Dangerous Haven

Welcome back Parliamentarians!  In this installment of Avatar of the Green we'll be continuing our discussion of Martin Pasko's run on Saga of the Swamp Thing, covering issues 6 through 8. Before we get into the meat of each issue, however, I want to tell you a story.

In the summer of 1982 my grandparents took me to the Sea World that had been in Ohio at the time. My grandparents lived in a suburb of Columbus, and drive from their house to Sea World was about three hours long. I was a hyperactive only child, and I was not very good at entertaining myself. What was the best way to keep 8 year old Grant quiet on a long car ride?  Get him some new comics first.

Before we set out in full, then, we took a detour to the nearby convenience store and the magazine rack within. There, I picked up an issue of Uncanny X-Men (featuring the Brood), an issue of Ghost Rider (featuring Nightmare), and Saga of the Swamp Thing #6.

I've mentioned in a previous post how my two main interests as a kid were superheroes and movie monsters, so the concept of a "monster hero" was very appealing to me. My interest in the character of the Swamp Thing already piqued by a friend's copy of SotST #3, I was very excited when I found my copy of issue 6, and I read it at least a half a dozen times on that trip.

Over the next few years I read that book to death. Eventually I forgot what the cover looked like, long since worn off by constant use, and I began associating the book with it's opening page, with an image of a hospital framed by live oak trees draped with Spanish moss, of a woman, her head in bandages, handing a doctor a locket, begging him to find her daughter and to "...kill her, for God's sake, KILL HER, before it's too late!"

We learn that the woman is the mother of the young mute girl that the Swamp Thing has called "Casey",  whom he rescued from her murderous and suicidal father a short time ago. The doctor is Dennis Barclay, ally of the Swamp Thing.

(NOTE*. If you're new to my blog and/or this infrequently trodden era of the Swamp Thing mythos, I strongly recommend you read the posts "The Mute and the Monster" and "Small Town Horror", which cover Saga of the Swamp Thing issues 1 through 5 before reading this one further.)

We learn that the girl's name is actually Karen Clancy. The amulet her mother had given Barclay bears her initials, "K.C.", thus explaining Holland's impression of what he had assumed to be her name. Swamp Thing and Barclay, along with their compatriot Liz Tremayne, make a quick getaway from the hospital, only to be ambushed by agents of the nefarious Sunderland Corporation, where Liz is captured by Sunderland operative Harry Kay. Barclay deduces Kay's destination is the SS Haven, a Sunderland cruise ship docked nearby, and he and Holland smuggle themselves aboard in a packing crate.

Aboard the Haven the two split up, with Holland searching the storage compartments and Barclay searching above deck. Dennis finds Liz, drugged, about to be given as a "gift" to General Sunderland, CEO of the corporation of the same name, with all of the creepy implications therein. The Swamp Thing, meanwhile, is attacked by strange one eyed tentacle work things (insert hentai joke here), and discovers that his sap-blood burns them like acid. The issue ends with the party goers of the ship's masquerade ball unmasking, revealing that they are all be transformed into the one eyed creatures.

In issue 7, while Dennis and Liz fight off and run from the passengers who are being transformed into the cyclopean worm creatures, the Swamp Thing discovers the source of the outbreak, a Cthulhu-esque alien hidden in the deepest bowels of the ship.


He also finds that his "blood" is just as destructive to the alien as it is to it's offspring. Dennis later determines that the mysterious bacterial infection that is slowly killing the Swamp Thing is lethal to the alien organisms. Dennis creates a makeshift bomb containing a large sample of Alec's "blood", which Swamp Thing sets off, destroying the creature and sinking the Haven. The issue closes with Holland washing up on a nearby island and bring confronted by what appears to be a Tyrannosaurus Rex.

In issue 8, Swamp Thing, Liz, and Dennis face not only dinosaurs of increasingly unlikely varieties, but also violent primitive natives, and a giant Kong-like gorilla. The three eventually learn that the island is inhabited by a group of Vietnam veterans who were all exposed to a chemical compound that gave them the ability to warp reality, and it is they who are causing the strange happenings. When Liz berates the men from hiding from reality, many of them, already partially unhinged by PTSD, have complete breakdowns. Not only, it turns out, were the vets creating the island itself, but they were keeping themselves alive by sheer willpower. The last surviving soldier manifests a helicopter and flies Swamp Thing and his allies away from the crumbling island as the issue closes.

I admit that I enjoyed issues 7 and 8 considerably less than 6 (it may simply be a matter of not having the filter of nostalgia for the other two). Our true purpose in covering issues 6 through 8, however, beyond the obvious completist sensibility, is the discussion of the continuing Sunderland/Karen Clancy subplot that runs through them.

In issue 6 we begin to learn that there may be more to Harry Kay than there first appeared. During a meeting of Sunderland executives, General Sunderland refers to Kay as "that crazy kraut". Later, in a face to face meeting about the SS Haven, Kay refers to Sunderland himself as "Herr General".

In issue 6 we meet Milton, who at first appears to be nothing more than Kay's hired goon. Soon, though, we learn that, while Swamp Thing is able to use Karen's locket to enhance his psychic link with her, Milton is able to telepathically tap into that link as well to pinpoint Karen's location. Milton tracks her to Georgia's Providence Canyons, where Karen has taken Liz Tremayne's producer, Paul Feldner, and sends a pair of hitmen after her. Feldner begs the hitmen to help him, moments before Karen uses her telekinesis to propel the killers from the lip of the mountainside cave to their deaths.

In issue 7 we learn that Harry Kay's agenda may not be as villainous as we the readers were led to believe. Aboard the SS Haven, he helps Dennis and Liz escape the Sunderland forces aboard the ship, and tells his superiors that the pair we're infected with the rest of the passengers.

Back at Providence Canyons, Feldner tells Milton that Karen has been psychically telling him her story, and that she is beginning to "change". He says that Karen thought that both he and Swamp Thing were her "catalysts", but that she was wrong about both of them. He says that Karen "has a mission, a journey to her predecessor's origin place. Karen then uses her powers to incapacitate Milton, then has Feldner drive her off in Milton's vehicle.

In issue 8 Kay and Milton have tracked Karen and Feldner. Milton informs Kay, through his psychic monitoring, that Karen has been slowly draining Feldner's life force. When we see Karen we learn why, as she has used that extra energy to age her body to that of possibly a 12 or 13 year old (and creepily still wearing pigtails and now a small tube top). Milton has discovered that Feldner has chartered a plane to take Karen to, as Kay says, "the Fatherland". When Feldner strikes Karen and runs toward Milton and Kay, Karen uses to abilities to psionically set his entire body on fire.

As we move on through the rest of the arc, well learn more about Harry Kay and, more importantly, about Karen herself, about what her predecessor was and what she is and who her mysterious catalyst is. She and that catalyst will become exclusively the antagonstic foci of the remainder of the epic. We'll learn nearly all of these answers as we round out the last five issues of the arc in the next two installments of Avatar of the Green.

Once we've completed the Karen Clancy saga we'll return, in about three weeks time, to the New 52 and start our discussion of Rotworld. In the meantime, if you want to talk about these issues in this installment, about Swamp Thing in general, or any of the characters in the dark corners of the DCU, you can find me at the Avatar of the Green Facebook page or @AotG_blog on Twitter (I also post a LOT on the Parliament of Trees Facebook group, run by John and Dave of the Parlipod podcast).

Until then Parliamentarians, think Green and be epic!

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