Swamp Thing 29-31
Swamp Thing Annual 2
“Love and Death”
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| Don't worry Abby, it'll just get worse from here. Trust me. |
Last we left Swamp Thing, he had
buried the spectre of his previous identity and Abby had begun
patching things up with her estranged, telepathically-powered husband
(ah, comics) Matt Cable. Things are looking up. Sadly, because the
rule of story tells us if we have characters in the midst of both
personal happiness and zero conflict then there is no story, both are
unaware the Matt was nearly killed in a car accident before entering into an agreement with an unnamed demon spawn. Rule of story
being what it is, 'Love and Death' are where sub-plots come home to
roost.
Matt Cable was not just possessed by
any demon, in fact, he technically wasn't possessed by a demon, but
instead by the disembodied spirit of one Antone Arcane. Arcane is to
Swamp Thing what The Joker is to Batman: the arch nemesis to end all
arch nemeses. Arcane first encountered Swamp Thing shortly after his
'birth' back when Swamp Thing was still assumed to be Alec Holland.
Arcane planned to capture the muck-encrusted hero and trade bodies:
take the Swamp Thing's body for himself and restore the hero to Alec
Holland. Not that it would have worked, but still, Swamp Thing
considered the bargain before finding out that Arcane was evil and
planned to use the immortal plant body for evil. Since then Arcane
and Holland clashed several times, the last of which ended with
Arcane, now in a genetic- and magick-enhanced insectoid body,
plunging to a fiery doom. Ah, comics.
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| Arcane and his cronies just love to party with Abby. |
It's hard to keep a good villain down
though, especially when he's so goddamned evil that Hell can't hold
him and he happens to posses the near-death body of a cast member.
Add in some truly heinous evil spirits that happened to hitch a ride
out and this is a big problem for our favorite moss-covered
superhero. Arcane's opening salvo is to torture, kidnap, and render
comatose his niece (yeah, in typical soap opera fashion, the villain
is the uncle of the superhero's friend) Abby. This guy is probably a
lot of fun at family gatherings.
This story is low on plot and low on
story. Arcane is back, again, and his only plan is to screw up Abby
and Swamp Thing's lives. He has no long game here. It's not
surprising that this plan falls apart almost immediately when Swamp
Thing literally pulls a levitating Arcane out of the air and smashes
is stupid undead face into the ground. It's not much longer before
Arcane and all of his hellish cronies are sent back to Hell. Problem
solved right, happy endings all around. Swamp Thing wasn't quick
enough with the face-smashing: Abby Arcane is alive, but her soul has
been sent to Hell.
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| Watch a plant squash a bug. |
No worries faithful readers, the most stable and loving couple in comic books are
not over and done with this early in the game. Abby dies halfway
through the story, which leads to an excellent second half that riffs
on Virgil's journey through Hell. Meeting up at the cusp of the
afterlife, Swamp Thing finds two of the more enigmatic characters in
the DC canon: Deadman and The Phantom Stranger. Deadman was an
acrobat who had the misfortune to be shot in the middle of his act by an assassin and now acts as an
emissary between the living and the dead while The Phantom Stranger,
well, The Stranger is an unexplained phenomenon, but a badass-looking
fella in a cape and fedora.
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| I'm swooning. |
The
Stranger leads Swamp Thing through Hell, moved by his quest to find
Abby and free her soul from its pre-mature damnation. She was damned
unfairly and against the 'rules' so to speak, so she deserves to be
free. Here, 'Love and Death' makes up for being low on story by being
high on horror. Images of torture, horror, and malice are paraded
before Swamp Thing as he descends. Hell in this story is not a fiery,
red, bright cavern with dancing demon, but a cold, rocky, frozen
tundra devoid of light and life where demons not just torture, but
demean and rape their charges. One of the harshest punishments is
reserved for Arcane himself as he sees Swamp Thing's appearance as a
victory. Why would this be a victory? Arcane's body has been used as
a gestation vessel for all kinds of demonic insects that uses his
copious flesh for food upon hatching. Seeing Swamp Thing in Hell, he
believes the hero has finally died after mourning Abby's loss for
decades, because, of course, given the pain and the torture he'd
endured, that's how long Arcane has been in Hell. When Swamp Thing
corrects him, revealing it'd only be one day, the villains screams
echo off the vile rock walls much to the delight of the spawn charged
with his agony.
Because
heroes don't screw up, and this is very much a classical hero story,
Swamp Thing is able to rescue Abby's soul, fighting off demons before
they can corrupt her and escaping with the help of The Phantom
Stranger and another celestial being, The Spectre, an embodiment of
God's wrath.
Abby's
body awakens on Earth and the first thing she sees is Swamp Thing
standing over her, tears of joys welling from his eyes.
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| She ends up dating him for his sensitive soul and not the face-smashing. |
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