What happened to Marco Rudy on this? Also Alan Moore!
Note this review may be shorter than usual because there isn’t as much to talk about.
I love this story arc I haven’t read the Animal man story but I read Swamp Thing and I utterly loved it was a nice story arc and I love what Snyder did with it and I was really excited for the end.
Plot
Swamp Thing and Animal man protect the Bat bot so it can launch into the atmosphere and stop the Rot while they are being attacked by Arcane and his forces and rot creatures of the people they loved
Review
Um….. right let me say this I could not get Animal man 17 from my comic shop they didn’t have a copy but I was able to get this and it wasn’t too hard to understand what was happening and it works well as a single issue and it is easy to pick up on the developments from Animal man. Right this issue was disappointing I mean very disappointing it has some serious problems with it but it is still got a few good points but parts of it dragged so much and while I can’t compare it to Animal Man I think this probably could have been put into Animal man or it could have turned into a one-shot.
One of the parts I did like in this issue is how Arcane tortured Alec and Buddy with the people they loved and how he has changed them into the rot’s minions both are horrible and torture them but I kind of feel for Buddy more as what happens to (spoiler) his daughter is pretty horrible and I thought these scenes in the issue made it interesting and added a dark feel to the book.
This issue is really one giant action scene until we get to the true use of the Bat bot and the action scene itself is pretty interesting and what goes on in it has some interesting twists as Alec and Buddy’s allies are taken down and Buddy and Alec fight the people they loved it was interesting to see the fight develop and I really liked some of the sacrifices the characters made and it made the issue feel a lot darker and more depressing.
The fight between Buddy, Alec and Anton Arcane on the Bat bot was great and the update in powers for all of them made it a lot more interesting and intense and I liked the emotion going through this scene. I liked how it ended with things going right for once but then this is Rotworld so everything has to go wrong again and it does and it doesn’t look good at all.
I have to admit the revelation at the end of this issue was interesting and I didn’t see it coming and I thought when the people in question (more on that in a minute) it makes for an interesting development and I liked how Snyder and Lemire have kept giving us loads of twists in the book and this one is a great one and I have to say it really adds a lot to whole story and also sets things up very well for the next issue (which is an epilogue in both Animal man and Swamp Thing)
Right (Spoiler) the Parliament of Decay finally turns up in this issue and I don’t know if this was intentional or not but one of them LOOKS LIKE ALAN MOORE!! It may just be me but it seriously looked like him and I found it quite funny.
Right now onto the problems with the issue the pacing of it this issue the majority of it is a fight scene building up to the final scene and while it’s interesting it goes nowhere until the final few pages and it was annoying how little it progressed I mean it was interesting to see all the fighting with Alec and Buddy with the people they loved but it dragged and likely it the scene could have been condensed down a bit.
The pacing problem really only drops the mark down by a half as what happens in those scenes makes up for it but the really problem is the art. What happened to Marco Rudy on this? He was originally solicited for this issue and while I prefer Paquette I like Rudy quite a bit and he would be perfectly suited to this kind of story and in previous issues he really did bring out the horror vibe in the series, but the art in this is cartoony really cartoony and it takes so much away from the issue nothing looks scary at all Anton Arcane looks silly in it and Swamp Thing’s lost his antlers and now has to small horns. It takes so much away from this issue with most of this story arc there have been panels where you say what the planet has become and how ruined and wrecked it is but those panels lack enough detail to show that it just doesn’t look as great also everyone’s face is a little too square like and Animal man’s face looked off sometimes.
Verdict
It really pains me to do this but I didn’t like it and would have to say this issue was just average I expected so much more but I may have given this a 4 if it didn’t have the art problems which really detract from the issue.
3 starts (I hate doing this)
