Two drifters hang out drinking one night in the Houma swamp. One of them, Diagonal Bob, recently got into a fight with his landlady, who threw him out. The other is a demented elderly man (whose real name is never revealed, but whom some call Nukeface) with rotting skin, missing teeth and a white glow. After lighting a fire, he innocently offers Bob a taste of what he's been drinking...which turns out to be a can of nuclear waste.
As Bob slowly dies of radiation poisoning and his body fizzes and falls apart, the oblivious Nukeface tells him his story. He once tended a coal strip-mine in Blossomville, Pennsylvania, staying there even after the 1968 underground fire which rendered it unusable. In 1972, the mine's overflow pits became a dump for nuclear waste. Desperate for something to drink, he took to it without at first knowing what it was, and became addicted. (Apparently he was partially immune to it from the start.) Eventually, however, the authorities had the dump paved over. Nukeface learned they were moving the disposal site to Houma, so he recently went there too, taking his remaining stash with.
Earlier that evening in Blossomville, Wallace Monroe, an inspector for the waste-dumping company, prepares to leave for Houma with his gentle, devout wife Treasure, who's expecting a baby. He tells her of his growing unease over his job, given the reports of homeless people who'd disappeared around the Blossomville dump, despite company assurances that they'd tested it for safety. Treasure unintentionally adds to his malaise by mentioning she'd overheard that one of the disappeared men had been "on a bender with Nukeface."
Later that night, in the wetlands, the Swamp Thing, sleeping beside Abby, dreams of the devastated Blossomville ecosystem. Waking up, he takes it for a premonition and goes off to investigate, discovering a drum of waste that some workers had just dumped in the swamp.
Nukeface, oblivious as ever, bids good-bye to what's left of Bob and goes to look for some more "juice." He soon finds, to his anger and sorrow, that it's all buried under the mud. The Swamp Thing happens by and Nukeface implores him to help dig it up. However, his touch bores a hole in the Swamp Thing's torso and he falls over in agony. Nukeface, assuming he's just drunk, decides to be magnanimous and share the rest of his supply. He pours it down the helpless Swamp Thing's throat, and begins to ramble on once more about Pennsylvania.
Tropes:
- Acquired Poison Immunity: Nukeface. Although years of nuclear waste consumption have rotted his skin and teeth, possibly contributed to his dementia, and made him a walking radioactive deathtrap, he's still alive.
- Addled Addict: Nukeface's addiction to nuclear waste renders him a hideous, demented (if oddly upbeat) vagrant.
- Artistic License – Nuclear Physics: Although in real life, radioactive material rarely glows—and people who ingested it, whatever else happened to them, wouldn't themselves glow as a result—Nukeface's white glow adds to the eerieness and horror of his character.
- Author Tract: In this issue and the next, many of the panels are littered with fragments of actual newspaper articles (which Bissette gathered at Moore's request) about the effects of nuclear waste dumping and attempts to cover them up. See also Straw Character below.
- Blessed with Suck: Played with. Nukeface's touch is lethal, but he himself is blissfully unaware of it.
- The Nicknamer: Nukeface, due to senility, calls everyone he meets "Ed." Even when Bob corrects him twice.
- Nuclear Mutant: Long-term exposure to radiation turns Nukeface into a hideously disfigured, walking doom-bringer.
- Obliviously Evil: Nukeface is friendly and well-meaning. He's also so demented he's completely unaware that his body is lethally radioactive, even when others scream in pain at his touch, and that sharing his "juice" is a very bad idea, even when others die and disintegrate right in front of him.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: Nukeface, ironically, given his own nicknaming tendency. (Strictly speaking, only once in this issue does the nickname "Nukeface" appear outside the title, in the "on a bender with Nukeface" indirect quote. See however the following issue.)
- Poisonous Person / Walking Wasteland: Nukeface, for the reasons mentioned under Obliviously Evil.
- Phosphor-Essence: Nukeface glows as a result of his long-term nuclear waste consumption. However, it's a white glow, not a Sickly Green Glow as is usually the case with fictional radioactive entities.
- Straw Character: Nukeface, if only for one scene. He tells Bob (who's already dead) that "We need nuculer fishing" because "How ya gonna run a car on windmills an' watermills?" and because it's necessary for defence. "Close [the nuclear plants] down, we'll all end up on the collective farm sluggin' back vodka!" Here Moore goes beyond commenting on the results of negligent waste disposal (and of cover-ups thereof), into an implicit condemnation of nuclear energy as a whole, placing the arguments in its favour in the mouth of an uneducated, demented addict.
- Toxic, Inc.: Wallace's company, which specializes in nuclear waste disposal, has a somewhat cavalier attitude toward safety. In Blossomville, there are deaths from exposure despite the firm's assurance that "they did tests." In Houma, one of the employees wonders about the depth of the bog in which they just dumped the drums. The other assures him that it's "[d]eep enough. It's like they say: Outta sight is outta mind...an' what the eye don't see...the heart don't grieve over."
- Very Loosely Based on a True Story: The Blossomville mine fire to which Nukeface refers is based on the Centralia, Pennsylvania coal mine fire
which began in 1962, ultimately resulted in the near-complete abandonment of the town, and is still burning to this day.
