Review by Frank Plowright

A Wisconsin high school has been transported wholesale to an alien planet with feral life populating the nearby woods. Due to the horrors outside the teaching staff feel everyone’s safest remaining within the school, and the gym teacher drawing on his experience in the marines has appalling consequences. Also seen was a group exploring the nearby woods, now split into two parties, separately discovering they’re not the first humans to have ended up there.

Writer James Tynion IV has been concentrating on the older students and some staff, giving the impression many of the remainder are being set up as future cannon fodder. Having shown how the primary cast cope with new dangers, he opens The Swarm not with an immediate continuation of The Arrow’s compelling cliffhanger, but heads back to the previous summer to establish a relationship that may not have been clear. It’s a method used throughout to explain how the featured cast have skills applicable to their current situation, but given emotional resonance.

The best horror always reflects humanity and Tynion places the cast in unpredictable situations able to reveal who they are and what they’re capable of. The exception is outsider Adrian Roth, who appears under some form of possession. While Tynion keeps the audience waiting for the answer to the big mystery of just what the hell’s going on, he doesn’t drag on the small puzzles too long, and the change in Adrian is explained before the book ends.

As before, and as throughout the series, artist Michael Dialynas and colourist Josan Gonzalez combine to create a world that would seem relatively familiar were it not for the colours being remarkably different and the well designed feral creatures. Dialynas also brings out the strong emotional subtexts as the cast undergo new experiences and relive a different type of horror in the past.

With the exception of the final panel cliffhanger, the focus is exclusively on a group of six students who’ve left the school to explore the titular woods on the new planet, and until that cliffhanger they seemed to have learned more than anyone left behind. It’s been a horrific learning experience, and up next is New London. If preferred, the paperbacks are combined three to an oversized hardcover Yearbook Edition, or the entire story is available in an oversized hardcover slipcased edition.