Swamp Thing: Fish Story

[alicemacher]

From Swamp Thing #39 (Aug. 1985).

Upon learning that their missing sons Nicky and Howard were last seen in the water at Rosewood, the boys' parents go looking for them, together with William's father. As they do so, the Swamp Thing looks underwater for the vampires: "This... is the place... where they are safe... and I... have come... to destroy it."

Howard, strung up upside down by the lake, asks the now-vampiric Howard (as the latter hunts and feeds on a rat) why the vampires haven't turned him as well. Howard says they're saving him for the Feast of the Firstborn, as it'll be hungry when it hatches, and "children are caviar" to its kind.

Under the water, the vampires herd the Swamp Thing to the site of the hatching.





Before the Swamp Thing can land a single blow, the Firstborn tears him to pieces, so he lets his body go...









The Firstborn swallows Mr. Shapiro in one bite. Howard's mother Tammy sensibly hurries her husband and son toward their car, and urges William's father Osgood to join them. But the macho Osgood insists on taking the creature out with his shotgun. Instead, he becomes its final victim as the Swamp Thing, his mind centered in the strip of land separating the lake from the river, begins to "flex [his] muscles."







Once the flood has subsided, Constantine meets up with the Swamp Thing and congratulates him for regenerating in only fifty-one seconds.





(The "red skies and funny weather patterns" are a reference to the Crisis crossover, which had recently begun.)

The Swamp Thing answers Constantine with a mere "Perhaps" and lets his body go. John comes across a couple of vampire skeletons slumped over at a bus stop. "Don't worry," he tells them, "there'll be three showing up at once in a couple of minutes." He walks away chuckling.

Next: a woman's curse.

Comments

[tcampbell1000]

The theme of this story is clearly family: the monstrous but oddly beautiful "family" of the vampire community and the human families of the boys in the lake, more imperfect but no less deserving of life. At first, Moore seems to be inverting the idea that the good are rewarded, as Nicky (har har) is the first victim just for being fat and slow and Howard looks to be the second because he has the decency to go back for Nicky when no one else will. But in the end, there's a certain rough justice at work here: Howard and his parents are neither venal like WIlliam's dad nor spiritually weak like Nicky and his parents, and they survive... though that leads to the most troubling part of the issue.

"A kid and his parents survived. They got out to tell the story. The whole point was to stop that happening." Errr... I think we're meant to read this as saying "You should've stopped this sooner, before anyone could bear witness to the Firstborn and could spread the story of its existence." But the phrasing... does lend itself to a darker interpretation, doesn't it? Just how amoral are you, Mr. Constantine?

[qalchemist]

I had this comic as a kid; the scene with Nicky and his mother was particularly horrific and jarring to me back then, and has stayed with me all my life.

Not to the worse, I think - it gave me a good grasp on how to make something truly scary.