It's not that Rick Veitch is a bad writer - he's decent enough. His art is certainly above average. But he just doesn't have Alan Moore's magic. He tries to capture Moore's talent for creating unique characters, for blending mysticism and new ideas with classic comic story and imagry, but he just can't do it. And I can't put my finger on why, but his Abby Arcane is just so damned dippy.

I so wanted to like this volume. I liked Veitch's run quite a lot, and I wanted to like how it ended. I think he knew he was running out of time on his tenure, so he felt compelled to wrap up some of the bigger stories before he left, and yet still end on a compelling, interesting note, but what we got instead feels rushed, poorly plotted, incoherent (like the Distant Cousins special? What the actual f*** WAS that?), and just downright bad storytelling. That being said, there was enough here tha...

Only three stars because it’s unfinished. Veitch left Swamp Thing acrimoniously when DC refused to publish his story about the death of Jesus despite having approved the script. You can easily find the whole script online along with some low-quality but intriguing scans of Michael Zulli’s unfinished art. Neil Gaiman would have followed Veitch as writer of Swamp Thing, but pulled out in solidarity, leaving only one issue, Swamp Thing Annual no. 5, to tease how his run might have gone.

Series went out with a wimper.

This is a review for the entire Rick Veitch run (and its tie-ins), not just this volume.Alan Moore is an impossible act to follow. I applaud anyone brave enough to try. Rick Veitch had an advantage, having already been working with Moore during the latter part of that run. Because of this, he definitely has a good feel for the tone and character of what Moore set up. It feels like a direct continuation not only of the story, but of the product as a whole. Now, this is mostly a good thing, but un...

I enjoyed very much. Great storyline.

Did you know that Swamp Thing porn was a niche? A slimy, green, fecund niche...But don't worry about being thought a pervert for reading this, there's also incest, lesbianism, and threesomes* to make it more mainstream. And a bunch of pregnancy, because who doesn't want a baby, even a baby that's made with a hideous vegetal monstrosity? Aside from the sex parts and Abby brooding over her relationship not much actually happens, and what does happen seems confused, brief, and under-developed. Ther...

This is the end of Veitch's run; who followed Alan Moore's. It's a hard burden; and part of the problem lays that I think Rick's run was a continuation in terms of style and natural progression of ideas. He chose to focus on what he seems to have considered "loose ends" from Alan's run instead of his own dashing start. Ultimately, it's a little more muted, but still pretty good--except for DC's botching Rick's ending. The original ending with Jesus is perhaps a tad on the nose, but I love it for...

After becoming an instant Swamp Thing fan thanks to Alan Moore, I close the book on this final volume, Volume 9, which ended with a story about gorillas. I have never given a Swamp Thing book one star until now. But in many ways, I'm not giving one star to ST...because he's barely in this volume. But if you like Chester the mooching stupid hippie and a bunch of fucking talking gorillas, this book is for you.

I really, really want to enjoy Rick Veitch's work on Swamp Thing. He seemed to be the hand-picked successor to Alan Moore at the end of his run, but for Veitch's wonderfully chameleon-like nature as an artist, his storytelling just isn't as deft as Moore's. I think this is mainly because instead of striking out and claiming Swamp Thing as his own, Veitch is still mired in plots and sub-plots that I think he perceives as loose ends from the Moore era. Moore for the most part closed the book on Ma...

This has strangely been collected out of order. The annual issue at the end of this volume belongs about a year earlier (probably in the previous collected edition) and the annual that should be in between the regular issues collected here is missing. Very strange.

It’s got everything you want from a Swamp Thing story: supernatural events, space travel for unspecified reasons, enemies who are for some reason weak to plants, alien invasion, gorilla mind control, and sci-fi pregnancy.Best part of this collection: “I’m on a mission from Grodd” Blues Brothers reference by a gorilla wearing sunglasses and a fedora.Weirdest part of this collection: Swamp Thing becoming a pregnant swamp creature, going into labor, and birthing itselfI bought the single issue 20th...

What a confused little TPB; story does not complete at all, and DC opted not to collect the issues that come after this one. Thus, we're left on a weird cliffhanger (not even, really, because it hadn't managed to build up that far) and then plummeted into a story about apes that takes place before the rest of the TPB.Weird stuff.I don't think that most of it is necessarily Veitch's fault, but that it's more DC's fault for cutting off the TPBs after this.If you're curious as to what happens durin...

Seguramente la nostalgia me juega en contra aquí, pero siendo fan de lo que hizo en Swamp Thing, Alan Moore, nunca pude leer esta continuación. Y muuchos años después por fin la encuentro y no me decepciona encontrar a los viejos Swampy, Abby y Constantine engendrando un nuevo elemental de la Tierra y continuando con las exploraciones de lo que significa el amor, las obligaciones y el poder. Muy bueno.

6.5/10

An ignominious end for Veitch's run here, as DC—compounding their refusal to publish the final issue of the time travel story arc—simply refuse to reprint any of it after this collected volume, including Doug Wheeler's largely ham-fisted attempts at wrapping it up without offending the precious sensibilities of the religiously-inclined, so this is the end of Veitch's collected run, though I'm reading the actual comics, so I'm including up to issue #87 in this review.Initially—and the prominent f...