Art By: Jesus Saiz, Travis Lanham, Matt Hollingsworth
Cover Price: $2.99
Release Date: December 3, 2014
Smoking The Green
Last time when we stepped into the world of Alec Holland and his avatar activities, we saw that machines had gained a sentience and now that they are up and thinking for themselves, they plan on joining the other kingdoms. Only problem there is that whenever a new kingdom is introduced, it seems to be the beginning of a mass extinction on Earth. Even with that in mind, Swamp Thing was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and just like when you do that in real life, it bit Swamp Thing on the ass. Yeah, the machines came back to the Grove and attempted to destroy the avatar of the Green, but Swamp Thing is no slouch, so he took care of those machines faster than they could compute. Finally we saw that even though the machines weren't hip on the idea of having an avatar, they finally said in machine-ese "the hell with it" and went to Lady Weeds to give her the avatar position she's so qualified for. So let's see how Lady Weeds takes the job offer and if our hero is taking the machines a little more seriously. Let's check it out.
Explain It!:
Our story begins with Calculus standing over Lady Weeds and discussing the job opportunity, if you remember Lady Weeds has been in a bad way ever since she became paralyzed and getting all machined up really doesn't sound like too bad of an idea when it could give you your life back and the ability to make your sworn enemy suffer, before you bring the boot heel down on them. So obviously Lady Weeds takes the job and I want you to sit back and think to yourself how someone would become the avatar of the machines. Are you doing it? Now no matter what I would of thought up on how this transformation could go down, I never would of guessed it. It's actually kind of like getting a Mogwai from Gremlins wet....... Bear with me here. Calculus starts rooting around with Lady Weeds' insides and then he stabs her in the eyes with his jobbers while opening up a compartment in his non-face, then (insert squishy sound here) the avatar of the machines is birthed out of Calculus's back. Did I just witness some kind of machine sex, culminating in the birth of an entity that is a mixture of the two of them? That's like an instantaneous "Damn I should of used a condom on my jobbers moment". Okay enough nonsense, so Lady Weeds is then reborn as a machine and her first order of business besides for uploading herself on Youtube, is getting allies to help her take down Swamp Thing and eventually all the other kingdoms. Oh and I guess I can stop calling her Lady Weeds now because her new name is Machine Queen and as Queen she's renaming her kingdom, it's no longer the Machines, it's the Rithm. Why this spelling was chosen I'll never know though.
Elsewhere, Swamp Thing is training for the big fight coming up and we see his impressive apple slicing skills.......... No I'm serious. Swamp Thing could be playing Eye of The Tiger somewhere on a boom box while prancing through an apple orchard cutting fruit. Yeah, it's a little more impressive when you find out that he's actually doing this in fifty places at once, but he's still slicing apples. We escape this training montage when Constantine makes a very brief appearance to simply tell Swamp Thing that the Machines have become a kingdom, which Swamp Thing knew and to tell him about Lady Weeds getting her machine on and then he's gone. That was a very strange reason to bring Constantine into this issue, especially to simply relay some information that we already knew. I guess it gives Swamp Thing a heads up about the Machine Queen, but it still comes off as a strange choice to me, you know since the two hate each other and all.
In the end we see that Machine Queen doesn't waste any time and finds Miki the once avatar of The Grey, who is still trying to find a way to become human again. After a rousing discussion about how much they both hate Swamp Thing and Machine Queen giving Miki a more human like body using her machine skills, Mike gives her The Grey. Now with the Grey in her back pocket, Machine Queen then goes after the Rot and we find a very meek Arcane wandering the ally's of Philadelphia. Our issue ends with Arcane shrugging off his meek demeanor by showing us that he has a plan for dealing with Swamp Thing and it looks like it involves Alec Holland's bones. That's fucked up.
That's it for this issue of Swamp Thing and while I was originally wary about a story involving Swamp Thing vs. Terminators, I have to say that I'm actually getting into this. It's really fun pulling the other kingdoms together for a grand war that is somewhere in the future. Pretty much I enjoyed everything in this issue with the exception of Swamp Thing coming off a little lame during his training and the fact that Constantine was just kind of thrown in for..... I don't know, color? We don't have enough caucasian tones here? It certainly isn't for sales because as it looks right now, Constantine is drawing readers to his own book let alone Swamp Thing's. But really the rest of the book was excellent and I can't wait to see the fight between Swamp Thing and Machine Queen. I just hope we get some Animal Man action in here along the way.
Bits and Pieces:
Jesus Saiz really does an amazing job with this book. Everyone is always talking about Charles Soule when they mention Swamp Thing's title, but Jesus really does a fine job each month giving us our avatar of the Green the best he could possibly look. This is my favorite issue so far from the Machine story arc and I have high hopes for future issues. Each issue just keeps getting better than the last and I'm all for that. So definitely go check out Swamp Thing this month and even though it's a little light on our hero, it's a story you'll want to read.
8.7/10
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