Swamp Thing

33 years ago - 18-year-old Alec goes to college to study biology.

29 years ago - 22-year-old Alec gets his bachelor's degree in Botany, and begins a graduate program in environmental engineering.

27 years ago - 24-year-old Alec has Jason Woodrue as a professor, where he meets Linda Olsen Ridge.

26 years ago - 25-year-old Alec begins his doctoral work in Adaptive Plant Morphology, working alongside Linda Olsen Ridge.

25 years ago - 26-year-old Alec marries Linda Olsen Ridge.

24 years ago - 27-year-old Alec gets his doctorate in Adaptive Plant Morphology.

22 years ago - 29-year-old Alec gets his second doctorate in Bio-Engineering based on his theoretical Bio-restorative Formula. He acquires funding from Avery Sunderland of the Sunderland Corporation, and begins work on his formula in his Louisiana labs with Linda Holland.

20 years ago - 31-year-old Alec's labs are broken into by men looking to steal his Bio-restorative Formula. The resulting explosion kills Linda Holland and he runs, engulfed in flame, into the swamp. He dies, but the formula affects the plants in the swamp, allowing them to rapidly grow and mutate, and absorb the memories of Alec Holland, until they rise up as Swamp Thing, a creature that believes it is Alec Holland.

18 years ago - 33-year-old Alec first meets Abigail Cable, the wife of S.H.A.D.E. Agent Matthew Cable, who has come to Louisana on assignment to track him. She discovers who he is and they help each other understand the strange magics of Lousiana. She hides their connection from her husband.

17 years ago - 34-year-old Alec Holland learns from Abigail Cable that her husband Matthew Cable has been hired by Eric Loveday, a wealthy scientist that has taken over a plantation as his new laboratories, with the intention to capture and exploit the Swamp Thing and learn the secret of his mutation. They are successful and Abigail breaks into the labs to free him, where they discover that Loveday is in fact Anton Arcane, disguising his deformity, having approached Avery Sunderland and revealing that the Swamp Thing may be a result of Alec Holland's Bio-restorative Formula so that he will fund his research. Arcane rebuilds himself into a hideous monster to confront Swamp Thing, and is ultimately killed.

14 years ago - 37-year-old Alec Holland discovers that Linda Holland's grave has been unearned and remains stolen.

13 years ago - 38-year-old Alec Holland discovers that Anton Arcane has possessed the body of Matthew Cable, using it to psychologically torture Abigail Cable and eventually kill her, forcing her soul into hell. He is able to defeat Arcane with the help of Matthew, who retakes control of his body. Alec follows Abigail into the afterlife, guided by Deadman, the Phantom Stranger, and Etrigan. He finds her soul and frees her, restoring her to life. He helps her heal from her trauma, and they are handfasted.

12 years ago - 39-year-old Alec Holland is trapped and killed by Avery Sunderland's men. Jason Woodrue performs an autopsy on his body, and discovers that the Swamp Thing is not in fact Alec Holland, but instead plant matter affected by Holland's formula that has absorbed his memories. Upon awakening and learning the truth, he kills Sunderland in a rage. He almost goes insane, but John Constantine helps him find the Parliament of Trees. His daughter Tef é Holland is born and named for the source of the Parliament's river.

10 years ago - Swamp Thing recovers the remains of Alex Holland and buries them properly. He is able to assist Holland in reuniting with his wife Linda Holland, and finally passing on.

8 years ago - Swamp Thing & Pamela Isley battle Jason Woodrue's attempt to usurp his role as defender of the Parliament of Trees.

7 years ago - Swamp Thing fights to protect the Parliament of Trees from an incursion by Anton Arcane, now part of the rot, a negative reflection of the elemental force of the green. He discovers that his daughter Tef é Holland is being contacted by her uncle and battles Arcane within the Earth for influence over her, but she ultimately rejects the rot when it proves too limited for her. He is found by Suzy Black, and helps her unlock her memories of Susan Linden Thorne.

6 years ago - Swamp Thing sends his consciousness across the cosmos to J586, to excise a seed of rot from the people's core. He meets Medphyll, and warns him he could find the same rot taking root in himself.

5 years ago - Swamp Thing tries to stop Batman from fighting Solomon Grundy so he can become a new Earth elemental, but when he is unsuccessful, he returns Grundy to Slaughter Swamp.

4 years ago - Swamp Thing & the Justice League stop Jason Woodrue's attempt to unify the plant population of the planet and eradicate all non-plant life.

3 years ago - Swamp Thing attempts to give refuge to Waylon Jones but he ultimately poses too much of a threat, and is brought back to Gotham.

1 year ago - Swamp Thing is called on by Buddy Baker to assist him & Suzy Black as they venture within the Green & the Red to fight Anton Arcane & the Rot.

Swamp Thing is probably my favorite comic series I've ever read, and If I try to write something glowing about this character I'm just going to rant all day, so instead, I'm going to just start with a fun little anecdote. Len Wein, the creator of Swamp Thing, got a little bit of flack from another comic writer, Gerry Conway, who had created a very similar character at Marvel called Man-Thing a year and a half earlier. Eventually, nothing came of it, because both companies realized that both characters were also very similar to a golden age character called the Heap. What's fun about this is that apparently at the time, Len Wein and Gerry Conway were roommates.

Swamp Thing's Comic History

Wein's original Swamp Thing story took place in House of Secrets #92 in 1972, a classic horror anthology series. This original story was set at the turn of the century and was about a man named Alex Olsen, who had been turned into a monster by a rival for his wife Linda. It was a classic monster story, and clearly it was a success, because less than a year later Wein was writing a new ongoing series for Swamp Thing, this time a contemporary story about a botanist names Alec Holland working on his experimental Bio-restorative Formula when he is caught in an explosion by men trying to acquire his work, running into the nearby swamp where his body is mutated into the hulking Swamp Thing.

Given what will come later for the character, I think people often sleep on these early Len Wein Swamp Thing stories, and that's a shame, because they're really quite good. Each issue is a very cool, self-contained monster story in its own right, with Swamp Thing as a sort of framing device. The art by Bernie Wrightson is downright gorgeous, and those early issues introduce characters that would be huge parts of Swamp Thing's stories. Unfortunately, interest waned in the series, Wein left, and it devolved into some pretty forgettable stories before the series was canceled in 1976.

After the success of the Superman movie the appetite for another movie based on a superhero property was clearly there, so in 1982 when a pre Nightmare on Elm Street Wes Craven wanted to make a larger budget action vehicle and decided to adapt Len Wein's story from the first issue of Swamp Thing, DC quickly started to throw its marketing machine behind it. A new Swamp Thing series was published, with an annual that actually adapted the movie.

This new comic wasn't exactly a huge success; it often got lost in a sea of supporting characters and barely included Alec at all, which is often the case when writers don't know what to do with the main character. It did seem to turn a corner around issue 16 when artist Steve Bissette took over the series, suddenly giving it a unique horror look. Characters from the classic series, Abigail Arcane & Matt Cable, were reintroduced, as well as a classic villain that had made several appearances in the original series, Anton Arcane.

Still, the series was hardly what you'd call a top seller, which is why DC gave it to an up-and-coming British writer who'd been working for Marvel UK, and for publications like 2000 AD. and Warrior magazine With issue #20, Alan Moore first started his run on Swamp Thing.

In a series that had previously been lost in its supporting cast, Moore quickly centered the story on Swamp Thing brilliantly, embracing everything about the character but also fully redefining him. He introduced the idea that Swamp Thing was not, in fact, Alec Holland. Holland had actually died in the original explosion. When his body sank into the swamp, the plant matter around him absorbed his memories and grew themselves into a shape approximating a body, "trying their level best to BE Alec Holland."

It was a brilliant shift in the character's narrative, but I do also really enjoy that this was actually something Moore would do again with other characters like Captain Britain, Marvel Man, or Supreme, always finding new ways to embrace the character's history while simultaneously redefining everything about them.

Trying to sum up this series is hard. On the surface level, it's just a very beautifully told story, woven with extremely high-concept ideas and prose. It introduced John Constantine, revitalized characters like Deadman and the Phantom Stranger, and just stood out as one of the best and most innovative comics ever published. It was also decidedly mature; not so much deliberately explicit in its content, but in the sort of stories it was telling. It. The sort of content Moore would sometimes be criticized for later in his career made much more sense here in the context of this horror series.

The success of the series inspired DC to continue to recruit young British writers like Grant Morrison, Peter Milligan, and James Delano to revitalize obscure characters. Moore would wrap up his run in issue #64 by very much closing Swamp Thing's story, giving him and Abigail a place to retire away from the world. He was followed by Rick Veitch, who did a very admirable job of continuing Swamp Thing's story; introducing the idea that he and Abigail would have a child together to give life to a new plant elemental in their daughter Tefe.

DC's 1988 storyline Invasion! involved aliens with plant-based ships, a story that Swamp Thing could solve VERY quickly, making it necessary to make him unavailable during its run. Veitch did this by having him thrust back in time while Abigail was pregnant. This led to some great stories exploring the history of DC, but it also led to the premature exit of Veitch when DC chose not to publish a story where Swamp Thing is present for the crucifixion. After the planned follow-up writer also left in solidarity with Veitch the story was finished by Doug Wheeler, who was later followed by horror writer Nancy Collins and then, the Jerry Bruckheimer of comics, Mark Millar, but the series never really managed to rise to the heights it reached under Moore or Veitch.

This was also, notably, essentially the last time the tale of Swamp Thing was really innovated on. Brian K Vaughn penned a Swamp Thing story in 2004 that was actually entirely about his daughter Tefe. A few more series followed, but none of them really had anything new to say.

Our Swamp Thing Story

The actual challenge in adapting Swamp Thing's story into our timeline is the fact that, despite having such a fantastic story, there are long swaths of his timeline where nothing really happens to him. His early years have some good monster stories, but he's often not even the main character, and Alan Moore did such a good job wrapping up his story in the decades since there's really not much else of him to adapt.

So to that end, we're going to be taking story elements from all over Swamp Thing's history and just gently rearranging them. The intention here isn't to improve on one of my favorite comics ever, but to take what works really well there, and shuffle it in with other concepts that actually had promise elsewhere in the larger Swamp Thing timeline. The result should be a much longer, more complete story that stretches across the characters' whole life.

For one thing, we're not going to do the thing where a newly Swamp-Thinged Alec Holland gets transported all over the world to be a framing device for other monster stories. These early tales can totally happen, like the original Anton Arcane or Patchwork Man stories, but they actually don't need Swamp Thing there. Instead, Alec can just stay in Louisana, and have those characters come to him. The story we're using to introduce Anton Arcane to Swamp Thing is actually a hybrid of a few things, referencing characters from the gut-churning Love and Death story arc, but also framing it all as a reimagining of the world of the Swamp Thing movie.

From there, of course, we're including some of the biggest stories of the Moore run, most notably his quest into hell to save Abigail, but we're also making one pretty gigantic change; we are waiting until MUCH later to use the story that reveals that Alec Holland is actually dead. This is specifically because we're glossing over a lot of the character's early adventures, so we want much more time for everyone to THINK that he is still Holland, but also because we want to have that reveal happen once Abigail is pregnant. The body-horror concept at play should be obvious, but we also really like the idea that the strange identity crisis and desperate search for purpose that come with that reveal should all happen WITH Abigail. It should be something they go through together.

There really aren't further standalone Swamp Thing stories that need to be adapted from this point forward, but that doesn't mean we can't still find all sorts of fun appearances for the character as he interacts with the rest of DC, a known, incredibly powerful entity whose loyalty is specifically to the planet and the elemental force of the green.

Swamp Thing's Future

Just Like in Moore's run, we do very much get a sense of a closing of a book as Swamp Thing chooses to close himself off in the Louisiana swamp with his beloved wife Abigail to raise their child and live happily ever after, but of course, that isn't ever the end of the story. He is still the guardian of the green, and will continue to be called on to defend Earth from the forces that would see it harm. I also imagine that Abigail shouldn't be closed off completely, but should be able to engage with the rest of humanity, probably still serving as a nurse when she can.

Truthfully, however, the real future for both characters is Tefé. Comics seem to hate to allow their children characters to grow up in real-time, experiencing life as a small child and growing to adulthood over time. The Swamp Thing comics were one of the few times we've ever seen that happen, and even then, Tefé was eventually rapidly aged to adulthood. We know that someday soon, a very young Tefé will actually venture out into the world and become a member of a future group of Teen Titans, and when that happens, it's going to be fun to know that somewhere, her father, an elemental god of the earth who has chosen to sit outside humanity, will always have her and her mother as tethers to humanity.

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