Well, with Green Lantern, his experiences ranged from being restrained, sort of crucified to watching someone else about to be crucified--

Swamp Thing #21 “Requiem” (March 1976)



Creative Team: David Michelinie writing, Nestor Redondo on art

The Story: Solus (Latin for "Alone") is an alien prince, cast out from his people after murdering his brother. But they left him with a Control Rod which augments his natural touch-based mind-control with the ability to control people at a distance. Also, they exile him on a spaceship which has both teleport capabilities as well as a rack of “stasis tube” prison cells. Solus runs all over the galaxy, kidnapping different species, including the beautiful Cellanth, whom he serially rapes. Finally, Solus kidnaps Swamp Thing. Cellanth frees all the beasties in Solus’ menagerie while Solus is busy monologuing about how difficult his life is. 



Solus seizes telepathic control of Swamp Thing to murder some of the other beasties, then telepathically forces Cellanth to dance for him so feverishly that she dies. Further beastie rioting ensues, and in the scuffle, Solus comes into physical contact with Swamp Thing. This is bad because he’s been festooned by his people with hundreds of tiny bombs which will explode if he comes into contact with “planetary soil,” and apparently Swamp Thing’s body qualifies in that category. Solus does explode, and Swamp Thing steps back into Solus’ teleporter, which delivers him into the Mojave Desert.

Covers That Lie: The cover image showing Solus riding a sky-sled and shooting a laser pistol at Swampy on Earth does not remotely describe the contents, other than the presence of Solus. Obviously it was done in advance of the actual story.

My Two Cents: Well, that was a dark story! Take away the sci-fi trappings, and it could have taken place in a grungy suburban basement dungeon. To make it work in outer space, Conway introduces many contrivances. The “stasis tubes” do not put the monsters into stasis; they are simply prison pods, handily equipped with telepathic language translators so that the prisoners can chat. The Control Rod has a hundred identical buttons, but Cellanth knows just which one will free the prisoners. Solus’ people exiled him with all kinds of tech that no deposed tyrant should be allowed to have.



The space platform has an absurd construction with only a shin-high railing to prevent one from stumbling off into deep space, which is exactly what happens to Solus during the fight scene.



The tragic life of Cellanth the sex-slave comes to a tragic end. She has flesh-colored antennae just like Marvel’s character Mantis, who debuted in Avengers #112-114 (1973). Steve Englehart explained later: "Basically Mantis was supposed to be a hooker who would join the Avengers and cause dissension amongst all the male members by coming onto each of them in turn." As if prostitutes are nymphomaniacs. Needless to say that aspect of Mantis didn't make it into her appearance in the Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 movie.



At one point Solus seizes control of Swamp Thing’s mind, forcing him to slaughter his fellow escapees. All in all, a sordid tale that doesn’t hang together well. Sort of like Avengers #200, which also lists Michelinie’s name among the writing credits, though he would later refuse to take credit for the contents. Redondo's art is good, though.

Swamp Thing #23 “Rebirth and Nightmare” (July 1976)



Creative Team: Gerry Conway writing, Nestor Redondo on art

The Story: Swamp Thing walks to Quin, Oregon, where his brother Edward Holland lives with his lab assistant Ruth Monroe, who hangs around the lab in a bikini top and low rider pants. Edward declares himself “twice the chemist Alec is or ever was” and promises to find a cure for swampiness. He’s right; Edward synthesizes an antidote in only 26 hours!



Super-villains Sabre and Thrudvang the Earth-Master work for the criminal gang Colossus, which wants to capture Swamp Thing and recreate Alec Holland’s bio-restorative formula. But Sabre has another agenda; he is government drone John Zero, whose Leviathan project was destroyed by Swamp Thing and Matt Cable back in issue #13. That explosion cost Zero his right hand, which he has now replaced with a blade, and he’s apparently trained up to become a buff swordsman. He tracks Swamp Thing to Oregon (more on this later) and accosts him, just as Edward Holland’s experiment is successfully turning Swampy back to a human. A battle in a burning barn leaves Zero even more maimed, and Alec Holland restored to fully human form.

My Two Cents: Sales must have really sunk, judging by the radical revamp. These are the first super-villains we’ve seen in this whole series, and they seem quite out of place. The cover has a new super-hero style logo and cover art also. We’re a long way from Len Wein’s gothic stories, though in all fairness it has been 18 months since he left the book. We’re told that Colossus has implanted a homing device inside Swamp Thing, but not when or how; it’s just a necessary convenience to lead the villains to the hero. The two villains fly together in a hovercraft to Oregon, but for some reason only Sabre attacks in this issue; Thrudvang must be hanging out in the woods for a couple of days, not attacking until next issue. 



I haven’t talked a lot about the art in this series. Nestor Redondo isn’t Bernie Wrightson, but on the whole he’s done a good job, better than the average Marvel comic of the 70s. Here’s a cool splash page montage of Swamp thing’s head intercut with a montage of Edward working on the cure.



Conway introduces biochemistry grad student Ruth Monroe as a stereotypical fainting female while his captions remind us that the fainting female is a cliché stereotype. Trying to have it both ways, are we? Conway does subsequently try to flesh out Ruth’s character through a conversation about her mother not living to see her pursuing advanced education. Redondo meanwhile spends plenty of time outing Ruth's flesh.



Edward makes good on his boast of being a better chemist than Alec, which of course raises the question of why we haven’t heard of him before now, and why it was Alec doing the government research and not Edward in the first place. Edward’s cure requires re-staging the original accident to a bizarre level of faithfulness. He builds a mock laboratory in a barn, plants a real bomb in it, and then when the bomb goes off, the chemical-coated Swamp Thing must run outside and jump in an inflatable swimming pool filled with Louisiana swamp water.

Being bimonthly doubtless helped, and Redondo was inking himself.

Swamp Thing #24 “The Earth Below” (September 1976)



Creative Team: David Anthony Kraft writing “with special thanks to Gerry Conway for the plot!” Ernie Chua and Fred Carrillo on art. Carl Gafford is credited as colorist, the first time in this series that the colorist has been separately named.

The Story: When Alec Holland awakens the next morning worrying about how to re-start his life as a human, Ruth Monroe suggestively says, “Start with me.” This makes his brother Edward jealous. Alec gets bad muscle cramps when he and Ruth go into town for groceries and breakfast.



Solomon Smith, Sabre’s boss from Colossus, gets Sabre out of jail and hospital and immediately has him back on his feet, re-equipped with a new curved blade. Sabre is worried that his partner Thrudvang the Earth Master (who went with Sabre to Oregon last issue but did nothing and is apparently still there) will kill Alec Holland before the secret of the bio-restorative formula can be wrested from him. Sure enough, Thrudvang uses his earth-powers to wreck the car with Alec and Ruth. Alec lures Thrudvang onto a nearby suspension bridge, then in “a flash of mad genius” cuts the bridge with his pocketknife. Thrudvang falls into the river far below, and the hero is safe… for now…



My Two Cents: Thrudvang proves thoroughly incompetent despite being super-strong, super-tough, and being an earth-shaper to boot. He has never appeared again in any comic book. The book is heading into some really silly super-hero territory now. The last page teases us with a “Hawkman vs Swamp Thing” battle next issue. But that issue never comes; the series was canceled here, so we never find out what Colossus was going to do next, how they implanted a homing beacon inside Swamp Thing, or how long it would take for Edward’s jealousy to (presumably) lead him to stage another chemical accident to turn Alec back into Swamp Thing, probably killing Ruth (the Linda Holland stand-in) in the process for extra symmetry points. A more interesting plot would have been for Edward to become the new Swamp Thing.



Ruth and Alec are having one of those accelerated comic book romances, falling into each other’s arms after only a few panels together. This kiss is particularly silly inasmuch as they stopped running away from the villain so they could lie on the ground and make out. Not surprisingly, he catches up with them.



In 1991, Len Wein assessed the series after his departure: “Bernie retired from the bimonthly Swamp Thing after ten issues. Three issues later, I left as well. Various other stalwarts attempted to carry on as best they could, but Swamp Thing was then our personal vision. After another dozen issues, the title quietly breathed its last. By that time the death was euthanasia.” That seems harsh; some of the stories were OK, and the art was great. But clearly sales were terrible. Next time we'll cover what happened to Swamp Thing in other books in the short term.

“Thrudvang”?

Did Conway never say that name out loud to see just how uneuphonious it is?

He also returned briefly to human form in issue #2 in his first adventure after transformation.  Magic was involved that time, and I guess you can explain anything with magic, but that issue does take it for granted that Swamp Thing's body is Alec Holland's physical body hybridized into plant form.

This issue is less easy to explain since it 's just laboratory bench work that transforms him to human. You could try to make a pseudoscience appeal to the memory of water or somesuch, but considering that neither villains Sabra and Thrudvang nor criminal conspiracy Colossus are ever seen again, it's best to just write these last two "superhero" issues of Swamp Thing off as non-canonical.