The Swamp Thing #6 spoilers and discussion

[sifighter]

Well this is an interesting twist I did not foresee, a crossover between a mini-series and an ongoing. Quick explanation time, the Prescott company keeping an eye on Levi ratted him out to Waller who wants to harness the power of the Green for her own purposes. So to get Levi's attention she attacked the Indian forest where he likely first got his powers and sent a separate suicide squad (i.e not the ones in the main book who are currently on Earth-3) led by Peacemaker, with Heatwave, Parasite, Nightmare Nurse/Asa, and Chemo dropped into the jungle after a bio-agent was dropped on the forest hampering Levi's abilities. I'm not really sure what is going on with Parasite in this book, he runs off and does something and alludes to "Green" but its very ambiguous in what it meant.

But besides the Suicide Squad on his tail, or lighting it on fire, we get another thing and that's Levi's past memories and family. We get to see him with his brother, reminiscing in a beautifully done Jungle looking over a city and then another memory of him with his father out in the rain as they discuss his childhood. Nothing too groundbreaking, just some nice character building. But its from his memory with his father that he starts to grow back together and we get a really well done ending page of him rising out of the water to take on Heatwave as Swamp Thing.

Now I will you do not have to have read Suicide Squad to understand this issue. Generally speaking the past few issues have established that Waller was planning this and we ended the last issue with Waller dropping the anti-Swamp Thing agent. So its not as if you have to go grab Suicide Squad #5 or 6 to get this. All you really need to know is that Peacemaker is a main cast member of the Suicide Squad working for Waller, and really just focus on him because there is no Superboy or Talon in this issue just Peacemaker. However there is one thing that might confuse you and that is Nightmare Nurse, because she talks as if she knows Swamp Thing and thats because she does. Nightmare Nurse is from New 52 Phantom Stranger, Justice League Dark, and the Forever Evil: Blight storyline. Yeah Ram V did a deep pull for this character and it took me more then a few minutes to remember who the heck she was, so your welcome for those who did not know or remember.

Besides that its nice to have Perkins back again, I missed him last issue and he's great here as he does some genuinely creepy art. There's a scene where Levi is reconstituting himself and its gross and beautiful at the same time. Like always he just sells this book.

[HsssH]

Perkins delivers again. Writing is average again. Now, I know that this is standard storytelling technique - keep the mystery and sprinkle in some flashbacks here and there. But I don't really care how exactly he became Swamp Thing? From very first issue it looked like his brother did some ritual and we are now in issue 6 and its not like we know much more than we did back then. To me it feels like Ram is just dragging it out till #10 for no good reason.

I'd like it more if we just got at some point full issue dedicated to what happened back then and moved on to things that are actually a bit more interesting like Prescott company and Woodrue.

[the illustrious mr. kenway]

It's a better crossover than the last issue. I would've preferred if Levi's time at Prescott was developed more. They should've been the villians instead of Waller. Levi was the weak link of this book till this issue.