Hm. I see the connection in terms of multiple narrators, but Kurosawa's point was that the narratives don't match because narrators are inherently unreliable, whereas the narrators in this story supplement each other rather than contradicting. I think it was just Moore's way of showing the same story without an omniscient narrator.

I think you mean Stan Woch.

Probably best known for working on Eclipse's Airboy.  Also pencilled Sandman #29 the "Thermidor" story.  

That explains why he blended in so well with the other guys.

Swamp Thing #39 “Fish Story” (August 1985)



Creative Team: Writing by Alan Moore. Pencils by Stephen Bissette. Ink by John Totleben.

The Story: On the surface of the lake, Nicky holds his playmate Howie captive in anticipation of a coming vampiric feast. The parents of Rosewood bicker and prepare their firearms to defend against a threat they do not understand.



Under the lake, the vampires lead Swamp Thing to the submerged football stadium where a thousand vampire eggs are hatching; the emerging creatures each each other in a Darwinian frenzy until one huge survivor remains. It tears Swamp Thing into pieces, then swims to the surface to menace Howie and the assembled parents.



Swamp Thing merges with The Green and uses the power of plant life to open a huge rent in the hillside that separates sunken Rosewood from a nearby river. The sudden oxygen exposure catches the vampires unprepared; they all perish. Constantine congratulates Swamp Thing on the rapidity with which he can now reconstitute his form. Next assignment: Kennescook, Maine.



My Two Cents: It’s a tale of two communities. As the humans rally to fend off the vampires, so too the vampires congregate to defend their undersea habitat against Swamp Thing’s incursion. In the process, Moore questions whether "I was doing it for my children" is really an acceptable defense for doing things that should not be done at all.



The geography of this story can’t be squared with the previous Rosewood story, in which the town lay in the shadow of a dam. That would imply a river flowing from the dam, right? But in this iteration, the town is at the top of a tall hill, with the river far below, and there’s no hill above the town into which the dam could have been built. Oh well.



This was also the month that Swamp Thing had an adventure with Superman in DC Comics Presents #85, but it’s not included in my trade paperback. In that story (by Moore, with pencils by Rick Veitch), a meteorite infects Superman with a fungus that causes madness and eventually death. Swamp Thing extracts the virus from Superman, who is insane at the time and thus doesn't know that Swamp Thing helped him.

Swamp Thing #41 “Southern Change” (October 1985)



Creative Team: Writing by Alan Moore. Pencils by Stephen Bissette. Ink by Alfredo Alcala.

The Story: On an antebellum plantation, a tryst between the lady of the house and a male slave is discovered, and the slave is flayed. We only hear the scene in dialogue captions displayed over the empty plantation house in present day.

A television crew comes to shoot a high budget drama on location at the old plantation house. Billy, the cocaine-addicted black man playing the slave, is embittered toward whites. Angela, playing the lady of the house, is a racist harboring a secret attraction to Billy. Richard, playing the plantation owner, fancies himself racially “woke” but really just wants to look good. These imperfect people get gradually possessed by the ghosts of this racially charged plantation and begin to re-enact the old scenes instead of the script of their TV show.



The extras playing slaves get caught up by the spirits as well, practicing voodoo rituals around bonfires. When Richard catches Billy snuggling with Angela, he takes the black man to the basement to re-enact the antebellum climax…



Covers that Lie: It’s more of a thematic cover really, just intending to say “Voodoo is in this story.” At no point does anyone make a voodoo doll of Swamp Thing. Nice painting though!

My Two Cents: This story steeps not only in the horrors of antebellum chattel slavery but also in Yoruba spiritism carried from Nigeria to Haiti to Louisiana by the slave trade. Moore marks the passage of days in the story by holidays in the Voodoo calendar, and by traditions like surrounding a cemetery with a protective line of salt. Moore is an avid reader and knew more about Louisiana culture than most Americans by the time he wrote this story.



Swamp Thing and Abby’s doomed relationship is beginning to fray as the differences between them hit home. It’s very similar to what Moore was writing at the same time between Laurie and Doctor Manhattan in Watchmen: the attempt at romance with a man who’s losing his humanity every day. Abby is secretly repulsed to see Swamp Thing press a dead bird into his trunk, and she frets that his body is just a sock puppet for a consciousness with interests elsewhere which she can’t share or comprehend. It’s the sort of thing that alienates lovers.

Swamp Thing #43 “Windfall” (December 1985)



Creative Team: Writing by Alan Moore. Pencils by Stan Woch. Ink by Ron Randall.

The Story: Houma, Louisiana’s resident drug dealer Chester finds one of Swamp Thing’s tubers in the bayou. He’s tempted to eat it, but afraid. So when his regular customer David comes by, looking for drugs to ease his terminally ill wife Sandy, Chester offers 1/3 of the Swamp tuber. It gives David’s wife a pleasant hallucinogenic experience, and they make love, just before she dies.



Later, brutish Milo Flynn comes by Chester’s apartment and bullies a piece of the Swamp tuber for himself. He imagines himself as Swamp Thing and everyone around him as the various antagonists we’ve seen throughout this series, culminating with Arcane. He is terrified, stumbling into traffic, where he is hit by a truck.



Chester hears about Sandy and Milo’s experiences and speculates that the tuber is a “cosmic litmus test” that gives good people good trips, and bad people bad trips. (Jason Woodrue's experience suggests he is wrong.) He’s afraid to consume the final portion and find out just what kind of person he is. As he slumps in a chair, he casts a Swamp Thing-shaped shadow on the wall, perhaps a clue of what experience he would have if he consumed the tuber, or maybe just a comment that he lives in the shadow of Swamp Thing.



Covers That Lie? The real Swamp Thing only appears in this issue on page 1, when the tuber falls off him as he walks. Close enough, I guess.

My Two Cents: A whole fill-in issue about drugs! Paraphenalia is everywhere, including a close-up of Chester and Dave reflected in Chester’s bong as seen below. The centerpiece of the issue is a series of two page spreads in which the left page shows Dave and Sandy’s pleasure, while the right page shows Milo’s terror. I bet some drug users do have a karmic notion about the origin of bad trips. The irony is that Milo’s trip was no less true than Sandy’s. It’s just not as pleasant to walk in Swamp Thing’s shoes.



Chester is reading a significant book which Moore and Woch are careful to show us clearly: “The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge.” Its author Carlos Castaneda lived with a Toltec shaman in Mexico from 1960-65 and submitted this book, his personal experience of shamanic practices and psychogenic consumption, as the thesis paper for his Masters degree in Anthropology from the University of California. Its critics have derided it as a work of fiction rather than scholarship. Castaneda’s work will be an influential strand in the Brujeria story which awaits us from Moore.



Chester is also reading “The Doors of Perception: Heaven and Hell.” This is Aldous Huxley’s 1954 memoir about mescaline consumption, and the beautiful and terrifying experiences he had under its influence. How nice of Moore to work his bibliography into the story! 





Stan Lee is seen guffawing while reading this book in his cameo in the 2016 Doctor Strange film, as seen at the 5:00 minute mark in this compilation video of his cameo appearances:



“The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers” was Gilbert Shelton’s underground comic book about stoners, published sporadically 1971-1997.
Chester is shown living on the third floor of a four story apartment building. Maybe if he lived in NYC, but I doubt Houma, Louisiana has four story apartment buildings. More likely he’d live in a trailer park.



This character, or one who looks very similar, first appeared way back in Swamp Thing Vol 1 #2 as an unnamed paramedic watching Swamp Thing get flown away by Arcane in a seaplane. Since Totleben was the creative team member most familiar with the original series, I bet connecting Chester to that bit character was his idea.



Chester must be the most benign drug dealer ever to grace fictional pages. His only customer are Bad People Who Deserve To Die, and the Terminally Ill Who Deserve Relief. We don’t get to see him selling cocaine to a disheveled teen who hocked his mom’s wedding ring to get the cash. Or heroin to a pregnant woman who pleads with him not to turn her in or “they’ll take my baby.” When he lists his sins while contemplating eating the tuber, “I’m a drug dealer” doesn’t even make the list.