In a later chapter, Wein suggests that his body is a primal plant to such a degree that the creature’s conscious mind can’t entirely control it. He gasps, “Why - y-you have no blood pressure - and your respiration - like that of a plant! You breathe in carbon dioxide - and exhale oxygen! Your body, it seems, is equally plant-like! There are several bullets lodged inside you - in places that would be fatal to anyone else!” Arcane is confused by his physical of the monster.

As early as the second issue, Wein is rather explicitly stating that he is a plant who has taken human form. I spent a great portion of the book in awe of just how much of what Len Wein wrote seems to vaguely hintat an idea articulated by Moore, but it took the later writer to make everything fit.įor example, there’s the nature of the creature’s existence. The proto-type origin story crafted by Len Wein for House of Secrets featuring a different Alec and Linda ( “Olsen”, not “Holland”) can be easily explained away as an earlier iteration of the same monster. Of course, it’s easy enough to fit Moore’s narrative between the lines. You know an author is on to something when his later ideas influence your approach to the creature’s very origin, as originally dictated by the original author. He was merely an elemental monster who thought the he was Alec Holland. Moore revealed that Swamp Thing was not in fact Alec Holland. It’s a testament to how fully-formed his ideas were that I am incapable of reading these early issues without constant reference to a mythology he retroactively grafted on to the character. Moore’s run is so influential that it actual extends its influence backwards. It still struggles a bit to find its own identity, but there’s some interesting ideas – and it’s easy enough to find some of the ideas Moore would develop to great success gestating between the lines. While it still remains in the shadow of an author who took over later, it’s not a bad monster book in its own right. Roots of the Swamp Thing only collects the first thirteen issues of the first Swamp Thing title, but it’s enough to get a flavour for the title under Len Wein and artist Bernie Wrightson. However, despite the fact that Alan Moore effectively defined the monster, Swamp Thing actually enjoyed a long publication history even before Moore began writing the title.

Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing is one such run, a modern day comic book classic which still reads as one of the best continuous runs by an author on any serial publication, ever. Sometimes a creator leaves such a massive impression on a character that it’s almost hard to believe that the character ever existed before the writer in question began their run.

Absolute swamp thing wrightson