Comic of the Week

I just got around to reading last week's books. The Super Bowl, IKEA, and a 47" flatscreen through a wrench into my weekend routine. But, now thats taken care of, let's see what there was to pick from:

1) Animal Man 6

2) Swamp Thing 6

3) Batman and Robin 2

I finally decided to drop Action Comics. I have never been a big Superman fan and it was getting WAY convoluted anyway. I replaced it with Batman and Robin, I'm picking up back issues until I get caught up. Much better story.

My favorite this week was Swamp Thing. It's been good the entire series really. This week broke the continuity with Animal Man, the latter taking a break from the storyline this week to play with family relationships. Swamp Thing is still rolling strong though, as Alec Holland realizes that he has been a stubborn idiot all of this time and accepts that he IS the Swamp Thing. But it might be too late. The Rot has seemingly taken over the Parliament of Trees and its destruction is spreading. By the time Alec realizes he's made a mistake, there's not much help to be had.

Paquette stepped out this month and the art duties were taken over by Marco Rudy. His style is similar to Paquette and the panel layouts are kind of cool. He really nails the gruesomeness of the Rot and all of it's minions. As a horror book, this is really working.

The story progresses through the analogy of a chess game. Abby's rotten little brother William is proud to be the spreader of the Rot. Apparently he's used Abby as his queen and manipulated things into a checkmate. I doubt it is, but the final image has to leave you wondering, "Is this IT for the Green? Has the Rot really won?" Guess you'll have to wait until the next issue to find out.