Swamp Thing #110 Review

Title:	Swamp Thing
Contributors:	Nancy A. Collins Bill Jaaska
Publisher:	DC
Issue #:	110
Year:	1991
Pages:	32 Pages
Age Rating:	10+ (Violence)
Story Grade:	D
Art Grade:	C

Swamp Thing #110 is everything I have come to expect of horror themed comics made in the 90s; like most of the movies from the era, they're crap. And this comic is not much different. This is the story of a traveling preacher who puts on revivals in different towns only to kill all those in attendance, but when he comes to Swamp Thing's neck of the woods, the preacher meets his match.

I desperately want to get into Swamp Thing as I think the character as a whole has such a promising story, but it is books like this that prevent me from being able to get hooked. This is 17th attempt at getting into Swamp Thing, and it is the various writers and artists 17th failure to hook me.

Listen, I understand that the late 80s and 90s were about Jim Baker and Jimmy Swaggart-types; disgraced holy men dethroned from their pulpits for the sins they committed, but story lines like this feel exploitative, generalized and campy. While their are times I'm in the mood for these, those times are rare.

This book crams about as many clichés into 32 pages as you can possibly get; creepy revivalist preacher, crappy love story, a hippy Cajun, poorly written accents and preachy messages about God's wrath, environmentalism and love just about made me sick. Add to all of that, that this preacher travels around with a venomous snake, loose in his car, on the stage of his revivals, hell it is everywhere, and the preacher is never bitten by said snake.

Yes, that is what you get with this comic.

The artwork is not my favorite. The facial expressions are all over the map and rarely match what one would expect a facial expression to show based on the dialog. The artwork is also very muddled, consistent with a lot of the artwork from the 90s.

I am so tired of this book, I am cutting this review.. short. I grade this book a D+ for all of the above reasons and 852 more that I won't bore you with. While I continue to have faith that one day I will find a comics from the 90s that is worthy of a read, I am losing hope that this will ever happen. But I will keep the faith.

Until next time... just do yourself a favor and skip the 90s.