The Swamp Thing, Vol. 1: Becoming

This contains two entirely unconnected stories, albeit by the same pairing of writer and artist, and it's mainly for this reason that I can't rate it more highly.

The main story shows the new Swamp Thing learning what he is turning into and facing a few supernatural threats along the way. It's a good introduction to the concept of Swamp Thing, with some great scenes set in the Green and reflections on what Levi is going through as he tries to make sense of what is happening. The art is also good, suitable for this sort of grimy supernatural setting. But it suffers from being too short - just four issues that don't take us very far into the story. It doesn't help that the beginning of the story is in some other collection, although we do get enough flashbacks to piece together the outline of what happened.

The reason it's short is, presumably, in order to fit the other, two-issue story in. And why is that even here? Yes, it has Swamp Thing in it, although probably not the same one, but, while it's well written, it feels needlessly tagged on to push up the page count. Not does it add anything to the main story, being set in the Future State setting so that it distracts rather than complements. One really good story that's rudely truncated, and one perfectly decent one that belongs somewhere else... one can't blame Ram V, but I don't know what DC's editors were thinking. And that gets it a big mark-down from me, I'm afraid.