Review: Saga of the Swamp Thing: Volume 1

Saga of the Swamp Thing: Volume 1
Alan Moore
DC Comics, Inc. (1987), Edition: 1st, Paperback, 176 pages

‘You shouldn’t have come here.’ (from the back cover)

The first four chapters are the best of this volume; the last three tell events improved in the next volumes of the saga of Swamp Thing.

‘He isn’t Alec Holland. He never will be Alec Holland. He never was Alec Holland. He’s just a ghost. A ghost dressed in weeds.’ (p. 33)
The Swamp Thing becomes aware of his nature: in a previous life he was an human being called Alec Holland, now in this new form he is only weeds and mud.
‘Woodrue ... he took ... my humanity ... away from me ... caused so much agony ... and when I thought the agony was ... over, that I found ... peace ... he tainted that as well ... Woodrue.’ (p. 72)
The Swamp Thing refuses to live as half man / half tree and he / it rooted in the swamp, becoming a vegetable.

Jason Woodrue becomes part of the swamp, and grows like a plant. Woodrue: ‘I am come to announce the Green Millennium.’ (p. 79) But this Green Millennium means destruction, so the Swamp Thing wake up to put order, aware that he is not anymore Alec Holland.