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{{quote|''"...you can't kill a vegetable by shooting it through the head."''|'''Jason Woodrue''', ''[[Swamp Thing|Swamp Thing v2 #21]]''}}
[[Swamp Thing]] is a comic book character created in 1972 by Len Wein and famed horror artist Berni Wrightson. The Swamp Thing first appeared in one-shot horror tale in ''"House of Secrets''" #92 (June-July, 1971). He was reworked as a character suitable for series appearances in ''"Swamp Thing''" vol. 1 #1 (November, 1972). Both stories co-created by Wein and Wrightson. He later appeared in [[Swamp Thing (
As an untested author, Moore was given a book slated to be cancelled. However, since no one cared about the title, there was no [[Executive Meddling]], so Moore used the book not to explore inhuman monsters in spandex, but human ones. He introduced mysticism and sexuality into the series, as well as [[Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism|gray moral tones]].
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Originally, Swamp Thing was a scientist named Alec Holland who gets turned into a monster in the swamps near the town of Houma, Louisiana after his lab equipment is sabotaged and his wife Linda killed. [[Wes Craven]] followed this plot with his mildly successful film adaptation, about your standard modern-day Prometheus doing good and lamenting lost love.
Moore, however, retconned the character's origin, turning him into [[
Eventually, the Swamp Thing and his long-time love Abby Cable-Arcane got together (common law marriage) and they had a daughter named Tefé, after the river in Brazil. John Constantine was the biological father. The first Vertigo revival of ''Swamp Thing'' focused more on Tefé than on the title character.
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{{tropelist}}
* [[A God Am I]]: Anton Arcane when he confronted Swamp Thing with Matt's [[Reality Warper]] powers. Swamp Thing was... [[Curb Stomp Battle|not impressed.]]
* [[The Alcoholic]]: Matthew becomes this after he receives his [[Psychic Powers]].
* [[Alliterative Name]]: Anton Arcane and his niece Abigail.
* [[Anthropomorphic Personification]]
* [[Badass Boast]]: As Swamp Thing [[Curb Stomp Battle|utterly dismantles the Brujeria]]:
{{quote|
* [[Beast and Beauty]]
* [[Beauty Is Never Tarnished]]: Arcane, in hell for a day experiences an eternity of torment. Abby, in for the same time, is untouched.
* [[Berserk Button]]: Don't touch Abby. Really, just don't.
* [[Beware the Nice Ones]]: Swampy is one of the [[The Messiah|kindest and most peacefull beings]] you could ever meet. But don't piss him of, if you don't want to have a tree grow inside [[Ludicrous Gibs|your intestines.]]
* [[Big Damn Heroes]]: Swampy is the one to thwart Woodrue's planned destruction of all animal life, after spending days in a catatonic state thanks to Woodrue's [[Tomato in
* [[Breakout Character]]: John Constantine.
* [[Captain Ersatz]]: For a ''house''. The haunted mansion Swamp Thing visits in the American Gothic arc is clearly meant to be the Winchester Mystery House. Swamp Thing himself is a [[Captain Ersatz]] of of the Golden Age monster The Heap.
* [[Chainsaw Good]]: Subverted, as "Evangeline's" wielder is easily disabled by Woodrue.
* [[Crazy Prepared]]: Subverted. In one issue, Batman shows up to try to take down Swampy. He does his usual thing, sets traps, loads up with plant killer, etc. He still gets his arse handed to him by the titular Thing.
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* [[Curb Stomp Battle]]: Swamp Thing vs [[Reality Warper|Anton Arcane]], Swamp Thing vs [[Religion of Evil|the Brujera]], and Swamp Thing vs [[Batman]].
* [[Did Not Do the Research]]: Moore has [[New Gods|Metron]] experience [[Animal Stereotypes|being a lemming and following the herd off a cliff]].
* [[Doing
* [[Doing
* [[Eldritch Abomination]]: The Monkey King, M'Nagalah... Swamp Thing tends to encounter a lot of these.
** Special mention should go to the Original Darkness, which was so massive that the heroes could only see the tip of its claw and was not even moving under the combined powers of [[The Phantom Stranger]], [[Doctor Fate]] and [[The Spectre]].
** In the New 52 series introduces The Rot who acts as the natural force of death and decay.
* [[Elemental Powers]]
* [[Evil Uncle]]: Anton Arcane
* [[Exiled From Continuity]]: with some exceptions. When Swamp Thing officially went to [[Vertigo Comics]], it was no longer considered continuity, for all intents and purposes. Once the series ended, he would make sporadic appearances here and there, often with a [[Shout
** DC has recently announced plans to bring Swamp Thing and other Vertigo characters back into the DCU.
*** [[Brightest Day|And now he's back]], {{spoiler|[[Oh Crap|as the Avatar of Death]].}}
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**** Who was now killed, and is now the Warrior King of the Parliament of Trees as Swamp Thing.
* [[Failure Is the Only Option]]: Originally, [[Swamp Thing]] wanted to 'cure' himself'; once he knows he is an Elemental, this is no longer an option.
* [[
* [[
* [[Gothic Horror]]: The original Len Wein series was entirely [[Gothic Horror]], to the point you expect to see a [[Hammer Films]] logo up front. To wit: In his second and third issues, he gets kidnapped to the Balkans, where he meets a Dr. Frankenstein expy and his monster, complete with castle, villagers, pitchforks, etc. In his fourth issue, he fights a Scottish werewolf. Issue five, he stumbles into a town where they're about to burn a witch -- in ''1970s Maine,'' mind you. And so on.
* [[Green Aesop]]: Though Alan Moore likes his Aesops Subverted, or [[Double Subverted]].
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** Later runs did have them go through a rough patch or two which led to a [[Heroic BSOD]] for Alec where he joined forces to merge all elemental powers... and destroy the world.
* [[Heel Face Turn]]: Anton Arcane, of all people. [[Status Quo Is God|It doesn't last]].
* [[Heroic BSOD]]: Swamp Thing undergoes a major one after learning that he is the [[Tomato in
** Abby's BSOD at one point involved [[Out, Damned Spot!|scrubbing herself with]] ''[[Out, Damned Spot!|steel wool]]'' until she passes out. It doesn't help.
*** To be fair she had just realised she'd been {{spoiler|[[Brain Bleach|sleeping with, and making love to, a rotten, fly infested corpse]] that only made itself look normal}}--and which was {{spoiler|possessed by her uncle,}} to boot. And she'd been doing this for ''months''.
* [[Horrifying Hero]]: [[Swamp Thing]].
* [[
* [[I Am Not Left
* [[Inspector Javert]]: Matthew Cable starts out as one of these.
* [[Intercontinuity Crossover]]: It's never directly stated, but there are enough hints to figure out that {{spoiler|Matthew the raven from [[The Sandman]]}} was {{spoiler|Matthew Cable}} before he died. Gaiman owes a lot to Moore in getting his career started; there are several nods in ''Sandman'' to Moore's work in the DCU. This was confirmed by Gaiman in an interview, and later made explicit in an arc of ''The Dreaming''. Swamp Thing also encounters quite a few well-established DC characters, including [[Superman]], [[Batman]], [[Etrigan]], the Spectre, Deadman and [[Adam Strange]].
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** When Abby gets jailed for it, the entire legal system still wants to prosecute her for it even as an enraged Swamp Things threatens to destroy Gotham. It's left to Batman to point out the legal hypocrisy in the DCU when he notes that the courts would have to jail the likes of Starfire, J'onn, and... oh, [[Superman|that guy in Metropolis]].
* [[Jury of the Damned]]
* [[Lawyer
* [[Love Makes You Crazy]]: During the time that Swamp Thing was exiled from Earth, he first lands on a blue-tinted world (the acclaimed issue "My Blue Heaven"). At first marooned there, he begins making clones of himself to keep company... and then creates his love Abby. By issue's end, his multiple-personality-disorder drives him to madness, and he forces himself to flee to another world.
** During that same story arc, Swamp Thing runs into Metron and the New Gods. Later, Metron barters with [[Darkseid]] using memories he acquired from Swamp Thing. Darkseid watches the lonely despair Alec feels being separated from Abby... and learns that "love" is something he needs to learn [[Oh Crap|to finish]] his [[Anti Life Equation]]...
* [[Meaningful Name]]: The Sunderland corporation, who were not friends of nature.
* [[Muck Monster]]
* [[No Such Thing
* [[Our Hero Is Dead]]: [[Swamp Thing]] was shot. Through the head. Fortunately for Moore, [[Death Is Cheap]].
* [[Our Vampires Are Different]]: During the American Gothic story arc, Swamp Thing fights underwater vampires who have evolved to inhabit a flooded town.
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* [[Reality Warper]]: Matt Cable, and later Anton Arcane when he possesed Matt.
* [[Reptiles Are Abhorrent]]: Subverted when Killer Croc moves in with [[Swamp Thing]], and lives [[Happily Ever After]] (well, until the next time Croc appeared in an issue of Batman where he [[Status Quo Is God|left the swamp and returned to villany]]).
* [[Rhymes
* [[Roaring Rampage of Revenge]]: Volume 2, Issue 63. During Moore's run, Swamp Thing returns to earth after planet hopping using the green. Despite missing his lover terribly the entire time, he starts things off by killing four executives of the Sunderland Corporation; the company responsible for sending him off planet to begin with, and the source of a great deal of grief the entire comic's run.
* [[Single Palette Town]]: An issue where the protagonist remakes an alien world in blue.
** It was already blue when he got there, he just remade it to look more like home... {{spoiler|with the worst case of multiple personality disorder ever seen in a comic book.}}
* [[Skunk Stripe]]: Inverted; Abigail has black on white.
* [[Spin
* [[Starfish Aliens]]: The eponymous hero encounters a sentient biomechanical planetoid, which then rapes him. Did I mention ?
* [[Story Within a Story]]: [[Mark Millar]] wrote an arc entitled ''River Run'', which had Swamp Thing helping the ghost of a writer complete her book of short stories by traveling inside them and acting as the link to tie the stories together and successfully complete them.
* [[Sweet and Sour Grapes]]: When Alec Holland relentlessly sought to regain his humanity, he was [[Cursed
* [[Tomato in
** And then he ''meets Alec's soul in Heaven'', the final nail in the coffin of the idea that he's anything more than a copy of Holland's memories.
* [[Trickster Mentor]]: Constantine.
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** Actually the mystics had protected their underground cave to where Swamp Thing couldn't get in as Constantine planned... but {{spoiler|the traitor [[Meaningful Name|Judith]] had accidentally brought in a rainforest flower that Swamp Thing ''could'' possess}}.
* [[Ubermensch]]: Tefé regards herself as one, until she's [[Brought Down to Normal]].
* [[Wham! Line]]: "But you see, if he read my report, he'll know that just isn't true. He never will be Alec Holland. He isn't Alec Holland. He never ''was'' Alec Holland."
** "You [[Oh Crap|can't kill a vegetable by shooting it]] in the head."
* [[With Great Power Comes Great Insanity]]: Matthew Cable.
* [[Year Inside, Hour Outside]]: Swampy visits hell, where he finds Anton Arcane, who died in the last issue. Arcane asks how many years the spiders have been laying eggs in his body and eating their way out. Turns out it's been a day. Arcane screams in horror.
** Why does he care? Forever is a really long time already, and now he's just realized that it's going to feel longer.
** Because there's a difference between intellectual understanding, and true realization. It's the difference between 'it hurts to get your arm chopped off', and ACTUALLY having it happen.
* [[You Fail Biology Forever]]: Moore's [[Retcon]] of [[Swamp Thing]]'s backstory depended on the theory that planarian worms can solve a maze after eating another worm who was familiar with it. The experiment was discredited when it turned out the worms had been following slime trails. Moore later modified the explanation to [[A Wizard Did It]].
** The plotline which immediately follows this revelation also Fails Biology, when the madman causes plant life of Louisiana to speed up its photosynthetic activity, raising oxygen levels to an explosive degree. This completely overlooks the "photo" part of photosynthesis, as this goes on ''at night'' when there's no solar energy to power such a metabolic pathway. Sure, you could [[Hand Wave|write it off]] [[A Wizard Did It|as magic]], except the captions ''specifically'' state that it's photosynthesis that's to blame.
{{reflist}}
{{IGN Top 100 Heroes}}
[[Category:The Seventies]]
[[Category:Horror Comic Books]]
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[[Category:Vertigo Comics]]
[[Category:The DCU]]
▲[[Category:Swamp Thing]]
▲[[Category:Comic Book]]
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