Swamp Thing: Windfall

[alicemacher]

From Swamp Thing #43 (Dec. 1985). Art by Stan Woch and Ron Randall.

In this intermission from the "American Gothic" arc, we meet Chester Williams, a hippie dealer who finds one of the Swamp Thing's tubers in the Houma wetlands, without realizing its source. He takes it home and cuts it in thirds so he can examine it under a microscope. His old friend Dave drops by unexpected and breaks down crying because his wife Sandy is dying of cancer and is in terrible pain. Dave asks Chester whether he has any dope that could make her feel better. Chester is in fact out of product at the moment, but out of compassion he gives Dave a slice of tuber for free because it has some structural similarities to datura root, a potent psychedelic.

Moments after Dave leaves, Chester receives an unwanted visit from Milo Flynn, an acquaintance who, after making misogynistic comments about Chester's ex, says he wants something to get high on. Refusing to believe Chester's out of drugs, he spots the tuber and demands a piece. Chester reluctantly offers it to him for fifteen dollars, but Milo simply takes it and leaves, saying he'll "owe" him later.

Dave, back home, has Sandy try the tuber.





Milo, at a bar with a friend, is in the middle of claiming Chester ripped him off, when he suddenly experiences himself as Alec Holland on fire and screams in agony.





Sandy makes love with Dave in the rain while continuing to rhapsodize about love and the world like Abby in "Rite of Spring."





Milo runs through the streets, hallucinating passers-by as various monsters the Swamp Thing has encountered. He becomes convinced this is how the world really is: a place of unending horror in which everyone consumes each other and decays. He recalls all the horrible things he's done.











"It's just a question of faith, that's all," thinks Chester as he picks up the last piece of tuber and prepares to take a bite. But he decides not to take the risk and puts it back down.

Next: the Swamp Thing vs. the Bogeyman!

Comments

Bonus fun fact

[alicemacher]

Animator Larry Loc, who was Stephen Bissette's roommate at the Kubert School, has claimed to be the visual inspiration for Chester who, beginning with Issue 53, would become a prominent supporting character right up to the title's 1996 cancellation.

[tcampbell1000]

An interesting expansion on the idea that eating the tuber lets someone share Alec's consciousness. If you're a good person like Abby or Sandy, you get the psychedlia and the flowery free verse, the best parts of his existence. If you're someone like Milo, though, you get his nightmares. There's a little part of Alec that still thinks of himself as a transformed human, even though he knows better, and a larger part that's got a little PTSD from the way more monstrous monsters just keep strolling into his life.

Note how Chester's two visitors underline his dilemma: Dave calls him a "good man" and Milo's unnamed friend calls him a "bastard." For each, he could say, "Takes one to know one."

I misremembered something here: I thought Dave and Sandy's sequence was actually Wallace and Treasure's, from the Nukeface story. This is an easy mistake to make, especially given what will happen when they appear later and their similar hair colors. Sandy's a lot thinner but at this point, Treasure probably is too. Maybe they were meant to be Wallace and Treasure in an early draft. It works better with new characters, though: Wallace has too much baggage to fit comfortably in this simple morality play.

It's also good to see one relatively ideal relationship (other than Abby and Alec's) amid the parade of marital horrors that runs through the rest of "American Gothic" ("The Curse," the Robertaland incident, and the upcoming "Ghost Dance").

Chester, a good man who worries he isn't better, also serves as a bit of a counterargument to this "dark heart of America" thing that "Gothic" has going on. Although Moore clearly identifies with the hippie mindset, Chester is a species of hippie you'd only find in the States.