What “Swamp Thing” can teach us about being a good steward of creation

Catholic Social Teaching is the Church’s instruction manual on how to live a Christ-centered life. It guides us in being the light of the world, the salt of the earth, the leaven which helps our society grow toward bringing about the Kingdom of God. In this seven-part series, we’ll examine the Seven Themes of Catholic Social Teaching through comic books – their stories, their heroes, and their ideals. We’ll look at how our favorite superheroes embody these principles of living a more Christian life.

The Superheroes’ Guide to Catholic Social Teaching – Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5

Theme 6: The Care for Creation; or, The Swamp Thing

Alec Holland was a biochemical engineer, working to develop a bio-restorative formula to turn barren land into fertile ground. A shady business cabal was very interested in his work. They wanted it all to themselves, though if that proved impossible they would settle for making sure no one else could have it either. So when Holland refuses to sell them his formula, they blow up his lab. And, in classic comic-book fashion, experimental chemicals plus violent explosion equals a superhuman transformation.

In this instance, Alec Holland comes away from it all as the giant humanoid-plant-creature known as the “Swamp Thing.” A decade later, Alan Moore would retcon this origin story, so that Alec Holland actually dies but his memories and consciousness are infused into the local plant life. In any case, the Swamp Thing comes back to wreak vengeance on the men who killed Holland and his wife.

In chapter four of the book of Genesis, when Cain murders his brother Abel, his sin actually infects the very earth. “You shall be banned from the soil that opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood,” God says in verses eleven and twelve. “If you till the ground, it shall no longer give you its produce.” It echoes the earlier scene in chapter 3, verse seventeen, where God tells Adam, “cursed is the ground because of you! In toil shall you eat its yield, all the days of your life.”

The point is that human sin has soured our relationship with the world we live in. God created it and pronounced it all good. As the Prophet Isaiah said, “not as an empty waste did he create it, but designing it to be lived in.” But humanity’s sin has put adversity between ourselves and God’s Creation.

Our work on this earth is meant to be in cooperation with God’s act of Creation. And Alec Holland is doing exactly that – he is using his God-given talents of intellect, reason, and curiosity, along with the accumulated knowledge of the natural sciences, to make things better for the people of the world. One can question the prudence and wisdom of turning the Earth’s desert lands into forest, and indeed we should question it. This is how we come to a greater understanding of this world God has entrusted us with. And in this case, it is clear that Holland’s heart is in the right place. He is working for the good of humanity, not for profit.

By contrast, his adversaries are the opposite in almost every way. They don’t want to do the work, but they want access to his results. They are interested in profit rather than the common good. Indeed, they are willing to sacrifice the common good, and even commit murder, to protect their own business interests. Like Cain, they refuse God’s call to be their brothers’ keeper. And, as with Cain, they find the verdant and life-giving Earth turns against them.

A decade after this story appeared in Swamp Thing # 1 in 1972, Alan Moore went deeper into the origin and nature of the Swamp Thing, with some interesting results. Moore brought in the villain Jason Woodrue, aka the Floronic Man – a plant/human hybrid being who first appeared in DC Comics ten years before Swamp Thing’s debut.

In Moore’s retcon of the Swamp Thing’s origin, Woodrue discovers that Swamp Thing is actually not the transformed body of Alec Holland. Holland, it turns out, did in fact die in the explosion. But as the swamp reclaimed his physical body, his memories and brain activity were absorbed into the vegetation. Swamp Thing, it turned out, was a construction of plant life that thought it was human.

Stripped of what last vestiges of humanity he thought he still had, Swamp Thing returns to the swamp and reverts back to a more inert vegetable state. Woodrue connects himself to Swamp Thing’s remaining consciousness, and through that to all plant life around the planet. He manages to incite a green revolution, in which the Earth’s flora will rise up and destroy all animal life.

As a plant/human hybrid, Jason Woodrue tries to deny his own humanity. And yet he exhibits the very human failing which the Church calls Original Sin. He locks himself into an adversarial mindset, fostering division where there should be a symbiotic balance. He even spreads this Original Sin, infecting all plant life all around the world.

Fortunately, Swamp Thing retains his memories of being human, of loving humanity. He is able to influence this worldwide vegetable consciousness to reject Woodrue and his divisive ideas. He understands the balance of Creation – plants and animals depending on one another for their mutual survival. He can’t repair all the damage of Original Sin, but he can at least do whatever is within his power. Which, of course, is what God asks of us all.