Future State - Top Ten: #5. Swamp Thing

 

Writer: Ram V

Artist: Mike Perkins

After the first two weeks of Future State I had declared this one the achievement to beat. When all was said and done four other stories beat it, but that hardly diminishes the first issue of Ram V and Mike Perkins’ Swamp Thing, a master class of tone and setting.

I’m not the biggest Swamp Thing fan. Part of that is because I’m also not the biggest Alan Moore fan. His Swamp Thing was Moore’s calling card before he had any other credentials, and remains one of his most celebrated runs. He famously made existentialism cool in comics when he postulated that Swamp Thing wasn’t even Alec Holland but a plant creature who thought he was, a deconstruction of superhero secret origins that still stands as unique in the modern era. 

But I never got around to reading much of it, and what I have suggests much of it is Moore being Moore, which for me isn’t really my thing.

The closest I came to being a fan of Swamp Thing was Charles Soule’s run in the New 52, which rounded out Scott Snyder’s (which has been completely forgotten by the same rabid Snyder fans who proclaimed his Batman to be the only good thing about the New 52). Soule focused heavily on Swamp Thing mythology, which for me is a reliable source of superhero comic entertainment. 

Anyway, so I didn’t come into Future State expecting to love the Swamp Thing entry.

I hadn’t even been overly involved in the career of Ram V. Ram is an emerging talent who was operating below the radar, looking for a breakout work amid consistently excellent material. For me that breakout was this comic. It’s Ram at his most focused, which means a writer who can usually already have an excellent grasp of the potential in arcane characters had found the one character who unlocked his considerable potential.

The first issue is brilliant setup. The second issue is a letdown insofar as the first is so great it’s disappointing that it had to be wrapped up so quickly.

Fortunately DC understood what it had and immediately commissioned a follow-up mini-series from the same team. I have since been reading it, and several issues in Ram and Perkins once again put their magic on full display, which also had the benefit of helping me stick with Ram’s new Boom! series, The Many Deaths of Laila Starr, the second issue of which was even better than the first, which I wouldn’t have found out if I had stopped reading either series when it looked like Ram and Perkins were once again coasting on their laurels. 

Won’t make that mistake again.

Reading Comics 182 "Making a commitment"

Yesterday I went to see Deadpool and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (thought it was entertaining, loved it, respectively) and in between visited Heroes & Villains again.  I wanted to order a copy of Omega Men #3 (the only one missing from my physical collection) and pick up the latest issue, #10.  Then I put in reserves for the two remaining issues, and next week's Wonder Woman: Earth One from Grant Morrison.  Omega Men, as anyone who's been reading this blog since last fall will know, has become my favorite recent comic, certainly favorite since Morrison's Annihilator which concluded early last year (and topped the last two annual QB50 lists).  Things rarely work out this way for me (yet), but ideally I'd like to see Omega Men remembered in the same ranks as Alan Moore's Watchman as a seminal superhero comic.  It's just that good.  It changes everything.  At least DC has rewarded writer Tom King with the plush assignment of Batman in the impending Rebirth era.

I walked away with a few other comics, and so I'll talk about that stuff:

Sam Wilson: Captain America #7 (Marvel)
Billed on the cover as celebrating Cap's 75th anniversary, this supersize issue features a pivotal moment in the "Standoff" crossover arc, for Steve Rogers, and a few extra stories from some acclaimed creators.  The lead features Sam Wilson, who's been Captain America for the past year or so but is also familiar to fans as Falcon, as he enters Maria Hill's misguided supervillain reconstruction town.  He teams up with Bucky, who still responds to the name of Winter Soldier these days.  The writer is Nick Spencer, who made a splash with DC a handful of years ago but has otherwise been making his name with the Image series Morning Glories.  (I'm surprised his name didn't already have a label here, because I was reading him in those early years, including the start of Glories, but I guess that was just before I started this blog.)  Joss Whedon teams with superstar artist John Cassaday for a tale from Cap's WWII past, Tim Sale does a mostly wordless story concerning Cap's oft-overlooked parents, and Greg Rucka features Steve Rogers at the ballet, along with artist Mike Perkins, who worked on Ed Brubaker's Captain America, as well as Marvel's ambitious adaption of Stephen King's The Stand.  Rucka and Perkins easily have the best work in the issue.

Omega Men #10 (DC)
King finally gets to the war the Omega Men have been plotting against the Citadel from the very start, and predictably, there's very little glory to be found, just mere survival.  Kyle Rayner stumbled into the fight of his life, one that has nothing to do with Green Lanterns, and by the end of the issue he walks off into the distance, and his last words in the issue are, "No.  No, I'm...I'm just another Omega Man."  King's quote from William James (always one of my favorite features in this series) says, "Truth happens to an idea.  It becomes true, is made true by events."  It's not until this issue that the Omega Men have truly been allowed to do what they've been promising all along, to be the heroes in a great fight for freedom.  What does it feel like to be a part of that?  Although King has been featuring the secret origins of the team itself, the series has had Kyle at its core since the start.  He doesn't revel in the results they've had so far.  Not having a personal stake, it means something different to him, but it has become personal.  That's King's genius. 

Prez #6 (DC)
This is the final issue of the initial run.  DC's promised to let Prez complete its twelve issue run, just as with Omega Men, but it'll take a little longer.  Ben Caldwell has since started work at Marvel.  I hope he'll be back to finish Prez, because Mark Russell's biting political satire is truly some of the best mainstream work I've seen in years, challenging what I believe, and I still love it.  That's just one of the many things to love about it.  I'm glad to have finally read the issue.

Superman/Batman #1 Special Edition (DC)
This was a freebie released in conjunction with Dawn of Justice, reprinting the debut issue of Jeph Loeb's modern World's Finest series.  Loeb had become one of the most acclaimed writers in comics at the time, and this series continued his trademark psychological insight into superheroes he'd previously brought to works like Batman: The Long Halloween and Superman For All Seasons, plus the more contemporary Hush arc with Jim Lee, in which he helped shape the landscape of DC at that time.  In this issue, President Luthor is still in office, one of the key developments that stretched from the dawn of the millennium to Infinite Crisis, characterization that reflects Lex's role in the later Geoff Johns Justice League and Zack Snyder's Dawn of Justice.  There are far worse free comics out there...