Walking Corpses & Conscious Plants: Possibilist Ecologies in ...

Bingham 108
Undeniably, the success of the revamped work is directly related to its development from
a previously established project. Continuing the discussion of issues posed by the first
version of the series which relate to the formation and restriction of communities, Saga
of the Swamp Thing expands the discourse surrounding these topics through content
detailing violent transformations of the body which results in physical and conscious
change among characters. Unlike the earlier version, this tale would not be of an
unattainable quest to regain humanity. Instead, the premise of the story shifts to an
interrogation of the appearance of consciousness in forms outside of embodied human
subjectivity when Alec Holland's identity is severed from Swamp Thing's. According to
Moore, “The main thing I wanted to understand was the character himself. I wanted a
credible scientific explanation for the Swamp Thing. There were some things in the
origin that bothered me. His being a plant hadn't been explored in depth” (Lawley &
Whitaker 35). Attempting to build a more believable background and develop the
character's potential with greater social relevance, Moore suggested a narrative where the
Swamp Thing was never human but rather a completely different type of existential
being.
To understand how this work can reveal patterns of imbalance within community
structure and begin to unsettle public acceptance of such matters, we can again turn to
Moore's vision of comics presenting an opportunity for communal ownership. He poses
a general question regarding the purpose and potential of artistic expression during an
interview with Bookforum's Steve Erickson:
As a culture we've reached a point where it's possible to think of history, time,
and existence in a different way, and if literature has a function, it may lie in
the assimilation of difficult new worldviews and their implications, brought on