The JLA, in their satellite headquarters, watch Woodrue's videotape in which he shows what he's done to the town of Lacroix and announces his intention to do so to the entire world, making plant life pump out oxygen until all humans and animals are dead. The superheroes, noting that the villain has suffered a psychotic breakdown since they last encountered him, nonetheless take at face value his claim that he's acting on behalf of the Earth's plant life. They discuss possible ways to tackle this emergency, but find none of them to be practical.
Meanwhile, the Swamp Thing comes face to face with Woodrue, who welcomes him as his mentor, "the Swamp God," and assumes he's returned from the Green to share in his upcoming victory. Woodrue offers him a woman whom he'd hoisted with vines in the previous issue: "Her life. Take it."
Instead, the Swamp Thing punches him and rescues the woman. Woodrue calls him a "traitor" and uses his power to attack him with the swamp creature's own body. As the two of them duke it out, with Abby watching in mixed confusion and terror, an elderly Lacroix resident fetches his chainsaw and prepares to cut Woodrue down. The Floronic Man easily disarms him, then decides that the chainsaw, which humans have used as both a tool to cut down forests and a horror film motif, makes a suitably ironic symbol with which to kill the man.
Before he can do so, however, the Swamp Thing comes up from behind and breaks Woodrue's arm, telling him he's hurting the Green. Woodrue refuses to believe this, claiming he's the Green's servant. The Swamp Thing maintains that the destruction around them is "the way of man," not "the way of the wilderness," and so he's been carrying out his own, insane will all along. Woodrue claims that hyperproduction of oxygen is "the only way" to save the Earth. "And what..." says the Swamp Thing, "will change the oxygen...back into...the gasses that... we...need...to survive...when the men...and animals...are dead?"
Woodrue, unable to answer, feels the world's vegetation slipping from his awareness and control. When even a single flower rejects his tearful plea to stay with him, he screams in anguish and runs off.
Abby and the Swamp Thing, seeing the threat is over, leave Lacroix together. He confirms what he'd told her before, that he's not Alec Holland, that Holland is dead. "And who are you?" she asks him. "I am...the Swamp Thing," he says, smiling, and assures her he's happy with who he is. They embrace, and he returns to his home in the Houma swamp.
Meanwhile, Woodrue reaches his makeshift lab in the swamp. Deciding that he's human after all, not a plant ("Jason. Call me Jason"), and in anticipation of the JLA apprehending him, he hurriedly sprays on his artificial human skin, dresses and puts on his wig, so that they'll accept him as one of them. However, because his bark and leaf "hair" have grown out since he last wore his "skin," what Superman and Hal Jordan see when they catch up with him is a monstrosity, neither plant nor human. Seeing that he's in such a pathetic mental state he poses no more threat, they take him gently to Arkham Asylum.
Back in the Houma wetlands, the Swamp Thing regrets ever having left, and resolves to stay there forever, as it's there he feels most alive.
Tropes:
- Aliens in Cardiff: Green Arrow says it all:Man, I don't believe this! We were watching out for New York, for Metropolis, for Atlantis...But who was watching out for Lacroix, Louisiana?
- Artistic License – Biology: Swamp Thing's claim that plants, in the absence of animal life, will run out of carbon dioxide, overlooks the fact that fungi produce this gas, as do plants themselves, at night, via aerobic respiration.
- Art Shift: The panels, from the first two pages, which portray Woodrue's video message were specially photographed in Deliberately Monochrome, with simulated scan lines added, creating the effect of actual screen shots from a crudely-produced videotape.
- Beware the Superman: An extremely mild example, but Moore's introduction of the JLA - focusing on their abilities and inhumanity and nothing else - is far colder and more unpleasant than just about any previous introduction to them.
- Big Damn Heroes: Subverted. In contrast to most stories involving the Justice League, the superheroes are not the ones who defeat the villain. In fact, by taking at face value the clearly insane Woodrue's claim that the Earth's collective plant life is the mastermind, they find themselves at a loss as to how to proceed. It's the Swamp Thing who, unbeknownst to them, is the Big Damn Hero here, leaving JLA representatives Superman and Jordan to, essentially, perform clean-up duty. (To their credit, the two do show compassion while apprehending Woodrue; Superman even lends him his cape for comfort.)
- Chainsaw Good: Subverted. The elderly man's chainsaw is no match for Woodrue's Green Thumb power; indeed, the man narrowly escapes death by his own tool.
- Covers Always Lie: The cover of Issue 24 bears the tagline, "ENTER: THE JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA!", and shows the JLA looking concerned as they watch, on their satellite monitor, Woodrue menacing the Swamp Thing. This may lead the reader to expect they'll leap into action and help the protagonist defeat his assailant. In fact, not only do the JLA never interact with the Swamp Thing at all in this issue; they remain unaware of his very involvement in the Woodrue case. Nor, as mentioned above, do they actually do anything except discuss the situation, sending help only when it's scarcely needed any longer.
- Cue the Sun: The arc ends with the Swamp Thing joyfully greeting the sunrise with outstretched arms, symbolizing his rebirth: "I want to...be alive...and grow...and rise up...and meet the sun."
- Digital Destruction: Early collected editions omitted the words "and meet the sun" from the last page.
- The Greatest Story Never Told: The JLA has no idea that it was the Swamp Thing who saved the day, and thus they're baffled at, though grateful for, whatever stopped the plants from attacking.
- Green Aesop: When Abby notes that "the plants backed down," the Swamp Thing replies, "Yes. I wonder...Will your people...do as much?" The panel containing that last sentence shows the silhouetted chainsaw in the foreground.
- His Name Really Is "Barkeep": Abby asks the title character who he is, if he no longer self-identifies as Alec. Having come to terms with his true nature, he calls himself simply "the Swamp Thing."
- I Call It "Vera": The elderly local calls his chainsaw "Evangeline."
- Metaphorgotten: The local describes Woodrue as "uglier than death backin' outta the outhouse readin' MAD magazine and crazy as a football bat."
- Nightmare Face: The result
◊ of Woodrue trying to pass as human again. - Plot Parallel: In this arc, both the Swamp Thing and Woodrue connect with the Green for the first time, the former with ultimately positive and life-affirming results and the latter with negative, destructive consequences. As well, both characters painfully, and at the cost of their sanity, confront the question of their true identity: Are they human, vegetable, or something else? For the Swamp Thing, the madness and existential pain are temporary, as he comes to realize that he's a plant being who nevertheless feels at home interacting with animals and people. Woodrue, in contrast, is left permanently insane and alienated from both the human/animal and plant worlds.
- Pre Ass Kicking One Liner: "Turn around," says the local man revving up his chainsaw, "I wantcha t' meet Evangeline." Subverted in that it isn't Woodrue's ass that gets kicked following this line.
- Rule of Symbolism: Woodrue invokes this trope when he takes offence at, and shows the futility of, the local resident threatening him with a chainsaw, but then decides to make a symbolic point by cutting him down, horror-movie style, with the same tool humans use to cut down trees.
- Suddenly Voiced: Prior to this issue, the title character (in Volumes One and Two) rarely spoke out loud, and when he did, it was in single, brief sentences at most, because it was supposedly difficult for his vegetable throat to form words. Most of his "dialogue" was in fact his thoughts. From this issue on, he speaks much more often and at greater length. Although never stated explicitly, the in-universe reason is presumably that the Swamp Thing now knows his vocal chords, like his other organs, aren't "real" vocal chords, and yet he can still somehow speak, so there's no reason to hold back. The meta reason, of course, is that giving the Swamp Thing the ability to speak (if still more slowly than most human beings) was part of Moore's plan to make him a more proactive character (see the YMMV tab).
- Talking the Monster to Death: While Swamp Thing is able to break Woodrue's arm, what really defeats him is when Swamp Thing asks the plants directly "what would happen when all the animals needed to produce carbon-dioxide are dead?" At that point, the Green's Hive Mind abandons Woodrue.
- That Liar Lies: Woodrue's response to the Swamp Thing's attempt at reasoning with him: "You're lying! You're lying you're lying you're lying! Why are you lying?"
- That Man Is Dead: The protagonist tells Abby that he's not Alec Holland, but the Swamp Thing, and that Holland died a long time ago.
- Villainous Breakdown: Granted, Woodrue's behaviour has already been erratic since his Sanity Slippage two issues ago. However, when the plant world deserts him, he completely falls apart and runs screaming through the woods. When the superheroes come for him, his speech is rambling and confused:I was just, you know, doing something normal, driving a car, fishing, one of those things us men do...and I broke [my arm]. It hurts. Actually, it hurts quite a lot. I need a doctor... What am I saying? I am a doctor! Hahahaha...
