A Fever Dream

     I bit off my ex-boss' nose and part of her face last night, her flesh like gelatin in my mouth, just as tasteless as her soul ultimately proved itself to be. I had approached her with murder in my eyes, and though she held off her panic at first, certain that I wouldn't do anything in full sight of the other people present, she swiftly was disabused of that notion. I didn't care about their presence, they didn't matter to me, only she did. Her eyes widened and she raised her hands to hold me off as she began to realize that, whatever I intended, it was going to happen, regardless of the consequences. I grabbed her shoulders, her long-sleeved shirt like silk beneath my fingers, cool and smooth, no hint of the warmth a body should have. I gripped her and, as she began struggling ineffectually, I pulled her close to me, my head moving forward, as if I was leaning in for a kiss. Oh my, the impropriety of the situation, and here in front of customers no less. And then I sank my teeth in her flesh, piercing skin and the sense of an untouchable self. Violation.
     I took a mouthful and, letting her go, I turned from her and spat out the piece of Wormwood, with a disgust wholly appropriate to the situation. It wasn't the taste mind you, it was more that I wanted to show my absolute disgust at her, at her identity, at this person, this vile thing.
     I looked at the wooden rafters above as a small uproar began behind me. It sank in that this was an opening salvo and that the echoes of it would resound for a long time. Then, aware that I shouldn't really have done this, aware that the consequences of this would be severe, life-changing even, and from a growing sense of disgust with my self, feeling soiled and stained, I turned reality into something that did not have my last action in it.
     I walked away, out the door, deliberately giving no attention to the scene behind me, knowing that reality had bent itself to my will, but at the same time not entirely sure of it, and aware that in either case I'd be best served getting away from here as fast as possible.

     Kevin was waiting for me in the car, and as he asked me where to, I responded that he should just get us away from here. Now, who is kevin, I hear you ask. But the truth is that I don't really know. His name wasn't even Kevin. I can't remember his actual name, but there is a glimpse of it, a feeling as if Kevin would be a good approximation of his name.
     In the grey light, but clear and perfect grey light as if it's very sunny out, we move out onto the highway. I sigh as I feel the mental drag of the situation start to sink in. The stress is telling. It's settled into my limbs, and my head has started to hurt. I'm on the passenger-side, with the man who's not Kevin, smooth-faced and clean, easily turning the car onto the turn-off to the highway. His hair is pepper and salt. Hair that's neat and shiny, but a shiny as from an over-exposure to sun not from being unwashed or from product. He has dark brown eyes aimed at the road ahead and radiates a sense that the world might just be grey for him.

     The pain in my head is starting to dominate the trend of my thoughts. The whole situation is pretty much a headache. Not just the building feeling in my head, I mean, but also the events that have just happened, and the feeling of discomfort they've given me. And you can bet your ass that somehow, there's a record of this somewhere, and one day it'll be used against me. Maybe it's just my conscience railing at the violence, a piece of my soul having just died, a bit of innocence lost, or something, but either way, the spleen of it, the psychic pain of it, is pretty awful. It turns the world into quite a narrow place, a tunnel-vision brought about by emotional discomfort. The future has become a thing fraught with horror and anxiety.

     Maybe I just need to eat something. On the dashboard there's something wrapped in aluminum foil. Something the man who isn't Kevin bought from somewhere that isn't anywhere I know. Take it out, he says to me, give me a piece. He must have seen me looking. I pull off the foil from what turns out to be a brown chocolate cake on a silver platter. It probably isn't really silver, and rather it's just some hardened aluminum-type metal, probably. I don't know, I'm not a metallurgist or even the remotest bit knowledgeable on any of the things normal people are. It might be the newest thing in tupper-ware and I wouldn't know. I break off a piece and hand it to him and he scoffs it down like he's starving. I ask what it is, and he say that I should help myself. I do and gulp it down. It doesn't taste like chocolate but if you asked me what it tastes like I wouldn't be able to tell you. I ask him what it is, and responds that it's just something he's bought recently. That's okay, I think to myself, I don't really care, there can be a few more mysterious things in the world that I know bugger-all about.
     We've been driving for a while, the foliage flashing past, the green the only indication of an actual living world beyond this highway, if you don't count the other cars. But then, I realize, there might not actually be anything past the tree-line, the shrubbery and the tall trees both conspiring to hide the vistas of cold grey nothingness that lies beyond, waiting to swallow me whole.

     My eyes feel dry, my head feels warm and I can feel a frown starting to take shape as I look at the other vehicles.vWhere once the cars, the trucks, the buses and all the other assorted types of vehicles that I know bugger-all about moved sedately in straight lines forward, only ever deviating from their course to switch to a faster lane, or to take a turnoff to parts unknown, now they are moving in noticeably erratic motions. I don't mean that they're speeding up or slowing down, or switching lanes in a way that could be construed to be the work of dull, or psychotically suicidal minds, itching for some high-speed entertainment. I mean the cars, the trucks, the buses and all the other assorted types of vehicles that I know bugger-all about have started to move in ways that should not be possible.

     There's a white gas-truck with a horizontal red stripe spinning like a damn Beyblade in front of us, its wheels inches above the road, judderingly turning in a mad high speed. If the laws of physics where still operating as they should the centrifugal force it attains by spinning that fast should have ripped the truck apart, never mind what speed, gravity and the asphalt of the road would have done to the wheels and the lower carriage. Maybe juddering is the wrong word for it. Stuttering would be better. The truck isn't even losing speed, or deviating from its course in any way. It's for all the world going about its business as if it just hasn't royally upended just about half the laws of reality by behaving in such an abnormal way. It's almost insulting, as if it doesn't care that it's just transgressed in a profoundly upsetting way. I pause. Or maybe it's just unaware. Maybe it's me that somehow just has started seeing more than I'm supposed to.
     Because the other cars are likewise misbehaving. I turn to look over to other lanes, and the cars that are headed in the other direction are also acting out of sorts. Not one of them is moving in the same way as any of the others, but nevertheless, there's a strange, delirious harmony here somewhere, I feel.
I look back ahead, fixing my gaze on the twisting vehicles ahead of us. There's something strange going on, I remark to the man that isn't Kevin. My gaze drops to the dashboard, where I didn't cover the cake.  Maybe an inch from the outer crust the cake is chocolate, probably even actual chocolate cake, but in the center the cake is revealed to be green, and very moist-looking.
What is that, I ask aloud. Kevin responds softly saying it's something he bought.

     It's not weed. Shit, whatever this is it's heavy duty, I think to myself. That motherfucker.
Still, it could be worse. At least the pain in my head is being pushed back by the visions swarming past the side of the highway. One doesn't complain when a gift horse is looked in the mouth, or something. I grit my teeth and clutch my head as a spike of agony slides deeper in my brain. Hunched over, I wait for the moment to pass, watching the saliva unspool from my mouth, clear ropes threading their gravity-loving way onto the floor of the car. After a while it passes and I sit up again.

     I look outside and I notice the trees and shrubbery have given way to an actual world beyond.
I grimace as I realize that the madness hasn't stopped. The world beyond the highway is inconstant, changing every moment, every second becoming profoundly altered. Farmlands, a house here and there with countless rows of planted stuff, are momentarily populated by windmills, old-style, dutch or holland-esque, not the technologically advanced kind, and then as fast as they came, the windmills are gone. Or rather, they've become something else. Buildings multiplying, morphing together, changing in material and style, as fast as thought. It goes too quickly for me to try and see it, and I'm already nauseous as it is. I wish I had some water, I comes to me that I might be dehydrated. I bend over and hold my head between my knees. For long moments I breathe in and out.

     As I look out again the world has become glass and steel. We are enclosed by skyscrapers, blue glazing reflecting the blue sky above, dotted with clouds as woolly as only dreams could be.
The landscape now doesn't alter anymore. It's become constant even though we're still moving past millions of different windows, all blue glazed, all beautiful as only my favourite colour could be. It comes to me that this all is one big mighty building, endless and infinite. I look at the windows, and realize that there must be people beyond them, untold thousands of them passing every second. How many of them notice our car, I wonder. I tell the man who is not called Kevin that I realize what is going on, that the landscape is informed by the dreaming of the people who populate this country, that the most dominant dreamers' dreams inform the dreams of the others. That it probably all started with one guy that dreamt about a blue-glazed sky-scraper, and whose dream infected others' dreams, like an infection spreading outward, like a ripple in a pond, until the only possibility that remained was a world of steel and dark blue glass. But I'm thirsty, and with the nausea and the headache it follows that I must be dehydrated.

     Ahead of us the concrete road begins to slope downward , it's become unmoored from the place around it, hanging in midair, surrounded by miles and miles of skyscrapers. The catch rails have turned white as if we're on a bridge. I look ahead and I see water. Ahead and below lies the dead-end of a canal surrounded on all sides by skyscrapers, blue glass and cold steel. The road ends abruptly and we barrel off of it. For some reason I'm no longer in the car, and the man who isn't Kevin has disappeared. I fall towards what is probably a very cold and very hard expanse of water. But really, I've only myself to blame, as I really was almost wishing for something to drink. I'm sure I was in it too, the water I mean, my head breaching the surface, exulting in the taste of fresh air. Then I wake up, and the nausea and the headache make me realize I'm probably very sick.

Swamp Thing Appreciation post 4: Gotham Thing

After the exhausting affair of Crisis on Infinite Earths and the subsequent battle between Light and Dark the Swamp Thing returns home to Louisiana only to find out that his wife has been publicly shamed and humiliated for her relationship with him, and that after breaking her parole while she awaited her decency trail she has been jailed in nearby Gotham city.

In an awesome fury Swamp Thing tears across the nearby Green in search of his lover, rampant bloom spreading in his wake, the echoes of his rage spreading throughout the psychic stratosphere. 

And we, the readers share that rage, as Moore does manage to lay it on quite thick. Poor Abigail's the subject of such disdain, disgust and ridicule that when finally the Swamp Thing bursts into the courtroom, one might be forgiven for punching the sky in glee.

But Gotham's justice system is unwilling to hand over Abigail without a fight, and so on her urging the Swamp Thing leaves, although he does deliver to the city an Ultimatum.

If they do not give him back his friend, then Gotham will be overrun by the Green completely, and as he takes his leave he gives the city a taste of what is to come if they don't comply to his demand.

Surprisingly, many of the city's inhabitants, their jobs and the busy schedules of day to day life paralyzed by the jungle quickly sprouting up outside, are seduced by the joys of nature and abandon their homes and offices to revel in the healthy throb of nature. And there are many who revere the Swamp God who turned crime-ridden Gotham into a kind of paradise Eden.

But, Gotham has its own response to those who upset the established order.

Yes, indeed, Batman is pretty prominent, and rather crucial, in this story arc.

Batman, and his many ingenious gadgets, easily wipes the floor with the Swamp Thing, but the Swamp God has learned that he does not a need a body to survive as long as he has the Green. And his mastery over his powers has grown exponentially.

Batman is defeated and though he urges Gotham's leaders to release Abigail the city refuses and so continues to be plagued by uproarious nature and various displays of the breadth of Swamp Thing's powers. It is honestly pretty neat.

As events threaten to come to a head Gotham's defender ends the stalemate by arguing with the city's mayor by stating that there is a precedent for the strange relationship between Abby and the Swamp Thing, and that if they designate the odd couple's relationship as against the law, then they probably would have to arrest various other superheroes, who would also be breaking the law by being alien life forms in relations with humans. And really, would anyone truly want to even try and arrest Lois Lane?

So the city backs down and releases Abigail after Swamp Thing restores Gotham to normal. The lovers rush into each other's arms, but before they can savour the moment, the trap is sprung, and Swamp Thing is assassinated.

Unbeknownst to Batman, Lex Luthor had been hired to annihilate the Swamp Thing, and the criminal mastermind had devised a way to cut off the Swamp Thing from the earth's Green, trapping his consciousness inside of his body, and then he unleashed hell upon the unsuspecting Swamp God.

And in the blazing inferno, within the cage of his body, the Swamp Thing dies, much in the same way as he was born the guardian elemental of the Green. 

Time passes and Abigail, Batman and the entirety of Gotham mourn his passing. They erect a statue in his honour, to apologize for the betrayal; and then... people go on with their lives, as best as they can.

And that's it.

Life moves on and people try to forget and come to terms with the death and loss.

But of course, the Swamp God did not die. Though the fire took him and death came close, the Swamp Thing's consciousness didn't die. Cut off as he was from the Green of earth, he made a desperate leap into the great dark of the universe in search of another planet, another Green that would house him.

And he found it. Or at least something like it.

Swamp Thing Apreciation 3: Self-Realization and the Crisis

Alright, by now these have become full-blown recaps, with spoilers and all. But I guess they do flow forth from my appreciation of this really weird superhero comic. So, read on, Macduff.

Ahead of Swamp Thing loomed great challenges, but the character as Moore envisioned him, was still seized by doubt and uncertain of his nature and power, and too blinkered by his human point of view, and so to lead him, in a very roundabout manner it must be said, towards self-realization Moore thrust him into the American Gothic arc under the guiding hand of John Constantine.

It was called American Gothic because in these adventures Swamp Thing dealt with various Americanized Gothic monsters; 

There were a bunch of Vampires, the leftovers from a Pre-Moore Swamp Thing story, a Werewolf tale with its roots in the menstrual cycle and even a curse that led to some pretty likable voodoo zombies, and along the way Swamp Thing gained a new perspective on himself and how he could interact with the world around him.

And then the Multiverse shifted.

And the Crisis on Infinite Earths arrived.

And, luckily, it didn't stick around for very long. At least, not in the pages of Swamp Thing, where our heroes are in and out of the main event without barely having seen action. It is comfortably the oddest of the Swamp Thing's already pretty strange adventures, more because it feels as if he's a step behind everyone else, and because the story itself feels very wonky. Crisis on Infinite Earths is the massive crossover event in the 1980's wherein DC brought together all its disparate superheroes, and made all the different multiverses into one universe harbouring all of the superheroes. As someone who's never read the main series (and likely never will) it all came across here as... lacklustre, and pretty barebones.

But as John says it, there was a point to it anyway, as the Crisis was to be used as a springboard by an ancient, evil force, and Swamp Thing was going to be crucial in the battle ahead.

After the Crisis, for a little while all of reality would be unstable and vulnerable to attack, and the Brujeria had been waiting for it, and more than that they had been waiting for the Swamp Thing in particular, knowing him for what he was, knowing his nature and true power. And they were prepared for him. And so Constantine finally pointed the Swamp Thing to the place were it all was to be revealed: South America.

Deep in the jungle of the amazon forest in the company of the Parliament of Trees, the Swamp Thing learns that he is but the latest in a long line of Swamp Things, all of them protectors of the Green, all of them transformed from man into elemental life by fire, death and water, all of them part of a recurring pattern throughout the history of the world, and he finally sees the possibilities inherent in his nature.

But though he asks the Parliament for help in controlling his power in order to be ready for the danger ahead, the evil to come, they rebuke him and state that all is simply as nature is. They refute his human point of view, so laden with doubt and prejudice and so uncertain of what to do, and so they refuse to help him, and they cast him out from the sacred place where the Swamp Things come for their final rest.

And so, disappointed and unprepared, the Swamp Thing goes to war against the Brujeria, and it all goes dreadfully wrong.

-----

I actually did like pretty much all of this arc. This is in large part down to the heavy involvement of John Constantine, it being his team of friends and hangers-on that gets pretty much annihilated. I had seen some of them in the Hellblazer series, which also had a few vague references to the events here, and it was nice to finally have it all seemingly filled in. In the Abigail Arcane's side story, which serves to set up the last story for Moore's Saga of the Swamp Thing, there are also some quite intriguing moments with Sandman's Cain and Abel, who seem to predate their whole Sandman shtick. And would you please bask in the violent glory that is this awesome panel?

-----

But anyway. The Brujeria manage to hold off the Swamp Thing for long enough to succeed in their ritual, releasing a bird of doom that wings its way past the end of the universe, where it wakes something huge and dark, something that will destroy Heaven.

The odd thing here is that Moore introduces it by calling it heaven, instead of just what it is; the light. Attention is given to the just-awakened thing, the oh-so-dark thing; that for some it is Satan, for some it is Cthulhu, for some it's just a massive energy field, either way, that it is the enemy, the thing to be stopped, and the goal of this thing would be 'Heaven'? Anyway, it's just a bit of an oddity I thought. It's obvious that this is the about the dichotomy between light and dark, good and evil. That the metaphor of the endless struggle is about to reach its climax.

But then, the confusion of the matter is also here for quite a crucial reason: The reader is not supposed to be completely clear on the exact identity of the two forces that are about to clash, just like the thing they're about to fight doesn't exactly know what it itself is. This gives it a reason to embark on a dialogue, which is where our hero comes in.

Swamp Thing and Constantine split up, Swamp Thing to travel ahead and gather up a team of heroes in order to try and forestall the coming end, and John to gather a cabal of magicians and warlocks to lend their psychic strength to the confrontation to come. And here we come to the second precursor for Justice League Dark (apologies if I'm in error about Swamp Thing having the first and or second DC-wide precursor for the Dark Justice League, I've barely read a thing from DC).

On the physical confrontation side of things there's a whole menagerie of characters some of which  are quite undeniably superheroes, and on the psychic backbench we have a roster of masters of the Dark Arts, most notable are of course John Constantine himself, Sargon the sorceror, Zatanna and her father, Zatara.

And what follows is quite awesome actually. The heroes and the circle of magicians square off against the massive dark thing that bears down upon them and, doing what self-important superheroes do they mostly engage with their enemy in grand-standing one-on-one engagements.

They are of course promptly defeated, as this force is so beyond them that they stand no chance at all.

They are swallowed up by the dark, and in their helplessness are asked a question pertaining to the nature of the dark thing itself, it having lived so long that it has forgotten its purpose and doesn't know what it wants. And each hero, according to their own temperament and way of dealing with their enemies answers as they are wont to do, leading to disastrous results.

On the Magicians' side of things, in trying to shield the battling heroes from the worst of the dark thing's power, the casualties have been severe, a few of the more notable members of DC's Dark magicians simply having burnt up, in quite an impressive and affecting manner.

And as all the climactic confrontations have happened, the greatest heroes having been defeated, as all seems lost and the dark's advance seems inevitable, the Swamp Thing, knowing there is nothing he can really do but unwilling to look on without acting, in silent humility steps forward into the dark.

He doesn't struggle, he doesn't fight, and as the dark asks him whether he knows the answer to the question of its nature, this nature that has been called evil, the conflicted and uncertain Swamp Thing responds as only he could; he responds with doubt.

He says he doesn't know, but he tells the Dark about his conversation with the Parliament of Trees and their assertion that all existence is simply as it is, that evil does not exist, and he adds that though he does not truly believe this, he believes that maybe evil and good are more intertwined and less independent than everyone has made it out to be. The dark lets him leave, and then continues on its way, and in a pretty awesome scene of metaphor made physical the great powers of dark and light clash and mingle, altering the very fabric of reality with their harmony.

And so, with all and done with Swamp Thing can go back home to Abby Arcane, who, because of her close relationship with him, has become the target of outrage and censure, the consequences of which will lead to the Swamp Thing's strangest and most experimental adventures.

Swamp Thing Appreciation 2: The pieces on the Board

So yeah, a pretty damn fine beginning.
The story was good, and in spite of the strangeness of the concept, it all worked quite well.

     It was honestly quite surprising, because I confess I did go into this with some reservations. The whole concept of Swamp Thing is weird. It seemed more than a little silly. And it is. There's no real way around that.

But there was a writer at the helm who just made it all work regardless.

     Alan Moore is a legend in the field of comics, having had an enormous influence in the medium with titles such as Watchmen, V for Vendetta, From Hell, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Batman: The Killing Joke, The Ballad of Halo Jones and others. Of those others, it is the extra-ordinarily dark but phenomenally good Providence saga that is far and away the stand-out, in my very biased and Lovecraft-loving opinion. But it is Moore's work on Swamp Thing that first brought him to the attention of the world at large.

Swamp Thing started out being a horror character, and despite of how weird and far afield it eventually got Moore always kept him firmly in that same genre, all the while bringing a whole new, and quite effective, approach to the stories. He played around with art and dialogue, with structure and layering. He mixed dream-quest, metaphor and genuine literary skill. And what was once just another comic became a work approaching cerebral literature.

Like its titular character Swamp Thing had this stately, inexorable pace, this slow way of ramping up, and the way in which the story was presented; with a multilayered structure that, to keep it all in your head, you had to somehow overlap in order to make it run smooth, this in particular was a genius approach. Swamp Thing always demanded your attention.

But, it was also still a comic, and a part of the DC/Vertigo universe... And that means Superheroes... the one thing that I didn't want to read anything about. And before the end of the first volume, before even Swamp Thing had dealt with his initial brush of existential angst shit had already hit the fan; the capes had arrived. For me, this was quite jarring, I can tell you.

Though their initial appearance doesn't last very long, and ends up being hardly relevant, it does remind the reader that this series' setting is very close to the rest of the DC Superhero stories. The big danger is quickly dealt with and the Swamp Thing gets to return quietly to his swamp, where he would occasionally deal with emergent horrors, all the while growing closer to his friend Abby Arcane.

Eventually, disaster would strike and lead him to team up with various characters from the darker/ occult side of the DC/ Vertigo universe. Etrigan the rhyming demon, Deadman, The Phantom Stranger, Spectre and the Swamp Thing himself would prove a compelling team for readers, making them hungry for more, and the earliest seeds for Justice league Dark were born. And you know what?
Despite my bias against, my loathing for superhero stories, I was having a lot of fun.

And then came Rites of Spring, a landmark in the Swamp Thing series itself. A moment of peace and love for Abby and Swamp Thing at the end of the horrors and the drama of the first arc of the Saga of Swamp Thing. It is an issue that is daring and experimental, its story and the direction it goes in gentle, passionate and rewarding. And the art is completely psychedelic.

But, even in the quiet, even in the happy moments, the question of his nature, his powers and capabilities remained. Man, monster, Swamp Thing, all of these, but what did this actually mean, what possibilities were there?

Moore had some ideas that would make the character truly great.

But he needed a way to shunt Swamp Thing along, he needed to have a guide to help him understand himself and to access his hidden potential. And so Moore created a character who was to be crucial to Swamp Thing's development: a certain mysterious Englishman, clad in trenchcoat and armed with snark and wit, a cigarette forever dangling between his lips.

Swamp Thing Appreciation 1: A Monster Re-made

Usually when anybody asks for recommendations for a comic to get into if you want something in the same vein as Hellblazer, they'll point you to Alan Moore's run on Swamp Thing. Apart from being the series where John Constantine was actually first introduced, the character itself created by Moore and visually based off of Sting (which is why that Hellblazer 30th year anniversary had that rather odd introduction by the artist) it does indeed also comes pretty close to it in tone, as we, in a sense, follow around a tortured character as he comes face to face with various supernatural threats. In Hellblazer we follow Constantine laden with feelings of guilt, in Swamp Thing, we follow around the titular character who's constantly struggling to come to terms with his very nature. But where with Constantine the tortured nature of the character is kind of the thing and will always be present throughout the entire 300 issue run, with Swamp Thing the quest for identity is simply where we start.

You see, people point to Alan Moore's run of Swamp Thing, and they leave out the 19 issues before it, because Moore completely reinvented the character, turning him from something that once had been a man, by disaster turned monster, and he turned it into something uniquely different.

In issue 20 of the second Swamp Thing series Moore took over and by the end of it he had killed its titular character off, or at least this seemed to be so. Death in comic books tends to be a blink-and-you-miss-it moment, the powers that be always unwilling to actually let the cash cow be led to slaughter in any permanent sort of way, and so heroes die only to be resurrected again and again.

and here we are, almost 50 years later, and hasn't it all gotten rather stale indeed?

But this death would be different.

Though Swamp Thing would rise again by the end of the next issue he would be fundamentally different, even though nothing had really changed. Moore killed off Swamp Thing in a spectacular manner, and then, in issue 21, the brilliant 'The Anatomy Lesson' he reverse-engineered him by literally taking him apart piece by piece, and revealed some startling, and yet somehow plausible explanation for the phenomenon of the Swamp Thing.

Through the narration of a small-time villain of the DC-universe, who is hired to dissect the Swamp Thing and uncover his secrets, we learn his strange true nature; we learn that the thing that thinks of himself as human-turned-monster, never was human at all, and that it had merely borrowed the mind of a man who fell into the swamp and died; that it was in fact, a plant-based consciousness that was under the illusion of being human.

And believe you me, I know that that sounds silly, but one should accept it regardless. Because it's not really about how plausible or implausible this concept is. It's about what this information might do to any thinking, rational creature. For someone to be told in clinical, dispassionate terms, it is not what it thought it was. And about what the consequences of this would be. What would this being do when it had this comfortable sense of identity, this oh so crucial thing, so brutally torn away?

There would be sheer existential terror, and rage.

And so it all begins. The Saga of the Swamp Thing.