Noteworthy Issues: The Swamp Thing #7 (September, 2021)

Ram V’s run on the newest Swamp Thing has been playing with the idea that the Green represents memory.  But what made newest Swamp Thing Levi Kamei transform into the latest avatar of the Green still hasn’t quite come out.

You know, until now.

Issue:  The Swamp Thing #7, September 2021

Writer:  Ram V

Artist:  Mike Perkins

The Plot:  Levi remembers.  The Suicide Squad attacks.

Commentary:  I felt, on one level, that sending the Suicide Squad after Swamp Thing was a dumb idea.  But then as I started reading this series, it made more sense.  Oh, I still don’t think the Suicide Squad has the power to do it, but it makes sense.  Levi is new at the job and doesn’t really know what he’s doing.  He’s being dragged all over the place.  He only seems to power through things by accident.  He’s not Alec Holland.  Meanwhile, the Suicide Squad, as led by Peacemaker, actually has a team that might be able to bring him down.  Heat Wave was taken down between issues, but there’s still Chemo stomping all over the place and the Parasite’s apparently just absorbing the power of the Green off by himself.  As for the Nightmare Nurse, a character I had never heard of before…yeah, she’s the real threat.

See, she’s some kind of telepath, and her power seems to be there to help Levi remember what the hell happened to him.  What did he do to become the Swamp Thing?  Why does he have so many painful memories of his father and brother?  And what is his connection to the evil corporation that seems to have inherited the Sunderland Corporation’s position as Swamp Thing’s corporate enemy?

I could tell you, but I prefer not go too into detail on a lot of these reviews unless it’s some 50+ year old issue of The Amazing Spider-Man.

Suffice to say that there are good reasons for Levi to not want to remember these things.  The basic concept is he fell too far from his heritage, thinking he knew better than “superstitious” locals about what was going on, and, well, even that may be telling too much.

But that was the Nightmare Nurse’s shot, and she has an interesting reaction to what happened there.

Anyway, Levi still has a few members of the Suicide Squad to take on, and his backstory isn’t quite complete yet.  But both are getting there, and both have been fun and entertaining.

Grade:  A-