Welcome to the Wellington Comic Lover’s (WCL) Guide, where we take you through the Wellington City Libraries’ collection of a comic book character.
Just in time for the spooky season, this post is about DC Comic’s premier horror character. You may know him as the twisted, vegetative mockery of a man from the deep waters of the Louisiana bayou, or the plant elemental Avatar of the Green, he is…the Swamp Thing!
(via GIPHY)
Note: DC Comics are divided by publishing eras, determined by a point where they set the issue number (and sometimes, continuity) of a series back to #1. ‘Pre-Crisis’ is everything published before 1985; ‘Post-Crisis’ is everything from 1986-2011, the New 52 from 2011-2016, DC Rebirth from 2016-2021, and Infinite Frontier from 2021 onwards.
Who is the Swamp Thing?
In the swamps of Louisiana, botanist Alec Holland is killed in an accident while working on a ‘bio-restorative formula’. Fusing with his formula and the vegetation of the swamp, Alec is resurrected as a shambling humanoid mass of plant matter. Together with his girlfriend, the mad scientist’s daughter Abigail Arcane, Alec protects the environment and fights supernatural threats as the Swamp Thing.
Classic Swamp Thing
First appearing in 1971 in House of Secrets #92, Swamp Thing was popular enough to immediately spin off into his own title. Under the pen of Len Wein and Bernie Wrightson, he fought mad scientists, federal agents, and Lovecraftian horrors.
Swamp Thing : the Bronze Age. Vol. 1 / Wein, Len
Swamp Thing : the Bronze Age. Vol. 2
Swamp Thing : the bronze age. Volume 3 / Pasko, Martin
Saga of the Swamp Thing
The most famous run on Swamp Thing is by Watchmen writer Alan Moore, who introduced the idea that Swamp Thing was not some accident of science, but in fact a plant elemental who embodies and protects ‘The Green’, the collective consciousness of all plant life on Earth, answerable to the Parliament of Trees.
Saga of the Swamp Thing. Book one / Moore, Alan
Saga of the Swamp Thing. Book two / Moore, Alan
Saga of the Swamp Thing. Book three / Moore, Alan
Saga of the Swamp Thing. Book four / Moore, Alan
Saga of the Swamp Thing. Book five / Moore, Alan
Saga of the Swamp Thing. Book six / Moore, Alan
New 52 – Swamp Thing reborn
In the New 52 series, Alec has returned to human form, but chooses to become the Swamp Thing again to fight The Rot, a force responsible for the natural decay of all life that had run amok. After preventing Earth from becoming a ‘Rotworld’, Alec begins to expand his suite of plant abilities to fight off a challenger to his position as Avatar of the Green, and confronts a new elemental Parliament based around artificial intelligence.
Swamp Thing. Volume 1, Raise them bones / Snyder, Scott
Swamp Thing. Volume 2, Family tree / Snyder, Scott
Swamp Thing. Volume 3, Rotworld : The Green Kingdom / Snyder, Scott
Swamp Thing. Volume 4, Seeder / Soule, Charles
Swamp Thing. Volume 5, The killing field / Soule, Charles
Swamp Thing. Volume 6, The Sureen / Soule, Charles
Swamp Thing. Volume 7, Season’s end / Soule, Charles
DC Rebirth
Swamp Thing didn’t have a series during DC Rebirth, but he appears in several miniseries, Halloween-themed specials, and a YA graphic novel called Twin Branches, which reimagines Alec Holland as a shy, scientifically-minded teenager with an outgoing twin brother, Walker.
Swamp Thing : the dead don’t sleep / Wein, Len
Swamp Thing : roots of terror : the deluxe edition / King, Tom
Swamp Thing : tales from the bayou / Seeley, Tim
Swamp Thing : twin branches / Stiefvater, Maggie
Infinite Frontier
During Infinite Frontier, a new Swamp Thing appears in the form of Levi Kamei, an Indian man who becomes a plant elemental after returning home to India and learning his secret family history.
Future state : Suicide Squad / Thompson, Robbie
The Swamp Thing [1] : becoming / V, Ram
The Swamp Thing [2] : conduit / V, Ram
The Swamp Thing [3] : the parliament of gears / V, Ram
Swamp Thing : green hell / Lemire, Jeff
Teams
Swamp Thing is a regular member of the Justice League Dark, a team that takes on the supernatural threats too big for the Justice League alone to handle. Here, Swamp Thing has to contend with the Parliament of Flowers, a rival faction to the Parliament of Trees.
Justice League dark. Vol. 1, The last age of magic / Tynion, James
Wonder Woman and Justice League Dark : the witching hour / Tynion, James
Justice League Dark. Vol. 3, The witching war / Tynion, James
Justice League Dark. Volume 4, A costly trick of magic / V, Ram
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