Swamp Thing

• 1. Introduction

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  Swamp Thing, the mound of living vegetation that guards nature in DC Comics, got his name because his creator never gave him one. Writer Len Wein later recalled: "I didn't have a title for it, so I kept referring to it as 'that swamp thing I'm working on'. And that's how it got its name!" The placeholder stuck, and so did the creature. He is often drawn as an anthropomorphic heap of plant matter. Yet the central question about him keeps changing. Is he a scientist who died and was transformed into a monster, or a plant that merely believes it was once a man? And what happens when several writers each rebuild the same swamp creature from the roots up? The answers begin with a rushed assignment and stretch across decades of comics, screens and rival Swamp Things.

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• 2. Wein and Wrightson

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  In 1971, DC Comics editor Joe Orlando contacted Len Wein for a last-minute eight-page backup story. Wein came up with the idea while riding a subway in Queens. According to publisher Jenette Kahn, the story's twist ending was Orlando's addition.

  Bernie Wrightson designed the creature's look, using a rough sketch by Wein as a guideline. He finished all eight pages in a single weekend. Michael Kaluta assisted him and also modeled for the story's villain. Jeff Jones inked two of the pages.

  Yellow thought balloons and orange speech balloons gave the stories a look of their own. The stated reason was that "it was such an extraordinary effort for him to speak...whenever a caption referred to him, it was drippy like a swamp." The creature first appeared in House of Secrets #92, dated July 1971.

  Len Wein wrote the first 13 issues of the Swamp Thing's own series, and Wrightson drew the first 10. Wrightson recalled that during story conferences, Wein would walk around the office acting out all of the parts. Nestor Redondo then drew a further 13 issues, and Fred Carrillo drew the last. David Michelinie and Gerry Conway finished the series after Wein.

  In the story's setup, scientist Alec Holland and his wife Linda worked in a secret facility in the Louisiana bayous. They had invented a bio-restorative formula that could solve any nation's food shortage. Two thugs working for Nathan Ellery, head of the criminal organization the Conclave, knocked Holland out and planted a bomb. He woke as it exploded and ran, burning, into the swamp. The formula drenched his body and affected the plants around him. They took on his consciousness and memories, and rose from the bog as a humanoid body.

  In this first run, the Swamp Thing hunted the men who murdered his wife and caused his monstrous transformation. He also searched for a way to become human again. The mad scientist Anton Arcane, obsessed with gaining immortality, became his nemesis even though the two met only twice in the first series. Arcane commanded a nightmarish army of Un-Men. His brother Gregori, rebuilt as a Frankenstein Monster-type creature after a land mine explosion, served as the Patchwork Man.

  Arcane's niece, Abigail Arcane, developed a close bond with the Swamp Thing. Lt. Matthew Joseph Cable, a federal agent, began as a close friend and turned enemy. He had mistakenly believed the Swamp Thing was responsible for the deaths of Alec and Linda Holland.

  As sales plummeted toward the end, the writers tried fantastical creatures, aliens and even a brother for Alec Holland named Edward. Later writers never mentioned Edward again. The last two issues turned the Swamp Thing back into Alec Holland, facing one last menace as an ordinary human. The series was cancelled with issue #24, and a blurb promising a 25th issue with Hawkman led nowhere.

  Holland's change back into the Swamp Thing came in Challengers of the Unknown #81-87. There, the Challengers enlisted him against M'nagalah, a Lovecraftian cosmic threat he had met during Wein's run.

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• 3. A Plant That Thought

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  In 1982, DC Comics revived the series to capitalize on the summer release of the Wes Craven film of the same name. A revival had been planned for 1978, but it fell victim to the DC Implosion. The new series, The Saga of the Swamp Thing, adapted the Craven film in its first annual.

  Martin Pasko wrote the revival first. His Swamp Thing wandered the Louisiana swamps as an urban legend, feared by locals. Pasko's main arc sent him around the globe to stop a young girl named Karen Clancy, the possible Anti-Christ, from destroying the world. Pasko left because of increasing television commitments, and editor Len Wein gave the title to British writer Alan Moore. When Karen Berger took over as editor, she gave Moore free rein to revamp the title and the character as he saw fit.

  In his first issue, Moore swept aside most of the supporting cast Pasko had built over a year and a half. He brought the Sunderland Corporation to the forefront, and its men hunted the Swamp Thing and "killed" him in a hail of bullets. The investigation that followed overturned the character's origin. The creature was not Alec Holland transformed into a plant. It was a wholly plant-based entity created when Holland died, having absorbed duplicates of his consciousness and memories. He is described as "a plant that thought it was Alec Holland, a plant that was trying its level best to be Alec Holland". The swamp's plant matter had absorbed Holland's bio-restorative formula, and the creature's body was the plants' attempt to copy Holland's human form.

  Sunderland hired a scientist called Floronic Man to study the body, which he stored in a cryochest. Floronic Man deduced that the real Holland had died in the explosion. After the two parted on bad terms, he used Sunderland's automated computer systems to raise the thermostat in the cryochest. The body regenerated. In his search for Sunderland, the Swamp Thing found Floronic Man's report. It sent him into a mindless rage, and he killed Sunderland.

  The shock of learning his true origin caused a temporary mental breakdown and identity crisis. He rooted himself in the swamp and spent three weeks dreaming, and his mind traveled into the Green. Floronic Man returned to the swamp, discovered the connection to the Green, and went mad. By eating parts of the creature's body, he could influence plant growth worldwide. The Swamp Thing caught up with him and persuaded him that his war against animal life was pointless, since plants and animals need each other to survive.

  A friendship grew between the Swamp Thing and Abby Cable, Arcane's niece, while her husband Matthew turned to alcohol. When Kamara the Monkey King tormented her autistic students at Elysium Lawns, the Swamp Thing destroyed the demon with help from Etrigan the Demon. That same night, Matthew crashed his car while heading to help Abby and was mortally wounded. To stay alive, he made a pact with the spirit of Anton Arcane, who possessed his body.

  Issue #32 mixed comedy and tragedy when the Swamp Thing met an alien version of Pogo, the character created by Walt Kelly. In issue #37, Moore formally introduced John Constantine the Hellblazer, a magician and con artist who led the Swamp Thing into the "American Gothic" storyline. Moore also introduced the idea that DC's Cain and Abel were the mystical reincarnations of the Biblical figures, caught in an endless cycle of murder and resurrection. The Saga of the Swamp Thing was the first mainstream comic book series to completely abandon the approval of the Comics Code Authority.

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• 4. Avatars of the Green

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  Alan Moore eventually tied the original House of Secrets #92 story into the main series with a new idea. He revealed that dozens, perhaps hundreds, of Swamp Things had existed since the dawn of humanity. All were designated defenders of the Parliament of Trees, an elemental community that rules a dimension known as the Green, which connects all plant life on Earth. This broadened the series to include ecological and spiritual concerns while keeping its horror-fantasy roots.

  As Avatar of the Green, Alec Holland as Swamp Thing controls the cosmic energies that animate all plant life in the known universe. He can inhabit and animate vegetable matter at will, including alien plants, and move toward life wherever it exists. He can change his size and shape, and he has superhuman strength and regenerative powers. He can even travel through time. Chemical compounds that harm plants can poison him, and his powers can be impaired if mystical or scientific means cut his connection to the Green.

  After reuniting with Abby, the Swamp Thing went to the Parliament of Trees and was greeted with surprised horror. The Parliament had assumed him dead after an attack by Dwight Wicker and the Defense Department Intelligence. It had begun growing a sprout that would become a new elemental once bound with a human spirit. Two elementals active at once would set the balance of nature awry and cause calamity. The Parliament offered a choice: take root among the trees and leave Abby forever, or kill the Sprout. He refused both. Instead he took control of John Constantine's body, displacing Constantine into the astral plane. In that borrowed body, he conceived a child with Abby to host the Sprout. After the Claw sent him back in time, he returned to the present in time to witness the birth of his daughter, Tefé Holland.

  Lady Weeds was a Victorian-era avatar active in the 1800s, before the title Swamp Thing was commonly adopted. She was ruthless and slew all her rivals. She persuaded the Green to stop sending rivals against her by first killing its latest challenger, who came from Ireland. She then caused the Great Potato Famine as a symbolic gesture of her power.

  Alexander Olsen, called Alex, was a talented young scientist in Louisiana in the early 1900s, married to Linda. His assistant Damian Ridge secretly loved Linda, tampered with Olsen's chemicals and killed him in the explosion. Ridge dumped the body in the nearby swamp and used Linda's grief to persuade her to marry him. Olsen rose as a humanoid pile of vegetable matter and killed Ridge, but Linda did not recognize him and ran away. He was left to wander the swamps alone and became a local legend in Louisiana. He later accepted the Parliament's offer to join them, which left the role open for a more worthy successor.

  Alan Hallman was a scientist working on a formula to repair damaged crops when the Parliament chose him. He died in flames, as all Earth elementals must. While traveling through the Green, a creature of the Grey captured him and broke him down into fungus and mold. Matango later gathered his consciousness together in his Chamber of Dreams and recreated him as an emissary of the Grey. Once Matango returned from Hell, Hallman was released into the Green with orders to capture the Swamp Thing and his daughter Tefé and force them to surrender their individuality.

  Albert Höllerer, a German airplane pilot, was shot down over a bog in 1942 and burned alive. He became the Swamp Thing of that era. For years he walked the Earth, carrying a small toy airplane as the only memory of his former life. In 1954 he finally found peace among the Parliament of Trees.

  Aaron Hayley, an American soldier in World War II, was slain and arose as a Swamp Thing too. Since Höllerer was still active, Hayley served only briefly before taking his place among the Parliament. In the 2020 crossover "Endless Winter", the summoned spirit of Jon Haraldson, the Viking Prince, became a temporary agent of the Green to fight the Frost King. When the story ended, he chose to return his spirit to Valhalla.

  Calbraith A. H. Rodgers was born in England in 1920. Ever since he was a boy, he had heard the leaves, the flowers and the trees whisper that something great and terrible waited on the other side of death. Afraid of it, he enlisted in the Royal Air Force to escape the pull of the Green. On the 3rd of May 1942, on his fourth mission as a pilot, his plane was shot down. He landed in a swamp, and the dying Rodgers felt branches and petals reaching for him. The Green fused the man with itself in his final moments, and the Swamp Thing was created. Rodgers would later return with a warning for Alec Holland.

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• 5. Creative Turnover

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  With issue #65, penciler Rick Veitch took over from Moore and began writing the series, continuing in a roughly similar vein for 24 more issues. His term ended in 1989 in a widely publicized dispute. DC refused to publish issue #88 because it used Jesus Christ as a character, even though it had approved the script. In that script, the Swamp Thing was a cupbearer who offers Jesus water when he calls for it from the cross.

  Doug Wheeler took over the title. In the published version of issue #88, he changed the cup that the Shining Knight believed to be the Holy Grail. It became a cup used in a religious ceremony by a Neanderthal tribe about to be wiped out by Cro-Magnons. In issue #90, Wheeler reintroduced Matango, a character Stephen Bissette had introduced in Swamp Thing Annual #4. He also completed Veitch's unfinished story arc.

  In 1991, after a period of high creative turnover, DC sought to revive interest by bringing in horror writer Nancy A. Collins. Beginning with Swamp Thing Annual #6, she wrote issues #110-138 of the second volume. She restored the pre-Moore tone and added a new set of supporting characters. She also resurrected Anton Arcane and the Sunderland Corporation as foils. Her stories tended to be ecological, and at one point featured giant killer flowers.

  With issue #140, dated March 1994, the title went to Grant Morrison for a four-issue arc co-written by the then-unknown Mark Millar. Collins had destroyed the series' status quo, and Morrison wanted to shake it up again. He plunged the Swamp Thing into a nightmarish dreamworld where he split in two. One half was Alec Holland, and the other was a mindless Swamp Thing of pure destruction.

  Millar took over with issue #144 and launched what began as an ambitious 25-part storyline. The Swamp Thing would face a series of trials against rival elemental forces. Millar closed the series with issue #171, in a finale where the Swamp Thing becomes master of all elemental forces, including the planet.

  The third series arrived in 2001, written by Brian K. Vaughan and drawn by Roger Petersen and Giuseppe Camuncoli. It focused on the Swamp Thing's daughter, Tefé Holland. She was chronologically 11-12, but a mindwipe orchestrated by the Swamp Thing had aged her into the body of an 18-year-old. Constantine and Abby tried to control her darker impulses, which came from her exposure to the Parliament of Trees. She held power over both plants and flesh.

  Tefé believed she was a normal girl named Mary who had miraculously recovered from cancer three years earlier. On prom night, she found her boyfriend and best friend betraying her and rediscovered her powers and identity. In a moment of anger, she killed them both. She faked her own death and traveled across the country, and ultimately to Africa, in search of a mythical "Tree of Knowledge".

  Meanwhile, the Swamp Thing and Abigail seemed to have reunited as lovers in their old home in the Louisiana swamps outside Houma. He told Tefé that he had cut himself off from the Green. The god-like powers he had acquired from the Parliaments of Air, Waves, Stone and Flames during the Millar run seemed to have left no trace.

  A fourth series began in 2004, written by Andy Diggle for issues #1-6, Will Pfeifer for #7-8 and Joshua Dysart for #9-29. After the first storyline, the Swamp Thing reverted to his plant-based Earth elemental status and tried to live an "eventless" life in the Louisiana swamps. Tefé was rendered powerless and mortal. Issue #29 was intended to be the final issue, because the volume was cancelled for low sales.

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• 6. Rebirths

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  The crossover event Brightest Day revealed that the Swamp Thing had been corrupted by the personality of the villain Nekron, in the wake of the Blackest Night crossover. He now believed himself to be Nekron, just as he had once believed himself to be Alec Holland. He went on a rampage in Star City, seeking to destroy all life on Earth.

  The Life Entity used Hawkman, Hawkgirl, Firestorm, Martian Manhunter, Aquaman and Deadman to slow the rampage. Meanwhile a new Swamp Thing formed around the human remains of Alec Holland. Holland's last conscious memory was of hurling himself into the swamp to put out the flames, and he had no memory of ever being the Swamp Thing. The earlier creature was a mass of plants holding copies of Holland's memories. This one was generated directly from his body, so it truly was him. The Entity gave Holland the powers of the Green, plus elemental governance over fire.

  Holland defeated and killed the corrupted Swamp Thing and restored life to natural environments across the Earth. He also restored Aquaman, Firestorm, Hawkman and Martian Manhunter to normal. He declared that those who hurt the Green would face his wrath. The book ended with him resuming his original mission by killing several businessmen who deliberately polluted illegally.

  A three-issue miniseries, Brightest Day Aftermath: The Search for the Swamp Thing, followed immediately. John Constantine tried to work out what had changed about the Swamp Thing and track him down. Zatanna, Batman and Superman assisted him.

  In September 2011, DC Comics relaunched Swamp Thing with issue #1 as part of The New 52, with Scott Snyder writing issues #1-18 and an annual. In this version, Holland was alive again but haunted by memories of the Swamp Thing. He tried to live as a carpenter in Louisiana, yet the Green kept reaching for him. Superman visited him about strange animal deaths across the world, and Holland declined to investigate because he wanted a normal life. He said he had made a bio-restorative formula again, then tried to destroy it after a vision of the Green overrunning the Earth. That night, nightmares woke him to a room covered in plants. He ran outside to destroy the formula he had kept, only to be stopped by a Swamp Thing.

  The visitor was Calbraith A. H. Rodgers, who told Holland of the rise of Sethe and the Rot. He also said Holland was the next protector of the Green, destined to be a warrior king. Rodgers confirmed that the Swamp Thing of Holland's memories was not him. Soon after, a member of the Rot, a force representing death and decay, impaled Holland. As he was dying, he asked the Parliament of Trees to use their last power to take the formula from his bag and turn him into the Swamp Thing. They agreed and broke open the formula. His human body was replaced with plant matter, and he emerged from a pod as the Swamp Thing.

  During the run, he teamed with Animal Man to defeat the Rot and Anton Arcane. He accepted that he and Abigail could not be together. He was forced to destroy the Parliament when it tried to betray him, and he fought a new enemy called the Gray. He also met Cappucine, who closely resembled Abigail Arcane. Snyder's run concluded with Rotworld, a crossover between Swamp Thing, Animal Man and Frankenstein, Agent of S.H.A.D.E. Charles Soule then wrote issues #19-40.

  Len Wein himself returned to the character in a six-issue miniseries drawn by Kelley Jones, released between March and August 2016. It followed the Swamp Thing giving up his powers to Anton Arcane, who was disguised as Matt Cable. Tom King then wrote a winter special in 2018, which also featured Wein's last Swamp Thing issue.

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• 7. Levi Kamei

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  In March 2021, a 16-issue miniseries titled The Swamp Thing began, written by Ram V with art by Mike Perkins. It was originally planned for 10 issues. After issue #10, a short hiatus followed, and the series returned in March 2022. It focused on a new character, Levi Kamei, while Alec Holland was off-world. Kamei debuted in Infinite Frontier #0 in May 2021.

  Kamei is an immigrant scientist from India who specializes in biology. He descends from a community that has watched over the Kaziranga wetlands for generations. At a young age, a ritual his mother performed on him and his brother, Jacob, unknowingly marked him to become the Swamp Thing. His more progressive views set him apart from his family and community, who distrust foreign corporations and their environmental impact. The loss of familial and cultural identity defines the character, and he seeks to regain it.

  Kamei later became a scientist for a foreign company, Prescot Industries. When his employers showed interest in the Kaziranga wetlands, he tried to help negotiate a deal with a community tribunal to sell the land in exchange for economic opportunities. The tribunal rejected the deal and protests followed. Prescot Industries used its political ties to force a deal anyway, and Levi's father was killed when the protests were violently broken up. A grieving Levi received a vision of his future self as the Swamp Thing. He chose to accept the role in order to atone for his mistakes.

  His girlfriend and fellow scientist Jennifer Reece helped him understand his power. Others, including Amanda Waller and Prescot Industries, sought to control him. His rival in the Green turned out to be his brother Jacob, now known as the Hedera. Jacob believed he should have been the Avatar, because his environmentalist ideals were stronger. He fell toward eco-terrorism to punish humanity for its crimes against nature. Conflict escalated when Prescot hired Jason Woodrue, whose actions resurrected Levi's initial adversary, the Wanderer.

  In the Dark Crisis on Infinite Earths storyline, Levi and his predecessor were among the supernatural heroes who questioned the Great Darkness's actions. Alec Holland mentored him and played a minor role, explaining to other heroes how Pariah connected to the Great Darkness. Levi joined Justice League Dark and investigated the Great Darkness's "corruption" with a team of superheroes. He later lent his powers to Jon Kent to extract a machine that let Pariah manipulate a portion of the Great Darkness's power. Afterward, Levi helped the Titans regrow an area of a rainforest. He was recruited to the team as a part-time member, balancing that with his role as Avatar of the Green.

  Levi has all the powers of the original Swamp Thing. His body is vegetable matter, he has superhuman strength and size-changing abilities, and he controls plant life. He can transfer his consciousness and is functionally immortal. Unlike earlier Swamp Things, he can shift between his human form and his Swamp Thing form. As a gifted scientist, he can also copy the chemical makeup of other plants. For example, he can gain resistance against heavy metal toxicity by adapting the chemistry of Pycnandra acuminata.

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• 8. Beyond the Page

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  Dick Durock made the Swamp Thing's live-action debut in the 1982 film Swamp Thing, with Ray Wise playing Alec Holland. Durock played both Swamp Thing and Holland in the 1989 sequel, The Return of Swamp Thing. Wise reappeared in a flashback through archive footage. A Greenpeace anti-littering public service announcement featuring Alec Holland's Swamp Thing aired to coincide with the sequel. Durock played the role again in a 1990 television series.

  Derek Mears wore the physical costume in the 2019 television series Swamp Thing, with Andy Bean playing Alec Holland. In that version, Holland is killed while investigating a swamp-borne virus plaguing Marais, Louisiana. The swamp then absorbs his memories and places them in an anthropomorphic plant. Mears later appeared through archival footage in the Arrowverse crossover Crisis on Infinite Earths and in the Titans episode "Dude, Where's My Gar?"

  Video Comics, an early Nickelodeon series that ran from 1979 to 1981, told Swamp Thing stories through narrated comic book panels. An animated series followed in 1991, with Len Carlson voicing the character. Later voices include Mark Hamill in Justice League Action and Sam Richardson in Harley Quinn. The 2003 documentary The Mindscape of Alan Moore also contains a psychedelic animation based on The Saga of the Swamp Thing #29, "Love and Death".

  Video games have made him a playable character in titles such as DC Universe Online, voiced by Chilimbwe Washington. He is also playable in Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham, voiced by JB Blanc, and in Injustice 2, voiced by Fred Tatasciore. IGN ranked him 28th in its Top 100 Comic Book Heroes list.

  The comics themselves collected prizes early. Len Wein won the 1972 Shazam Award for Best Writer (Dramatic Division), and Bernie Wrightson won Best Penciller (Dramatic Division) that same year. Together they won Best Individual Story (Dramatic) in 1972 for "Dark Genesis" in Swamp Thing #1. The series won Best Continuing Feature in 1973.

  Alan Moore won the Jack Kirby Award for Best Writer in both 1985 and 1986 for his Swamp Thing work. Moore, John Totleben and Steve Bissette won the 1985 award for Best Single Issue with Swamp Thing Annual #2. The same three also won Best Continuing Series for three years running, from 1985 through 1987.

  On the 31st of January 2023, a self-titled Swamp Thing horror film was announced as in development at New Line Cinema and DC Studios. The next day, The Hollywood Reporter confirmed that James Mangold was in early talks to write and direct it. He was set to do so after Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny and his Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown.

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