Swamp Thing

The Swamp Thing is a fictional character in the DC Comics Universe. The character found perhaps his greatest popularity during the 1970s and early 1990s. Len Wein came up with the idea for the character while riding a subway in Queens. The comic is set in the early 20th century, when Olsen, a scientist, is caught in a lab explosion caused by his co-worker, Damian Ridge, who intended to kill him to gain the hand of Olsen's wife Linda. In Swamp Thing #1 Wein and Wrightson updated the time frame to the 1970s and featured a new version character: Alec Holland, a scientist working in the Louisiana swamps on a secret bio-restorative formula "that can make forests out of deserts". He is described as "a plant that thought it was Alec Holland, a plant that was trying its level best to be Alec Holland" with the result that he suffered a temporary identity crisis as he tried to surrender to his plant side after the discovery that he could never be human 'again', but he eventually adjusted to his role after a fight with the Floronic Man.