Swamp Thing

Swamp Thing by Maggie Stiefvater is a new comic in the DC universe. In Swamp Thing, we follow Alec as he navigates plants and people.

Alec and Walker are twins, and that’s about as far as their similarities go. Walker is energetic, and a social butterfly. Alec is anti-social, and not sure how to react to people. He is most comfortable with plants, which is where his scientific research has lived. Attempting to isolate plants’ memories and feelings into a compound that can be placed in new plants, his research has been his most important project.

When Walker and Alec walk in on their dad cheating on their mom, they have to pack it up and stay with their redneck cousins in a swamp area. Walker takes well to the change, social as always. However, some of Alec’s research gets destroyed and things don’t start well. As the twins try and navigate both their own rocky relationships, things get Swampy. It looks like Alec’s research has mutated in a way he didn’t quite expect.

Thank you to Netgalley and DC Universe for a copy of this in exchange for an honest review.

I really liked Alec and the other research “geeks” in the comic. They felt fun and I wanted to experience more from them. Walker was intolerable from the get go, and even his explanation for his actions fell short for me. The cousins felt realistic, like every redneck in the middle of a small town nowhere I’ve ever experienced. Their toxic aggression and violent hobbies all seemed par the course. I know it’s a comic, and I assume it’s a standalone, but the wrap up was pretty quick. It felt like a lot of world building and character creation, only to quickly wrap everything up when one realizes they’re out of time.

The ending didn’t surprise me, but that doesn’t mean I loved it either. It seemed as though Alec had finally started to figure people out…and then it was taken away from him. That made me kind of sad because I’d gotten attached to our plant boy. That may seem to be a spoiler, so I’ll make sure to mark this accordingly.

For Maggie’s breakout into the comic book realm, I think she did a really good job. I know storytelling in the short form that is comics can be tricky, and I would imagine coming from writing novels would be even harder. Maggie did a great job with this, and I would be interested in reading more comics from her- and maybe from Swamp Thing in general!

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