Future State: Swamp Thing #1 – Ram V, Writer; Mike Perkins, Artist; June Chung, Colorist
Ray – 9/10
Ray: Much like Wonder Woman, this title is a preview for one that will start in March. It also throws us into a new world with a new status quo and characters—and it’s utterly fascinating. Swamp Thing, now a powerful being known as “Green,” is still roaming a ruined world, but he’s not alone anymore. From a young girl named Calla to a mercurial and sarcastic old man named Indigo, he seems to be the patriarch of a clan of Swamp people—who may have been created by him. They travel the world, searching for traces of surviving humans. While some within the clan question if this is a good use of their time, Calla eagerly listens to stories of the time when humans still roamed the world. It’s a bold new take on Swamp Thing that takes an in-depth look at how these mysterious beings operate. It has vibes of the Vertigo runs in a way that none of the other recent DCU tales achieved—as good as the Snyder and Soule takes were.
Ram V’s creator-owned works have played with format, and this series lets him do that more than his Justice League Dark work did. Mike Perkins draws some amazing splash pages of what looks like anatomical sketches, depicting how Swamp Thing and his “family” use plant functions to duplicate human functions and operate a body out of plant matter. Of course, every hunt for a lot species will probably end with encountering that species in fiction, so what happens near the end of the issue isn’t a twist—but it looks like it might cause some major rifts in the clan of the Green. What I didn’t expect, though, was the last page—which not only reveals the main villain of this story, but also features the return of another character who has not been seen for a long time. This creative team works with one of DC’s non-A-list characters, but they deliver one of the most inventive and compelling stories of the event so far.
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GeekDad received this comic for review purposes.
