Self-Discovery

Existentialism values freedom above almost everything else, and sees self-deception as a barrier to freedom.

When we lie to ourselves we lose the ability to recognize reality. Philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre illustrates this with an example: a young woman is on a date with a man. The young woman hears the man say that “he admires her” but ignores the sexual implications, the man grabs her hand, which she doesn’t enjoy, but she resigns herself to it, ignoring it, becoming passive. In this example the woman has become an observer to her own life, incapable of taking action.

Sartre compares self-deception to sleeping, and the realization of self-deception to waking up, implying that the process to remove our self-deceptions can be unpleasant but necessary.

The inability to recognize reality is something that is stripped away in “The Anatomy Lesson“. Swamp Thing is harshly thrust from the comfort of deception and into a new, horrifying understanding of himself. He is a plant, he’s never been human. A discovery made by scientist, and plant-based supervillain, Jason Woodrue.

A troubling revelation for a creature that was so dedicated to regaining his humanity. Imagine if the Thing discovered Ben Grimm’s dead body in the Fantastic Four’s spaceship, or if Spider-Man discovered he was a radioactive spider that killed a kid named Peter Parker, stole his memories, and mutated into a human.

Existential Crisis

The rest of these issues, especially the next three, stem from this discovery, and focus on how Swamp Thing can self-actualize.

Self-actualization is the realization or fulfillment of one’s talents and potential, especially when considered as a drive or need present in everyone.

In existentialism self-actualization is the process through which we create ourselves. In other words, the choices we make define who we are, and we should always be true to ourselves.

Suddenly Swamp Thing is forced to consider a plethora of new questions about himself: If his lungs are just plant fibers pretending to be human lungs, does he need to breathe? Can he grow fruit? Most importantly, is he even still human?

Abby Cable, a friend of Swamp Thing’s, and her husband, Matt, go walking in the swamp, looking for Swamp Thing, who had recently been kidnapped and presumed dead. They soon find him, but as a vegetable, filled with bugs, and pooling water on his face.

Swamp Thing has become a plant, a phenomenon which Woodrue, who had followed Swamp Thing to Louisiana, then explains to Abby.

Swamp Thing is now able to establish roots, stop breathing, and even produce edible food from his own body. Pretty soon, in a dreamlike sequence where Moore indulges in his love of word play, Swamp Thing begins to question his existence. If being human is such a burden, and Swamp Thing was never human in the first place, why not just give it all up?

Despite the pleas from his “humanity”, Swamp Thing decides that he’d rather rest, and forgo the troubles of human life.

Meanwhile, while studying a fruit produced by Swamp Thing, Woodrue discovers Swamp Thing’s ability to tap into something called “The Green”, a sort of mental connection between all plant life (depicted in suitably trippy art from artists Bissette and Totleben).

Woodrue, driven partly mad by this discovery, begins using the green to influence plants to murder, believing that he must kill all human and animal life for their abuse of plants. Soon after, Swamp Thing awakens, enraged by Abby nearly being killed in Woodrue’s rampage. Swamp Thing confronts woodrue and exposes the flaw in Woodrue’s plan: Animals and plants need each other to survive. If humans and animals were to die, what process would change oxygen into carbon dioxide for plants to breathe? What would provide nourishment to the soil? What forces would drive plants to develop and grow? This causes the green to reject Woodrue but the damage to his mind has already been done. By the time the Justice League finds him they see a broken man, clearly insane, and decide it’s best to send him to Arkham.

Abby finally has a moment to speak with Swamp Thing, in which he rejects the name Alec and claims…

Free from the burdens of Self-Deception, Swamp Thing is no longer a tortured monster searching to regain a humanity he never had. Instead, he is a new being comfortable with who he is and capable of accepting his new body. The endless insecurities and torment faced by the once-troubled monster finally end as he is no longer Alec Holland. He is the Swamp Thing.

The plot threads started in “The Anatomy Lesson” are resolved finally in “The Burial” an issue where Swamp Thing finds himself haunted by the ghost of Alec Holland. The ghost guides Swamp Thing to Alec Holland’s corpse which had been lying at the bottom of the Swamp ever since the Swamp Thing had emerged. Swamp Thing buries the body, finally allowing Alec to rest, and allowing himself to move on reflecting an important passing of the torch.

Throughout the next several issues Swamp Thing tests the limits of his body, discovering latent abilities, and exploring his connection to the green.

While Swamp Thing’s awakening from Self-Deception may have been difficult, it lead to a newfound understanding of the world and improved Swamp Thing’s quality of life, giving him the ability to self-actualize, and escape his constant struggle to regain a human form.

Sophisticated Suspense

Prior to Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing, DC had never published a comic book without the approval of the Comics Code Authority (CCA). During the events of some of the prior issues Matt Cable crashes his car while drunk, badly injured, a fly promises to allow him to see his wife again if Matt will allow the fly to enter his body.

Soon we learn that the fly contained the soul of Anton Arcane, the deceased nemesis of Swamp Thing, and uncle of Abby Cable, who has now escaped hell. The fly allowed Arcane to possess Matt’s dying body, and utilize his unrealized supernatural abilities. By the time Abby discovers this, Arcane had been puppeteering her husband’s corpse for some time.

Never one to shy away from the sexual side of stories, Moore references the fact that Abby has had sex with Arcane, her own uncle, unaware he inhabited her husband’s body. A truly horrifying notion that, unfortunately, reflects a comics trend to subject female characters to disgusting horrors, primarily to motivate the male protagonist.

Importantly however, this isn’t solely to motivate Swamp Thing, it reflects Abby’s own journey of awakening from self-deception. Even before Matt’s possession, Abby had been constantly fighting with Matt due to his alcoholism and vanity.

Abby can’t acknowledge her failing relationship, instead pretending her marital problems are temporary and easily resolved, a situation reminiscent of Sartre’s woman on a date example of self-deception. Like the woman, Abby chooses to ignore her partner’s issues, and unconsciously subjects herself to a life where she is incapable of recognizing a crisis until it’s too late.

Like Swamp Thing’s realization that he is a plant, Abby is forced to realize the monster her husband has become, when he literally becomes a monster.

Arcane quickly kills Abby, damns her soul to hell, and battles Swamp Thing. Arcane loses when Matt regains control of his body and sends Arcane’s soul back to its own damnation. But the damage had been done, Abby was still dead.

This was the first story DC had published without the approval of the Comics Code Authority (CCA), which was withheld due to the incestuous overtones. Editor Karen Berger defended Moore’s story and it was printed and sold without the CCA stamp. Shockingly, the next issue was approved by the comics code, but every issue of Moore’s run after that, excluding issue 35 which was, again, mysteriously approved, was run without approval, proudly displaying a banner of “Sophisticated Suspense” across the top, highlighting the books mature content.

Karen Berger, the editor who helped Moore push his more adult comics into the hands of readers, would later go on to found and edit DC’s “Vertigo” line of comics, responsible for publishing acclaimed mature comics hits like: The Sandman, Animal Man, Doom Patrol, Hellblazer, Transmetropolitan, and Y: The Last Man. Moore’s run itself was never published under DC’s Vertigo imprint but it paved the way for its creation, and was later rebranded as a Vertigo comic.

After Arcane is defeated, Swamp Thing journeys into the afterlife to retrieve Abby’s soul where he learns that hell is not a punishment we receive from god, but a manifestation of the punishments we think we deserve. The people in hell choose to be there (existentialism!) and literally create their own hell.

After seeing Alec Holland in heaven, and Anton Arcane being tortured in hell, Swamp Thing finally finds Abby, and with the help of The Demon Etrigan, Swamp Thing returns Abby’s soul to her body, reviving her.

Crossing Over

The first story in which Swamp Thing battles Woodrue features an appearance from the Justice League, who realize that there’s nothing they can do to stop the aggressive plant growth caused by Woodrue. Even though Moore means to highlight that Swamp Thing is the only hero that can fight Woodrue, he avoids making the Justice League look incompetent, providing believable reasons they don’t think they could help.

While Alan Moore maintains that he thinks superheroes are fascist (or the adults who read them are), his work in comics betrays a deep love of superheroes and superhero stories. Moore has written for Superman, Green Lantern, Batman, and Green Arrow among others. In fact, when Len Wein, the original creator of Swamp Thing and DC editor at the time, called Alan Moore to offer him the job on Swamp Thing, Moore was in such disbelief that he hung up the phone. When Wein called him back he had to explain to Moore that he wasn’t one of his friends playing a prank on him.

Moore gleefully takes advantage of the DC universe around him during his run with frequent cameos from DC characters like Deadman, Spectre, The Demon, Kamara ”The Monkey King”, and The Phantom Stranger, among others.

In another deep cut reference to the history of DC, Moore canonizes Swamp Thing’s original origin.

When Len Wein first created Swamp Thing the story was printed as a short horror story in House of Secrets #92, an anthology series in the vein of old EC horror comics like “Tales from the Crypt”, and “Vault of Horror”. In this version Alex Olsen, not Alec Holland, becomes the Swamp Thing at the turn of the century, decades before Alec Holland’s death, and Alex Olsen’s wife survives but never recognizes that the husband she thought died in an explosion was actually the Swamp Thing.

The first Swamp Thing story became so popular DC asked Wein to write a monthly series for the character, but he wanted Swamp Thing to inhabit the modern day DC universe, not the early 1900s. So Wein redid Swamp Thing’s origin, this time creating the more familiar version of Swamp Thing we know today.

To give Bissette and Totleben a break from art duties, Swamp Thing #33 was supposed to be a reprint of the original Swamp Thing origin but Moore insisted on reframing it. Moore chooses to reveal this origin to Abby Cable in a dream, where she learns that Alec Holland wasn’t the first Swamp Thing, there were others before him, and he is only one in a long line of “plant elementals”. She awakens, intent on writing down her dream to tell Alec but before she can, she forgets.

This not only adds new context to Swamp Thing’s first appearance, but folds Swamp Thing into a rich history of mythic “Green Men“, symbols of rebirth and nature. An idea Moore would return to in greater detail in the second third of his run.

Both the Marvel and DC comics universes have grown so large in scale that both incorporate ancient mythology into their stories. Wonder Woman is an Amazon who deals often with the Greek gods, Thor is an actual Norse god, Marvel and DC have their own versions of Hercules, and now Swamp Thing is a Green Man.

Moore didn’t just incorporate ideas from DC history into his run, he also referenced Walt Kelly’s social/political satire newspaper strip “Pogo”.

In the issue “Pog” which immediately follows a string of particularly dark issues in this run, Moore brings the cast of Pogo into the Swamp Thing world as alien visitors looking for a new home (with spacesuits that obscure their features and slightly different names to avoid copyright disputes).

Pog, Moore’s stand in for Pogo, and his friends come to earth after a domineering species has destroyed the natural balance of their world. Pog believes that Earth is the perfect planet for him and his friends to inhabit, until Swamp Thing shows them that humans here are currently in the process of destroying the earth much like Pog’s home planet. While Swamp Thing shows Pog the human race, one of Pog’s friends Bartle is eaten by an alligator.

Moore’s writing here is playful, frequently merging similar sounding words to create new words with double meanings, like Pog calling Swamp Thing Earth’s “Guardiner” a mixture of guardian and gardener. While the issue lacks cohesion with it’s surrounding stories, it demonstrates several writing habits of Moore’s: he loves to take light playful ideas and take them seriously, he loves to reference other people’s writing (he hates it when people reference his), and Moore loves wordplay.

Throughout this run, Moore is (mostly) careful with his references, making sure each adds texture to the overall story. Through his allusions Moore often adds layers both to the original material and his own writing, while also adding something meaningful to the DC universe as a whole.

In the DC (or Marvel) Universe nothing exists in a vacuum.

This is a quality that can both attract and alienate audiences. By nature, with ~50 comics being published every month for nearly 100 years in one continuous story spanning multiple universes, the DC universe comes with some baggage. The massive story creates a rich, and sometimes convoluted, mosaic of characters and plots that all contribute to a giant epic too large to ever be fully experienced and digested. An epic that both compliments, and is complimented by Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing run.

Swamp Thing Gets Wet

This section of Moore’s run ends with the deepening of Alec and Abby’s relationship in “Rite of Spring”.

Abby, now free from her relationship that was almost entirely built on self-deception, confesses her love for Swamp Thing, who quickly confides he has felt the same for a long while.

They share a kiss which Abby says tastes like lime, and soon Swamp Thing addresses the elephant in the room.

Incapable of having traditional sex, Swamp Thing produces a fruit from his body and invites Abby to eat it. She obliges and quickly their minds begin to merge in a scene described in vague, poetic, language from Moore, and rendered in psychedelic splash pages by Bissette and Totleben.

As Abby returns to normal she asks Swamp Thing…

As Moore wraps up the first third of his run on Swamp Thing he concludes on a note of optimism. Two people, freed from self-deception, find happiness in a newfound appreciation for each other and themselves. As Spring begins, new love blossoms.