Herald of the Beast

Here we go Parliamentarians!  For the last two installments of Avatar of the Green, and the last six issues of Saga of the Swamp Thing, we've watched our hero deal with everything from small town punk rock vampires to reality warping PTSD. Meanwhile, a much greater threat has been looming in the background, consolidating and growing its power. As the reader, our only window to this threat has been not the Swamp Thing, but a man who was at first thought to be an antagonist, but may prove to be an ally of sorts, or at least an enemy of an enemy. In this installment, however, we'll explore how the paths of Alec Holland and the mysterious psionic girl Karen Clancy, already intertwined by fate, begin to once again converge.

NOTE: As stated last installment, if you're new to my blog, or if you're unfamiliar with this era of the Swamp Thing mythos (Hi honey!), I strongly recommend you read the posts "The Mute and the Monster", "Small Town Horror", and "Dangerous Haven" in that order before continuing with this one. Pasko's stories are dense, and there's too much back story by this point to do a recap that won't take up the whole post.

In issue 9 we watch as, after setting television producer Paul Feldner's body on fire with her powers, Karen psionically aged her own physical body from that of a pre-teen to that of a woman appearing to be in her early 20s. She then boarded a chartered plane to Germany , her "predecessor's origin place".  Rogue Sunderland employee Harry Kay smuggles Feldner's horribly mutilated but still barely living body into the Washington DC Sunderland facility and uses the "empathic receptor" beings (last seen in issue 5 of Saga of the Swamp Thing) to restore Feldner to full health.



Kay's actions are observed by one Walter Ellenbeck, the special operative better known of Grasp (last seen in issue 2 of SotST), who reports back to General Sunderland, head of the Sunderland Corporation. Grasp is ordered to find information to ruin Kay, and also to eliminate the Swamp Thing and his allies Dennis Barclay and Liz Tremayne.

Following a lead from a newspaper article saying that Feldner was taken to a "Sunderland owned clinic", Holland and his friends venture to the Barclay Clinic (also last seen in issue 5), believing it to be the one in question. Finding the facility deserted, they nonetheless locate records revealing that Harry Kay's real name is Helmut Kripptmann, a supposed Nazi war criminal, wanted for crimes against humanity, including genetic experimentation. Holland, Barlcay, and Tremayne are accosted by a squad of uniformed Sunderland goons (it's not clear if the goons followed them or if they were stationed there to guard the facility from trespassers). Before they can attack, however, the goons are taken out by  Milton Grossman, psionically powered associate of Kay/Kripptmann. Arriving soon with Feldner in tow, Kripptmann demands  Holland and company's cooperation. When they refuse, Grossman uses his psionic powers to cause the roots in Swamp Thing's body to grow uncontrollably and begin to strangle his friends.

In issue 10, with an effort of extreme will, Alec tears some of his own roots free and uses them to literally whip Grossman into submission. After Kripptmann explains that he and Holland have common enemies in not only Karen but Sunderland as well, Swamp Thing reluctantly agrees to a partnership for the good of their common cause.


Holland, Tremayne, and Barclay accompany Kripptmann and an ever increasing number of psionically gifted associates to Germany. Paul Feldner, following a brief period of trauma induced selective amnesia, has recalled that Karen is seeking the ruby pendulum of an occultist named Von Ruhnstedt, who had once been an advisor to Hitler. They track Karen to Dachau, the Nazi concentration camp and the place of Von Ruhnstedt's death. When they arrive, Karen uses her powers to reanimate the prisoners and the soldiers who died in the camp to attack her enemies.



While they are otherwise engaged, Karen summons the spirit of Von Ruhnstedt, who tells her to seek out his pendulum in the region of Berchtesgaden to fulfill her destiny. After she departs, the reanimated corpses dissipating without her presence, Kripptmann reveals that he was no Nazi but a Jewish prisoner of the camp.

As issue 11 opens, Karen arrives at a large house in Berchtesgaden, steals the pendulum from a wall safe, and kills the owner of the house, a former Nazi officer. Swamp Thing witnesses her actions through his psychic link to her, which he severs only through great force of will.

After Kripptmann and Barclay have a brief fight over the former's role as a "kapo" (a trustee forced to help Nazi scientists with their biological experiments at the camp), Feldner reveals that Karen's destiny is to be the "Herald of the Beast". He says "Unless she's stopped, first there will be genocide for all the Jewish people, then all non-whites, and for any person who refuses to follow the creature Karen will serve".  The Beast, he elaborates, is the biblical Antichrist.



Later that night, Karen returns to the house where she stole Von Ruhnstedt's pendulum and, using the artifact to enhance her own abilities, transforms the house to an ominous looking castle-like structure, "the Fortress of the Beast".


In the meantime, Kripptmann and his psionic associates construct a massive clay figure and animate it using their knowledge of Hebrew mysticism, creating a golem, "programmed" to hunt down Karen and destroy her.

Holland follows the golem to a nearby tavern (where she is recruiting local neo-Nazis to be her foot soldiers).  He and the clay monster attack her simultaneously. The golem is destroyed almost instantly, while Karen blasts the "flesh" from Alec's arm, revealing the "bones" beneath, before flying away.


When the Golem is reassembled it resumes it's attack, though with Karen now gone the closest thing that bears the resonance of her power is her locket, which Swamp Thing wears around his neck and has now become firmly entangled in the roots of his chest. The issue ends as the two monstrous creatures, locked in combat, tumble off a nearby mountain cliff.



Wow!  We have a LOT to disect from these three issues. The first is the nature of the psionically gifted individuals' abilities. In previous issues we've seen Milton Grossman use his telepathic and psychometric powers will no ill effects. When Grossman appears in issue 9, however, and begins using his telekinesis, we learn that the repercussions are horrible disfigurements. Growths that look like huge cysts break across his bald scalp. His back develops a severe hump and his limbs become misshapen. Kripptmann explains that psionics are a result of genetic mutation, more akin to characters from Marvel than DC telepaths like the Martian Manhunter or Saturn Girl. With Karen being the only known exception (either due to a unique mutation or her nature as the Herald), a psionic's energies they manipulate are so powerful that they wreak havoc on the comparitively fragile human body. 

The second thing I found fascinating was how Pasko depicted the objectives of the Antichrist. This is the first and only time I've heard of the Antichrist having an agenda specifically against adherents of the Jewish faith and people of color. Though it's not specifically stated in these issues, if you haven't figured it out from the points that (a) Von Ruhnstedt was the previous Herald and (b) Von Ruhnstedt worked for Hitler, the previous incarnation of the Antichrist was (spoilers) Hitler. This begs the question then, in the context of this mythos, was Hitler a racist and anti-Semite because he was an incarnation of the Antichrist, or is the newest incarnation a racist and anti-Semite because it still bears some trace of Hitler?

In the installment "Dangerous Haven" I referenced how Swamp Thing's "blood" burned the alien organism like acid in issues 6 and 7. This point of interest came up with that incident, though I wanted to save it for this installment, since the appearance of Swamp Thing's " bones" evoke the same item.  The majority of Swamp Thing fans are likely more familiar with the elemental version of the character, a sentient conscious inhabiting a seemingly endless series of bodies made up entirely of plant matter, than not. I find it interesting to consider that, to fit into this narrative that would be created by Alan Moore less than a year later, the fact that Swamp Thing had bones in these issues means that he would have had to have subconsciously create them out of wood to fit his delusion that he was a scientifically altered human being. 

Whew!  These issues were such a great read! Thanks for exploring them with me Parliamentarians. Next week we'll be finishing the Karen Clancy epic with issues 12 and 13 of Saga of the Swamp Thing, where we'll learn the identity of the Antichrist and witness Alec Holland's final confrontation with the Herald of the Beast. 

As always I welcome any questions or comments about the issues covered in this installment, about Swamp Thing in general, or about the dark corners of the DC universe as a whole. You can reach me through the Avatar of the Green Facebook page or on Twitter @ AotG_blog. 

Until then, think Green and be epic!

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