PositivesAs "Future State" is a finite thing, these two issues featuring Swamp Thing do a marvelous job of telling a complete story that is both intellectually engaging and emotionally moving. It's a true achievement that V and Perkins can explore, even is just briefly the notion of "soul" and what it means to people and how it separates humans from other organisms on the planet. Like and great work of literature it inspires the reader to think by making him or her to also FEEL. Despite the inherent sadness surrounding the incidentals, this is a beautiful story . Read Full Review

Future State Swamp Thing benefitted from being set far away from the other titles where the focus could be solely placed on its isolated character and what makes it tick. Read Full Review

Future State: Swamp Thing tells a story that is profoundly sad and surprisingly uplifting, apocalyptic yet hopeful. It's everything that's great about the title character and then some, and it should have readers chomping at the bit for Ram V and Mike Perkins' next Swamp Thing project. Read Full Review

Mike Perkins delivers some beautiful art throughout the issue. The action is fantastic. The characters look great and there are visual moments that punctuate the emotion of the story. Read Full Review

Using its 22 pages for maximum effect, Swamp Thing #2 is a dense and atmospheric conclusion to one of Future State's better-realized settings. While Future State: Swamp Thing has been a story of creation and misery, there's real hope in its conclusion " even if humanity must go through multiple apocalypses to get there. Read Full Review

Swamp Thing faces an old enemy for the future of humanity. Sacrifices are made but a new hope emerges and grows at the far ends of time in the DCU. Read Full Review

Swamp Thing has never been a typical superhero. He's a force of nature, something that serves something higher than humanity, and this issue is a great example of that"with a powerful ending that makes me very optimistic for Ram V's upcoming run featuring a new Swamp Thing. Read Full Review

FUTURE STATE: SWAMP THING #2is huge. It's an epic, rewriting the rules of the DC universe and daring to dream big. But V, Perkins, Chung and Bidikar never lose the human heart at the center. Even if its veins are full of chlorophyll. Read Full Review

Future State: Swamp Thing #2 is a powerful and thought-provoking conclusion to Ram V, Mike Perkins, and June Chung's saga of humanity versus nature in the shadow of the end of the world. Swamp Thing himself is portrayed as a complex figure, who must make difficult choices about whether to cast his lot with his children (Who are really just extensions of himself) or with the humans, who have some good eggs but are also trying to blot out the sun and end life on this planet. Future: Swamp Thing is a disaster story with soul that ends on just the right note of hope and tragedy. Read Full Review

Future State - Swamp Thing #2 works great with a more direct approach than the first issue, delivering an epic story with visuals to match that unfortunately just get too unwieldy for such a limited format. Read Full Review

Unfortunately this was too rushed and could have been a 4 parter. Read Full Review

It's simply a disappointment. Read Full Review

This review covers Future State: Swamp Thing #1 and #2.

Future State: Swamp Thing is perhaps the greatest Future State mini-series to find its way to print. Its biggest strength is its disconnect from the rest of the Future State event and the DC Universe at large. You could easily take this story and publish it as a stand-alone graphic novel, and it might become one of the best-selling Swamp Thing tales in years.

In the far future, the Earth lies in ruins and only a few humans remain in isolation. Swamp Thing has been searching for this remainder of humanity but has had no success in finding any survivors. To ease his loneliness, he has created a new group of green creatures much like himself who each take a small piece of his power and exist as a new race of plant-based beings who search the ravaged wastelands of the planet for remnants of humanity.

The biggest problem the green face is that humans see these green creatures as monsters and continue to set traps for them, thinking that these creatures are going to kill them. Little do they know that Swamp Thing, the supernatural creature of the Earth’s green energy who bonded with a human host, longs for humankind and misses having human interaction. When a human is finally subdued and shown that the creatures of the green are not his enemy, the human tells them that the last remaining humans have moved far north into the snow-covered lands where plants can’t grow, into a former S.T.A.R. Labs facility where the military control everything and some new kind of weapon is being developed. He begs Swamp Thing and the creatures of the green to help him free his people and save humanity.

I admit that I’m a sucker for post-apocalyptic stories and this one delivers. I was expecting some sort of climate change mumbo-jumbo or even a tale set in a not-too-distant future that simply pushed along the Justice League narrative, but this story delivered in ways that were far better than anything my lowered expectations could’ve fathomed. Future State was so uneven overall that realized no standards had been set and some writers just weren’t up to the task of creating a new status quo. Ram V, however, nailed it and crafted one of the best comic stories in years, Future State or not.

The art from Mike Perkins and June Chung was a great fit for this yarn. Perkins not only had the ability to tell a great story and keep the characters independently recognizable, but he also provided some amazing “anatomy” drawings of the green creatures to sit alongside Swamp Thing’s narration of their creation that mimicked the anatomical drawings of Leonardo Di Vinci. I found myself often just staring at the linework and detail of these “fake” bodies and I think it really helped to sell the creation of these creatures. Chung’s colors are rich and moody with the ability to be dark without becoming muddled and confusing. She shows a tremendous grasp of the color spectrum by using different tints and shades of green for the creatures that help to keep them distinguishable and recognizable, even when they are grouped together.

I don’t plan on reviewing any more Future State comics because I don’t expect any others I read to move me to love or hate them as much as the ones I’ve already covered. But especially after reading Swamp Thing, books like Dark Detective and Superman: Worlds of War anger me with their spectacular crapulence. It’s painfully obvious that the powers-that-be in charge of DC Comics have no idea how to pilot the ship and the “big name” writers they paid big dollars for are woefully underprepared to write the characters that they’ve been given. At least Ram V hasn’t been let go from DC Comics yet, and hopefully he’ll be moved to a book of greater prominence once the others have failed and been let go from the company.

Do yourself a favor and buy these two comic books. They will make you see why the medium works.

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Wow, this was fantastic. While I'm finding Future State to be mostly very disappointing, this was an incredibly well-written story. Cannot wait to read more Swamp Thing stuff by Ram V.

Fuck yes!

Give Ram V a separate JLD book so I don't have to buy shitty Bendis-League DC!

I was a little lukewarm in the first issue. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't amazing. This issue does a great job in lifting this story up into something I'd recommend. This is a really good issue.

I went into this with a bit of apprehension. While I have enjoyed everything Ram V has so far dished out during his time at DC, I didn't know if I was quite prepared for one of Future State's gloomier and heavier titles because right now real life is gloomy enough.

But I wanted to see how this story concludes. And I'm glad I decided to read this story today. Despite its darker themes, hope spreads through the book like the branches of a tree.

Beautiful conclusion to a very, very solid story. When I was reviewing issue #1, one of my main observations was how Ram V wants to tell his unique stand alone story without connecting it to anything else. Little did I know, it would end with an absolute bang, leaving me amazed where that creative freedom has led. It is satisfying on so both storytelling and phylosophical levels, offering us a one of a kind self contained modern myth.

Fantastic comic, and it's one of the very few Future State titles that can confidently be called instant classics. Pick it up, I couldn't recommend it enough.

A good conclusion to this apocalyptic story. Some things felt rushed but with this being only a two issue mini-series there wasn't a lot of room to explore everything in detail. Ram V continues to prove why he's such a good writer and I couldn't be more excited for his upcoming Swamp Thing series.

A moving ending to one of Future State's best series. It'll be interesting to see whether Ram V and Mike Perkins incorporate this possible future into their upcoming Swamp Thing run.