Animal Man #17 and Swampy Thing #17!, by Marc Alan Fishman – Snarky Synopsis | @MDWorld
February 11, 2013 Marc Fishman 0 Comments
Animal Man written by Jeff Lemire and Scott Snyder
Art by Steve Pugh and Timothy Green II
Swamp Thing written by Scott Snyder and Jeff Lemire
Art by Andrew Belanger
That’s right kiddos, it’s a two-fer! Given that both Animal Man and Swamp Thing’s 17th issues were the final two chapters in what could best be called 17-issue long mega-arcs, it made sense to give you the scoop on both.
For those not keeping score in Animal Man (and the whole “Rotworld” crossover) allow me to break it down as quickly as I can. Buddy Baker was sucked up into the Red a while back, because he’d lost a vicious fight. Well, he was given a second (or by my count… his forty-second) chance at life. Problem being by the time he returned to our mortal plane… the world had been conquered by the ‘Rot’; the amalgamation and personification of death incarnate. See, the Rot’s been chasing Baker and his family down for a while now. This begat ‘Rotworld’. In essence? It’s your typical ‘evil won’ scenario—the world is an apocalyptic wasteland, overrun by death. Specifically to our hero though, ‘The Red’ is reduced down to Beast Boy, Orchid, Batgirl (who is now more bat than girl, natch), and a few others. Baker sets out on his quest to defeat the big-bad, and most importantly… save his family. Simple enough?
Good. Now to explain the whole Swamp Thing part of this review, just replace the paragraph above’s Baker with Alec Holland, ‘the family’ with Abby Arcane, and ‘The Red’ with ‘The Green’. Second verse… same as the first.
Backstory out of the way, Animal Man #17 is the penultimate chapter to the ‘war on death’. And like all big action movies it’s obviously gleaning from… we get all the tropes paraded out in order. Baker taps into his power like never before to defeat hordes of bad guys. Baker finally meets up with ‘Big Green’, and back to back they start to face down the continual onslaught of worthless peons. If this were a Peter Jackson film, we’d be about 30 minutes into that last battle in Return of the King. OK, not like the… end-end battle… but like the big battle before that last battle where Aragorn gave the big speech? Yeah, you know what I mean. Suffice to say, the book story-wise has very little to accomplish. By issues end, the heroes are rallied together, and just as they’re about to launch their final assault and save the day—dun-dun-dunnnnn—Arcane reveals Baker and Holland’s loved ones corrupted by the Rot. Oh no! End issue.
Swamp Thing #17 finishes (ish…) with our heroes face to face (to face to face, etc.) with their loved ones, now 100% more evil. And with tears in their eyes, they slash and claw and punch and kick, all while Arcane hurls evil monologue their way. Buddy’s daughter Maxine, now possessed by one of the demons she flayed issues ago (that’s the problem with killing agents of DEATH. Hard to keep them dead, you know?), revels in attacking poor daddy. Daddy whimpers, bites his lip, and eagle claws his daughter’s face off. Let’s hit the fast forward shall we? Blah-blah-punch-blah. The good guys use their doomsday device to rain Rot-melting goo all over the battleground. Evil recedes in to the darkness. And then, faced with his demise, Arcane slips away. The day is won, but at what cost? Meh. I lied. Seems the “parliament of death” (yeah, they have one too…) regrets making Arcane their avatar. So, hey, Animal Man, Swampy! You ain’t got nothing to live for anyways! Leap into our deus ex machina, in time for issue 18… the EPIC EPICIER CONCLUSION! Gag.
I apologize for having to waste so much space to the aforementioned ‘synopsis’ of this review, but I figured I ought to be thorough in presenting the obvious; Rotworld sucked. To have spent 32 combined issues through slow, methodical building of plot and character… to be reduced to a farce of a crossover like this? It’s beneath Lemire and Snyder. Both kings of the creep factor claw pathetically towards the tropes that lesser writers would lean on, in order to ramp up the danger in their respective books. And for what? A double conclusion / double epilogue where Baker and Holland either save the day through punching, or worse… defeat evil, but in turn lose what made their books interesting in the first place? Pending some kind of amazing turn, this is a lose-lose situation, kiddos. And one I’m flabbergasted to even think about. If this the end of the ‘long-game’ I’ve talked about now for a year and a half, I wish for my own deus ex machina to stop myself from ever buying either book.
Scott Snyder’s greatest asset (as far as I can tell through the reading of his run on Detective Comics, Batman, and pre-Rotworld Swamp Thing) is his ability to drive to the heart of his characters through the actions and eyes of profound evil. Jeff Lemire, through his run on Animal Man, showed a distinct prowess at grounding his hero through the eyes of his family. In spite of all of the horror that chased both Holland and Baker throughout their respective books, it was their hearts and humanity that elevated their stories. Through this eventual crossover, it’s as if Lemire and Snyder were both so fearful of stepping on one-another’s toes, the end result is a story so paint-by-numbers, I’m left wondering if I missed some delicious twist. A subsequent look back over the Rotworld issues however disproved any chance of that. The heart and humanity was left at the starting blocks. In their place we’ve seen nothing but grit, gore, and cheese.
Our big baddie, Anton Arcane, was the evil behind the evil. And here he stands, a rotting corpse-mutant waxing poetic about how he’s already won? For all the brilliant twists and turns we had in their respective books with the Hunters Three, and Abby Arcane’s little brother… to see the ‘final boss’ as nothing more than a mustache-twirling megalomaniac is pitifully anticlimactic. And coming from the man who gave us James Gordon Junior, and the creepiest Joker ever to be pulled off in comics? This is a freakishly terrible villain to anchor the series on. And I mean that with no shade of pun.
Art chores on Animal Man are delivered by Steve Pugh and Timothy Green II. They continue to deliver an amazing product. There’s nothing more to say that that; Animal Man #17 by visuals alone is a stellar dance of the macabre. In stark contrast, Swamp Thing is handled by Andrew Belanger. Andy, who forgive me if I’m wrong, is taking up the mantle of the green for the first time. Given that this was the FINALE of a massive crossover, I’m really perplexed as to why the book was handed to him. His loose, cartoony, simple style is everything series regular Yanick Paquette is not. In short? His art sucks. Now that may be unfair to him—it’s obvious given the scope of the book, and the sheer amount of bodies, beasts, and kabooms that need to be rendered is a huge undertaking for anyone—leaves the whole book feeling rushed. I know a while back that DC vowed that it wouldn’t deliver books late, even if it meant subbing in artists to make it on time. Hear my call DC. STOP IT. I’m all for new talent, but not when it’s the climax of your series, drawn at all points previously by another artist. It reeks of desperation, or worse… apathy.
Suffice to say, I’m truly saddened by the efforts of all parties considered. Rotworld was to be an epic war, well worth the long-game played out by Jeff Lemire and Scott Snyder. Instead it’s a half-hearted, half-sloppy ham-fisted waste of my time and money. It will be hard to nab the subsequent “real” ending to these arcs next month. Especially knowing that Snyder is dropping off from Swamp Thing right afterwards. While I’m willing to give him (and Lemire) the benefit of the doubt to pull something alive out of this pile of dead paper… I’m finding it hard to see the forest for the trees anymore.