Embracing Dionysius in Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing

Abstract

In the second issue of Alan Moore’s mid-1980s run on DC comics’ Swamp Thing , Alec Holland learns that he is not simply a mild-mannered botanist who has been miraculously transformed into a super-powered “moss man.” The Swamp Thing is a plant, a plant who borrowed Holland’s identity, a plant who only thought it was a man, all along. This essay examines how Moore’s run on Swamp Thing embraces the challenges of depiction that come with making a plant—not just a “plant-man”—the hero of a comic book. How, the text asks, might the forms of plant-thought differ from a man’s? How does it think, and what might those thoughts “look like” on a comic page? Through the run, the writing and art overcomes the confining linearity of the comic’s paneled structure and conventional points-of-view, as well as the commercial demands of writing for a presumptively adolescent audience.