Comics Fondle

There are two surprises at the end of the last of these issues. First, the real Swamp Thing finally shows up (Vaughan’s run has shown, better than it’s done anything else, Tefé is the Corey Haim of Swamp Things). The other surprise is the big villain woman is really the big villain man in drag. Vaughan lays lots of clues for it (I’m shocked I never saw the M. Night Shyamalan influence before) and I guess it’s competently done, but it’s so idiotic, it doesn’t really matter. Vaughan hasn’t lowered Swamp Thing’s narrative ambition, he’s flushed it down a toilet then poured in Drano to make sure it doesn’t get stuck.

Oddly, the two issues before the idiocy–and Vaughan’s female hit woman having one of the worst written monologues ever–are okay. Issue fifteen is a nice enough drumroll to the big show and issue sixteen is a decent, if logically failed, comedy of errors. Vaughan must have heard by this point the series was going bye-bye and so he’s accelerating the Tefé is not a monster, just “a girl.” You can almost hear the whines for a WB pilot going in these issues.

A different artist might have helped a few things, like the bad monologue. Camuncoli is, in these three issues, just terrible. He’s worse in the second two, when some of the art seems like a poor attempt at aping the DC animated style. He’s just terrible. How someone can draw so much motion and still have a static panel, it’s something.

I think it’s kind of funny, after seventeen issues, Vaughan’s going to cop out on Tefé (it sure seems like he’s going to), but given he hasn’t shown any interest in the character, it’s not a surprise.

It’s so bad.

And the classy (not to mention competent) covers are false advertising.

F

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