A review by adamskiboy528491
Absolute Swamp Thing by Alan Moore, Vol. 1 by Alfredo Alcalá, John Costanza, Alan Moore, Stephen R. Bissette, Rick Veitch, John Totleben, Tatjana Woods, Shawn McManus, Dan Day, Ron Randall

4.25

 The book was among the first to abandon the Comics Code and paved the way for the darker and edgier comics of the 1980s and 1990s, including Moore's own Watchmen and DC's Vertigo imprint, where the series eventually ended up outside the main DCU. Swamp Thing also showed publishers that holding comics to a higher literary standard did not necessarily mean a drop in sales. 

 

Originally, Swamp Thing was a scientist named Alec Holland who was turned into a monster in the swamps near Houma, Louisiana, after his lab equipment was sabotaged and his wife Linda was killed. Wes Craven followed this plot with his mildly successful film adaptation, about your standard modern-day Prometheus doing good and lamenting lost love. Moore, however, retconned the character's origin. 

 

The character is generally considered to have changed hugely for the better when Alan Moore did away with "Alec Holland" trying to become human again, recast Swampie as the anthropomorphic personification of all plant life and began exploring nature mysticism. Most writers afterwards have followed this angle.