Swamp Thing: Twin Branches: 06/06/21

Swamp Thing: Twin Branches by Maggie Stiefvater and Morgan Beem (illustrator) is a standalone graphic novel about the origin of Swamp Thing. Alec and Walker Holland are twins but a terrible flu changed Alec. Since then, he and his brother have been drifting apart.

Alec has been researching how plants store memories and can collect the memories of other plants around them. A forced cross country move and some careless handling of his experiment leads to the original work being lost. But it also inspires new discoveries.

Mostly the journey home leads to the brothers drifting apart. Walker is at home with their extended family. Alec isn't. He has his revised experiment and one friend who is interested in similar of research.

While I found the story interesting, I found the artwork off putting. The character designs looked like rejects from Beevis and Butthead. The artwork was distracting enough to pull me out of the story numerous times.

The road to Alec becoming Swamp Thing is contextualized in the road narrative spectrum. The travelers are siblings (CC) — twins Alec and Walker. Their destination is the wildlands (99) of the forest near their new home. Their route is the maze in that their journey proves dangerous (CC): through bullying and through Alec's own experiments. Summarized Swamp Things is about twins going through the wildlands via the maze (CC99CC).

Two stars

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