I've had most of this series for ages, but I've never got around to reading it. Partially this is because it's based on characters from the Swamp Thing series, which I'm still in the process of reading, and I didn't want the series to give anything away. But according to things I've read online, this continuity diverges somewhat from the Swamp Thing continuity, so whatever. Partially it's because I have read this first issue before, and it's not a happy series. Like, a really not happy series.
But it's Dave Louapre, who I think is one of the great writers to work in comics, though he's without his usual partner in crime Dan Sweetman (whose work we saw recently from a coeval series in The Last One). Unsurprisingly, the comic reads like an extended Beautiful Stories for Ugly Children, and what's chilling about that is that Beautiful Stories for Ugly Children stories work nicely because they're compact, limited by the single issue format. We don't have time to delve into the squishy inner workings of the narratives, nor, in many cases, would we want to. But American Freak gives Mr. Louapre a chance to delve. Damien Kane's transformation is not told in a matter of pages, but issues. It's an uncomfortable series to read.
"My bones feel like they're going to explode."
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