Review: Swamp Thing #33- Blunt shears, mangled bushes

Writer: Charles Soule
Artist: Javier Pina
Publisher: DC
Released: 2nd July 2014

It’s time for me to drop this book. I’ve been hanging on for a bit too long, as I tend to do, but after reading the latest unremarkable issue of Swamp Thing I have to stop wasting my time and money on it. There are far more productive things for me to do with my reading time, and I hate to waste money on something that offers so little to me now.

Swamp Thing #33, by Charles Soule, has unimpressive artwork by Javier Pina, and dull colouring from Matthew Wilson. The art is competent, but there is a lack of atmosphere and detail in it. Have you ever watched a football match where the commentators describe an unimpressive performance by a player as ‘workman-like?’ That’s what you have here. It’s competent, but I want more than that. I want art that is alive, creative and impressive. The artwork in this book lacks all of those qualities. It would be fine if the story was doing something special, but it really isn’t.

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Alec ‘Swamp Thing’ Holland has been all over the place recently. Last month he was quite uninterestingly messing around with Aquaman, and the month before? I can’t even remember, but it certainly wasn’t memorable.

The one constant has been two incompetent villains, hanging around in the background and threatening to bring some life into proceedings. So far they have failed, and in this issue one of those villains fails again. Next month the other villain will get a go, where she will undoubtedly fail. Why would I want to hang around to witness that? I don’t.

The Swamp Thing title has potential, especially in 2014 where we have an urgent debate going on about genetically modified foods, and how it could be contributing towards the massive increase in cancer rates and every other kind of life threatening illness and disease in the western world. I thought this was where the book was going when the ‘Seeder’ character was introduced, but that is over now, and so many avenues and possibilities that could have been explored ended up leading to nowhere.

 Swamp Thing is supposed to be the avatar of all plant-life on this planet. You’d think he’d have something to say about large corporations genetically altering all of that plant life wouldn’t you? Imagine the fascinating, cutting-edge, controversial stories that a good writer could tell with the Swamp Thing character going up against the Monsanto Corporation and their army of lobbyists in the US congress? Don’t you think that would be great? Hell, you could even talk about global warming. Take a side, any side. Are the plants being affected, or is man made climate change just a political con? Or, you could ignore all of these fascinating contemporary concerns and define ‘pollution’ as a bloke pouring a barrel of chemicals into a lake.

You are not going to get anything relevant here, because relevant, contemporary issues are always controversial. If you are allowed to say it, then I don’t want to hear it. I want to hear unpopular speech because that’s the only kind of speech that is worthwhile listening to, especially in the dumbed down, politically correct times in which we are living today. DC doesn’t do controversial, and Charles Soule fits in perfectly.

DC and Marvel are the corporate status quo, and their job is to support it, not question it. It’s understandable. After all, why would they want to question the structure of something that they are very much a part of? It’s sad, but here’s a truth. No questioning of powerful corporations/banking institutions is allowable in contemporary comics.

Perhaps it’s time I stopped reading all Marvel and DC comic books, and just supported independent books instead? I never thought I’d feel like I do today, as I’ve always loved the mainstream superhero books, but it’s getting very difficult for me to read them now.

The New World Order is not a secret group. When I use the term all I am doing is referring to the corporate/banking/media/political/military elite’s who get together, have a chat and decide what country to invade next, how to spin it to the public and how to further screw over that public in order to maximise corporate profit and keep us all on their corporate slave plantation. They have arguments and differences of opinion, and they are always stabbing each other in the backs, but there is one thing you can be sure of. They don’t give a crap about you, or me.

Marvel and DC are very much a part of the corporate control system, so anything you read in these books will always support the elite’s version of reality and the status quo they want to protect. Swamp Thing is an avatar of plant life who cannot discuss contemporary issues involving plant life. It’s also not particular well drawn, or entertaining.

 

Boiling things down, what I’m trying to say is that Charles Soule’s Swamp Thing is irrelevant, and not entertaining enough for me to keep bothering with. Forgetting the underlying corporate issues that I’ve just mentioned, and judging it purely as a childish comic, it’s a very boring book. Swamp Thing is an unlikeable dictator, his friends are dull, and his enemies are incompetent and feeble. I can see absolutely no reason to keep on reading this book, and so I shall not do so. Goodbye Alec Holland. Give me a call when you start taking on Monsanto. Until then, you have nothing to say to me.
Rating: 3/10