The Saga of the Swamp Thing #54-59

The Saga of the Swamp Thing #54-59

Originally released in 1986

Written by Alan Moore (#54-58), Steve Bissette (#59)

Art by Rick Veitch

When I last left Swamp Thing, the titular swamp man was supposedly killed; normally, the death of his body would be a minor inconvenience, since his consciousness could remain and grow a new body anywhere on Earth where plant life exists, but that hasn't happened.

As a result, issues 54 and 55 focus on Abby, who is mourning Alec.  She gets an unexpected visit from Liz Tremayne, a reporter who seemingly played a large role in the previous run and had a brief appearance at the start of Alan Moore's run.  There, she was on the run from the Sunderland Corporation along with a Sunderland Corp. psychiatrist named Dennis Barclay, and things took a turn for the worse.

Barclay has seemingly taken advantage of the fear that they're in to whittle down any sense of self-worth that Liz has, making her a paranoid wreck who's too nervous to watch TV (or even ring a doorbell) for fear of electrocution.  I'd only briefly seen Liz Tremayne in the first few issues of Moore's run, but the state that she was in was downright unsettling.

Dennis finds signs of where Liz was headed and arrives at Abby's house shortly afterwards, and what follows felt like something out of a Stephen King novel at times.  Dennis wants Liz dependent on him and him alone, and he's willing to kill anyone who gets in his way and tell Liz that they're Sunderland's spies in order to get that. (the fact that Sunderland's been dead since Swamp Thing found out that he's not truly Alec Holland makes no difference to Dennis)

Taking advantage of her knowledge of the swamps, Abby manages to outwit her pursuer, leading to Dennis suffering a gruesome end.  This leads to the next issue, a memorial service for Swamp Thing in Gotham.

Throughout the service, Abby is clearly having a rough time, lost in imagination about what her life with Alec should have been like.  It's not especially realistic (among other things, her former husband comes out of a coma, gives his blessing to their marriage, and drives off), but she's snapped out of her reverie by Deadman, a.k.a. Boston Brand (or rather, someone who's possessed by Boston Brand), who tells her that Swamp Thing isn't dead.

Now Abby has no context for who Deadman is, and no reason to believe him, but by the issue's end, we find out that Swamp Thing is alive - his frequency is out of sync with Earth's plant life, so he was forced to make a blind jump across the universe to find a world that he is in sync with.

Now listen up: here's a story about a little guy that lives in a blue world and all day and all night, everything he sees is just blue like him inside and outside.  Blue, his house, with a little blue window and a blue Corvette, and everything is blue for him and himself and everyone around, 'cause he ain't got nobody to listen to.  He's blue, da ba dee da ba di...

Trapped on a world that's lifeless with the exception of some insects, little by little, Swamp Thing starts to go mad.  Using the plant life, he creates a replica of Abby based on his memories of her.  She's almost like the original, but her smile is... off.

He builds towns, people, but it's not enough; he destroys what he has created and, overcoming his fears, makes another blind jump through the universe, hoping that he will be able to make it back to Earth.

He winds up on Rann, the part-time home of Adam Strange, a DC hero that I haven't touched on. (I wouldn't be sure where to begin - I know Tom King wrote a series about him, but by my understanding, it portrays Adam in a way that's wildly out of character) Rann is a dying world devastated by nuclear war, and a pair of Thanagarians have offered to use their technology to fix that in exchange for Rann's knowledge, particularly of the Zeta Beam that transports Adam from Earth to Rann and back.

The people of Rann are frightened of Swamp Thing (they seem xenophobic in general - even though Adam is their hero, and in a relationship with their princess, they mock him behind his back and treat him like he's little more than an ape), leading to a fight.  Once Adam has a conversation with Swamp Thing and realizes he's the same one that turned Gotham into a jungle, he comes to the conclusion that he might be able to do the same for Rann, which he agrees to with no strings attached.

This upsets the Thanagarians, causing them to attack Swamp Thing and later Adam. By all appearances, Thanagar has undergone a major change since Katar Hol and Shayera were there, and now, they're a much more war-like species.

As Swamp Thing restores Rann's jungles and makes another leap across the universe, trying to find a world of sentient plants that Adam mentioned who could restore Alec's connection to Earth, issue 59 switches focus to Abby in a surreal Frankenstein-esque horror story.  Her uncle, Anton Arcane, is being tortured in the depths of Hell, and for the amusement of the demons who have been using his head as a sports ball, he's been allowed to exert his influence on the world of the living.

Anton reanimated the corpse of his brother, Abby's father, and uses it to mess with Abby from beyond the grave, while circumstances lead her to believe that it's Alec back from the dead.

In contrast to my choice from yesterday, this stretch of Swamp Thing issues is about loss, mourning, abuse, and body horror, though ultimately, it's about love. The love shared between Abby and Alec allows them to keep going through seemingly impossible difficulties, which is a touching sentiment.