Arcane's malevolent psychic influence, now augmented by Matt's reality-warping power, spreads throughout Louisiana and beyond, causing susceptible people and animals to turn homicidal. Meanwhile, he fills in his captive niece Abby on what he'd been up to in between dying in the West Virginian mountains and possessing her husband. He says that he managed, through sheer force of will, to break free of Hell and return, in spirit form, to his body and exoskeleton. Seeing that neither was fit for use any longer, he resolved to find a new host body, and found one in Matt.
Over Abby's objections, Arcane reveals her husband's dirty secret: that, under the influence of alcohol, he squandered his power on creating erotic fantasy women, thus damning himself before Arcane had a chance to. Sensing an opportunity, Arcane used his own psychic influence to make Paul's parents summon the Monkey King, so as to distract Abby and the Swamp Thing while he caused Matt to crash his car. Thus, Matt, psychologically and physically weakened, surrendered his body to him. Arcane basks in his new, apparent omnipotence as hands rise from the floorboards and pull Abby in after them.
Their job done, Arcane's zombie companions are free to reassume their living human guises and go out looking for victims. Meanwhile, his influence reaches Arkham Asylum, giving the staff a busy night. It even attracts, from space, the attention of the Monitor and Harbinger in one of their early, cross-title appearances pre-Crisis. And it causes various evildoers to head for Louisiana.
Arcane, no longer needing to pose as Matt, takes on a progressively more demonic appearance as he goes out, shirtless and barefoot, into a blizzard. (Presumably, doing so is another demonstration of his power.) There he reveals himself to the Swamp Thing, and promises his upcoming demise. The Swamp Thing is relatively unmoved, until Arcane says he has Abby. He follows Arcane back to their house and up the stairs, finding her lying in bed. Cradling her in his arms, he tearfully asks his laughing arch-enemy, "HOW LONG HAS SHE BEEN DEAD??"
Tropes:
- Boy Meets Ghoul: Sally Parks and fellow zombie-in-living-guise Mark Newell pick up members of the opposite gender. Subverted, in that their true objective isn't sex but murder.
- The Determinator: Arcane pulls himself up from Hell back into the land of the living, by sheer force of will.
- Evil Makes You Ugly: While maintaining his mortal human facade, Arcane sports Matt's handsome features unaltered. After he casts off the facade, he gets progressively uglier over the course of this issue and the next: his eyes go all white; there are Phlegmings between his teeth; his skin breaks out in boils; and he's surrounded by insects, tiny dragons, snakes, and various small Eldritch Abominations.
- A God Am I: "I AM ARCANE! I am returned from the dead...and there is nothing that I cannot do."
- I Control My Minions Through...: Arcane, through the power in Matt's brain, awakens the latent (or not so latent) evil and destructive impulses in living things throughout the continent.
- I Have Your Friend: Played with, in that Arcane tells the Swamp Thing this not so that he'll perform a task for Arcane but, as the following issue makes clear, to induce despair in his Arch-Enemy before killing him.
- Misplaced Retribution: One of Arcane's motives for returning and stealing Matt's powernote is to avenge his death on the Swamp Thing and Abby, even though it wasn't they who caused it, but his would-be henchman Harry Kay's Heroic Sacrifice, as Arcane himself acknowledges by implication.
- Mysterious Watcher: The Monitor. As in his other pre-Crisis appearances in various DC titles, he's mostly concealed from view, and his motives for observing the Earth via satellite are not yet clear.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Arcane's ripple effect makes The Joker stop laughing.
- Pietà Plagiarism: The final panel shows Swamp Thing mournfully carrying the deceased Abby. Bear in mind that this came well before the famous, often-imitated image of Superman doing so with Supergirl in Crisis on Infinite Earths.
- Power Perversion Potential: Discussed. Arcane says that Matt had the power to "shake what gods there be," but instead wasted it for his own erotic self-gratification.
- Shout-Out
- The issue title is a reference to "Halo of Flies" from the 1971 Alice Cooper album Killer.
- The caption, "And the returned man looks upon his works...and he sees that they are good" is a dark parody of Genesis 1:31: "And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good." (King James Version)
- Signs of the End Times: As a result of Arcane's psychic shockwave (or "my Apocalypse" as he calls it in the following issue):
- Cain and Abel: A woman decides to exact belated revenge on her sister who had "tormented" her as a child and is now conveniently ill and helpless.
- Cannibalism / Autocannibalism: Tropical fish in a pet shop eat each other, then themselves.
- Disposable Vagrant: A man sets fire to an unconscious, drunken homeless person in an alley.
- Fetus Terrible: A cow gives birth to "something terrible" that "cries like a woman and then dies."
- Frying Pan of Doom: A housewife prepares to murder her husband this way.
- Killer Cat: A cat covets the spot where a baby is sleeping.
- Microwave the Cat: Two little girls do this as an act of hostility against their new stepmother.
- The Swarm: A town suffers from a plague of ladybugs.
- Turned Against Their Masters: A guide dog attacks its mistress.
- Snow Means Death: A snowstorm, which in real life is almost unheard-of in southern Louisiana's sub-tropical climate, heralds Arcane's murder of Abby.
- World-Wrecking Wave: Arcane unleashes a wave of malevolent psychic influence that causes people and animals throughout the continent to turn murderous.
