Swamp Thing #37

Boo! Hiss! I don't think I want to fuck Lady Weeds anymore. Maybe. Hmm, well, okay. But she'd better not make vacuum cleaner noises while I'm failing to bring her to orgasm.

That reminds me! Are we all using the phrase "Curiosity got the teenaged boy's dick stuck in the jacuzzi vent" instead of "Curiosity killed the cat"? I think it's more realistic because cats might be curious but they're so bad-ass that it rarely ever gets them killed. Perhaps "Gluttony killed the cat" would be more apt? Or "Choking on its toy string while it continued to try to play with it killed the cat"? What about "Sleeping under the blanket and getting sat upon killed the cat"? "The asshole neighbor that doesn't understand cats are free roaming members of the community killed the cat"? "Climbing up into the warm engine of your car killed the cat"? "Contracting feline AIDS killed the cat"?

I should probably stop before I make myself cry!

The first six pages of this issue have been reserved for the birth of Mistress 404, Avatar of Machines. I guess Charles Soule had a lot of scripts to write this month so he probably just sent a note to Jesus Saiz to waste five or six pages on coming up with as graphic a birth scene as he could. And now that that's over, maybe we'll get some of that fantastic Charles Soule conflict where one superhero talks the ear off of another superhero and then the other superhero, instead of punching the first superhero for some reason, actually brings up a counter argument to the first superhero's point. It's crazy. There's never been a superhero comic book like it!

Constantine comes looking for Swamp Thing to discuss (Seriously! Discussion!) the rise of the new kingdom and its Avatar. Constantine enjoys his magic so he can't be too happy that technology is rallying behind a leader, and a vicious one at that. Unless she's viscous! One of those. I wonder if Constantine's going to try to involve Buddy Baker as well. Or has everybody stopped calling him because they're tired of him just turning them down because "you know, guys...I got the family and all"?

Lady Weeds first mission is to think up a cool new name. Like Mistress 404?! Shut up! It is too cool!

First mission failed! Seriously? Rithm?! Machine Queen?! I wonder if Mother Machine is going to be pissed about this whole Machine Kingdom business?

Machine Queen, Agent of Rithm's second mission is to take over one of the other kingdoms. She'll probably save Swamp Thing for last, so she's probably going to go after Buddy or the Fungus Leader.

Swamp Thing asks for Constantine's help because Alec Holland has a death wish, I guess? Don't partner up with that schleprock!

Swamp Thing has dingleberries.

The Machine Queen easily convinces the Mistress of the Grey to give over dominion of the fungus in exchange for a new body and the promise to end Alec Holland. I don't think Buddy or Abigail are going to be that easy to convince. Although Maxine probably wants a new computer and an iPod for Christmas, so maybe if Machine Queen can get Buddy a discount?

The Machine Queen's third mission is to recruit Anton Arcane. Christ! Does that fucker have to be involved in every Swamp Thing story arc?!

So that's what killed the cat! Dick.

Anton Arcane is currently a sniveling wretch and of no use to the Rithm as a leader of their armies. But Anton does have one thing that he thinks might help. He's been dragging it in a huge sack all over Philadelphia as he eats stray animals and digs through dumpsters. It's the corpse of Alec Holland.

Swamp Thing #37 Rating: No change. How did Charles Soule waste six pages on the birth of the Machine Queen and still seem to pack in a full comic book worth of story on the subsequent fourteen pages? Is that even possible? Maybe it's because he left out all of the usual superhero battles. Constantine didn't fight Swamp Thing. Lady Machine didn't fight the Mistress of the Grey. Anton Arcane didn't fight anybody except that cat. It was almost a violence free issue! Except for that cat thing. And the birth scene!

Swamp Thing #34

I hope Lady Weeds tattooed her butthole with a flower that smells like poo.

A post popped up on my Tumblr earlier with pictures of that actress on Teen Wolf with the witch eyes and it got me thinking about actors and good looks. My first philosophical foray into the issue was that acting was bullshit and people are just generally cast because of their looks. But that's obviously bullshit because Steve Buscemi. Obviously a lot of attractive people without talent get jobs in the business because directors and producers and casting agents know that people like to masturbate to beautiful people. But I think acting gets its start at a very young age. Much like a kid raised on junk food will eat nothing but junk food as an adult, a kid raised on constant attention and praise because of their good looks needs to maintain a certain level of fawning over their beauty. Now even though I am, myself, a beautiful human being (on the outside), I was raised by a mother who would say things like, "Your cousin Jason is like the son I never had!" So I was raised on a steady stream of bitterness and resentment which is why I need to attack as many successful people as possible on a nearly constant basis to feel normal.

See how that first paragraph began as if it were about something else but I was still able to bring it back around to discuss me? That's because this blog is about me! It's not about comic books at all. Those are just incidental.

What did they do, Cappuccino?! They made a puppet of the Swamp Thing?!

I guess they killed the little tiny Swamp Thing that Swamp Thing made to look over the Green. It's a little bit hard to tell with the lack of Narration Boxes saying, "Cappuccino comes into the room holding the lifeless corpse of Baby Swampie while I lay dying on the floor. Or is it 'lie dying'?" I guess if you look closely, Baby Swampie's left cheek is kind of torn up, probably from where Wolf shoved his cock into him. And since Wolf is a disgusting monstrosity right now, it probably wasn't a pleasant face-fucking at all.

Like that one person born out of the head of the other person (Cher or somebody. I forget), Swamp Thing explodes out of the head of Baby Swampie to answer Cappuccino's call. I sure hope Baby Swampie was already dead before that happened.

Brother Jonah decides he'd rather go back to The Green than die. Must be nice to have that kind of choice! I guess those are better last words than wondering whether to use "lie" or "lay." Although that's still better than dying wondering whether to use "who" or "whom." Which is still better yet than dying not knowing the difference between the Arctic and Antarctica.

Oh Lady Weeds! You get more beautiful with each passing panel!

I was in love with Lady Weeds when she was just a fancy plant lady. But then she became a blood covered naked woman and she became even more precious. Sure, she had that stint where she got a bunch of crappy tattoos all over her body but I loved her for trying to get back to that elegant look she had while living in The Grove. And now she shows no sympathy for a person because they have kids? Can a person's heart take this much yearning? She's the perfect being!

After killing this jerko father of no year ever, Lady Weeds firebombs the plant life around the hospital she hitched a ride to. Then she sets Wolf free to do whatever he's going to do. Fight Swamp Thing? Curb himself? Eat the entire hospital staff?

Meanwhile, Swamp Thing carries Jonah into the Green to become his regent. He'll take the place of Baby Swampie which is too bad because Baby Swampie was my favorite new character of last month! I bet Dan DiDio is behind Baby Swampie's death! Jerko!

I once knew how the story ends but stupid time has taken away all memory of the book! So, really, it doesn't matter, Jonah. You'll only be satisfied for the most fleeting of moments before time pisses it all away.

When I was a teenager, my main concern about dying was that I would never find out how all the stories I was currently reading would end. Books, being on my own timetable, didn't concern me as much as comic books which I had to wait for, dangerous week after dangerous week! Eventually I realized that comic book stories never really fucking end and the characters change by the whims of the writers and it never really mattered that much. But the feeling of not knowing how things will end eventually resurfaced when I created the main motivation for the Galactic Hero Corps' enemy, Global Thermonuclear War Dude. The destruction of everything always seemed like a weird super villain goal. What does that get anybody? Destruction for destruction's sake? Global Thermonuclear War Dude wanted to destroy everything, including himself, simply so that he wouldn't miss out on anything. He wasn't content to just leave the party. The party would have to end if he had to end. All parties would have to end! Forever!

Swamp Thing leaves the Sureen and Cappuccino to fight Wolf at the hospital because the brilliant Lady Weeds planned it that way.

Ugh. Wolf is even more disgusting than when he was a bald man.

Lady Weeds convinces The Sureen that he should help her become the Avatar because she was once an Avatar and The Sureen must help all Avatars. Also, she threatens to stab him in the face, so, you know. Fairly easy choice to make. I suppose her plan is to threaten innocent lives unless Swamp Thing switches bodies. But I think Alec has done enough body switching lately to know that it never does anybody any good. Especially him! And The Green! And the entire world, really.

Lady Weeds doesn't realize that Swamp Thing has learned his lesson about body switching and, it seems, is now willing to let two final innocent people die to keep any more from harm. She also doesn't realize that Wolf has learned to use his new demon vocal cords and that he hasn't lost his hatred of the vulgar.

Although stabbing yourself in the throat seems a bit crass as well.

I would have thought he'd kill Lady Weeds before killing himself but I guess suicide has more art to it than murder. Anyway, it wouldn't fit the story to have Lady Weeds dealt with by Wolf. Only one person in this story gets to fuck up Lady Weeds.

Maybe Lady Weeds can be the New 52 Oracle!

Lady Weeds is punished by being trapped inside a human mind with no power to stab innocent people in the face. But at least she's not dead! Although after last Universe's incident involving a spinal injury, it seems that comic book heroes have a better chance of coming back from the dead than recovering from being paralyzed.

After Wolf is dead and Lady Weeds severely injured, some guy named "A Calculus" comes forward to help Alec with his duties.

Swamp Thing #34 Rating: No change. I'm sad that Lady Weeds has been taken out. But I'm happy because now that Swamp Thing doesn't have to deal with Lady Weeds and Wolf, that means Etrigan can finally show up to battle Swamp Thing for Cappuccino's soul! Etrigan has been sorely missed lately. Although why would Etrigan still care about the deal Jason Blood struck with Cappuccino? Wasn't that just one of Jason Blood's plans to remove Etrigan from his life? And that's already happened, according to that story in Stormwatch where Etrigan came back and possessed some London punk. Anyway, DC Comics needs more Etrigan, no matter who he's shacked up inside.

Swamp Thing #33

If I could send one type of plant to Hell, it would be those trees that smell like semen. Why does their plant spooge have to smell so similar to human jizz?! Walking outside in Spring and Summer is often like getting a surprise Bukake.

I watched a video review of an issue of Batman on some comic book site too boring to remember, and I have to wonder how those things are so popular? Is it just because they're easy to view? You can sort of half-listen to them while jerking it to porn? Here's the thing: reading the comic book, which is far more entertaining, takes nearly the same amount of time as hearing some jerk tell you about it while abusing the amount of work the word "very" should actually be doing according to Word Union Standards. The person giving the review said this about Snyder and Capullo's Batman and my brain literally metaphorically went inside-out: "It's very, very classical." I suppose even though it's easier for the viewer to find more stuff about Batman if they get to listen to it while doodling pictures of Batman teabagging The Hulk, it's more difficult for the reviewer to blather on and on about the comic book without suddenly depending on the word "very" to do all of the work. I know I should probably be paying "fuck" time and a half on my blog but fuck fuck. Get a real job, you slacker!

I would have watched more reviews because maybe I just listened to one where the reviewer wasn't totally into it. But I had more important things to do like go meet Super Bobcat for dinner so she could start calling me Nothing Bobcat which just sent me into a huge existential crisis. It didn't help that she decided later that I was more of a "loser Bobcat" and that the best way to tell me was to stick her finger in my face and say, "No! You're Loser Bobcat!"

Super Bobcat and Loser Bobcat.

Loser Bobcat needs a haircut! And jeans that fit! It must be nice to be a leafy green plant man that can look like whatever he wants. It must also be nice to be a head in a jar.

Meanwhile in comic books, Swamp Thing has finally had enough of Lady Weeds and her passive-aggression. Probably because her passive-aggressive attitude finally gave way to aggressive-aggression when she stabbed him in the the face with a knife last issue.

He should have asked her if she's going to keep stabbing him in the face.

Swamp Thing continues to be manipulated by Wolf because Alec Holland is too nice. And now that Lady Weeds has proven more dangerous than Swamp Thing realized, Alec will probably trust Wolf even more. I don't know if this was Wolf's plan all along, to turn himself and Lady Weeds into Good Cop/Bad Cop, but he's going to take advantage of it while he can.

Swamp Thing creates a Mini-Swamp Thing to help him keep an eye on The Green and tells his other kids to stay in the house while he checks up on the world. And then he's off like some poetical image I can't bring myself to say because it's trite and cheesy.

Having Lady Weeds attack Swamp Thing was indeed part of Wolf's plan as was nearly everything in the last few months. He's keeping Swamp Thing off-balance by hiring people to fuck with The Green on a nearly constant basis. In the meantime, he plays up the role of trusting adviser. Eventually, the plan is to install Lady Weeds as the Avatar while Wolf becomes the sole tree in the Parliament of Trees. They just need to find a way to defeat a Plant God and a nearly immortal warrior woman and probably Jonah, the laid back ex-avatar monk.

The final part of Wolf's plan is to have Swamp Thing assaulted constantly by demons. Eventually they'd overwhelm Swamp Thing and his body would be theirs. Too bad he hired a bunch of quitters.

He should have hired Twat Lobo!

Since Wolf's overly intricate, time wasting, fuddy duddy plan failed, Lady Weeds decides it's time to change tactics. She's much more violent and direct. What's needed now is a lot of blood and gore! She should hire Original Lobo!

Turning Wolf into some hideous, bloodthirsty monstrosity is another way to go.

Swamp Thing #33 Rating: No change. Not much to say about Swamp Thing by Charles Soule. It's always one of the top five comic books DC puts out each month. It's so good that it takes me out of my whimsical, goofy commenter persona and into my boring, state the facts ma'am, simple explication persona. Maybe that's why the review I watched was so boring! Because it was about a well written comic book and not a total stinker like Catwoman or anything by Lobdell! I'm going to search their site for a review of a comic book I know is shitty so I can have a properly researched opinion on their abilities as reviewers!

Hmm. Nevermind. I couldn't find any reviews of shitty comics. The closest I got was a review on Superman #30 which the reviewer found "quite interesting" a fair number of times. He also gave it a pass if you're not into Superman which is as close as he can probably say to "Scott Lobdell's writing is terrible" without causing their site to lose their seemingly good relationship with DC Comics. I imagine that's why so many reviews are of very, very decent to very, very well written comic books only. You don't want to shit in the mouth of the hand that feeds you! That's why I feed myself. Because I shit in everybody else's mouths far too often to rely on them to feed me.

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.