Somewhere in Texas, the shabbily-dressed, unkempt Liz Tremayne curls up in the corner of her den, feeling anxious over her partner, Dennis Barclay, having been gone three days. (Neither character has appeared since they fled West Virginia in Loose Ends.) She decides, after much vacillation, to plug in and watch the television, despite Dennis's warning that the electricity from it could kill her. She sees on the news that Abby, despite his claim to the contrary, is alive and, in the wake of the Swamp Thing's apparent death, has returned to Houma. Shocked that Dennis would lie to her, she tries reminding herself that he's brought her flowers but remembers that was months ago. Before long, she gathers the courage to take a bus trip to Houma.
Abby visits the swamp, remembering what three people told her before she left Gotham. Commissioner Gordon had invited her to attend an upcoming memorial service for her lover. Batman, drawing on painful personal experience known to the reader, had advised her to face and accept her loss, as the first step to dealing with her grief. Chester Williams had invited her to join an environmental activism group he's forming in memory of the Swamp Thing.
Returning home, Abby attempts to throw out a dead houseplant but, for understandable reasons, can't do so. She collapses to the floor in emotional pain, until Liz's ringing the doorbell snaps her out of it. As they catch up, Abby senses something's not right about Liz, who talks as though Sunderland were still alive and constantly hunting down her and Dennis. (Meanwhile, Dennis, wearing army fatigues, has returned home. Piecing together where Liz has gone and why, he goes after her, taking a machine gun.) Abby urges Liz to have a bath, and when she discovers that Liz has been wearing stitched-together rags for underwear (because Dennis had refused to shop for women's underwear, claiming that Sunderland's spies might notice him), and that Liz is standing up in the bath for fear of drowning (because Dennis had convinced her so), Abby realizes that her friend is a victim of abuse.
Before Abby can discuss this with Liz, the doorbell rings again. Answering it, she dodges a round of gunfire from a psychotically grinning Dennis, who soon finds the cowering Liz, berates her for running away, and tells her this isn't Abby, but one of Sunderland's agents in disguise. Abby knocks a vase over his head, grabs Liz and runs for the swamp, before realizing she'd neglected to take his gun from him.
Quickly recovering, Dennis goes after them in his jeep. While struggling to make the psychologically defeated Liz run, Abby remembers how special the Swamp Thing made her feel, and laments she's nothing without him. However, she soon discovers she's more resourceful than she'd thought. When Dennis, his attempts to coax Liz into going back with him unheeded, starts chasing the two of them on foot, Abby lets her by now intuitive knowledge of the swamp guide her, and tricks him into landing in a patch of river concealed by vegetation, thus drenching his gun. Undeterred, Dennis trudges through the water towards them, only for alligators to devour him as Liz looks on in horror.
After taking her friend home to stay with her, Abby cheerfully calls Gordon to accept the invitation and has him pass on her thanks to Batman. She also calls Chester to express interest in joining his action group.
Tropes:
- Call-Back: "All we have in common is the horror in our lives," Liz's kiss-off words to Dennis in Loose Ends, recur more than once in this issue, thus serving as Arc Words.
- Curse Cut Short: Just before the alligators attack him, Dennis tells Abby he's "gonna club your brains right out of your f..." The implied end to his sentence is "fucking head."
- Domestic Abuse: Dennis, over the course of the past two years, has broken Liz's spirit by convincing her that it's dangerous to leave the house, use electrical appliances, or do anything without his assistance. When she finally runs away, he comes after her with a gun and says that if she returns to him, he'll limit her punishment to reducing her "soap ration." When she fails to respond, he resolves to kill her.
- Dramatically Missing the Point: As they flee Dennis, Liz refuses at first to go with Abby through the undergrowth, for fear of contracting tetanus from thorn scratches. Abby's response: "Liz, Dennis has a machine gun. Let's risk the tetanus, okay?"
- Exit, Pursued by a Bear: Alligators eat Dennis alive.
- Face Your Fears: For all her brokenness, Liz manages to gather enough courage to flee her abuser. As many subsequent issues will show, she has a long recovery process ahead of her, and needs Abby's and Chester's help to get by, but the first step is entirely her own.
- If I Can't Have You…: Dennis threatens to murder Liz when he sees she won't come home with him.
- Killed Off for Real: This is Dennis's last appearance.
- Look Behind You: Double subverted. As Dennis, in the water, closes in on Abby and Liz, Abby says this to him in a deadpan tone. Dennis scoffs, claiming he's too smart to fall for that "Bonanza" trick. Seconds later, as he feels an alligator take the first bite, he realizes it was no trick.
- Out of Focus: The title character doesn't appear in this issue, other than in Flashback or symbolically, as he's presumed dead.
- Same Character, But Different: Dennis and Liz, once two of the most prominent supporting characters in Saga of the Swamp Thing, have been absent from the story since Issue 20, and when they return in this issue they're all but unrecognizable from their characterization under Marty Pasko:
- Dennis was a Sunderland employee who made a Mook–Face Turn after he discovered the corporation's true nature and joined forces with Liz, the Swamp Thing, Matt and Abby. Although somewhat rough around the edges, he was fundamentally a decent person who tried to do what was right. In the present issue, he's a psychotic, abusive-turned-homicidal boyfriend.
- Liz was a successful TV journalist and author of an investigative book on the Swamp Thing. She was confident, assertive and even cocky at times. Now she's a broken domestic abuse victim who doubts her own intelligence, lives in constant fear of death, and can no longer fend for herself.
- Shell-Shocked Veteran: The now-psychotic Dennis has taken to wearing army fatigues and boasting about how his time in Vietnam has prepared him for chases through swampland and for making use of a drenched gun. Thus, it's likely that Dennis's and Liz's narrow escape from death by explosion in Issue 20, upon which he flashed back to his Vietnam experience, was the cause of his descent into paranoia.
- Shout-Out: The issue title is the name of an early Punk Rock band to which Sid Vicious belonged before joining the Sex Pistols, who subsequently performed live a song by the same name. As well, former Sex Pistol John Lydon recorded an album by that title with Public Image Ltd..
- Took a Level in Badass: Abby's previous role in Swamp Thing had essentially been that of a non-action Sidekick (later promoted to Love Interest) and, on occasion, Damsel in Distress, albeit a more intelligent and well-rounded instance of these than most. In this issue, however, she uses her intuitive knowledge of the swamp to lead her pursuer into a fatal trap.
- Very Loosely Based on a True Story: In a letter to Stephen Bissette, Moore revealed that the real-life basis for Liz's plight was a distant relative of his. After many years of apparent reclusiveness followed by her husband's death, this woman turned out to have been a victim of her husband's psychological, emotional and financial abuse, such that, like Liz, she was afraid to use household appliances or the bathtub, and was wearing sewn-together cloth scraps in place of underwear, and thus was unable to function in society without help.
