The title character, having cast off his memories of the violent, bloody "red world" of humanity, and taken root in the swamp, drifts mentally through the Green, finally at peace. Before long, however, he notices the presence of a foreign, "red" mind and investigates it, uncovering the name "Woodrue."
Late at night, the newly-deranged Woodrue, the Floronic Man, uses his plant manipulation powers to hoist and strangle two teenage boys with vines in the swamp. Abby, out for a walk to get some peace and quiet, discovers their bodies and runs in panic, calling for "Alec." In the Green, the Swamp Thing hears her call and gradually remembers how he came to be in his present situation, and Woodrue's role in that.
Woodrue continues his rampage in the nearby town of Lacroix, destroying its landmarks and, choosing a residential block, ordering everyone indoors. Then he causes their houseplants to accelerate their oxygen output. As a result, when someone lights a cigarette, it sets the entire block ablaze. Woodrue has a teenage boy film it all, records a message of his own, and sends him with the videotape to the police station in the neighbouring town of Chenille. The desk sergeant watches it and sets in motion a chain of calls ending with the Justice League.
Abby, beside herself with fear, continues to run through the woods, only for some Woodrue-activated vines to grab hold of her. She calls again to her friend, just as he's figured out that Woodrue is not only the one who robbed him of his hope for regaining his humanity, but is also the one robbing him of his peaceful plant existence by tainting the Green. In anger, he returns to his body and uproots himself, freeing Abby in the process. He tells her flatly, however, that he's not Alec, and walks off. Abby follows him.
In Lacroix, Woodrue—or, as he now calls himself, "Wood-Rue...the pain and the bitterness of the woods!"—rants on about his mission, supposedly on behalf of the plant kingdom, to rid the world of humans and other animals. The Swamp Thing interrupts him: "Woodrue...no more."
Tropes:
- Artistic License – Biology: The Floronic Man somehow accelerates the oxygen output of plants, despite the fact that it's night and there's no solar energy to enable photosynthesis.
- Astral Projection: The Swamp Thing, for the first time, manifests the ability to leave his body and enter another plane of existence, in this case the Green. This will become one of his most useful powers later in Moore's run and beyond.
- Call a Human a "Meatbag": Woodrue refers to human beings as "hamburgers" and to the animal kingdom overall as "screaming meat."
- Converse with the Unconscious: Abby implores "Alec" to wake up and save her. This time, she gets through to him.
- From Nobody to Nightmare: Dr. Jason Woodrue was originally a non-superpowered botanist who turned to crime, calling himself the Plant Master. Then he chemically transformed himself into a Plant Person, now going by the sobriquet Floronic Man. Even with his newly-gained Green Thumb powers, however, he remained your standard, world-domination aspiring, easily-defeated villain. It's not until he goes insane that Woodrue becomes truly dangerous, no longer seeking to control the human race but to eradicate it.
- Gaia's Vengeance: Woodrue claims to be the avatar through which the Green will avenge the stripping of forests and pollution of the ecosystem.
- Garden of Evil: The Floronic Man turns the wetland vines, and the houseplants in Lacroix, into this.
- Green Thumb: Woodrue uses this power to kill people and destroy property.
- He's Back!: The Swamp Thing, filled with anger at what Woodrue has done to him and the Green, snaps out of his Heroic BSoD and goes back into action.
- Knight Templar: Woodrue sees himself as the righteous hero of the Green, and believes that humankind's pollution and despoliation of the environment justify its removal from the Earth.
- Meaningful Name: The Floronic Man, with the simple insertion of a hyphen, invests his human surname with new significance: "Wood-Rue...the regret and anger of the forests."
- Mood-Swinger: Woodrue, during his rant, veers abruptly from a soft, calm speaking tone to screaming fury and back again."Let us have another green world." That's what [the wilderness] said to me. "Another green world, as there was at the beginning, before the beasts crawled up out of the oceans...Those long, green centuries...where no bird sang...where no dog barked..." WHERE THERE WAS NO NOISE! WHERE THERE WAS NO SCREAMING MEAT!!
- His body language and actions also vary wildly throughout this monologue. In particular, he toys with Angie, the unfortunate woman who'd pleaded with him to stop, lifting her by hand and dropping her, then caressing her cheek in mock tenderness, then hoisting her with vines.
- Nature Lover: A poignant scene has Sgt. Luther Galen of the Chenille police shed tears as, in order to protect his family from Woodrue, he chops down their beloved tree while recalling all it's meant to them.
- Omnicidal Maniac: Woodrue aims to wipe out the entire animal kingdom.
- Psychic Link: An implied one, between the Swamp Thing and Abby, when he hears her call his name despite being outside his body at the time. This link will be a recurring, more explicitly-played plot device later in Moore's run.
- Properly Paranoid: When the already spooked Abby discovers the teenagers' strung-up bodies and runs, she worries that she's going paranoid, perhaps even suffering from paranoid schizophrenia. It soon turns out that she has good reason to fear for her life: Woodrue's vines seize hold of and strangle her.
- Shout-Out: The issue title alludes to that of the 1975 Brian Eno album.
