Swamp Thing #39 (Comics Review)

In the world of Swamp Thing, the new Machine Kingdom has made some incredible advances in a very short amount of time, going so far as to create its own Avatar, thereby picking one of the titular hero’s greatest enemies as its champion. And the battle that has followed from that has not been kind to the hero or his closest allies either. In fact, Swamp Thing and the others are losing the fight, and that’s where the fun really comes in I think, to see the hero tested beyond what you’d expect, and to see the incredibly rich lore of Swamp Thing really come alive.

In Swamp Thing #39 from last week, we pick up from where we left off in the last issue, namely with the cliffhanger of Swamp Thing being confronted by his own formally mortal body, now reincarnated by the Machine Queen to serve as her ace in the hole. The new issue is absolutely brutal in its execution, and writer Charles Soule sets a brutal pace for the reader. Losing to the combined power of his doppelganger, the Machine Queen and Arcane, Swamp Thing is now in for the battle of his life, to eke out the smallest measure of victory from these dark events.

Comics Picks For 07.01.2015

No “Magic 40” in the first week of the new year, but the second week definitely sees me hit that landmark number, and with graphic novels mixed in to boot!

This week’s surprise hits were Angry Birds/Transformers #2 from IDW Publishing, Ares & Aphrodite #1 from Oni Press, Operation: S.I.N. #1 and Wolverines #1 from Marvel. The disappointments of the week were Angela: Asgard’s Assassin #2 and Ant-Man #1 from Marvel and Future’s End #36 from DC. Ongoing greats like Swamp Thing #38 and Detective Comics #38 from DC, Bucky Barnes: The Winter Soldier #3 from Marvel, and John Carter: Warlord of Mars #3 from Dynamite to name a few were just as I expected them to be: superb.

As mentioned above, the graphic novels for the week were Legends of Red Sonja Volume 1 from Dynamite and Quest: Age of Darkness Volume 1 from Zenescope. The former was a fun book where Gail Simone brought together several different female prose writers, paired them with different artists, and wrote a grand, sweeping Red Sonja story. The latter was part of the publisher’s Age of Darkness event and was more a prequel story.

Anyway, here’s another edition of “Comics Picks For…”. Full reading list, as always, is available here and all my comics reviews are available here.

Swamp Thing #38 (Comics Review)

Swamp Thing is one of those New 52 launch titles that I’ve wanted to read for a long time but didn’t get around to until very recently. And then it all just kind of happened last month and I blitzed through the three recent issues so I could be all caught up on the current arc. And it turned out to be a pretty good arc too, one that seeks to delve into the mythology of the character and also take it a few steps further. With all that the newly-formed Machine Kingdom is up to, it looks like the times ahead for the hero are quite grim indeed and that he is going to have to go through some pretty brutal challenges before he can succeed.

In past week’s Swamp Thing #38, we finally see the beginnings of the Machine Kingdom’s assault on the Avatar of the Green. When they failed in a previous attempt, the Machine Kingdom decided to create itself an Avatar of its own and said Avatar has completely changed around their mode of thinking and has taken battle directly to Swamp Thing, gathering allies and supporters of its own. And this pretty fight is pretty brutal indeed for the hero as Charles Soule explores how the combined powers of three supervillains launch a simultaneous attack on him.