History Recap / SwampThingVolume2Issue39FishStory

* FiveManBand: The parental search party.
** Tammy (Howie's mother) is TheLeader. Focused, sensible and take-charge, she's the first parent who resolves to go looking, and the one who gets her husband and son into the car when they hesitate. She also tells Osgood (who doesn't listen) to forget about fighting the vampire and join them.
** Jack (Howie's father) is TheLancer. Quieter than Tammy, but similarly rational and focused. Quick-working and competent; as such Tammy delegates him to cut their son loose.
** Mr. Shapiro (Nicky's father) is a downplayed and subverted TheSmartGuy. More collected than his wife, he does his best to keep her calm and hopeful and, unlike her, is observant enough to notice his son is NotHimself. However, when Nicky starts draining his mother, Mr. Shapiro proves ineffective, merely standing by and pleading instead of trying to save her. And he freezes at the sight of the vampire fish, instead of running.
** Osgood (William's father) is TheBigGuy. Macho, quick-tempered, brutish and headstrong. He has no patience for other's weaknesses, while being unaware of his own. The only member of the party to carry a gun, which he foolishly tries to use on the vampire instead of running to safety with Howie and his parents.
** Joan Shapiro (Nicky's mother) is TheChick. Completely governed by emotion, she does little except cry and imagine the worst. Upon finding her son, she ignores Howie's and her husband's warnings and rushes to hug and comfort him.

--> "This... is their neighbourhood...This...is the place...where they are safe [...] to live and worship as they choose [...] to raise their children [...] And I...have come...to destroy it."\\
'''-- The Swamp Thing'''

!!Tropes

* WoundedGazelleGambit: Nicky pretends to be scared and cold, in order to lure his mother to him so he can feed on her.

* AdultFear: Although they each show it in different ways, all of the parents are worried about what may have happened to Nicky and Howie, neither having returned from the lake all night.

* GrayAndGrayMorality: Apart from Nicky, who acts in a ManipulativeBastard manner toward his own mother, the vampires aren't portrayed in the usual ForTheEvulz manner. Rather, in this storyline, they're given an inner monologue from their collective viewpoint, which shows they value the safety and happiness of their families and their community. In contrast, the humans in the story are a mixed lot. While most of them are loving and well-meaning, Osgood is an abusive brute, and John Constantine a {{Trickster}} AntiHero who not only strings the Swamp Thing along but places the prevention of the {{Apocalypse Cult}}'s grand scheme above the sparing of individual human lives. The Swamp Thing, being neither human nor vampire, nevertheless also places himself in a morally gray area by taking the humans' side, as he himself acknowledges here (see page quote) and even more starkly in Issue 50:

* TranshumanTreachery: As noted above, Howie is the one Rosewood vampire who behaves in a way that's deliberately evil, first deceiving his mother into approaching him so he can drain her, and then taunting his father for having failed to save him.

* TranshumanTreachery: As noted above, Howie is the one Rosewood vampire who acts wilfully evil, first deceiving his mother into approaching him so he can drain her, and then taunting his father for having failed to save him.

** Mr. Shapiro (Nicky's father) is a downplayed and subverted TheSmartGuy. More collected than his wife, he does his best to keep her calm and hopeful and, unlike her, is observant enough to notice his son is NotHimself. However, when Nicky starts draining his mother, Mr. Shapiro proves ineffective, merely standing by and pleading instead of trying to pull him off. And he freezes at the sight of the vampire fish, instead of running.

* GrayAndGrayMorality: Apart from Nicky, who acts in a ManipulativeBastard manner toward his own mother, the vampires aren't portrayed in the usual ForTheEvulz manner. Rather, in this storyline, they're given an inner monologue from their collective viewpoint, which shows they value the safety and happiness of their families and their community. In contrast, the humans in the story are a mixed lot. While most of them are loving and well-meaning, Osgood is an abusive brute, and John Constantine a {{Trickster}} AntiHero who not only strings the Swamp Thing along but places the prevention of the {{Apocalyptic Cult}}'s grand scheme above the sparing of individual human lives. The Swamp Thing, being neither human nor vampire, nevertheless also places himself in a morally gray area by taking the humans' side, as he himself acknowledges here (see page quote) and even more starkly in Issue 50:

Beneath the water's surface, the Swamp Thing comes face to face with the Rosewood vampires. Finding him unsuitable for feeding as he has no blood, they herd him to the birthing-place. He watches in horror as the Mother's eggs hatch not humanoid vampires, but skeletal fish creatures. These proceed to devour each other until, by a process of hyper-accelerated evolution, only one is left: a giant, bipedal vampire-fish which attacks and destroys the Swamp Thing's body.

Meanwhile, the parents find the boys. Nicky feigns helplessness in order to lure his mother Joan toward him. Ignoring her husband's caution, and Howie's shouted warning that "he isn't Nicky anymore," Joan goes over to comfort him, and he drains her of blood. When his father pleads for him to stop, Nicky tells him he's "useless" because he wasn't there to save him as a father should, and it's now too late to save Joan. With that, the giant fish-vampire breaks the surface and devours first Joan's husband, then William's father Osgood. Howie's parents, however, manage to cut their son loose and the three of them drive to safety.

The Swamp Thing abandons his dismembered body for the Green. He reflects that he's having trouble because he's still been trying to fight as a human would, and comes up with a larger-scale tactic. Seeing that a narrow strip of land separates the stagnant lake from the nearby flowing river, he becomes one with that strip and restructures the terrain so as to reconnect the lake to the river. The vampires, unable to survive in the flowing, newly-oxygenated water, quickly disintegrate, their last thoughts a lament that all they wanted was their own home to raise their children.

When the flood subsides, Constantine shows up and calls for the Swamp Thing, who regrows in only fifty-one seconds, then demands the knowledge about himself that his mentor had promised. Constantine, however, tells him that he's "botched" the job, because he allowed Howie and his parents to survive and tell others about their ordeal, which will lead in turn to an increase in the number of people who believe in vampires. Increased occult belief, John explains, is exactly what "the people who are behind this" need for their plans. He tells the Swamp Thing he'll talk further with him in two weeks' time, in Kennescook, Maine. Annoyed and exasperated, the Swamp Thing says only "Perhaps," and then abandons his body for home.