Swamp Thing 88- The Lost Jesus Story

[BudgetMego]

This came out yesterday. The continuation of Rick Veitch's Swamp Thing time travel story. Swampy had been sent through time by the alien Dominators as part of the Invasion crossover. This part was pulled by DC because of the subject matter. Swampy ends up in the garden of Gethsemane at an important time. The story starts with the Wisemen (actually evil sorcerers) conjuring Belial to deal with Jesus. Apparently they only came to the nativity to scope out a potential rival. Belial attacks and impregnated the Golden Gladiator with an embryonic Etrigan. The Gladiator is the captain of the guard and client of Mary Magdeline. He promised to let Jesus go, but Etrigan assures this doesn't happen. Swampy spots Jesus in the garden, and recognizes him from Alec Holland's memories. The Roman's arrive for Jesus, and Swampy tries to help fight them off, but is sent back to the timestream(by Jesus I think.) Jesus exorcises Etrigan from the Gladiator. He's then taken to the crucifixion, and Belial kills the Wiseman because his son Etrigan is now bound to Earth. All in all, I found this to be a very good story. As an old Catholic boy, I didn't find anything offensive. No revisionism on Jesus. He's depicted as above reapproach and doing everything out of love and concern for people. The only difference is I think is it's left up to the reader to decide if the DC version of Jesus is actually Divine, or a Sorcerer Supreme type character. Also maybe if you revere the Wiseman as religious figures, you might not like that they're depicted as depraved villains with body parts hanging in their ritual chamber and pluck out their own eyes as a sacrifice to Belial. But Swamp Thing was always a horror comic. Gives an origin of sorts for Etrigan, and with the Wiseman, you might never look at a Christmas nativity scene the same way again.

[MRP]

I picked this up and I 've been picking up the trade collections of Veitch's Swampy run, and I am waiting until I have the run in full to read it. But I am extremely excited this is finally seeing print.

-M