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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In the Swamplight
Swamp Thing Series 1 #8
| Story Title | Pub. Date |
| "The Lurker in Tunnel 13" | Jan.-Feb. 1974 |
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| Writer | Artist |
| Len Wein | Bernie Wrightson |
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| Cover | Editor |
| Bernie Wrightson | Joe Orlando |
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| Chronological Breakdown |
| • c. 200,000 B.C.: M'Nagalah the Eternal creates in the minds of mankind a capacity for evil and mindless violence. |
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| • 1827: M'Nagalah touches the mind of Edgar Allen Poe, inspiring him to write his first work. |
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| • 1866: M'Nagalah touches the mind of Ambrose Bierce, inspiring him to write his first work. |
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| • 1896: M'Nagalah touches the mind of six-year-old Howard Phillips "H.P." Lovecraft, inspiring him to write his first tale, "The Noble Eavesdropper." |
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| • 1904: The town of Perdition, Pennsylvania, begins seventy years of demonic control under M'Nagalah. |
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| • Jan. 7, 1974: Swamp Thing hops an Orlando's Trucking rig out of Gotham. As he navigates the snowy Appalachian woods, the cold weather slows his plant metabloism. He saves Ezekiel Monroe from an attacking bear. Before dying, the man warns him to avoid Perdition. A once-proud mining town, Perdition has been gripped by evil ever since his father Abraham evoked M'Nagalah with a book of spells. Swamp Thing carries Ezekiel to Perdition, where Hector and other locals mistake him for the killer and attack. Ezekiel's son, Jason, breaks up the fight, chiding them for their rudeness. They apologize, and Jason's wife Lydia brings him home to tend to his wounds. All appear friendly, but Swamp Thing senses something odd below the surface. When Jason's son Jody vanishes, a search party tracks his footprints to Tunnel 13 of an old mine. Swamp Thing goes in alone to repay their kindness, unaware they've set him up to fight M'Nagalah, who has grown in mass over the years, preparing to reign over mankind. Swamp Thing has enough mass to complete his growth, but Swamp Thing has other ideas: toppling a beam, he buries the beast in a mountain of debris. Exiting the mine, he nearly throttles Jason for lying to him but leaves in disgust. The evil, however, is not over, for M'Nagalah has infected Jason with an alien fungus. |
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| Trivia |
| • Challengers of the Unknown #83 reveals that Perdition's demonic possession began when Abraham Monroe released M'Nagalah from its extra-universal exile using a spell-book written by his ancestor, Dr. Malcomb Monroe, entitled Visions of a Dead Priest. Challengers #83 also gives M'Nagalah's full name and the date on which the main action of Swamp Thing #8 takes place. |
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| • M'Nagalah, created as an homage to H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos, has since appeared in Challengers of the Unknown #81-86, The Trenchcoat Brigade #1-4 and The All-New Atom #1-6. |
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| • In Challengers of the Unknown #83, M'Nagalah claims he introduced mankind to evil and mindless violence occurred "a billion-billion" years ago, but that's rather unlikely since scientific theory indicates homo sapiens first appeared on Earth around 200,000 B.C. Even Biblical accounts contradict such a figure. Therefore, I have amended the figure, attributing his claim to gross exaggeration—villains lie, after all. |
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| Reprints and Collections |
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DC Special Series #20—
The Original Swamp
Thing Saga | | Roots of the
Swamp Thing #4 | | | | |
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Swamp Thing:
Dark Genesis | | Swamp Thing:
Dark Genesis | | The Secret the
Swamp Thing | | |
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