Art By: Jesus Saiz, June Chung
Cover Price: $2.99
Release Date: February 4, 2015
If I Was Green I Would Die
*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*
In the last issue of Swamp Thing we saw the climax of Machine Queen's plan to take out The Green and in turn Swamp Thing. After having one of the strangest three ways I've ever seen Machine Queen, Anton Arcane and Miki used the bones of Alec Holland to copulate out a resurrected Simple Jack version of Alec Holland and after Swamp Thing came face to face with this wrong doppelganger, the battle all fell apart. Using a mind controlled Sureen to open a portal to The Green, Anton Arcane given his powers back so that he could use The Rot to finally strike a fatal blow against the plant life on Earth, poisoned the Green and spread Rot across the Earth. It was bad news for our swampy Avatar, let's see if he can overcome this calamity and pull a Dr. Sam Beckett and put right what once went wrong.......... Or what's going wrong........ Let's check it out.
Explain It!:
Our story begins with Swamp Thing rotting away and Machine Queen letting him in on who she really is ( Lady Weeds). After Swamp Thing's revelation about who the Avatar of the Machines really is, this issue grosses me the fuck out. The way The Machine Queen plans on killing Swamp Thing....... you know, besides for him just rotting to death, is to get the Alec Holland that she created, who also sees her as a mother figure to......... Eat his vegetables......... That's right, he just digs into Swamp Thing wrist deep and starts shoveling him into his mouth. When the Machine Queen tells him that he's finished and the two fly off back to the Machine headquarters, Swamp Thing is just left as a hollowed out rotting shell of his former self............... and I'm just grossed the hell out.
Before Swamp Thing becomes nothing more than mulch, The current Avatar of The Rot and Swamp Thing's lady love; Abby Arcane shows up and tries to slow his rotting down a bit as the two go in search of help from the only person Swamp Thing thinks he can go to........ Yeah, for all their bickering Swamp Thing goes to Constantine for help. While Constantine magics up a beer to be a sorta Green rejuvenation drink, The Machine Queen goes back with her awful awful love child Alec Holland to the Machine headquarters....... Or the Rithm as they like to be called. There we find out that the "Rithm" isn't too pleased with the Machine Queen's destruction of The Green because they wanted all the kingdoms to be unified by them and when they try to take her Avatar power away, she pulls a Swamp Thing when he killed the Parliament of Trees. This part is actually really really funny. The one Calculus knew exactly what was going to happen the whole time and tried to warn all the other........ Calculi? Well he tried to warn them to get away and he was just hysterical as he quoted Short Circuit and Speed Racer as he tried to make his escape. There is no escape from the Machine Queen though and all of the Rithm parliament get destroyed.
In the end, Swamp Thing being able to reassemble himself from Constantine's magical brew, goes back to The Grove and into The Green to face off against Anton Arcane. Even though our hero has little to no power left, we see that he still has the ability to call in all the old Avatars of the Green for a bit of reinforcement.
That's it for this issue of Swamp Thing and even though the bit with the Machine, Rot and Grey love child; Alec Holland was gross as hell.............. It was also really freaking cool. So we've got a really cool gross out scene and a comical machine overthrow with the Machine Queen and the bonus of having Constantine and former Avatars of The Green show up....... This was an awesome issue. Everyone and their mamas showed up for this and it was really one of the best reads I've had this week. Jesus Saiz like always comes through in the art department and makes everything and everyone look great. So all in all, a very solid issue that you should all check out.
Bits and Pieces:
If you've been a fan of this story arc with the Machines then you're going to love this issue. We go from the edge of defeat to a mountain of hope as this issue delivers in action, comedy, romance, horror.......... You know what? This issue has it all and it was a lot of fun to read and really gets you pumped up for next month's final issue of Swamp Thing. Go check it out and get your Green fix before this series is over.
9/10
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