4,5 ( )

So how do you follow Alan Moore in the comics that is considered one of his best? Apparently by working with him in the latest issues and then taking over and making it your own.

Collecting issues 65–70, this one starts exactly where Moore left the story - Abby and the Swamp Thing are married and living together in the bog. But of course, it cannot stay like that - first John Contantine shows up again and then the Parliament of Trees make it very clear that the Earth needs its elemental and when ours was missing, a new one was created - and we cannot have two. Alec Holland (the current Swamp Thing for the ones that do not pay attention) refuses to kill the sprout or to essentially kill himself and join the Parliament (there is Abby after all) and that causes a lot of confusion.

So the sprout is trying to find a body (and we get to see Solomon Grundy (the other bog-man of the DC universe) turning green for awhile...) and Alec is trying to resists his elders. And as it turns out their biggest failure (as they had taken to calling him) has a few new tricks up his sleeve - he did not travel the cosmos for nothing after all.

Not very surprisingly, we do see Batman (and Alfred) in action - this time not trying to kill the Swamp Thing, we get a cameo of Superman and Metropolis (and almost get a Swamp Thing from there) but this collection is almost standalone in the DC world.

Let's see where this goes next. ( )

The last section, with Constantine chasing down all the information he needs is kind of interesting, but it's really a story about Constantine, rather than Swamp Thing. That's a shame because the rest of the book is pretty lackluster. The idea is pretty good, and the idea of Swamp Thing being the antagonist as a result for his own selfish desires could go somewhere interesting, but Veitch is unable to channel whatever it was that made Alan Moore able to make a plant elemental so very human.

Sadly, I have a fear that the remaining volumes will only be worth picking up for any Constantine crossovers. ( )