10 DC Superheroes With Tortured Pasts

Being a giant green sentient plant can't be a barrel of laughs at the best of times, but when Alan Moore got his twisted mind on the character, Swamp Thing's past became even darker.

When Alec Holland and his wife Linda were working on a brand new bio-restorative formula, the appearance of two of Nathan Ellery's hired goons would see the research laboratory destroyed in an explosion and his wife killed.

Alec himself would manage to flee to the watery areas that surround the place - while on fire no less - and would later re-emerge as the Swamp Thing. At least, that would be what he thought. During his excellent run on the comic in the eighties, Moore would turn this whole theory on its head.

While he was stored in a cryochest, experiments revealed that this Swamp Thing was not, in fact, Alec Holland. Holland never survived the explosion and what was left was a creature who had absorbed the memories of the man and, therefore, was convinced they were one and the same.

You've got to hand it to Alan Moore - nobody does a tortured soul quite like he does.