Roots Of The Swamp Thing: Swamp Thing, Hellblazer, The Un-Men And More

Roots of the Swamp Thing: Your Portal to the Universe of Swamp Thing, The Un-Men and John Constantine: Hellblazer

• Part 1: Before Year 1
• Part 2: Year 1 to 1899
• Part 3: 1900 to 1969
• Part 4: 1970 to 1979
• Part 5: 1980 to 1984
• Part 6: 1985 to 1988
• Part 7: 1989 to 1991
• Part 8: 1992 to 1994
• Part 9: 1995 to 1999
• Part 10: 2000 to Present

Born on the Bayou
A history and introduction

Creature Features
Articles and feature stories

Cover Gallery
Judge the books by the covers

In the Swamplight
Issue-by-issue breakdowns

Elemental Lineage
Past lives and other entities

Upcoming Releases
Coming to a bog near you

What's New Bayou?
Archived news updates

About Me
Portrait of a swamp-nerd

Homepage
Go back to the roots

Contact Me
Comments, corrections & tubers

Thanks to Joe Bongiorno, who first dragged me kicking and screaming into the mucky mythos of Swamp Thing, and to Paul Giachetti, who created the amazing header banner.

Thanks also to reader 'Alec Holland,' whose support has been invaluable; Mike Sterling, for promoting Swamp Thing and this site; and Kevin Church, for his excellent optimization advice.

And thanks to Len Wein, Bernie Wrightson, Alan Moore, John Totelben, Stephen Bissette, Jamie Delano, Garth Ennis and all the other creators whose work inspired this site.

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A Brief Glimpse Into Joshua Dysart's
Swamp Thing Plans Beyond Issue #29

When Josh Dysart took over the writing chores on the fourth incarnation of Swamp Thing (as of issue #9), he had several long-term plans in mind. Unfortunately, those plans were cut short when the series was prematurely canceled, only 21 issues into his run, at issue #29.

At the end of the final issue, Alec Holland had reformed his fractured elemental consciousness; defeated Arcane, the Toad King and Jason Woodrue; and reunited with his wife Abby and daughter Tefé. But there was still more story to tell, and only Dysart knows what would have happened next. Although he prefers to keep most details secret for now (in case a future opportunity to revisit those concepts should ever crop up), he was kind enough to provide some hints for readers of this site:

DYSART: "As far as plans for the series went, oh yeah...There was a lot of great stuff coming. The thing is, to my mind, we'd only gotten the first story line finished.

"After that, each of the 'Southern Stories' was going to have their own story and interaction with Swamp Thing explored, just like Hagar and King Toad and his Bayou Boys had. So the The Boy Who Could Fly, If Only Straight Down and The Man Who Wore His Ego on the Outside, all of them would have the origins explored. And Paul Pope had agreed to pencil the two-issue Ill-Fated Cajun Lovers story, which was to be about zombies in turn-of-the-century Louisiana, when the Cousins Marriage Law was enacted (and yes, there would have been a turn-of-the-century Swamp Thing involved).

"Of course, all of this was going to be happening while the war for the swamp waged (the result of King Toad's, Nerk's and Sissy Bob's assault on Houma, as seen in the last issues of my run). And then, once the stories were told, and the war for the swamp was hitting its most violent apex, turning Swamp Thing into a perceived terrorist and he and his followers into refugees, the storyline I was most interested in would kick in: the birth of Arcane and Josephine's child in Hell.

"The child was going to be an atrocious insectillian monster but have the soul of the Buddha—a completely evolved messianic being, far beyond his years in wisdom. Imagine the stories of Monster Buddha in Hell. He would start to be persecuted, of course, and Swamp Thing was going to return to Hell to rescue him, then bring him back to the surface, where the child's greater wisdom would bring about a peaceful resolution to the war in the swamp.

"After that, who knows."

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Swamp Thing, Hellblazer and The Un-Men are
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