It’s very hard to impress someone who has read Alan Moore’s epic Swamp Thing run with a book about the character, and while I have doubts that anything else will ever truly equal or better the stories that helped create the Vertigo line, I am actually impressed by Scott Snyder’s take on Swamp Thing in this first issue.

Proving that the new 52 is not a complete reboot of the DCU, this story picks up a bit after Brightest Day ends, with a now-living Alec Holland shirking his Swamp Thing duties and trying to live his life off the grid.

The art is excellent, and even though we really don’t get to see much actual Swamp Thing (we see more of Superman than Swamp Thing, actually), the story is striking the perfect chord between Vertigo-style horror atmosphere and a book that takes place in the mainstream DCU that is chock-full of superheroes.

I wasn’t expecting to be that interested in a Swamp Thing book that straddles the line between Vertigo and superhero books that isn’t written by Moore, but this is easily one of the best of the new 52 books so far, so it gets an “A.”

- Ed

Swampthing has an outstanding pedigree.  From the original Bernie Wrightson run to the Alan Moore run of the 80s.  So it is hard not look back.  But it looks like they take the core horror concept of man-as-plant monster story and brought it back to life (pun!).

I found the art at the beginning to be outstanding.  The details shown in Metropolis are great, but sometimes the art looked off.  He drew Superman with a flat face, it looks like he was hit in face with a cartoon frying pan.  There is actually a profile shot where Superman has no nose!

Overall the art is good, but sometimes the layouts get in the way.  There were a few pages without much dialogue that I could not understand what was going on.

The story was solid and introduced the key concepts well.  I’ve reread the section with the mammoth and the bugs and I still don’t get it.  But I”m interested enough to find out next issue.

B     ——  Don