Sometimes writing a good villain can be harder that writing good hero. This is not a problem that Scott Snyder has. Snyder sketches out bits of Alec Holland and his transformation into the new Swamp Thing, but the main brunt of this book focuses on the villain, Arcane. And, my word, he is fearsome. A timeless monster, the book opens with Arcane devouring a Swamp Things from a century earlier. Later he smothers a baby before it can even begin to develop into another avatar of the Green. Closer to the present he gruesomely dispatches Alec and his wife with ease. From cover to cover, Arcane is a brutal, relentless and grotesque killing machine. The horrific weight of the book is all Kano's art though. The monsters are frightful, but the real unsettling frames are the little moments like when Arcane has put on the skin of Alec's dead wife, but hasn't quite settled the face into place yet, or the small smile she wears as she watches Alec burn. That page in particular with the exploding house and Alec burning while his wife watches, with each of the three panels divided by jagged lines of fire, is especially masterful.