Soaring to Greener Pastures
Hell yes, We've been waiting and now it's happened, Scott Snyder has finally taken all the pieces and hints and threads of the past 6 issues and finally wove them all together for one fantastic pay-off. Sure, not much happens in this issue except one or two big plot points, but in the end this installment serves as a great mood piece and new beginning for Alec Holland, finally breaking the floodgates and just letting the horror begin to poor out.
Snyder has chosen to use this issue to create a visual atmosphere rather than just straight story-telling. Mostly it's 20 pages of a discussion with the parliament of trees, but it's the events surrounding this conversation, the drama and emotion coming from both sides, and the characterization of Alec Holland that are the focus, which makes for an enjoyable read. This is all well and good, and it's enough to carry the issue on it's own, but it's the visuals coming from Yanick Paquette that propel this issue into greatness. The sheer abject terror drawn into the pages, the trippy layouts and disturbing images of the rot and the green as they burn, the ominous feelings of whats to come and what is happening, all of it just serves to make this book another win for Snyder's growing resume of fantastic horror comics. Seriously, the level of discomfort I felt when i saw that Rot-horse 7 pages from the end was just delightful.
Really there's not much to say about this issue, except that it's just a beautifully grotesque title, and If someone wants to see super heroics (I use that term very lightly) combined with John Carpenter-esque horror, or just want something refreshingly different from the usual crop of DC books, this series is for you.