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Title Character
Swamp Thing
AKA: "Alec Holland"
A plant mass that was born from the memories of Alec Holland. Initially believing himself to be Alec Holland, he eventually learned his real nature.- Anthropomorphic Personification: After the retcon of Moore's run, he became the Avatar of the Green, a humanoid embodiment of the elemental force that governs and comprises all plant life.
- Anti-Hero: Swamp Thing often straddles the line between hero and anti-hero, and much to his chagrin he frequently finds similarities between himself and his enemies. He fights to protect his home, the environment, and humanity in general from supernatural forces, but the darkness of the character frequently stems from an air of tragedy. The New 52 is really the only time he's been a traditional superhero. Generally he's either just trying to be left alone in the swamp with Abigail, dealing with the Parliament, or getting involved in big godly stuff. He's a bit of a philosophical character more than a real hero.
- Art Evolution: After Moore's run begins, his body becomes more detailed.
- Badass Bookworm: Well, Alec used to be a scientist, and he thought he was Alec for a long time. In a Running Gag, he's one of the few people who can always take Batman in a fight. 'Nuff said.
- Becoming the Mask: The central concept of the Alan Moore run: He isn't really Alec, just a plant elemental who assimilated Alec's memory and personality. While he eventually accepts this, the base of his personality is, for all intents and purposes, still Alec.
- Berserk Button: Don't touch Abby. Really, just don't. He turned all of Gotham into a jungle and beat the Batman to unconsciousness for keeping Abby in jail.
- Beware the Nice Ones: Despite his monstrous appearance, he really isn't that bad of a person and can be amicable if he or his family aren't harmed or threatened. We still advise against pissing him off however, as he is capable of plant-based rampages on par with Poison Ivy's, if not worse.
- Bizarre Alien Senses: In the "vegetable sex" scene, Abigail temporarily experiences Swamp Thing's ability to sense life force, and perceives the wetlands as a shimmering field of glowing vegetation, dotted with bright life-sparks of animals.
- Botanical Abomination
- The Bus Came Back: His resurrection and death are undone by the New 52, and while in the Green, the real Alec runs into Swamp Thing.
- Composite Character: Post-Rebirth continuity makes it so this Swamp Thing was always the real Alec Holland.
- Creepy Good: He has the appearance of a scary and mysterious creature, but is still a heroic being.
- Dead All Along: He eventually finds out that Alec Holland truly died in the explosion, and he's simply a mass of plants with his memories.Swamp Thing: I'm... not... Holland. Holland died... died... in an... explosion! I have... his consciousness... his memories... but he... he is... dead.
- Death Seeker: In Martin Pasko's run, his failure to find a means to restore to humanity crushed his spirits to the degree that he lost the will to live and wished his existence would come to an end.
- Do Not Call Me "Paul": Once he learns out that he is not actually Alec Holland, he angrily tells Abigail not to call him that.
- Dying to Be Replaced: In Brightest Day, he turns out to have become a Black Lantern entirely off-screen, so that the actual Alec Holland can take his place.
- Eat Brain for Memories: According to Alan Moore's take on the character, Swamp Thing came about in such a way. Initially, the story was that Alec Holland had been working on a serum that would cause plants to grow, but was injured in an explosion; affected by the serum and the local flora, he was transformed into a Plant Person. However, when Moore came on the book, he revealed that Holland had actually died instantly, but the swamp, affected by the residual traces of the serum in his system, "ate" Holland's remains and absorbed his memories and personality, then reconstituted him as a living plant that thought it was Alec Holland.
- Elemental Embodiment: He is an embodiment and representative of the Green, the cosmic force behind all plants.
- Gaia's Vengeance: He is Gaia's Vengeance, the representative of all living plant life.
- Good Is Not Nice: Being a good guy does not mean that he's above getting confrontational with his enemies or that he's unwilling to take violent action against those who harm the environment.
- Green Thumb: He's a good contender for the strongest case of this power in the whole DCU, to the point of being called a god. His control over plant life is strong enough that he can transform the entirety of Gotham into a jungle or create entire towns down to the last detail out of plant life alone.
- Healing Factor: He can rebuild his body out of any mass of vegetation, even if it has been completely blown up. This borders on Resurrective Immortality. Even in his original incarnation in the Bronze Age of comics, he could regenerate lost body mass, although he was worried about how much he could lose before being unable to sustain the regrowth.
- Horrifying Hero: He is a mass of plants assuming a vaguely humanoid form, several times taller than a regular human being and living in a Swamp. Still pretty much a good guy as long as you don't make him mad.
- Interspecies Romance: During Moore's run, he developed a steadily more romantic relationship with the still-human Abby Arcane, despite being a sapient plant.
- Light 'em Up: Thanks to the whole Brightest Day shenigans.
- Mid-Season Upgrade: When he discovered he was a lot more than just "Alec Holland", Swampie quickly became more powerful up to Physical God levels, able to manifest as long as there's any plant life around.
- Muck Monster: The Bronze Age incarnation is one of the three defining examples of the "Swamp-Stuff Muck Monster" subtrope, being a mass of algae, moss and roots in the loose shape of a human — the narration is even fond of calling him a "muck-encrusted mockery of a man". Downplayed after the Alan Moore run, which depicts him more as a physically solid Plant Person than as a gooey mass of plant matter.
- Nature Hero: He is nature, and probably the Trope Codifier of Gaia's Vengeance heroes.
- Papa Wolf: Every foe who's tried to harm his daughter Tefé in front of him quickly learned that doing so wasn't a good idea.
- Physical God: At the height of his powers, Swamp Thing has total control over all plant life on Earth. He also cannot be killed so long as a single specimen of flora exists, instead reconstituting himself from whatever plants he likes.
- Plant Person: Even during his original Muck Monster incarnation, he was largely made up of moss and algae bound together by roots. Alan Moore depicted him more as a single plant that instead has the appearance of a malformed humanoid, a change that stuck.
- The Quiet One: In the earlier stories, his dialogue mainly resided in thought balloons and it was rare for him to actually talk.
- Rage Against the Reflection: In issue 23 of the original series, he notices his reflection in a mirror after causing Ruth Munroe to faint and instinctively shatters the mirror by throwing a figurine at it.
- Super Power Lottery: Swamp Thing has a wide variety of powers, although they differ somewhat between the original Bronze Age incarnation and his Alan Moore incarnation.
- The Bronze Age Swamp Thing has the standard powers of a non-toxic Muck Monster; he has Super-Strength, Super-Toughness through a combination of a diminished sense of pain and an inhuman bodily composition that makes him naturally resistant to damage, and a Healing Factor that lets him regenerate missing body mass.
- Alan Moore's retconned "Plant Elemental" version of the character has the classic Super-Strength, Super-Toughness and Healing Factor, but also has the ability to manipulate other plants around him, increases his Healing Factor to From a Single Cell levels, is capable of a degree of Voluntary Shapeshifting, and can "teleport" by astrally projecting his consciousness into any plant he desires, even one on another planet, and reconstructing his body from that point
- Super-Strength: His physical strength is just as impressive as his size would make you expect.
- Swamp Monster: Alongside The Heap and Man-Thing, Swamp Thing is the definition of the overlap point between Swamp Monster and Muck Monster.
- Tomato in the Mirror: The major concept of the Alan Moore run on the comics, which became the definitive interpretation of the character: he was never Alec Holland, just a mass of plantlife that did its best to copy Holland after his death.
- Unscrupulous Hero: In later series, his only concerns are maintaining the stability of the Green and keeping his family safe. If either of those are threatened, especially the latter which he often expressed preference for over the former, the Swamp Thing will certainly kill in the most gruesome of ways as vengeance and will express no remorse over the fact.
- Verbal Tic: He speaks slowly... often with... pauses... It's justified by the fact his vocal chords are either heavily malformed or crude vegetative imitations, depending on the series.
Swamp Thing II
AKA: Alec Holland
- Back from the Dead: He was resurrected to fight the corrupted Swamp Thing. In the New 52, he was brought back for some other reason.
- Composite Character: Post-Rebirth continuity makes it so Alec Holland was the "original" Swamp Thing.
- Ghost Memory: He possesses Swamp Thing's memories, and at first he doesn't know why.
- Legacy Character: He serves as the second Swamp Thing after the plant elemental who used his name.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Killing the Parliament of Trees and bringing the Wolf and the Lady back wasn't the greatest idea ever.
- Replacement Goldfish: For Abby Arcane. She even says he's not "her" Swamp Thing when they first meet.
- Rescue Romance: In the New 52, he falls in love with Abby after she rescues him.
- Star-Crossed Lovers: With Abby. Due to their roles as avatars of their respective elements, they cannot be together.
- The World Is Just Awesome: Has a great time going around the Great Barrier Reef, taking in the lovely scenery.
Swamp Thing III
AKA: Levi Kamei
- Affirmative-Action Legacy: Zigzagged. He's the first non-Caucasian American Swamp Thing to be the star of the comics, but it's unknown what the ethnicities of all the past Swamp Things were, so he's probably not the first non-"white" Swamp Thing in general.
- Younger Than They Look: Levi is 26, but looks to be in his early to mid forties.
Supporting Characters
Abby Arcane Holland
- Book Dumb: There are a few hints that she didn't get a formal education.
- Distaff Counterpart: Of a sort to Swamp Thing as the Avatar of the Black.
- Happily Married: Eventually, to Swamp Thing. Ends up averted later on when Swamp Thing's dedication to the Green ends up being too much for Abby to tolerate in their marriage, and she decided to leave him and their daughter.
- Interspecies Romance: With Swamp Thing. This was actually made a plot point once, as she was arrested for essentially marrying a plant. Swamp Thing didn't react well.
- Mad Scientist's Beautiful Daughter: A slight variant; she's the beautiful and good-hearted niece of Anton Arcane, who is clasically as much an Evil Sorcerer as he is a Mad Scientist.
- Mind over Matter: Abby is often depicted as having telekinetic abilities that let her move things with her mind.
- Ms. Fanservice: She's quite an attractive woman and is shown naked on multiple occasions.
- Mystical White Hair: She is best-recognizable by her white and black hair.
- Psychic Powers: A concept first established in the Bronze Age is that Abby has strange powers of the mind, although what those powers are varies depending on the continuity.
- Rescue Romance:
- She falls in love with Matthew after he (and the Swamp Thing) rescues her.
- She falls in love with Swamp Thing after he rescues her.
- With New 52 Alec Holland, she is the rescuer.
- Sanity Slippage: Her marriage to Swamp Thing and trauma under Dr. Arcane has not done much to stabilize her mental state and is often seen in hysterics in stories when her personal life is threatened. Her New 52 incarnation seems to avert this, having become quite blasé as a coping mechanism instead.
Capucine
- Deal with the Devil: Her immortality is the result of one. When she dies, she gets stuck with Etrigan. Alec subverts this by sending her to the Green instead, putting her outside her body so she does not actually die.
- The Perils of Being the Best: She's really good at killing things. Unfortunately, this comes with the problem of people seeking her down to kill her, in the belief it will give them her immortality. And of course, the more she kills the more her reputation grows…
- Plant Person: Becomes one after being sent into the Green.
John Constantine
A con-man who specializes in the occult. See his pages.
- Anti-Hero: He technically is a good guy, but his motivations to do good are entirely selfish, and his methods tend to be morally ambiguous at best.
- Badass Longcoat: And a sentient one, at that.
- Breakout Character: Ended up becoming so popular he eventually got his own series that lasted longer than Swamp Thing's, and his iconography became a part of pop culture too.
- Jerkass: As in his main series, he's a major dick, who expresses very minimal concern for human life in his words.
- The Mentor: During Alan Moore's run of the comics, he served the role of guiding Swamp Thing into realizing his true nature as the Avatar of the Green and a champion of the cosmic order. Unfortunately for Swamp Thing, he was a Trickster Mentor, preferring to manipulate, misdirect and befuddle the confused elemental rather than simply explain things outright.
- Remember the New Guy?: As the series progresses, we see many previously established DC characters are familiar with Constantine, including Zatanna and The Phantom Stranger, despite readers never seeing them interact before.
Matt Cable
A government agent who was originally assigned to protect the married scientists Alec and Linda Holland as they worked on their experimental plant growth stimulant. After they were killed by the Conclave, he became obsessed with tracking down the mysterious Swamp Thing in order to discover its role in the murder. During this time period, he constantly worked with Abby Arcane after they met on one of Swamp Thing's earliest misadventures, and a romance eventually blossomed. Unfortunately, it wouldn't last.
- Deal with the Devil: After fatally wounded in a car crash, Arcane in the guise of a fly convinces Mat to let "help" him survive. In reality, Arcane takes over his body and uses it to exact the most twisted revenge upon Abby and Swamp Thing.
- Death Equals Redemption
- Death of the Hypotenuse: His coma and eventual death after the Arcane Saga free up Abby to openly enter a relationship with Swamp Thing guilt free.
- Inspector Javert: In the Bronze Age, he was introduced as a government agent who was responsible for protecting Alec and Linda Holland, and who believed Swamp Thing was somehow involved in their deaths. As a result, he constantly chased Swamp Thing, wanting to apprehend what he believed to be a mutant killer. After Swamp Thing finally explained that he was Alec, he became a rare sympathetic version of the trope, constantly trying to track Swamp Thing down to help him, during a time when Swamp Thing was constantly seeking to isolate himself from humanity.
- Reality Warper: Acquired these abilities from shock treatments designed to wipe his memory clean.
- Took a Level in Jerkass: In the Saga of the Swamp Thing series, Matt slides more and more into unlikable terrority, becoming colder and distant while abusing his powers to create pornographic fantasies for himself away from Abby. As such, the reader doesn't chide Abby for clearly developing romantic feelings more and more for Swamp Thing. While Alan Moore leaned into this, much of it started with his predecessor as writer, Marty Pasko.
- Transplant: He became Matthew the Raven in The Sandman (1989).
The Parliament of Trees
The collective body of every past Swamp Thing; when a Swamp Thing finally tires of interacting with the human world, they retreat and take root, joining their minds into the Parliament. Their council acts as the closest thing the Green has to a governing body, and is technically a resource of wisdom which the current Swamp Thing can tap for answers.
- Lawyer-Friendly Cameo: Marvel's Man-Thing is regularly seen among them, though obviously never identified as such in-story.
- Omniscient Council of Vagueness: Whilst they're supposed to be Swamp Thing's bosses and advisors, they rarely communicate with him, and even when they do, their advice is often cryptic, vague or flatout unhelpful.
- Restraining Bolt: It turns out that, while they're apparently useless or obstructive, they keep the Green in check. Without it, Bad Things start to happen.
The Patchwork Man
AKA: Gregori Arcane
Father of Abby Arcane, Gregori was nearly killed when he stumbled into a minefield left over from World War II during a walk in the forest near the Arcane family home. To save his life, his brother Anton rescued Gregori and rebuilt his body using pieces of corpses, leaving him hideously deformed and at least partially brain-damaged.
- Cain and Abel: He and his brother Anton Arcane have a... complicated and often hostile relationship, although Anton did save Gregori from death by rebuilding him as the Patchwork Man.
- Frankenstein's Monster: Anton rebuilt Gregori's mangled body by grafting functioning bits and pieces taken from corpses to it. When he debuted in the Bronze Age, he even looked a lot like the iconic depiction of Frankenstein,
- Meaningful Name: Well, meaningful nickname; he's called "The Patchwork Man" because he was assembled by sewing bits and pieces of different bodies together, and quite clearly looks it.
- Rage Against the Reflection: When his brother showed him a mirror, he destroyed it after seeing what he had become.
The King of Petals
An avatar of the Green. Formerly known as Dr Oleander Sorrel, he was a botanist who suffered the loss of his family, and who later died in a fire and was resurrected by the Green as their avatar.
- Foil: To Alec Holland. Like Holland, he was a scientist who died in a fire and was resurrected as a plant person. Unlike Holland, he's not able to come to peace with himself and what he has become, and simply wishes to use his powers to make himself happy.
- Petal Power: His speciality is flowers, as befits his name.
- Steven Ulysses Perhero: Both parts of his civilian name are plant-related. Oleander is a flowering shrub, while sorrel is an herb.
- We Hardly Knew Ye: He lasted one issue, and in the end was only a meal ticket for the Floronic Man.
- The Workaholic: His wife abandoned him after the loss of their family, and he didn't mind.
Villains
Anton Arcane
Abby's uncle and Swamp Thing's Arch-Enemy, Arcane is an Evil Sorcerer Mad Scientist obsessed with gaining immortality. To this end, he has tried several times to get his hands on the Swamp Thing's body.
- Alliterative Name: Anton Arcane.
- Animal Motif: His mutated forms tend towards spiders and flies.
- And I Must Scream:
- While in Hell, spiders lay eggs inside his body that hatch and eat their way out, causing him awful pain for eternity. To make things worse, the whole thing include a case of Year Inside, Hour Outside.
- Later, the Parlment of Decay punishes his misuse of the Rot by trapping him a place of peace and life where death doesn't exist... which, considering his obsession with creating a place of endless death and decay, is torture to him.
- Arch-Enemy: To Swamp Thing. He is by far the most persistent and personal antagonist.
- Ax-Crazy: Could seriously rival The Joker as one of the most depraved, homicidal villains in the DCU. His "accomplishment" include, among others, molesting his sister as a child, experimenting on his wife, practicing a lifestyle of necrophilia, cannibalism, depravity, and satanism that got him kicked out of school and once indirectly raping his own niece. You know he's bad when even the Joker is terrified of him.
- Back from the Dead: Death seems to be more of an inconvenience, really.
- Bald of Evil: Usually despicted as bald, though there have been exceptions.
- Been There, Shaped History: Anton was the one who convinced Hitler to go into politics and start his campaign of terror and mass genocide, simply because he wanted more bodies to experiment on in order to find the secrets of immortality after he felt the last Great War ended too quickly and didn't provide him enough bodies for his liking.
- Big Bad: By far the most prominent villain faced by the Swamp Thing.
- Cain and Abel: With his brother Gregori, Abigail's father, who "accidentally" stepped on a landmine, after which Anton experimented on him and turned him into the Patchwork Man.
- Creepy Uncle: A strong contender to the title of creepiest uncle in all of fiction. How many others went so far as to secretly possess the rotting corpse of their niece's husband and carry on their relationship as if nothing was wrong for months (yes, including sexually), reveling in her horrified reaction once she found out, then throwing her soul in Hell, just for petty revenge?
- Demonic Possession: When he managed to escape Hell, he used this to interact with people, even possessing Matt Cable for a time.
- Disney Villain Death: His first confrontation with Swamp Thing ended with him falling to his seeming death.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Completely ruined his niece's life and raped her by possessing her husband just because she turned down his request that she becomes his apprentice.
- Enfant Terrible: Even as a kid, he was a sociopath who took pleasure in hurting and molesting his younger sister. And he only got worse growing up.
- Evil Sorcerer: Skilled in many forms of magic, including necromancy, among other things.
- Evil Uncle: Doesn't even begins to describe his relationship with Abby.
- Hate Sink: One of the most despicable and loathsome villains to ever appear in The DCU. Just look at his Ax-Crazy entry above!
- The Heavy: Masterminded every storyline in Swamp Thing comics.
- Heel–Face Turn: Though obviously, it didn't stick.
- Horrifying the Horror: His apocalypse in Saga of Swamp Thing made the Joker stop laughing.
- How the Mighty Have Fallen: During Soule's run, after being abandoned by the Rot, he winds up homeless, until the Machine Queen finds him.
- Immortality Seeker: His main goal. Towards this end, he often plotted to steal Swamp Thing's indestructible body to inhabit and instigating the death of millions just to have more bodies to experiment on. Think Dr. Herbert West up to eleven.
- Joker Immunity: As noted above, he has been killed an incredible number of times, but he always manages to come back and torment the Swamp Thing again even after being dead and sent to Hell.
- Know When to Fold 'Em: He's got a good sense of when to run.
- Mad Scientist: He is a brilliant enough scientist to create synthetic organic matter, which he uses mostly to create monsters under his control or find ways to become immortal.
- Made of Evil: When Anton became an evil spirit and possessed Matt Cable, he was able to spread his evil influence across the country to the point even the Monitor, a cosmic being who oversaw the entire cosmos, was terrified of the evil Anton was giving off, even likening it to something on the level of Trigon the Terrible or the Spectre. The evil was so potent it started freaking out the afraid and deranged, and even managed to the make the Joker stop laughing, rendering him drooling and catatonic in the process. He's so bad the demons of Hell were impressed at how remorselessly evil he was after being sent there and allowed him to become a demon.
- Necromancer: In the New 52, he became the avatar of the Rot, the force of Decay and Death.
- One-Winged Angel: Has at several times turned himself into various kind of hulking monsters through his experiments.
- Politically Incorrect Villain: During Nancy A. Collins' run, he refers to Ya-Ya, the ghost of an African-American musician, as a "minstrel".
- Possessing a Dead Body: In Nancy A. Collins' body, the final arc has him possess the cadaver of Carlton Sunderland and manipulate Sunderland's daughter by pretending to be Sunderland resurrected.
- Reality Warper: Used for horrific results when he possessed Matt Cable.
- Same Character, But Different: By far one of the villains who has changed the most over the course of years, to the point it's difficult to find a picture appropriate for his page.
- Second Episode Introduction: He made his debut in the second issue of the very first Swamp Thing comic book.
- The Sociopath: A particularly twisted example. He has zero empathy for anyone, and exists only to sate his disturbing desires.
- Spider People: In his third appearance, he became a cybernetic monstrosity, half spider, half zombie, with one compound eye piloting a aircraft shaped like a dragonfly.
- Take Over the World: Seemingly Anton Arcane's ultimate goal if not trying to be immortal. Later, he had the power to do so when he took possession of Matt Cable's body and his reality warping abilities. And during Rotworld, we saw what the world would be like under Arcane's rule.
- Would Hurt a Child: Oh yes. Pre-New 52, he had been terribly abusive to his own younger siblings when they were young; in his reintroduction afterwards as an avatar of the Rot, he narrated how he had been killing avatars of the Red and Green for over a century... and that his favorites were those he killed when still in their cribs.
Floronic Man
AKA: Jason Woodrue
- Breakout Villain: He started out as a fairly minor villain from The Atom. Then Alan Moore used him for his own take on Swamp Thing, and he quickly got a boost in popularity.
- Cannibalism Superpower: He eats the King of Petals to get his powers.
- The Corruptor: His abuse and experimentation on Pamela Isley is what turned her into Poison Ivy.
- Everyone Went to School Together: Alec Holland, Linda Olson Ridge, Phillip Sylvian, Bella Garten and of course, Pamela Isley were all students of his during a government funded research project.
- Gaia's Vengeance: He briefly attempts to do this after his contact with the Green, believing he is saving Earth from mankind by killing all non-plant life. Swamp Thing gets him out of it when he points out plants also need animals to survive.
- Go Mad from the Revelation: He once managed to use Swamp Thing's body to contact the Green. The experience drove him insane, to the point that he tried to exterminate all non-plant life on Earth.
- Heel–Face Revolving Door: Briefly became a hero during The New Guardians series. He however reverted back to be a villain after the death of most of his teammates.
- Killed Off for Real: Apparently killed and eaten by Ivy in Poison Ivy (2022) #6, although like other plant characters he might come back eventually
- Large Ham: "THERE WAS NO NOISE! THERE WAS NO SCREAMING MEAT!"
- Off with His Head!: Happened to him in Batman: Shadow of the Bat. Twice. Good thing he can heal, indeed.
- Plant Person: A human who transmuted himself into a sapient plant.
- Rogues' Gallery Transplant: Originally a small-time baddie who bounced back and forth between Batman and The Atom. Considering what fighting Swamp Thing did to his popularity, the change was for the best.
- Shadow Archetype: In Poison Ivy (2022), he is presented as one to Ivy herself. Not only is he the one who made her what she is (and thus stands for her traumatic memories), but he also preached a pessimistic, almost nihilistic view that humanity can't be saved (and thus stands for Ivy's misanthropy). It's when Ivy actually defeats Jason that she abandons her quest to destroy humanity.
- Steven Ulysses Per Hero: Wood rue. He actually invokes this himself when he tries to act as an agent of the Green.
- Villainous Breakdown: He has several in the space of a few issues.
- Was Once a Man: He used to be an ordinary person, until his formula, a derivative of the Super Serum that gave Poison Ivy her plant-manipulating abilities, transformed him into a sapient plant.
Great Darkness
- Almighty Idiot: It doesn't really know what it's meant to do when it awakens and it goes about finding out in what is ultimately a completely non-malicious way.
- The Anti-God: There are a lot of Satans in the DC Universe but this is the true opposite to The Presence.
- Alternate Company Equivalent: To Marvel's The One-Below-All.
- Big Bad: Subverted. It is set to be this for Dark Crisis, with Pariah as The Heavy due to him killing the Justice League and leading the Dark Army, but it turns out Pariah was only using a tiny fragment of its power, and was the mad one corrupting it in the first place.
- The Bus Came Back: After a 32, give or take, year long absence, the Great Darkness returns during the Infinite Frontier era.
- Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: Like all of DC's other "Crisis" Big Bads it's a powerful omniscient Reality Warper however unlike The Anti-Monitor, Darkseid, Paralax, Doctor Manhattan, Nekron, Alexander Luthor Jr. and Superboy Prime, Perpetua or The Batman Who Laughs. It's naturally a neutral force of nature that has no interest in destroying, rebuilding or changing the Multiverse in any way. A part of it had just been corrupted by Pariah.
- Dark Is Not Evil: Ironically, despite being the literal source of evil, it doesn't seem to be actively malevolent or malicious in and of itself. During its manifestation, each person it encounters is greeted the same way; by the Great Darkness asking them to define what "evil" actually is, because it doesn't understand what itself is supposed to be. Characters like The Spectre and Etrigan give it a simple Black-and-White Morality-based response, and the Great Darkness reacts with disappointment before casting them aside. Finally, Swamp Thing gives it a more nuanced response, describing Evil as a necessary part of the cosmic balance, and is sent on his way in peace. Shortly thereafter, the Great Darkness finally meets its counterpart, the Great Light, and instead of fighting, the two peacefully clasp hands, seem to run together, and finally vanish. The Infinite Frontier era would put it firmly back into this trope big-time. Or maybe not. Turns out Pariah accidentally corrupted it.(to Etrigan): The fight is to be endless, then. Ahh. Ahh. Little thing, you have taught me fatalism. You have taught me inevitability. They are not the things I needed. You are not the thing I needed.(to Doctor Fate): Am I so low, then, and is he you serve so high that there can be no possibility of respect between us? Little thing, you have taught me contempt. It is not the answer that was required.(to The Spectre): And what of the tortured eons I endured, unable to broach this maddening brilliance and quiet the pain it woke in me? Do they not demand retribution? Little thing, you have taught me only vengeance... be gone'', that I might savor it in solitude.(to Swamp Thing): I see. Little thing... Little thing, I sense a great and final end approaching. I would be alone. Leave freely, as you came.
- Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life: When it first awakens, in the end it realizes its job is to maintain the Balance Between Good and Evil alongside The Presence.
- Eviler than Thou: Is probably the supreme example of this trope in DC. All those reality-shattering villains behind the many Crisis events? They were nothing but its unwitting puppets. Not only that, but when Darkseid and the other cosmic threats come to it, it promptly overwhelms and takes control of them. Played with, as it isn’t actually evil at all, but rather corrupted by Pariah's madness.
- Good Counterpart: To Perpetua. She was meant to be the ultimate balance between good and evil in the DC Multiverse but ended up being rotten to the core, The Darkness was meant to be the ultimate force of evil in the DC Multiverse but ended up being a benevolent, neutral force. Both were stated to have influenced all the previous "Crisis" events but Perpetua's influence was intentional and had an agenda while any influence The Darkness may have had was subtle and part of it's nature. Both where controlled and eventually usurped by a More Vile Minion during a crisis event but Perpetua chose The Batman Who Laughs as her enforcer knowing full well how evil he was while The Darkness had no connection to Pariah before being corrupted by him.
- Irony: Despite being the primal source of evil, it isn't actively evil in of itself with it being the Big Bad of Dark Crisis being the result of Pariah accidentally corrupting it. Justice League Incarnate also reveals it screaming is what created the flaw on Monitor-Mind that grew into the Omniverse. In other words, it accidentally created what it's trying to destroy.
- Primordial Chaos: The darkness that preceded everything, revealed by Justice League Incarnate #4 to be even older than Monitor-Mind the Overvoid.
- Satan: The biggest contender in the DCU.
- You Cannot Grasp the True Form: Initially, the Great Darkness appears as what seems to be a pillar of shadow. Then it seems to be some kind of enormous slug or worm with an armored head. Only at the very end do the collected mystics realize that what they are looking at is just one finger of an unimaginably huge hand.
- The Worf Effect: Dishes a major one at the end of Justice League Incarnate. Darkseid has merged with all his incarnations, turning him into his ultimate form. He then goes to face the Great Darkness head on, more than confident he's the Darkness's superior. He's so, so very wrong. Darkseid ends up a mere slave in the Darkness's army of other heavy-hitters like Ares, Nekron, and Eclipso. Or rather, Pariah's army.
Invunche
- Body Horror: It has a Head Turned Backwards and one arm bent around so its hand can be sewn into a slit in its back.
- Was Once a Man: According to John Constantine, all Invunche begin as male human babies before being transformed into monsters by Black Magic. The ritual starts with the six month old having its joints dislocated, and what happens next is so horrible that even Constantine can't bring himself to talk about it.
The Lady of Weeds
A former Avatar of the Green, encountered by Alec Holland during a visit to the Parliament of Trees. Revived as a human after her death, she focused on her own agenda of revenge on Holland, eventually accepting the Machines' offer of becoming their Avatar, turning into the Machine Queen.
- Body Horror: Her transformation into the Machine Queen is not pleasant. It starts with tubes going into her eyes, and doesn't get prettier from there.
- Obviously Evil: Right from the word go, and she never exactly tries hiding it, either.
- The Starscream: When the Rithm tries pulling the plug on her, she instead pulls the plug on most of them.
Tefé Holland
Swamp Thing and Abby's daughter, conceived through the use of John Constantine as a surrogate donor and imbued with the nascent soul of a future Swamp Thing. Unfortunately, she was blessed and cursed with great powers.
- Above Good and Evil: She concludes that good and evil are merely human inventions and will have nothing to do with them.
- Biomanipulation: Due to her half-elemental, half-human nature, she has the ability to manipulate and shape living flesh in much the same way Swamp Thing can shape plants. She also has Swamp Thing's Green Thumb powers as well.
- Cosmic Retcon: Flashpoint erased her from existence. It's not until the 2021 miniseries The Swamp Thing where she officially returns to continuity.
- Extra Parent Conception: From a pure biological viewpoint, she's the daughter of Abby and John Constantine. However, Swamp Thing was possessing Constantine's body during the sex, and he also infused the fertilized egg with "The Sprout", the nascent essence of what would have been his replacement as the Swamp Thing. Unfortunately, choosing to use Constantine as the sperm donor meant that Tefé was also tainted by Constantine's demonic pledge with Nergal.
- Half-Human Hybrid: Due to her unique method of conception, she's effectively half-human and half-elemental.
- Little Miss Badass: She has her moments of making impressive use of her powers as a toddler, one of the best examples being when she singlehandedly stops the rampage of her creation Thunder Pedal by shrinking him and destroying him while admonishing him as a "bad flower". She also does a good job in defeating Anton Arcane at the end of Nancy A. Collins' run, showing absolutely no fear in defying her evil great-uncle and outright tricking him when he thinks he's succeeded in getting her to comply with constructing him a new youthful body.
- Mystical White Hair: Just like her mother, only without the skunk stripe.
M'nagalah
- The Assimilator: Absorbs living creatures into its mass, subsuming their bodies and their minds to reach its true statue.
- Been There, Shaped History: Claims to have seeded Earth with life, imbued humanity with the "gift" of its capacity for mindless violence, and inspired the works of Edgar Allan Poe, Ambrose Bierce and H. P. Lovecraft by touching their minds.
- Blob Monster: Appears as a writhing, seething mass of cancerous flesh and tentacles.
- The Bus Came Back: M'nagalah debuted in 1974 in Swamp Thing #8 it what seemed to be a oneshot comic. Then it returned three years later in 1977's Challengers of the Unknown #82. After that, it vanished until All-New Atom #3 in 2006.
- Canon Immigrant: Ramsey Campbell canonized M'nagalah into the Cthulhu Mythos in the 1976 story "The Tugging", stating it's one of the Great Old Ones described in the Revelations of Glaki.
- Eldritch Abomination: It's literally a Great Old One from the Cthulhu Mythos.
- Names to Run Away from Really Fast: His title is The Cancer God. Sound like somebody you want to get close to?
Matango
- Been There, Shaped History: Supposedly was the one who tempted humanity to eat the Fruit of Knowledge.
- Elemental Embodiment: Is the avatar and champion of the Grey, the cosmic elemental force of fungus and a rival to the Green.
- Festering Fungus: He's basically Swamp Thing, but fungus instead of plants.
Nebiros
- Possession Burnout: In his sole Swamp Thing story, he needed to take a host body to interact with the earthly realm, or else it would swiftly destroy him. However, human bodies are too fragile. This becomes his defeat when he is tricked into possessing the body of his summoner, Father Bliss, who is far too weak to sustain the demon's essence; the fallen priest's body is burned to ashes in seconds and Nebiros is banished back to the netherhells he crawled out of.
The Pale Wanderer
- Was Once a Man: Supposedly, he was a soldier in the American Civil War who grew so disgusted with society that he withdrew to the isolation of the desert, where he was eventually transformed into an elemental being.
Sethe
- Been There, Shaped History: Caused the Antonine Plague of the second century A.D., the Byzantine Plague of the Sixth Century, and the Black Death.
- Beware the Skull Base: Seethe builds a 'kingdom' in the deadlands of the southwest, building it 'bone upon bone. Each pound of rotting flesh upon the next.'
- Body of Bodies: Like the Swamp-Thing, Sethe is an incorporal being that forms a physical body to interact with the world. In Sethe's case it is a gigantic, demonic-looing, scarecrow-like body made from rotting flesh and bone knitted together. His minions are much the same: hideous mix-and-match creatures made from different animal and human corpses.
- Cruel Elephant: Sethe used the uncovered bones of a wooly mammoth as the intial frame for his corporeal form, resulting in a giant body.
- De-power: After the Rot learns of his plans to exterminate all life, they denounce him and strip him of his role as their avatar, transferring all of his powers and authority to Abby Arcane.
- Destroyer Deity: Is described as "The Bringer of Storm and Pestilence," and is resonsible for the worse plagues throughout human history.
- Dragon-in-Chief: Whilst he's technically the servant of the Rot, the twist comes out that he's actually more evil than his supposed masters, who hadn't realized Sethe planned on exterminating all life and upsetting the cosmic balance.
- I Am Legion: Sethe has no voice of his own, and can only speak through the "broken mouths of his followers."
- Omnicidal Maniac: Sethe enjoys killing and decay, and wants nothing less than to annihilate life down to the smallest microbe, creating a universe of total nothingness. Ironically, this is actually not what the Rot wants, who point out that the total cessation of life would lead the Rot's own demise in turn, as there would no longer be any life for it to feed on.
- Throne Madeof X: Sits on a throne made out of animated corpses arranged in acrobalance forming a chair-like arrangement.
- Undead Abomination: A huge skeletal being, the embodiment of death and decay, that kills, reanimates and distorts every living thing it comes in contact with, with designs to cleanse the entire universe of life? Yep. Sethe fits the bill.
The Un-Men
- Body Horror: They are an incredibly diverse array of uniquely grotesque horrors.
- My Brain Is Big: A variant is Craniac, who is literally a disembodied brain with a human face on it mounted on a human hand, so he can "walk" on his fingers. He's portrayed as the smartest of the Un-Men, and their leader in Anton's absence.
- Sssssnake Talk: Ophidian, an Un-Man resembling a many-legged snake, drags out his esses when he speaks.Ophidian: Yesssss, Craniusssss — Ophidian comesssss!
