Pre-Crisis Primer: Welcome to The Green

Swamp Thing 35-36

'The Nuke-Face Papers'

He's so hungover.

Swamp Thing finally meets his match. What Hell and Fear could not conquer, a deranged drifter with a penchant for toxic waste achieves.

Things are going well for the muck-encrusted plant who thought it was a man at one point but now knows it's a plant but still acts like a man anyway, because whatever. He revealed his love to Abby Arcane, who is more than willing to requite; Abby's uncle, Swamp Thing's nemesis Anton Arcane, has been consigned to Hell for eternity (this is comics, who are we kidding); and now the hero is content to laze about his days in the swamp, spending time with Abby and every now and again sharing a yam. Like a lover.

The rules of narrative unequivocally dictate that shit go massively awry and 'The Nuke-Face Papers' is more than willing to oblige. The story comes at the reader from several different angles. At one point we're following a young couple, Wallace and his pregnant wife Treasure, who are traveling from Pennsylvania to Louisiana because Wallace is receiving a new job within his company. Wallace has a secret, he was involved with some kind of industrial waste dumping disaster. Another angle is that of the titular Nuke-Face: less a run-of-the-mill nuclear-powered super villain, Nuke-Face is a drifter suffering from severe radiation exposure. Instead of being killed he's become sort of a Typhoid Mary carrier, infecting those he comes into contact with radiation sickness.

The friendly guy at the end of the bar.

To a lesser extent the story also introduces us to two workers illegally dumping waste in the swamp, as well as a group of children from Houma, the Louisiana town near where Swamp Thing makes his home, who witness Nuke-Face hiding among the trees and make a game of looking for him. At the center of this, the knot that ties all the story strands together, is Swamp Thing.

It is revealed Wallace really is a no-good kind of guy in that he was both responsible for some illegal waste dumping that led to some very bad things happening to some people, as well as the guy in charge of moving the operation south before anyone gets wind of what happened. What happened being that a bunch of homeless men and drifters up and disappeared near the dump site. Bad mojo. What Wallace is unaware of is that the results of this dumping led to more than death: it lead to Nuke-Face, a man who now survives by subsisting on the illegally dumped waste. He loves the stuff, and he's bound and determined to follow Wallace wherever he may go.

The resolution to the story is a bit unorthodox. The illegal dumping perpetrated by the unnamed company is not revealed. There are hints that with proper investigating, the dumping would be brought to light, but also hints that bribery will be the order of the day. Nuke-Face is not fought, nor even incarcerated. He disappears into the night, looking for more of the waste he loves so much. The only bit of traditional resolution is the poetic justice faced by Wallace when he realizes that his wife, Treasure, has had explicit contact with Nuke-Face and it's strongly hinted that the unborn baby will be affected negatively by this exposure. Poetic justice for Wallace maybe, but Treasure is the one who really suffers here. 

She'll give birth to The Toxic Avenger.

As for the Swamp Thing meeting his match? He plays a minor part in this story in terms of 'screen time' because he's one of the first characters to stumble upon Nuke-Face who, through purely accidental means, manages to burn the Swamp Thing badly with his radioactive touch. Swamp Thing is burnt so badly that his limbs dissolve and melt, and, in front of Abby, he begins to totally dissolve. Letting go of the man for an instant and realizing he is a plant and that plants regrow with the seasons, Swamp Thing has one last gamble. In front of Abby, the Swamp Thing dies. That's a pretty complete resolution there. 

What Etrigan and Arcane couldn't accomplish, a nice gesture does instead.

Rest assured, there will be a next issue, but for now the Swamp Thing is dead. 

That's all folks.

'The Nuke-Face Papers' is another winner in the Alan Moore and Stephen Bissette run of stories we've covered so far. Coming off the brilliant 'Rite of Spring' and emotionally-charged 'Pog', the series continues its streak of thought-provoking stories. Less a part of the over-arching story of the Swamp Thing and more a self-contained tale on the effects human beings can have on the planet and each other. The story is framed with photocopies of many articles written in newspapers and science journals on the horrors of waste-dumping, nuclear power, and other man-made toxic disasters. Every action by the characters is framed as some response to an environmental disaster changing both the Earth and, as not-so-subtly made allegorical with Nuke-Face himself, humanity. The story ends much like the real-life problem of environmental damage: without much of a resolution. In fact in the final scene nuke-Face brags about how's he going to see the whole of America by the time he's done.

All this and our mean, green hero lies dead.

Not the hero we want, but the hero we deserve.