in a few months. For now, she needs to relearn how to do her job. And Swamp Thing needs to fix the world.

Lastly, two last things happen. So one of them isn't technically last but fuck you. And it's better if I just scan them in instead of pretending something sexy is happening when it actually isn't.

I love that The Wolf was behind this whole mess. Wolf and Lady Weeds are going to be a lot of fun.

And Aquaman stops by to bring the credibility of this comic down a few notches.

Swamp Thing #31 Rating: +1 Ranking. High points: Fungus Avatar, Wolf's Plan. Low points: Aquaman. I was going to give this comic book a +2 Ranking but then I remembered Aquaman interrupted this comic book with his idiotic presence and just couldn't do it. Also, this comic book is quickly rising up the ranks and I need to find reasons to slow it down before it breaks through the top of the chart like a great glass elevator.

Swamp Thing #30

Charles Soule's Swamp Thing gets more and more pornographic every month.

This issue is part two of the three part story "The Gift of the Sureen." Since it's the middle bit, you can probably skip it. The middle part of a story is always just filler. Forget about this issue. Let's talk about other things.

Today I was setting up an old cat tower in my office so my cat has someplace to sit when she visits instead of sitting on the floor and screaming at me continuously until I let her jump up in my lap which prevents me from doing anything else for the rest of the day. It's a homemade cat tower so it's a bit rickety. I was looking for something to balance the base and found two comic books lying about the floor. One was an extra copy of Talon #1 that my comic book store tricked me into buying by putting two in my subscription box. And the other one was this comic book:

I decided against using it to balance the cat tower even though it had just been lying on the floor for probably over a year. I set it aside and thought, "This looks familiar. Wasn't it in the case at the comic book store?" So when I picked up comics today, I checked. And there it was tagged for $50.00. Seriously? Even this reprint of Walking Dead #1 that was given away at the Portland Comic Con is worth a little cash? You people are crazy for your Walking Dead, aren't you? The fans of the show should be called The Waking Dead. Hopefully my first printing Walking Dead #1, carefully bagged and boarded and carefully stored away, is in as good condition as this issue that was just lying around on the ground under the desk for a year.

I just glanced at the first page of Swamp Thing #30 since it was lying here open beside me and I think maybe I should read it. Things are about to get nasty!

Sexually nasty!

While the Swamp Thing is about to have every twig, leaf, and bud examined, the important characters in this book are busy making themselves at home now that they're back on Earth. Wolf has chosen to dress up in a fancy suit with a suitably fitting green shirt and tie while Lady Weeds has chosen to cover herself in tattoos of vines and flowers. Now they're ready to ditch Swamp Thing and begin their own monthly comic book. Although by Lady Weeds behavior since she escaped The Green, her entire comic book would just be panel after panel of her killing different animals. It might get a bit repetitive unless maybe Garth Ennis were writing it. I think he could come up with enough creative ways to kill animals so the reader doesn't get bored. If he ran out of material, all Ennis would have to do is consult his childhood diary. Probably! I don't know anything for certain! Was that stated clearly enough to not get sued?

Brother Jonah and Capucine track them down because Swamp Thing told them to. And now they're all headed back to the swamp where Swamp Thing's burned down mansion is located. They might be a bit surprised about the burned down part.

Also surprising: The Swamp Thing's new look.

Everybody takes a turn tsk-tsking Alec for losing the Avatar's body before they begin discussing what is to be done. And what is to be done is almost as terrific (if not more so. Seriously, it's hard to compare things that are nearly perfect) as Etrigan hunting Capucine: Vandal Savage is called in to help. It's beginning to look like Capucine may have spent some time as a Demon Knight.

I love Vandal. I have not lived nearly as long as he has but this is the same argument I usually use with my father when he begins telling me the new way the world is going to end. Many generations before have believed the same thing. And many still to come will also. When the world finally does end (the anthropocentric version of the world, of course), I fear humans will have little to do with it. It will most likely be sudden and violent and of cosmic origin.

Vandal's price is Capucine. And Capucine's reaction to that price is, and I hate myself for even typing this, priceless. "Nnf. I knew it. Fine. Let's do it." I think she's been to this dance multiple times before.

And so she has. Which is why she knows he just wants to spar a bit with her. This is a relationship I would like to read more about. In just a few pages, Soule makes me care more about two characters than Lobdell could manage across two and a half years. Reading more stories about Vandal Savage and Capucine would be a delight.

Savage tells Alec and the others that the Sureen are in India. A few more details might be helpful since India isn't exactly a tiny place. Now if he'd said France, they'd find the Sureen easily since the only location in France in the DC Universe is the area surrounding the Eiffel Tower. Savage allows them to use his helicopter to get to his jet which he's letting them borrow. He's decided to walk to wherever he's going next (Pandora #10!) because he can live the Frank Black song, "All My Ghosts."

Immediately upon arriving in India (or possibly after days of searching. Soule knows enough to leave out the boring shit and just get to the next important bit), Alec finds the Sureen. It's just one old man that he's never met before. Well duh! If Alec had met the actual Sureen, he'd be having oral sex right now with Pistil instead of hunting for his escaped body.

Oh yeah. This old guy is the real deal!

The Fake Sureens stole The Swamp Thing so they could turn his body into a never ending resource for pharmaceuticals. They could use the body to feed the entire world but where's the money in that? Pills are where the cash is!

Finally, it turns out the woman that took Alec out to celebrate his return to humanity might be Abigail Arcane. She has gross stuff inside her just like Alec has plants inside him. Although I have gross stuff inside me too and I'm not an Avatar! I don't think.

Swamp Thing #30 Rating: +1 Ranking. Charles Soule keeps finding ways to remind people that super hero comic books don't have to be filled with people in leotards punching each other in the face to be an interesting and entertaining comic book. Swamp Thing feels more like a Vertigo title than it has since The New 52 began. The only thing I'd change (if I could be assured the change would make the comic better because it's already pretty damn good and any change is more likely to make it worse) is the tone. I do enjoy my Swamp Thing filled with horror elements.

I also think this comic book could create some good spin-offs! Lady Weeds. Wolf. Brother Jonah and Capucine. Capucine and Vandal Savage. Soule is writing some terrific characters. I'm a fan.