In the abandoned Robertaland plantation house near Houma, ghostly voices echo a violent incident from the past. Wesley Jackson, the plantation owner, having discovered his wife Charlotte's affair with their slave William, had him tied to a post and made her watch as he prepared to skin him.
In July, 1985, the Swamp Thing, having recently returned from Kennescook, tells Abby that Constantine had specified their home area as the next place the country-wide troubles would manifest. Abby hasn't noticed anything unusual, but mentions that Robertaland will be the site that summer of an historical soap opera. She takes a part-time gopher job with the production in hopes of seeing the stars in action.
The stars are Richard Deal, an overcompensatingly liberal white man; his sort-of girlfriend Angela Lamb, a casually racist Caucasian woman; and Billy Carlton, a bitter-towards-whites black man. Despite the tension between Angela and Billy, and their mutual irritation with Richard, the three agree to some preliminary rehearsals as the house is restored. All of them have been cast against type: Richard as a plantation owner, Angela and Billy as respectively his wife and slave, who become lovers. A number of local black people have signed on as extras, playing slaves.
During the first rehearsal, the spirits of Wesley, Charlotte and William temporarily possess the actors. The director, Dennis Linder, unaware that the actors are also hallucinating each other as dressed in period costume and the home in its original splendour, takes this as an inspired improvisation. A few days later, Richard, after having noted it's hard for him to think like a racist, falls under Wesley's control again as he angrily reprimands "William" while hallucinating that he's beating him. Meanwhile, the extras begin spontaneously decorating the house with flowers, as if preparing for a Voudoun festival, and the Swamp Thing, after dark, discovers odd salt patterns encircling the plantation's slave graveyard.
One month later, as the first day of shooting nears, the atmosphere on set has grown even stranger. Richard, outside of rehearsal, is now talking like a full-blown racist, while Angela makes a romantic/sexual gesture to Billy, who accepts it. On the first filming day, Abby spots Alice, an elderly black woman who serves lunch at Elysium Lawns, laying down salt around the graveyard. Alice seems confused as to why she's doing so, and alternates between calling Abby "Mrs. Cable" and "Mistress," as though she were a slave. Abby tells the Swamp Thing about this, and about the generally highly-charged atmosphere there, and suggests they both go check it out as soon as possible.
That night, coinciding with the Voudoun Mystère L'Orient festival, the director is distressed to find the extras lighting bonfires and dancing around them. Then Wesley/Richard turns up looking for Charlotte/Angela, and is outraged to learn they've gone into the house together. Oblivious to the director's protests, he conscripts two "slaves"/extras to accompany him inside, where he finds her in the midst of seducing William/Billy. And the violent scene from the issue's opening plays out word-for-word, through the possessed actors.
Tropes
- "Angry Black Man" Stereotype: Billy starts out this way. He tells his manager he's only doing the show as a "political statement." He calls Angela the "Great White Whale" to her face. Billy also hates what he terms the "Stepin Fetchit" dialogue written for him, and rejects Richard's (admittedly patronizing) attempts at moral support.
- Bigot vs. Bigot: Angela and Billy, at the outset, are so prejudiced towards each other's ethnicities they refuse even to touch each other during their love scenes and elicit promises of stand-ins for those.
- Cliffhanger: The issue ends with Wesley/Richard about to skin William/Billy.
- Doesn't Trust Those Guys: Richard, by now deep under Wesley's thrall, speaks disparagingly of the extras bringing flower offerings:Richard: These people...They had good jobs and good prospects, but stick 'em out here, they revert to type!
Dennis: Uh...Richard? Who are we talking about?
Richard: (in gritted-teeth close-up) Why, the colored, of course. Who else would we be talking about? - Flaying Alive: William's punishment for sleeping with Charlotte. At issue's end, Wesley's spirit, in Richard's body is about to reenact the flaying on the William-possessed Billy.
- Ghostly Possession: The spirits of Wesley, Charlotte, William and other slaves possess the cast by degrees, eventually all but overriding (and, in the leads' case, inverting) their former personalities.
- Haunted Headquarters: The Robertaland plantation is suffused with the ghosts of slaves and slaveowners. And that's just the beginning.
- Hollywood Voodoo: Averted. Most of the issue's scenes are headlined with the dates of little-known but actual Voudoun religious festivals, such as Mystère de Grande Saint Anne and Communion Table of Dan Wédo. See Greg Plantamura's Swamp Thing Annotations
for more information on these and other observances. - Irony: Billy Carlton's last movie, Breaking Even, bombed.
- Jive Turkey:
- Richard praises Billy's acting with, "Billy, my man! That was some hot performance, bro'...".
- Subverted by the ghosts, when they possess the main actors: They speak plainly and eloquently.
- Loss of Identity: Discussed. Abby asks the Swamp Thing whether his newly-discovered ability to shift his consciousness from one body to another makes him feel detached. She says that she sometimes feels as though she's embracing his "jacket" while the real him is somewhere else. The Swamp Thing tries to assure her that whatever form he takes, he will always love her, and thus her concern is needless. "No," she says, "it's human," perhaps implying that he's in danger of losing the one thing human about him that remains: his soul. Later, he admits she has a point: "I must...restrain myself...in the use of these abilities...lest I forget...what I am..."
- Nature Hero: The Swamp Thing cradles a dying bird, telling it not to be afraid and to just let go, "for the universe...is kind." Once it's dead, he places its body inside him, so that its decay will nourish his body "and nothing shall be wasted." Abby, looking on, is somewhat
weirded out, but does her best not to show it. - The Prima Donna: Billy, objecting to his character speaking in a heavily servile tone and exaggerated southern black dialect, says, "Either than line goes or I go!" Also, both he and Angela demand the use of stand-ins for their love scenes with each other.
- Shout-Out:
- The issue title comes from the Neil Young song "Southern Man", about the legacy of slavery and the Ku Klux Klan.
- The Voudoun-themed illustrations in the margins are based on Alexander King's illustrations in the 1929 William Seabrook book on Haitian Voudoun, The Magic Island.
- Stealth Pun: Abby tells the Swamp Thing there's "a lot of tension" on the set. In the foreground of that panel there's a water strider, an insect that walks on water via surface tension.
- White Guilt: Richard expresses this trope at the outset. He castigates Angela for her racist comments while ignoring or excusing Billy's racially-prejudiced insults about her. He also thinks he's supporting Billy by praising him in Jive Turkey slang. When Billy calls him out on this ("Us colored folk don't say that anymore!") and walks off, Richard says, "Jeez, what is it with those people?", suggesting he isn't as egalitarian as he thinks.
