Something Spooky: The New 52’s ‘Swamp Thing’ Finds Horror In Its Grotesque
by Tony Thornley
Swamp Thing is one of the best known horror comics from either of the Big Two comics publishers. In DC Comics’ New 52 though, the series tried something different, with a fantastic result.
The New 52 Initiative is rightly maligned for its shotgun approach. Some characters got a full reboot, others got a soft reboot, and yet others didn’t really get rebooted at all. Naturally that got mixed results. Batman is still rightfully heralded as the best line of the era (even if one of the four titles was a mess), while Superman was such a mess that it required multiverse shenanigans (before they were cool) to make people like the character again.
Where it wasn’t a mess was with the reintegration of several of Vertigo’s flagship characters, specifically Swamp Thing and Animal Man. The former was spearheaded by Scott Snyder, whose star had rightfully risen on a combination of horror series from Vertigo and Image, as well as his incredible work on the Batman line, leading up to him taking the reins on the flagship Batman title. He was joined by artists Yannick Paquette, and Nathan Fairbairn, with letters by John J Hill and Travis Lanham, and fill-in art by Marco Rudy, Sean Parsons, and Val Staples.
Alec Holland woke up a month ago, no longer dead, with the memories of the plant who pretended to be him. It’s just in time as well, as the Rot, a force of death and decay that stands in opposition to the Green, is amassing its forces to take the world. But Alec is just a man, not the mighty warrior king known as Swamp Thing. But unless he embraces that destiny, he may doom the world to rot…
I’ve not read a lot of Swamp Thing, and frankly most of what I know is via osmosis. You can’t be a comic fan for the last thirty-five years, and not know at least some of the broad beats. Snyder does such a good job at encapsulating those beats while also forging his own path. I never felt like I needed to go back and read the Swamp Thing stories of Moore, Veitch and the others that followed. Even better, he did that while making Alec and Abby remarkably relatable, despite the almost cosmic level horror surrounding them, and their fantastical backgrounds.
And thanks to Snyder and Paquette, I was engrossed in the battle between the Green and the Rot. The Rot was a terrifying adversary throughout the story, and Paquette just made them so gross. It’s a fantastic use of body horror and gross out gore to heighten what the story is attempting to accomplish.
Make no mistake as well, this story is scary. From the moment you first meet the Rot, the story becomes unsettling, and builds to disgusting, frightening, then outright terrifying. I read the first nine issues of this, and I could not put it down. It was simultaneously gross and engrossing.
I was so glad that I sat down with this book, and I’m truly looking forward to continuing the run. But maybeeeee, I’ll need to do it with the lights on…
