Review by Karl Verhoven
It’s a brave creator who takes on Swamp Thing. Many have tried over the years, but the shadow of Alan Moore hangs very prominently over the series and character. Ram V, though has proved a writer of intelligent horror and fantasy over a number of independent comics and has a vision for reinvigorating the character. However, don’t expect all the answers in Becoming.
Advisedly, previous incarnations are sidelined as the focus is on Levi Kamei, an American of Indian origin who’s just returned home after burying his father. He’s greatly troubled by dreams in which he becomes something else, recognisable to readers as Swamp Thing. V presumes some knowledge of Swamp Thing as avatar of Earth’s green, an equivalent to Mother Earth if you will, and sets him against an American myth personifying the world’s deserts.
Contrasting environments of cities and the wild are brilliantly realised by Mike Perkins, using his known naturalism for the former, and supplying the latter via a less known talent for imaginative horror. Occasionally there’s a turn to scientific illustration, yet in context those become almost abstract. As matters take a trippy turn, Mike Spicer’s colours become more important. A verdant tone is to be expected, but Spicer also dazzles, adjoining colours instead of merging them giving a distinctive look. The cast are few, but almost all haunted by something, and Perkins shows their horrors amid melancholy lives.
Among them is an Arizona Sheriff in his sixties, his life unfulfilled, so he just continues the one job he’s good at, and one of the most powerful scenes is when he decides to confront his won demons. “We both know why you’re here”, he’s told, “it’s because you understand now what I truly am. The absence of all hope”. It’s a concept most of us don’t have to wrestle with, but give it some brief consideration to enhance your reading experience.
Swamp Thing has been rebooted and reconfigured before, but rarely with such raw emotional content. Although everything seems new at the start, there’s no throwing the baby out with the bath water, and by the end of Becoming ties have been established with what has come before, giving Kamei a focus and context. Perhaps he comes to terms with the possibilities of what he can do too easily, but who wants the drudgery of training and learning?
Belonging ends with a separate two chapters originating in DC crossover series Future State, in which stories about the future of assorted DC headliners are told. Reflecting our own depressing collective ignorance, the future’s not a nice place to be. In fact humans may be extinct. There is a Swamp Thing, though, and a bunch of similar followers who’re searching for what may remain of humanity. The two chapters are bleak, intelligent, superbly drawn and even offer a glimmer of hope by the end.
This has been a fundamentally thoughtful and bold opening statement, and there’s more to come in Conduit, foreshadowed by Amanda Waller and the Suicide Squad on the final page.
