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
World's Finest Comics #219
| Story Title | Pub. Date |
"The Prisoner
of Rogues' Rock" | Sept.-Oct. 1973 |
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| Writer | Artists |
| Bob Haney | Dick Dillin
and Frank Giacoia |
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| Cover | Editors |
| Nick Cardy | Murray Boltinoff
and E. Nelson Bridwell |
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| Chronological Breakdown |
| • April or May 1945: As World War II ends (with Germany on the losing side), Hitler's top aide, Martin Bormann, sends a submarine to South America containing two billion dollars' worth of treasure stolen from Nazi victims. The booty is lost, however, when the U-boat sinks, only to turn up years later in Latin America. |
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| • 1963: Don Roberto Esteban, much-beloved owner of a Brazilian rancho called La Comparsa, is murdered by a cold-hearted entrepreneur named Don Ernesto Rivera and his lawyer partner, Molina. Ernesto frames Esteban's daughter Carlotta for the murder, and she is sentenced to life in prison at an island penitentiary called Rogues' Rock. As a reward for exposing her "crime," Don Ernesto is given the rancho and turns it into a mining company, oppressing the ranchers and forcing them to live in poverty and work for him in the mines. For the next 10 years, Carlotta remains at the Rogues' Rock prison, pretending to be male to honor her father's wish that he'd had a son. |
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| • 1973: At Rogues' Rock prison, Carlotta Esteban befriends Galdo, an elderly bandit in a neighboring cell. The dying man tells her of a sunken treasure he'd found before his own incarceration: the fabled horde of Martin Bormann. When Galdo dies, Carlotta hides in his body bag and is tossed into the ocean instead, breathing via a jungle herb he'd given her. Once the herb mixes with water, it transforms her into an elemental creature of muck and plantlife. Carlotta finds the Nazi booty and uses it to help her father's employees, now forced to serve as mine workers by Don Ernerto. The locals see her as a hero, dubbing her El Monstro. When a mudslide decimates a hillside favela near the rancho, El Monstro arrives on the scene, leaving a trail of jewels and treasures throughout the shanty town. Ernesto hears of the tragedy and tells his lawyer/assistant, Molina, to make the survivors work harder. One miner arrives with a bar of gold, offering to buy the land. Ernesto accepts, and the bar makes its way through banking ciricles to the Gotham City National Bank. Suspicious of the bar's Nazi symbol, the U.N. and World Bank ask Batman and Superman to investigate. As Superman scours the ocean for Bormann's U-boat, Batman tracks the creature until a local fisherman shoots him with a poisoned dart. Batman plummets into the water and is ensnared by an anaconda. Carlotta rescues him and pulls him down to an undersea cavern, where she cures him of the poison and reveals her tale. Superman arrives to fight El Monstro, which ends in a stalemate. Batman stops the fight, but Superman is skeptical of the creature, insisting the treasures should go to the Nazi victims' families. Ingesting a nearby plant, she briefly regains her original shape, then returns to creature form and retreats into the forest. |
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| Trivia |
| • This classic tale, which constinues in issue #220, is not directly connected to the Swamp Thing mythos. Still, the similarities in storyline and theme, and the fact that the story is written by Bob Haney (author of the Swamp Thing story in The Brave and the Bold #122), are enough for me to consider them part of the saga. |
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| Cover Variations |
| None |
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| Other Collections |
| None |
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