Swamp Thing EcoGothic Monster or Environmental Champion?

In 1971, Len Wein and Bernie Wrightson co-created a male plant-human hybrid monster for DC Comics that emphasised the ambiguity of the fictional superhero figure and captured the popular imagination. From its birth as a comic book marsh monster, Swamp Thing was reconceptualised by Alan Moore in 1982 as a superhero figure that engaged with environmental, political, and social issues, many of which resonate with today’s readers. This hybrid monster has featured as the protagonist in Wes Craven’s film, Swamp Thing (1982), a sequel directed by Jim Wynorski, The Return of Swamp Thing (1989), a short-lived animated series (Fox Kids, 1991), and two TV series (USA Network, 1990-1993 and DC Universe, 2019), clearly speaking to public fascination with the uncanny and grotesque. Yet is this character a superhero or a monster? Exploring Swamp Thing through a material ecoGothic approach reveals the character’s trans-corporeal monstrosity which, through a disturbing becoming-plant, not only embodies our (somewhat) irrational fear of nature, but also advocates for an ecological change in attitude as we move towards better understanding our place in the world. Swamp Thing, as an eco-monster emerging from the murky, polluted marshland, disrupts our pre-conceived ideas of a pleasant (controlled) nature, forcing us to recognise the impact of the Anthropocene. Through Stacy Alaimo’s concept of trans-corporeality, Swamp Thing’s plant-human hybridity exemplifies ‘the flows, interchanges, and interrelations between human corporeality and the more-than-human world’ (Bodily Natures: 142) within a monstrous posthuman character that ‘reconfigure[s] the very boundaries of the human’ (Bodily Natures: 154). Through an ecoGothic approach, despite the appearance of being an horrific villain, Swamp Thing’s monstrosity situates this character as an environmental superhero.