How do you fix a damaged character? Swamp Thing was a "hero" with very comic book-y origins. After getting caught in an lethal laboratory explosion, Alec Holland was transformed into a creature that was more plant than man. It was more cheese than horror, and the comics struggling sales showed that the readers felt the same. How do you make the adventures of a man transformed into a plant more interesting? Try rewriting his entire origin. When Alan Moore took over the Swamp Thing title he immediately changed the characters history, suggesting that the creature wasn't Alec Holland at all, but merely a plant pretending to be a man. Swamp Thing was reinvented as an elemental entity created after the death of Holland, having somehow absorbed the deceased doctor's memory and personality into itself. Swamp Thing wasn't anything close to a man, just a plant trying its level best to be Alec. This completely changed Swamp Things motivations and reason for living. Up until this point he believed that he could reverse the process and once again be a human, but the revelation that he could never achieve that goal sent the creature into an existential crisis and some of the most creative comic book stories of all time.
Andrew is a self-proclaimed humorist/facepuncher, and is one of the last of his kind. He was dragged from the debris in war-torn Poland and plays a piano most beautifully. In closing, he likes pickles. Follow him on Twitter @TheAEJohnson
