From the pages of the original SWAMP THING run — not to mention background players on the TV show — come the experimental freaks of nature created by mad scientist Anton Arcane, now starring in their own spinoff series from Vertigo. The initial five-issue arc is collected as THE UN-MEN: GET YOUR FREAK ON!

Arcane may be gone, but his “children” live — and all together in a tourist-fave theme park called Aberrance, U.S.A. But when one of them — a limbless “gill-boy” — turns up dead 800 miles away, an obscure arm of the Department of Energy sends in albino Agent Kilcrop to investigate.

With his lack of pigmentation making him somewhat of a freak himself, Kilcrop feels a certain kinship with the mutants he meets, including a beautiful, one-armed winged brunette and a bald man tattooed with words head to toe. But others? Not so much. That goes for Dr. Cranius, little more than a head atop a hand, and Janus, a slimy corporate type whose slimier son is grated onto his back and resembles a leering ventriloquist’s dummy.

In both John Whalen’s script and Mike Hawthorne’s art, THE UN-MEN has a real RE-ANIMATOR sensibility to it, with more than a fair amount of the far-out and (darkly) funny. But there’s horror, too, with several splash-panel-sized surprises awaiting the reader.

With a palpable seamy side making it not for the kiddos, THE UN-MEN bests the most recent incarnation of SWAMP THING, and this debut collection suggests it has a long life ahead, assuming its creators can continue its current level of the peculiar and the puzzling. —Rod Lott

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OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS SERIES:
• SWAMP THING: HEALING THE BREACH
• SWAMP THING: INFERNAL TRIANGLES
• SWAMP THING: LOVE IN VAIN
• SWAMP THING: SPONTANEOUS GENERATION