Okay, this story line has gone on way too long at this point. Pasko sets up a decent finale only to reveal it’s still not over… they still need to fight the Antichrist.
The story’s awkward, mostly because there’s a huge supporting cast and no reintroduction to them. I’m reading it at a fairly accelerated pace; monthly it would have been very difficult to follow.
At least Pasko is working on his subplots, both Swamp Thing’s illness and the romance between Liz and Dennis. I guess he’s finally memorable enough I’ll use his name. Unfortunately, their almost love scene is terrible. The comic’s rather mature overall but Pasko tones down the adult nature of their conversation and comes off silly. He shouldn’t have done it if he wasn’t allowed the required vocabulary.
There’s some nice Yeates art. The issue’s packed with visuals.
Cuti’s Stranger backup is overwritten but not terrible.
I think this issue must have been an informal “jumping on” point. Over the first four or five pages, Pasko recaps every major event in the series in a flashback. Then he spends another five or six pages on expository dialogue.
John Totleben joins Yeates on the art this issue, but it’s hard to see what effect his inks have on it. The issue is almost incomprehensibly dense, with Pasko starting in the States somewhere and ending up in Dachau. Not sure how well the big reveal works—the Nazis were fueled by a powerful psychic who’s been reincarnated and wants to start the Holocaust up again.
I never thought, reading the issues before this one, I would see cheesecake in Pasko and Yeates’s Swamp Thing run. But this issue isn’t Yeates, it’s Jan Duursema. Duursema handles the art in varying degrees of quality. With Tom Mandrake inking, there are some very iconic Swamp Thing action moments. Duursema and Mandrake make Swamp Thing look even more like Redondo’s rendition in the first series than Yeates ever does. But there’s also a strange approach to people—Duursema likes long shots, with the moving figures looking awkwardly static.
This issue features Swamp Thing and company–I’m tempted to start singling Liz out because I think she remains a character, but I’m not sure yet–on an island with a bunch of scenes from classic movies. You get to see Tom Yeates, for a couple pages, do a King Kong adaptation. It’s awesome.
Swamp Thing continues his cruise ship adventure, ending up fighting a giant undersea monster. It reminds a lot of the first series, only this time there are subplots. Casey, Swamp Thing’s former charge, has turned out to be an evil psychic. Or something along those lines. It means more action scenes for Yeates, who handles some of them beautifully—Swamp Thing getting knocked around by a tentacle, for example.
Yeates’s art takes a strange turn this issue. He spends less time on Swamp Thing than he does on the supporting cast. There’s a lot of action this issue too—Pasko does a great job pacing, considering how many big events occur—and even those Yeates handles oddly. He hurries through them, not taking the time to elaborate. Like I said though, his work rendering the supporting cast in still moments shows a great deal of work.
So Swamp Thing now has his supporting cast… at least for now. Casey the mute wasn’t cutting it.
This issue concerns a demon who possesses people in order to feed on children’s souls. The children in question must be murdered, of course. The demon targets minority children as it turns out their troubled souls taste the best. So it’s definitely disturbing, but not as terrible as he could have made it. In some ways, it’s a cop out but Pasko’s Swamp Thing is episodic. Any different handling would have been insensitive.
And here’s where Pasko hits his stride. The issue features Swamp Thing versus a town of teen vampires who have not just ruined the town but done so out of boredom. Though I suppose their argument vampires don’t have to worry about money rings true.