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

The Vivi-Quinquerme spacecraft Find the Lady lands in the bayou country of Louisiana. The ship holds up on entry-burn, but a tadling's portapuddle nearly decants during landing. Shipboss Pog and Front-Mate Bartle calm a panicking Hystricide crewman, as the tortoise-like ship bounces to a stop and reports a breathable atmosphere. Pog tells Bartle to fetch the Hystricide, the Junior Umbrellabirds and Dr. Strigiforme, who are all that remain of his crew. The Hystricide is cynical, for though this world is like the Lady, it cannot be Her. Pog's crew resemble characters from Walt Kelly's Pogo strips and speak in unusual patterns of nonsenical, combined words. As they search the swamp for intelligent life, Strigiforme shoots Alec unconscious with a gentique spotgun. Pog sends others to explore the swamp while he sits atop Alec's bound form and ruminates. When Alec awakens, Pog realizes he's sentient and frees him. Using pictographs in the dirt, Pog communicates their long journey to find a new home after a hostile race stole their world and destroyed the fauna and flora. They have come here seeking a world free of those who would harm animals or plants. Sadly, Alec leads him to Richie's Farm, where Pog is devestated to see a concession stand selling cooked meat to voracious customers. Bartle, meanwhile, goes for a swim and sees a trio of aligators. Overjoyed at finding others similar to himself, he rushes to embrace them and dies a horrible death. Hearing his cries, Alec and Pog rush to find the gators fighting for his corpse. Alec beats them into submission and carries Bartle back to shore. Pog sadly tells his crew, who mourn their fallen comrade and realize Earth is not the Lady after all. Bidding fairwell to Alec, they depart to resume searching for a viable world.

Swamp Thing (Series 2) #32: "Pog"

NOTE: It's not a coincidence that the characters look and speak like those from Walt Kelly's Pogo... they are from Walt Kelly's Pogo.

With Matt in a deep coma at the hospital, his prognosis bleak, Abby takes an apartment by herself.

Swamp Thing (Series 2) #33: "Abandoned Houses"

Her address is 1318 Finey Street.

Swamp Thing (Series 2) #51: "Home Free"

One Friday night, she dreams of meeting Cain and Abel, the sons of Adam and Eve, and Caretakers of the House of Mystery and House of Secrets in the Dreaming. Repeatedly abusing his stuttering brother Abel, Cain offers Abby the choice of a secret or a mystery. She chooses a secret, and Abel leads her into his House. There, amid the dust-covered stories of the sub-conscious, he produces a bracelet that carries with it the tale of Alex Olsen and his wife Linda. Abby is confused, for Olsen's story is so similar to Alec's. Abel reveals that Alec was not the only Swamp Thing, nor was his creation an accident; in fact, there have been many more, for in times of trouble, the Earth creates elemental champions for protection. The rules forbid her from taking this knowledge back to the waking world, for a mystery may be shared but a secret must remain alone forever. Abel, however, feels the knowledge will aid Alec in troubled times to come and tries to sneak Abby out of the Dreaming with the secret intact. Cain catches them and again murders his brother, sending Abby home with the secret locked in her subconscious. She awakens and tries to write the story down, but a phone call from Deanna asking her to help out at work pushes the details from her mind.

Swamp Thing (Series 2) #33: "Abandoned Houses"

NOTE: This issue reprints the first Swamp Thing tale from House of Secrets #92, briding the gap between that story and the subsequent saga of Alec Holland.

A wino in Blossomville , Pennsylvania, is horrified to find his secret stash of nuclear waste cemented over by employees of the Lombard Coal Mine. Quite insane, he's been drinking the stuff for thirteen years. His nickname is Nuke-Face, for most of the flesh of his face has rotted away from drinking nuclear waste Determined to find more toxic liquor, he makes his way to Louisiana, where Lombard employees plan to dump whatever's left of the deadly liquid into the swamp.

Swamp Thing (Series 2) #35: "The Nuke-Face Papers, Part 1"

Spring 1985 A.D.

Abby visits Matt at Terrebone Parish General Hospital. wjere Dr. Ruiz can find no indication of higher brain function. The pain she feels is not mourning for Matt, however, but longing for Alec. She returns to the swamp to visit him. Plucking a flower from his chest for her hair, she tells him she likes his appearance best in the Spring. She stopped loving Matt even before his coma, she says, and now she loves another but has not told him. Alec advises her to be honest with her feelings, and she admits that it's him she loves. To her surprise, he has loved her for years but was afraid to scare her away. They kiss, and it tastes like lime. Though physical sex is impossible, he feels there should still be a communion and offers her one of his tubers. She takes a bite and the world shifts to one of bright jewels of light, a pastiche of reds and yellows and purples. This is how he sometimes perceives the world, he explains. The two merge in a pool of blues and greens, their minds intertwined. Through his mind, she experiences the world as a living, breathing, pulsing entity. When it's over, both are as sexually satisfied as though from an actual physical encounter.

Swamp Thing (Series 2) #34: "Rite of Spring"

A hippie in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, named Chester Williams breaks up with his girlfriend Suzanne.

Swamp Thing (Series 2) #43: "An American Gothic-Windfall"

Nuke-Face and another wino named Diagonal Bob relax in the Louisiana swamp at night. Nuke-Face lights discarded newspapers for warmth and dances around drunkenly, singing "Pennsylvania 6-5000." Diagonal Bob runs out of alcohol and tastes Nuke-Face's. He spits out the foul liquid, but the sip he swallows makes him violently ill and quickly kills him. Oblivious, Nuke-Face tells him of his home-town of Blossomville, Pennsylvania, where an explosion at the Lombard Coal Mine in 1968 started a coal-seam fire, forcing locals to abandon their town. Back in Blossomville, Wallace and Treasure Monroe view the wreckage of their town before moving to Louisiana. Wallace works for Lombard and feels guilty over the danger represented by the toxic waste his company has dumped. That night, Alec dreams of Blossomville as Abby sleeps. He awakens to see discarded newspapers bearing headlines of global ecological disaster. Ddisheartened, he goes for a walk and finds Nuke-Face desperately trying to un-earth barrels of toxic waste buried by Lombard employees. Frantic, Nuke-Face grabs Alec and begs him to help, but contact with his flesh so poisons Alec's plant metabolism that he falls to the ground, weakened. Concerned, Nuke-Face tips back a flash of toxic waste into Alec's mouth, intending to revive him. The liquid burns a hole in Alec's midriff, and as Alec lies there helplessly, Nuke-Face loses interest in his strange companion and walks off to find a drink.

Swamp Thing (Series 2) #35: "The Nuke-Face Papers, Part 1"

Dreaming of Abby, Alec rots away the whole night and into the following day. Elsewhere in the swamp, Abby awakens and catches a bus to Elysium Lawns, but while working with a non-verbal child named Tommy, she hears Alec's mental cry and returns to the swamp. She finds him near death, his lower half entirely gone. He tells her he plans to leave this body and rebuild another one, then dies. In town, local teen Billy Hatcher goes fishing in the woods and runs into Nuke-Face. He taunts the man, then runs to tell his friends. Officer Mike Bernhardt investigates Diagonal Bob's death. He questions Mrs. Morel, Bob's landlord and owner of the Time Saver convenience store. Wallace Monroe overhears them and says several winos recently disappeared in Pennsylvania as well. Concerned, he returns to the hotel and his pregnant wife. Heading out to buy milk, he sees Billy and his friends chanting "Nuke-Face!" He panics, for children in Pennsylvania chanted the same phrase, and he thinks something evil has followed him here. Treasure is gone when he returns, so Mike organizes a search party in the swamps. They find her in the morning and learn that she'd taken a walk, gotten lost and come across a diseased wino glowing and in need of help. She'd slept next to him to keep him warm, and when she awoke in the morning, he'd appeared dead so she'd headed back to the hotel. Wallace and the police, hearing that she'd slept next to a nucleated man for an entire night, back away for fear of contamination. An ambulance takes her to the hospital, the baby's future uncertain. Guilt-ridden, Wallace leaves town. Mike searches for Nuke-Face's corpse but finds nothing, for the man has somehow survived and gone off in search of another fix. Mike's brother Joey relates the day's events to Billy Hatcher, who amazes his friends with the whole bizarre tale.

Swamp Thing (Series 2) #36: "The Nuke-Face Papers, Part 2"

Long after the Nuke-Face incident, nothing grows on the spot at which Alec's body dissolved.

Swamp Thing (Series 2) #78: "To Sow One's Seed in the Wind"

Wallace Monroe's child is a stillborn, and his wife lasts only a few more months before dying herself. Ashamed at his actions, Wallace wanders the country side looking for a way to redeem himself.

Swamp Thing (Series 2) #53: "The Garden of Earthly Delights"

Mid to late June 1985 A.D.

John Constantine learns of the imminent return of the Shadow, an ancient menace that cannot be destroyed by mystical weapons. He decides his only hope is to find a way to help the creature attain inner peace, and the only being able to do that would be an earth elemental. Unfortunately, he learns, the reigning earth elemental (the Swamp Thing) is still in his infancy and unaware of his own nature.

SDC Heroes Role-Playing Game—Magic Sourcebook

One of Earth's two great Magic Lodges urges John Constantine to help the Swamp Thing evolve on his first step to godhood. Constantine agrees, unaware the lodge intends to use the elemental's power to one day destroy humanity. Constantine does not learn of their treachery until 1997.

Swamp Thing (Series 2) #166: "Trial By Fire, Part 1-Golden Days Before the End"

June 22, 1985 A.D.

Alec slowly begins to regenerate. Tim Carburton expresses his and Deanna French's concern for Abby's well-being, but she thinks only of Alec, who has been re-born as a tiny seedling.