Swamp Thing

The Swamp Thing is a fictional character created by Len Wein and Bernie Wrightson for DC Comics, and featured in a long-running horror-fantasy comic book series of the same name. He is a humanoid mass of vegetable matter who fights to protect his swamp home, the environment in general, and humanity, from various supernatural threats. The series was continued by a number of writers, notably Alan Moore, whose reinvention of the character was particularly influential.

Parodies and homages

In Dave Sim's Cerebus, starting with issues reprinted near the end of the first collected volume, there is a two-headed creature whose heads are named "Fred" and "Ethel". The appearances of Fred and Ethel are obvious parodies of Swamp Thing and Man-Thing respectively, and Ethel is referred to as a "woman-thing" at least once. Later, near the end of the Church and State storyline, this creature is depicted with a third head, called "The little fellow with the hair", attempting to complete the Ascension and become a messiah-figure; this creature then falls to Earth from a point somewhere near the moon and is later said to have burned up on re-entry and ended up as "a light sprinkling of ash".

Related Topics:
Dave Sim - Cerebus

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Another possible artistic reference to Swamp Thing appears in early editions of the collectable card game ; the original artwork for the card Force of Nature, seen in the basic sets up to and including Fourth Edition, greatly resembles Swamp Thing. In the other sets where this card appears, namely Fifth Edition and Ninth Edition, different artwork is used. (Since this is true of many Magic cards starting with the Fifth Edition set, it is unlikely that this was due to the resemblance between the two creatures so much as a simple desire to evolve the look of the game generally.) Another Magic card, Sylvan Library, resembles a cross between Man-Thing and various members of the Parliament of Trees.

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