Two tales from the swamp.
Creative Staff:
Story: Phil Hester
Art: Tom Mandrake
Colors: Hi-Fi
Letterer: Dave Sharpe
What They Say:
Story 1 – Deep in the bayou, Swamp Thing continues to follow the fifolet, despite not knowing the mysterious spirit’s ultimate destination. On his way he encounters a strange and powerful girl locked away in the swamp, with magical friends and a monster at her door. Story 2 – Come one, come all, and watch as the terrifying Swamp Thing attempts to rescue a young boy from the spellbinding snare of a cursed circus!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
With the extended storyline ended in the previous issue that took Swamp Thing to a natural global end, the property goes back to simpler tales for a bit here with two separate works by the same creative team. Phil Hester has done a lot I’ve liked through a few other publishers in the last few years so I always perk up when I see his name to see if there’s a creative twist or an adherence to the established with his work. What really got my attention here though was Tom Mandrake on the artwork. I’ve loved Mandrake’s work going back for what feels like decades now and getting him with some Swamp Thing material – colored by Hi-Fi no less – is just ideal. It captures all the right murky and creepy elements here but also the humanity and the details for the strange.
The opening tale is a fun one into the weird as we see Swampy milling about while a father and child are doing some late night fishing together only for the filofet to show, a ghost-like ball of light that’s either something that guides the good or is a portent of doom for those that see it. What we get is a kidnapping by desiccated clowns amid all of this and it takes Swamp Thing to an old carnival of the dead kind of place where they’re looking to trap in those that they get their hands on. It’s interesting in that it plays to showing Swamp Thing his past, present, and future that could have been but doesn’t have the space to really drive in hard on it. It’s just enough to remind of his humanity and weaken him, allowing for the kidnapped and the filofet to intervene to help out. It’s a story that could have used more pages to be sure but has a solid tightness to it.
The second tale involves the filofet as well as we’re introduced to professor Aliyah Wallis as she’s there with her fiance and a group of grad students doing some research and attempting to tag and find out more about a slave ship that sank into the bayou three hundred years ago. That she encounters Swampy and the filofet is the whole portents thing again but the reality is that the man funding her research, Ammon, is actually four hundred years old and was on the ship when it sank, having made a deal with dark forces to survive it and he’s now trying to bring that life to a close. It’s a good chapter in how it presents Ammon and the complications of him and his magic along with the narrowmindedness that has come with it in trying to find a way to free himself from the new chains he created by surviving at this cost. It unfolds pretty well and goes big quickly but it still hits a lot of good marks.
In Summary:
With a strong creative team working two stories that come in at half the length of the usual ones, what we get are some tight works that could have used a bit more room to breathe but are well-told when you look at where they originally appeared. I love short-form storytelling and am glad that the DC Giants are providing for that and that a character like Swamp Thing got to be included as it allows for some good semi-horror material to make its way in. Hester doesn’t get to dig too deep into what makes Swampy who he is but it captures the nature of the bayou well while Tom Mandrake delivers some great looking designs and pages throughout. I’m looking forward to the next installment that has them back for two more short stories.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 12+
Released By: DC Comics via Kindle and ComiXology
Release Date: June 7th, 2020
MSRP: $0.99
