Swamp Thing VS Man-Thing

"Nature has an order, a power to restore balance. I believe he is that power."

- Dr. Ishiro Serizawa

Swamp Thing, the Avatar of the Green and vegetative simulacrum of Alec Holland.

Man-Thing, the dreadful, fiery husk of Ted Sallis and guardian of the Nexus of All Realities.

In the unexplored depths of America’s murkiest swamps, whispers and murmurs of cryptids and strange gatherings are plentiful. But, no one would suspect that overwhelmingly grandiose powers and guardians of nature would take refuge in the dense environments within. Yet, such gods are suffering in ways privileged citizens could barely imagine. Sunken in their own depths of despair, isolation, existential horror, and silent fear, these monsters strive forward despite their long lost hopes for normal lives. However, even with their humanity barely intact, their vast amounts of power would cause chaos unbound if they ever clashed. Who would come out on top if it comes to that? Let’s find out!

DISCLAIMER: Like most DC vs Marvel fights, continuities and canon have gotten progressively simpler to composite over time. Marvel mainline comics will be examined for both Man-Thing and the specifics of the Nexus of All Realities, and Infinite Frontier effectively soft composited all mainline DC comic continuities into one. The Green is the same across the cosmology, so that will be covered as in-depth as possible, although this concept has been in a ludicrous amount of comics, so this will be covered to the best of my ability.

Another thing to note about both swamp creatures is that they’ve sometimes fluctuated as lineages or different versions of the same character. For Man-Thing, his Rebirth era effectively split the entity into two different characters, but the old version and new version have canonically fused together and fixed this distinction in-universe. There's also the runs where Man-Thing was controlled by a powerful entity known as Adam K’ad-Mon and where Ted grew independently and similarly powerful for an even shorter amount of time. For the sake of simplicity, these eras will all be differentiated by different names, but we’re primarily focusing on Ted Sallis and his capabilities as Man-Thing.

The Swamp Thing we’ll be primarily looking at is Alec Holland, although the New 52 somewhat muddles his origins with a different take on him. Originally, Alec Holland Swamp Thing was meant to be a man transformed into a grotesque plant monster, but Alan Moore retconned his backstory to be that he was always the monster that simply absorbed the man’s memories for himself. The New 52 took the original approach and made it so that Alec Holland was transformed into the entity again, but their abilities are effectively the same and he loses his human body shortly.

The Green Champion operates on lineage rules, meaning that it’s a title passed down from each elemental across time. Currently, Alec Holland has basically retired and Levi Kamei has taken over the role as the current champion. Throughout most comic runs, Alec Holland has been stated to not only be the most proficient at using the Green, but every avatar shares the same power set, memories, and strength relative to the realm anyway. There was also a large amount of time where he became godlike after attaining various links to other elemental kingdoms, a power set that stayed until he was forced to give them up in order to thwart Sargon’s evil plans, so that era will be differentiated for the sake of simplicity as well. Therefore, we’ll be examining what each avatar could do since the champion inherits their memories anyway.

Character Version Keys:

Swamp Thing:

Classic Swamp Thing: Originally Alec Holland turned Swamp Thing before being retconned to having always been the entity with his absorbed, mimicked mind.
Swamp God: After completing all the elemental trials for each realm’s connections, gathering just four out of five of them elevated him to a powerful, godlike form.
New 52 Swamp Thing: After the New 52 reboot, Swamp Thing was now made of the original Alec’s body with the implication that the original Swamp Thing events happened.
Levi Kamei Swamp Thing: After Infinite Frontier, all previous Alec Holland Swamp Things were composited and retired as the avatar, leaving young Levi to take his place.

Man-Thing:

Classic Man-Thing: A result of Ted Sallis’s injection of his incomplete serum crashing his car into the Everglades Swamp, he became a mindless entity and Nexus Guardian.
Adam Man-Thing: After shattering the Nexus from his rejection of his duty, Man-Thing came into possession of the Staff of the Creator, which allowed Adam K’ad-Mon, the original, first Man of Lineage, to take over his body after a few fragments were gathered.
Lineage Man-Thing: As Adam grew independent of Man-Thing, Ted Sallis, Ellen Sallis, and the Nexus were drawn down into an aware, now powerful Man-Thing for one issue.
Rebirth Man-Thing: After working for the Thunderbolts and imbued with Satana’s magic, Man-Thing absorbed enough entities and fear to incubate as an “egg” before hatching upon transporting to the past as a new Man-Thing capable of universal speech.
Fused Man-Thing: The Classic and Rebirth Man-Thing met and briefly fought before they forcibly, canonically fused together to become a Man-Thing sometimes capable of thinking and sometimes not depending on the author writing him.

Background

Swamp Thing

“If nature were to shrug or raise an eyebrow, then you should all be gone.”

Eons ago, at the dawn of creation, a primordial tree grew at the pinnacle of reality housing a mind of its own. Its roots spread across all of creation, and was the source of all magic throughout the multiverse. From this tree, the metaphysical realm of the Green, which represented all forms of plant life, spread across the cosmos and latched onto countless planets. Billions of years ago, as life evolved on a humble little place called Earth, the idea of a protector began to manifest a long legacy of entities throughout history. The plucked fates of living things once per era were converted into avatars made entirely out of vegetation to serve the natural order. However, unique among them was a man whose run as the Green’s champion was like no other.

Alec Holland lived an ambitious, yet idealistic life as an accomplished biochemist alongside his wife and lab partner, Linda Holland. Their work was so noteworthy amongst the environmentalist scientific community that it garnered the attention of government contractors. Under the watchful eye of their handler, Matthew Cable, the Hollands worked tirelessly in a secret laboratory hidden deep within the bayous of Louisiana. Their secret project involved synthesizing a bio-restorative formula that could potentially accelerate plant growth to the point that it could seamlessly restore deforestation or even create gardens out of deserts. However, such a potent formula naturally drew the unwanted attention of seedier “private contractors”. Shady men stopped by the secret lab of the Hollands and offered a discreet, under-the-table payment for the batch. Ever the boy scout, Alec refused to put his work on the market for them to do who-knows-what with! Unbeknownst to any involved, this firm decision would change the planet forever.

Frustrated at his refusal, the men would arrive later at night with the intention of sabotaging the scientists and recovering whatever they could from the aftermath. Quickly knocked out, Alec Holland would awaken to the sight of a ticking bomb strapped to his workstation where the bio-restorative formula sat before being utterly consumed by the blast. His body entirely enveloped by flames, Alec would run off into the nearby swamp to free himself from this pain. After a strange chemical reaction bubbled beneath the murky waters, what came out instead was a cryptid made entirely of plant matter, yet shambled about like a person. This was the genesis of the Swamp Thing. Holland, even in this horrific state, ran back into the lab and found that his wife had been shot to death during the break-in. He looked back down at his own body, one covered completely in moss and lacking sensations, blood, or skin of any sort, Swamp Thing cursed fate itself for dooming him to live as a monster for normal life would never be attainable again.

The creature found that he had superhuman strength, didn’t feel pain, was covered in constantly growing roots, and, after a brush with the profane mad mage Anton Arcane, learned that his innards were no longer meat. Swamp Thing wasn’t just some random bog creature, but a thing made of foliage entirely. Forever doomed to isolation in the swamp and suffering constant attacks from angry mobs, Alec mustered all that he could to hold onto his humanity and to help people wherever he possibly could with his newfound strength. However, after constant harrowing misadventures, deaths of friends, and government interference, Swamp Thing was captured by the mogul Avery Sutherland and dissected by Jason Woodrue, the Floronic Man. However, Woodrue later deliberately betrayed his boss after growing frustrated with his capitalistic tunnel vision and left his findings in a nearby file. Having been subtly released by his pathologist, Swamp Thing caught an eyeful of everything that was documented about his body and read nothing but absolute existential horror. In truth, the Swamp Thing wasn’t a person turned into a monster at all. Unbeknownst to him, this entity was a mimicry of Alec Holland’s mind and memories, one that was reborn and created through the swamp, formula, and flames as a being made of undergrowth that carried itself as if it were the human that died so long ago.

The shock sent the Swamp Thing into a spiral of depression and severe identity diffusion that he nearly succumbed to if not for the support of his friends, especially from his future partner: Abigail Arcane. Deep within himself, the entity learned to let go of his perceptions and accept himself for what he was, finding true companionship not just with his support group, but through unlocking his connection to all plants on Earth thanks to the warm, metaphysical embrace of the Green, the consciousness of all botanic life. Over time, he learned about the legacy of plant elementals, and how it was his fated duty to protect the flora of the planet, an aspect of his life that gave him a sense of self and an agonizing duality when it came to balancing his empathy against it. Such responsibilities embittered his non-existent heart and led him down a dark path after being constantly forced to choose between his duty to nature, his wife and daughter, and his duty to protect humanity through his jobs with the magician John Constantine. However, as he grew monumentally in power, Swamp Thing remained resolute in his empathetic ways through even the worst the multiverse had to offer, and he even participated in the Justice League Dark to protect far more than just the Earth. The isolated, self-loathing slump of moss was no more, and a protector rose to serve every voiceless life down to the loneliest petal.

Man-Thing

"Whatever knows fear burns at the Man-Thing’s touch!"

Long before existence and time itself, there was nothing. The Creator was alone, manifesting reality from their dreams with the use of a powerful staff. First, the Fallen Stars, a small group of immeasurably powerful beings were materialized, leading the charge on the entirety of creation themselves. The staff was then thrown into the boiling heart of the Earth, and one of these divine entities was entrusted to maintain the dream and guard the focal point of all dimensions. Adam K’ad-Mon, thus, began a long lineage of dreamkeepers and descendants who worked tirelessly to oversee these crossroads. All except for one man, the latest in the lineage that not only rejected this duty, but abandoned it completely without even realizing it. See, deep within the swamplands of the Florida Everglades, a sheltered biochemist toiled away, contracted on a secret S.H.I.E.L.D. research program. Theodore Sallis, and his neglected wife Ellen, lived isolated with the singular goal of finally recreating the legendary Super-Soldier serum that enhanced a certain patriotic superhero. Frustrated by his lack of progress, he would seek out darker means of achieving this synthesis by diving into unscientific tactics. Theodore set up an infernal ritual in his lab, summoning forth a demon to strike a Faustian Bargain.

All he needed was a supernatural substitution to complete the formulaic gap in his serum. Around the same time, influenced by her deeply rooted trust issues from her troubled past, a bitter Ellen feared the kind of cold man that Ted would become and fell into the temptations of the opposing A.I.M. organization. Now acting as a spy, Ellen eventually led the A.I.M. agents into their lab to ambush Ted in the night. This betrayal and panic stuck with the fleeing biochemist as he drove away with the only existing, finished batch of the serum. In a last ditch effort to save his research from prying, malicious eyes, he injected the concoction into himself. But, during that momentary distraction, Theodore’s car missed a crucial turn and crashed into a tree, sinking it into the dark depths of the swampwater. Unbeknownst to him, this crash, combined with the interdimensional, demonic magic now running through his veins, created a mythical force strong enough to tear a hole in spacetime itself. The drowning biochemist didn’t know it yet, but he had single-handedly created a new Nexus point in the multiverse.

While his car sank into the murk, Theodore’s skin, muscles, and bones melted away as a biological amalgam overtook his body and banished his mind into darkness. His humanity and his sense of self drifted away as he desperately attempted to keep his grasp on himself. In the end, a tall, mossy behemoth emerged from the waters as the A.I.M. agents and Ellen investigated, becoming the first witnesses to the terrible form of the Man-Thing. This entity sensed only emotions, as it lacked a mind of its own, and found itself pursuing and grabbing the men. As he did, Man-Thing sensed their fear, an emotion deeply traumatic and painful to him, and unleashed a chemical that would burn them to death before Ellen’s eyes. However, as he burned the side of her face, a remnant of Ted, even after all of this, intervened and didn’t let the creature finish the job. Instead, he wandered back into the swamp, his eternal cage. What followed was a life of aimless curiosity and wandering to the nearest sources of empathic fluctuations. Yet, he could not wander too far from the swamp, as his connection to it fueled his mobile state. As passing visitors grew more fantastical and strange, powerful strangers would often come by and interrupt his misadventures, as they had discovered the swamp’s true nature as the Nexus of All Realities.

Throughout the sudden high stakes he was brought into, Ted was stuck in an impossibly deep part of the un-mind of Man-Thing, forever unable to vocalize his torment and isolation. During the aftermath of a multiversal apocalypse, however, Manny was put in charge of Franklin Richards, a powerful, reality-warping child that subconsciously took advantage of his connection to the Nexus as a result of his grief. All this interdimensional travel caused silent Ted to unknowingly reject his preordained mission as a keeper of the Creator’s dream, a thought of defiance that shattered the Nexus itself. This act would end up drawing Ellen back into his life, who was recruited by Doctor Strange as the other half of this mission to help Man-Thing through his duties and seek a path at redemption that she desperately craved. During their journey, they would recover Nexus fragments from different, mystical corners of the world with the aid of a staff given to Ellen to travel the dimensional crossroads of the Nexus itself. However, the more that Man-Thing collected these shards and used the staff, the more abrasive he grew.

In truth, one of the Fallen Stars and his ancestor, Adam K’ad-Mon, had taken him over. And, he was attempting to thwart Termineus, his sibling, from using the Nexus, through Ellen’s secret son with Ted, to consume all of creation. As Adam was tricked and reality collapsed, it would actually end up being Ted himself who maintained the dream of everything, buying enough time for his son to restore it all. In the aftermath, Adam broke off and became independent as Ted & Ellen merged with the Nexus and drew it down into Man-Thing before creating a new avatar for Man-Thing with a residual of Ted’s consciousness and becoming the Nexus itself. This avatar continued on, joining teams, foiling plots, and reincarnating before a new threat, and a pep talk from Spider-Man and Magik, forced the aspect of Theodore Sallis to finally confront his self-pity and deeply rooted fears. Finally accepting that the past happened and moving forward, he willed himself back into control over Man-Thing, saved the day, and got some payback on the demon that broke that bad deal. So, as the rumors of the Man-Thing circulate, interdimensional invaders will be in for a nasty surprise. For a single touch and a hint of cowardice is all he needs to set their ambitions ablaze.

Skill & Experience

Swamp Thing

Considering he still retained some unspecified level of intellect from Alec Holland during his creation, it should be fine to attribute some of that biochemistry expertise to Swamp Thing. This is especially apparent since he could still synthesize the bio-restorative formula with his own body in the New 52 era, plus each Avatar of the Green inherits all of the experiences and memories of the previous ones. Holland was specifically brought onto a secret government project and was apparently well known for understanding biochemical abnormalities. This gives him intellectual feats such as deducing a mutation in an alien virus through his own Earthly knowledge. And because of all those inherited memories from the Green Avatars, Swamp Thing reliably has billions of years of wisdom, knowledge, and experience to draw from as well. On his own, Swamp Thing can artificially enhance his own intellect essentially as an immobile “biocomputer” for a month and a half, which allowed him plan against a “black hole of synchronicity” that kept trying to doom people he knew with increasing familiarity to the fate of becoming the next Avatar. During this intellectual meditation, Swamp Thing was capable of comprehending the history of reality down to the quantum and “probability” level.

When it’s time to throw some hands, Swamp Thing is both tricky and improvises consistently when put on the spot. One example involves him luring a villain, Thrudvang, onto a bridge before cutting it down and sending him hurtling into the waters below as a human. Plus, human Holland can still kick people across rooms while he’s powerless. Back when Swamp Thing didn’t have a connection to the Green, he would stealthily hitch rides on planes, claw his way out of quicksand or a coffin over the course of a full day, and zap creatures with nearby exposed wiring. In fact, when dealing with a 1,000 year-old demon, Swampy tricked it into possessing him right as his body was being hauled into a freezer. After he finally found his green thumb, Classic Swamp Thing battled monsters for years and New 52 Holland not only fought an entire army that served Sethe, Avatar of the Rot, by himself, but he later rallied his own troops in a war against the Grey, Rot, and Metal. Later on, when the Green had rejected him, he could fight yet another army on his own made up of avatars from the Green, Rot, and Red. He’s always ready for whenever those kingdoms might pick a fight, even going as far as precisely slicing and skewering through multiple apples in over 50 orchards worldwide at the same time to train. It’s no wonder that he, reluctantly, earned a spot on the Justice League Dark.

In terms of tactics with using the Green itself to mess with plants, Swamp Thing was once praised by a previous Green avatar for being both flexible and endlessly creative with its powers like previous wielders before him. He’s been able to find a small piece of vegetation left unaffected by a spell meant to mask a cavern from the Green, materialize under and through floorboards after Gotham’s leaders hid all the plants that used to be inside of a building, and reformed out of the processed vegetable matter in a bag of chips. Alec’s mastery over these powers are so great that he’s been able to create perfect, green recreations of other characters, towns, and original, fully furnished housing in seconds. Even finding a miniscule piece of plant matter in a dead rabbit’s teeth amongst a salted landscape or finding his way back onto Earth after being portaled onto the moon are things he’s worked around. Even his daughter, who barely controlled or understood her elemental powers in the first place, could already affect entities within a 22 mile radius of her influence. With mastery and experience, Swampy could grow a vast harvest in a desert on an alien planet with alien plants and materialize in extradimensional locations like the House of Mystery or the Oblivion Bar. His creativity also shines when working with others, such as allowing Aquaman to slice off and harpoon his arm to act as a makeshift grappling hook while immediately beginning to regenerate it.

His eloquence is also not lost on anyone that knows him. The most notable instance involves Swamp Thing brokering a peace between the Great Darkness and the Light of Heaven after having a sincere conversation with the Darkness itself, preventing interplanar armageddon from the entity that corrupted the Anti-Monitor during the Crisis on Infinite Earths. He managed to do this after Etrigan, Dr. Fate, and the Spectre all tried, failed, and were heavily burned by it before his eyes while attempting to do the same. Perhaps this is why he was able to commune with a small alien plant species and help them achieve group sentience. This cleverness allowed him to fully fool Woodrue, someone constantly attempting to usurp the Green championship from him, by imitating the Parliament of Trees in order to lure him to his own immobile location. His existence also was completely ignored by Black Rider because he had already “died” before, in a sense, so he felt no need to go after him with his death touch.

Man-Thing

Presenting this section for Man-Thing might come across as odd at first given his reputation for being a mindless, instinct-based cryptid, but he is not without his cleverness. In the older comics, Man-Thing would have occasional flashes of Ted’s old memories that’d help guide his intuition or decision making, such as when he briefly, nearly recognizes devices planted around his swamp. Theodore’s previous experience as both a college professor and accomplished biochemist were also enough to catch the attention of SHIELD, who would later contract him specifically. During this time, he would rub shoulders with other scientific minds like Curtis Connors, who would later become the Lizard, and even seek him out for advice sometimes.

Whenever Ted would emerge and take over Man-Thing, he’d also significantly increase the body’s speed, reaction times, and add his own cunning into the mix. During the time Ted was cognizant after fusing with the old Man-Thing, he improvised during a battle and reflected blinding, emitting light with a nearby mirror back to his attacker. In fact, Man-Thing was still able to take up a biochemistry teaching job while still acting as the creature. When he had fully embraced his Man of Lineage status, Sallis was even deceptive enough to outwit the Scrier in a bet over the ownership of the Staff of the Creator.

However, whenever Man-Thing has no mind to guide him, he still acts in accordance with his own self-preservation. He will instinctively eject the section of cells that contain Ted Sallis if he feels significantly threatened, which is a far cry from the times when he’d simply stand there confused and not fight back in an arena battle. Naturally, the entity is much more swift and graceful when moving underwater, and any kind of traditional shackles are useless for containing him. Whenever he needs to smoke out his targets, he’s even cooked up a strategy to climb a house and block the ventilation of a chimney to lure out the people inside. Additionally, Man-Thing himself is almost nothing but a rumor, consistently living as an obscure cryptid to the masses. These attributes likely played a part in why he was considered good enough to join both the Thunderbolts and the Howling Commandos! In fact, it’s been suggested that pinpointing locations through a Nexus Point is a massive feat of intelligence, something Manny’s both done instinctively and manually.

With Ted as the next Man of Lineage meant to guard the Nexus, it’s no surprise that he’s had experience battling interdimensional intruders on a regular basis. While previously enough fear and emotion could overload Manny, his best showings depict him rampaging without signs of slowing down from sensing over eight million people feeling fear all around him. This has led this cryptid to be selected as a guardian to Franklin Richards, join a battle against a large group of Ghost Rider-ized, brainwashed Avengers serving Mephisto, and allowed him to participate in the Phoenix Force Tournament in the White Hot Room, which is also where he regrew after being defeated. When Adam inhabited Man-Thing, K’ad-Mon was referred to as a “swamp god”, with him claiming that he was not only older than time itself, but predates Galactus before he was even an “unborn thought”.

Arsenal

Swamp Thing

Bio-Restorative Formula

This special chemical batch synthesized by Dr. Alec Holland served as the catalyst for the Swamp Thing’s inevitable creation. Think of this formula as a secret recipe, something that’s only been able to be recreated by Swamp Thing and only partially reproduced by Batman. Someone would have to be a biochemist on par with either of them to figure it out without a sample of it on hand. However, pieces of Swamp Thing’s body have sometimes been stolen in order to try to unravel this formula.

This chemical concoction’s main usage comes from being poured onto dying or young plant life to both revitalize them and accelerate their growth in seconds. This is something that’s been stated to be potentially able to create gardens out of sweltering deserts. This formula was later weaponized by Batman’s massive Bat-Bot, inside of guns, and used in a Venom Delivery System strapped to Swamp Thing’s body so that he retains strength even in a completely barren, Rot-ravaged planet. Using this concoction allowed him to even eliminate Rot-corrupted entities when they came into contact with it.

Plants

Swamp Thing’s iconic power is his control over and ability to summon literally any kind of known plant through channeling the Green. This created, manipulated vegetation has had special properties and grisly, yet creative uses. Some examples include:

Sundew Flytrap: A new station reported that Holland had summoned huge, carnivorous sundew flytrap plants around Gotham City.

Cactus: Manifesting even out of alien cacti, Swamp Thing’s body becomes covered in their natural spines, which he can fire out of his body at incoming threats

Roses: Alec can multiply existing or plucked roses to both envelop people and shred them apart with their thorns, making escape difficult and painful.

Peach Blossoms: Swamp Thing can duplicate the peach blossoms in the air at an alarming rate to bury and suffocate people, such as flooding their bedroom while they’re asleep.

Grass: Swamp once grew out grass from a front lawn to form a massive labyrinth of a hedge maze, where the hedge walls are thorn bushes. This trapped a man in there for an entire week. Conversely, he can rapidly grow antifungal grass from within a woman's body and cells.

Cellular Flora: Swamp Thing can materialize and manifest within the flora inside of a human’s digestive tract at a cellular size, which allows him to travel through their body via their bloodstream. This grants him access to their brain or anywhere else inside them really.

Venus Flytrap: Alec can potentially evolve into a large venus flytrap to attempt to imprison characters within the sticky resin on the inside of his jaws.

Poultice: He’s capable of forming poultice which can treat people’s burns.

Trees: Swamp Thing can manifest as a tree, grow it, and use the branches as large arms.

Pollen: Holland materialized as a grain of pollen to stealthily glide along the air.

Straw: He once took control of a scarecrow by manifesting through its stuffed straw.

Salad: Swamp Thing can kill a man by growing out the salad he had for lunch from the inside.

Poppies: He can forcibly grow poppies from the ground to cover a person’s nose and mouth, forcing them to breathe in their sedative perfume to knock them out.

Pitcher Plant: He’s captured robots in giant pitcher plants to digest them with acids.

Garlic: Swamp Thing previously created some garlic spray to attack vampires with.

Weed: Grew out cannabis for Constantine’s 40th birthday like a true pal would.

Produced Equipment

Swamp Thing can make his own personal equipment out of plant matter or his own body. This production usually takes only a few seconds at most. Examples of produced gear includes:

Wingsuit: Created leaf-like gliders from his body to make a biological wingsuit.

Exoskeleton: Swamp Thing can form a plant exoskeleton around people to puppet their body. Additionally, he can grow wood to reinforce his body with natural armor.

Blade & Shield: He once created a wooden shield and a gauntlet-like blade combo from his arms. Later on, Levi Kamei was able to make a freed blade and wooden axe. This was done by Alec too, since he also made a disconnected sword and hilt out of wood.

Threads & Nets: Alec can form threads from his body and create large nets from his limbs.

Eden Armor: Swamp Thing once made armor out of Pre-Lapsarian Wood from Eden, the holy locale itself. Curiously, it was unable to be detected as wood by him since it’s not technically part of “nature”, so he had to manually whip graft and absorb it to use it. Hellish, unholy creatures created by the Voice cannot harm this Eden Armor and burn if they touch it.

Tubers

Swamp Thing’s body naturally produces special tubers, a kind of fruit that grants anyone that eats it a brief connection to the Green, possibly even a permanent one for other plant beings. They’ve allowed normal people to view the world in Alec’s special “life vision”, which highlights areas full of living things, and eating one himself can restore any lost regenerative capabilities. Anyone daring enough could also attempt to morph substance from Swamp Thing’s body into plants they want after consuming one, but insufficient mastery when trying this can kill them.

However, the most notable side effect that occurs after consumption is the insane acid trip that a person experiences. It’s possible to simply have a bad trip and undergo brief memory loss, but the fruit actually has a set of rules that changes how this trip works for individual people. Simply put, the tuber can detect a person’s personality and morality and fine-tune its hallucinogenic effects accordingly. So, a good person is connected to the overwhelming beauty in the world and their, erm, “primal desires” are exaggerated. On the flipside, a bad person experiences all of Swamp Thing and Alec Holland’s traumas, fear, dread, pain, and self-loathing to the point that it overwhelms their senses and leaves them unaware of nearby dangers.

Empty Vessels

Swamp Thing can produce empty vessels, which are metamorphic plants that can rapidly grow out and merge with entities to create a new avatar and champion of the Green. Even abstract, aetheric entities, despite the vessels being corporeal, can be transformed into elementals.

Psychometric Locket

Alec once owned a locket that granted him the psychometric power to track down the last owner’s location through their aura residue, an energy field generated by all living things. Because Karen, the previous owner, had greater aura due to her special abilities, this residue rubbed off on Swamp Thing through the locket and granted him psychometric powers so long as he owned it. These powers include psionic beams that attack and destroy souls and gravity defiance to grant flight. Plus, it can psychokinetically immobilize characters in stasis and send them back to their home dimension, but enough usage of it wreaked havoc on Swamp Thing’s regenerative cells, so he tossed it away once this story arc was complete.

Mask for the Soul

This temporarily owned eye mask allowed Swamp Thing to view the “true soul” of a person. As in, their body resembles what kind of person they really are regardless of outside alterations. This is done through illusory hypnosis from the mask, and it turns invisible and hides the original form of the wearer to reflect their “true soul”. It can even create illusory, yet tangible opponents for Swamp Thing to fight, though he ditches it after one issue.

Jean LaFitte’s Doubloon

An old doubloon that Swamp Thing could use to summon an undead pirate crew for backup.

Dead Zone Monster

Swamp Thing is able to summon a monster that was created by a natural “dead zone” after allowing it to live peacefully in the Green upon defeating it. It has a large, toothy maw and several kraken-esque tentacles, along with being made up of the “absence of life”. Dead zones are locations that can exist on Earth where nothing thrives, which can damage the Green and be located via this damage. This toxic runoff is what manifested this monster in the first place.

Louisiana Swamp

This particular swamp in a Louisiana bayou was the original bog where Alec Holland died and Swamp Thing was born. While that origin story was partially attributed to radioactive waste dumping early on, the special properties of these waters can do much more than that. The chemical imbalance here tends to mutate and aggravate the animals living there, but Swamp Thing experiences much different effects if he returns and submerges himself inside. His elemental body has been fully purged of defoliant chemicals that were breaking him down, had his damaged regenerative cells healed, was cured of his fatal necrosis, and ended up being fully resurrected by the swamp in earlier runs. This is all likely due to it still being suffused with remnants of his initial bio-restorative formula.

The Parliament of Trees

Deep in the rainforests of Brazil, a natural haven that restricts access from most humans resides in peaceful tranquility. Within this sanctuary are numerous, sentient trees whose language is unknown to all except the current champion of the Green. These trees are all the previous, now retired avatars, coexisting in their little retirement home, known as the Parliament of Trees. While most of them truly exist in the depths of the Green as a groupmind, there are some that don’t wish to join such a hivemind that hang out in the physical forest. There, Swamp Thing can seek their counsel by temporarily joining the groupmind, view their memories, learn about more potential and previous uses of the Green’s powers, and can even be projected into the past to commune with past champions in action.

Though, to be blunt, these retirees can be curt, vague, condescending, and generally unhelpful to the point that they can shut Alec out of their mindscape to prevent him from conversing with them. This has often led to them either simply butting heads or being in a full blown antagonistic dynamic, and they’ve often tried to retire and replace Swamp Thing with a new avatar, like Woodrue. When they tried this, they sentenced Swamp Thing to the depths of the Green and revoked his powers, which they can generally do to other, newer champions too, even banning access to the Green altogether.

However, Swamp Thing does have a form of leverage over them to the point that their antagonism and meddling isn’t an issue anymore. Because of his status as the current champion, Alec can not only force the Parliament members into dormancy within the Green, but also sever their connections to it so there’s no chance for them to bother him. This sealing process even let Swamp Thing take their power for himself. This works in reverse too, meaning he can selectively release certain Parliament members from dormancy. This power imbalance and threat is what gives him sway over their behavior, because this is straight up extortion.

This lets him force or ask them to share their power to heal him from things that could weaken him like poison, cleanse poison from the Green over time, and summon them for support in battle whenever he wants. Though, emerging them to the outside world for help will eventually lead to them withering and dying permanently. In the New 52, this even let Alec summon Classic Swamp Thing from the previous comic runs, when, during this era, Alec had his dead body bonded with to make a new champion instead. In addition, removing a consciousness from the Parliament after they’ve taken root in the Green during retirement is referred to as “true death”.

Notable Members

Yggdrasil: The founder of the Parliament of Trees is the prehistoric Yggdrasil, whose seeds were planted in Eden by Swamp Thing when he was going through a closed time loop. Starting off, members of the Parliament can tap into sources of knowledge with their roots, which gives them a “good handle” on the immediate, upcoming future. When Yggdrasil was planted, Swamp Thing unknowingly bestowed all of his memories up to that point to them, which gave the council paradoxical knowledge, in the past, of Alec’s present life. This allowed them to later deceive him with a lie regarding a “danger” that might exist with two elementals present at once, which is a fancy way of saying this paradox gave the writers a free retcon to a previous plot point. Later on, after Swamp Thing completed all of the elemental trials, the Parliament of Trees combined with the other elemental councils to become the Parliament of Earth.

Jonah: As one of the few Parliament members that Swamp Thing actually trusted, Jonah was kept active in the Green and could be consulted for advice. However, he is only really shown being called out of the Grove, a location where the Green was accessible via a pool of water that can be sealed off through evaporation. As his friend and predecessor, Jonah says that he’d be tending to the Green whenever Alec is unable to.

Earth

No, this isn’t a joke entry. There are several instances where it’s been confirmed that Planet Earth is, effectively, Swamp Thing’s body. He manifested over the surface of the planet, controlled the lunar tides, controlled the continental plates, could terraform the Earth if he wanted to, and achieved global, fourth-dimensional consciousness after completing his elemental trials. Swamp Thing’s been stated to not only feel the weight of the planet, but sense its magnetic fields, heaven, hell, and all things down to the subatomic level across natural environments.

In fact, his Astral Form’s electromagnetic spectrum is specifically attuned to the magnetic field of the Earth, sort of like a planetary radio channel that provides connection to its Green. Plants all over allow him to view and feel down to the subatomic level, meaning that anything the planet feels, he’ll also feel no matter how small. This symbiotic relationship leads to situations where the blotting out of the sun and breaching of dimensional barriers to leak in dark energies can lead to Mother Earth being left unstable and in fatal danger. But, to put this all more simply, Woodrue has stated that whoever currently controls the Green also controls the world.

The World Tree

There once was a tree so old that time, as a concept, was new to her. This is the World Tree, which houses raw magic so powerful that all it would take is a thought to conjure things through magic. The reason for this primordial strength is quite simple, because this tree is the source of all magic throughout DC’s entire omniverse, whose roots spread throughout all of creation aside from the Source Wall. Not only this, but it’s also the root of the Green itself, and ended up saving Swamp Thing and his friends from death via non-time entropy at the end of time that would have unmade all of them. According to Alec, at her primordial point in time, the World Tree is a “millionfold” stronger than the present full consciousness of the Green that he knows. This absurd power is then demonstrated by either casually creating or recreating the House of Mystery when it was needed.

This tree has its own mind which houses the “soul of creation”, so it’s actually able to communicate with others. Being near her can allow the tree to grab you with her roots, eat away at a person’s mind and individuality, stretch across all of spacetime, sense disturbances in the flow of time, and send others millions of years into the future to a space that recently had the idea of a unique flow of time introduced to it. Even if all of creation is nearly erased, Swamp Thing, so long as he exists, serves as a direct link to the World Tree herself. Specifically, he carries her essence, so the tree’s potential strength should be housed inside of him. Once Zatanna used this fact to grow Swamp Thing’s body to restore all of creation, the World Tree tucked the Justice League Dark back into the House of Mystery and was subsequently “gone”. It’s not exactly clear what “gone” means in this context, as it could be that she went back to her spot in the cosmology, but so long as she’s the root of the Green and that link exists, Swamp Thing should theoretically have access to her.

White Lantern Ring

They’ll give anyone a Lantern Ring these days, huh? During the events of Brightest Day, Swamp Thing’s body was corrupted by the personality of Nekron, so the Green formed a new Swamp Thing out of Alec Holland’s buried body as an emergency backup plan. Alongside merging with multiple other heroes who wielded the elements of air, fire, water, and earth, this new avatar was imbued with White Lantern energy to fight the Dark Avatar. With each blow, the Dark Avatar was being purified of this corruption, and the fight ended once White Lantern Swamp Thing severed the connection of the Dark Avatar to Nekron’s power and eradicated it, likely acting as an antithesis to the corruption. After purging this darkness, those elemental amplifications weren’t needed anymore, so they left his body.

In a later Swamp Thing run, Alec was able to call on that specific avatar to use a White Lantern Ring he kept, since it’d only work if this power was previously wielded. The way it was used acted in a similar purifying manner to the Dark Avatar fight, since it was able to eradicate Anton Arcane, the Rot avatar, as it acted as the antithesis to those decaying, death powers. A Green champion wielding a Lantern Ring is not unheard of either, since Alan Scott in the Earth 2 runs was able to use his engagement ring as a Green Lantern Ring by using it as a power conduit for the Green. Now, the blue Swamp Thing normally indicated the Classic version from the original runs, which would contradict the fact that Brightest Day required a new avatar to fight back, but the current avatar should theoretically still have access to this user in the Green regardless.

Rifle

Don’t mess with Alec Holland, he’ll start blasting.

Man-Thing

Serum SO-2

After being contracted by S.H.I.E.L.D., Ted was able to put his mind towards synthesizing a recreation of Captain America’s super soldier serum. Earlier versions of Serum SO-2 were able to grant immunity to biochemical poisons, but the obvious downside was that it turned people into monsters. After a sabotage by A.I.M. through his wife, Ellen, he’d end up injecting the concoction into himself before driving into the nearby swamp, crashing and mutating into the Man-Thing we all know and love.

However, the Curse of the Man-Thing run ended up expanding on the details surrounding this origin story. While working towards remaking the serum, Ted was actually unable to crack it, and instead turned to making a Faustian Bargain with Belasco, the summoned, then-ruler of Limbo, which infused his formula with interdimensional magic. Upon injecting it and crashing, the impact managed to cause a reaction between science and magic that tore a portal in spacetime and ended up creating the Nexus Point in that Everglades swamp. Earlier comics also back up the fact that the swamp water could contain dimensional energies, rather than demonic ones. He later attempted to summon Belasco again with a ritual, only to have Magik show up instead since she inherited this deal from him after usurping his domain over Limbo. Because this deal essentially resulted in his transformation through a curse, Magik can remove the Man-Thing state on her own.

Hank Pym Implants

During Man-Thing’s time with the Thunderbolts as their transportation, Hank Pym invented special NAV Units that would be embedded into his body. These helped to channel and manipulate Man-Thing’s spacetime portal creations so he could make shortcuts across the globe for the team. Basically, it lets them “steer” Man-Thing so that they don’t have to take a plane or something. Unfortunately for them, it can simply be removed from the inside of his muck. There’s also an extra implant behind his eye that feeds into a security room to give the Thunderbolts back at home base a first-person point of view of what Manny sees.

Theodore Sallis

Despite the concept of Man-Thing relying on a mindless husk of, what used to be, a man, Ted Sallis has emerged to play parts in his story a bunch of times. Normally, Man-Thing’s brain cells are spread uniformly throughout his mass, so they’d need to be regenerated and put through constant, rigorous mental massaging for days to even begin to resurface Ted. Otherwise, fragments of his original mind can sometimes urge Manny forward, but only to a limited extent. The original consciousness is actually trapped within one of the creature’s cells, which is supported by the ability Sallis has to manually revert back to Man-Thing at the cellular level should he ever find himself in his original human state. That means that having the ability to view microscopic entities should allow a person to find which cell he’s in. This is how Curt Connors found him after the creature ejected a small portion of itself containing him that could stay in control and independent from a plant manipulator to save Ted.

Inside this cellular piece of the monster exists a dark reality, the Dreadscape, that Ted was previously trapped in and has control over, which assaults the consciousnesses of those trapped inside with their greatest fears. For years, he was said to be stuck in or resigned to “oblivion”, and this pocket reality might retroactively be where this was referring to, since Man-Thing's “miasmic soul” reality where Ted was located existed back when Doctor Strange entered it in 1981. Attempting to magically tear his soul from Man-Thing will simply remove Theodore Sallis, which leaves the creature vulnerable to losing control, having its body manipulated, or being entirely hijacked. However, there have been ways where the scientist could have complete autonomy and control again.

Spider-Man, while speaking to Sallis in the Dreadscape, implied that his self-loathing and fear are what kept him stuck as passenger and prisoner for Manny in this realm. Through overcoming this fear with pure willpower, he’s actually able to control the Man-Thing at will. Once our scientist is in charge, he’s even able to reclaim pieces of his manipulated plant matter back into himself to rebuild his body by asserting his will over those portions. However, there’s something cosmically unique about Ted that gave him another way to control the entity’s body.

During the Man of Lineage storyline, his status as the titular, next-in-line man and guardian of the Nexus gave him absurd power and abilities. When all of creation was being consumed, Ted was able to maintain all of it independently in time for his son, who was a child that barely understood his own potential as the next Man of Lineage in the first place, restored it all in its entirety. During the events of the story, Ted and Ellen fulfilled their roles as guardians of the Nexus by merging and drawing down the entire consciousness of the Nexus into Man-Thing, which granted them full autonomy over the body. He could even take Ellen out of the Nexus that she was supervising alone to save her soul from being sent to oblivion. As this run concluded, this merged version of Ted became the Nexus itself, meaning that anytime Manny is amplified by the Nexus of All Realities later on, he should be drawing from that enormous well of power.

Florida Everglades Swamp

The originator of the Man-Thing and a Nexus Point for the Nexus of All Realities can be found in this swamp in the Citrusville, Florida Everglades. A strong link exists between the location and the creature, since Manny’s been stated to be a part of the swamp itself and this location is the “source” of his strength. There have been statements that this location has existed for “eternity”, but this is contradicted by the Curse of the Man-Thing and is more likely to be flowery language. The important thing about this place, however, is that its status as a Nexus Point means that it can act as a gateway to the Nexus of All Realities itself, a realm that spreads throughout the cosmology as a multiversal crossroads. So, not only can this area constantly heal and regenerate him through continuous damage, but it's also magical in nature and leads to infinite alternate dimensions.

Even coming into contact with native plants from the swamp is enough to regenerate off of, and its substance helps to revitalize and remoisturize him if he’s been dried out via draining the life and moisture from its waters. If Man-Thing’s mind has been consigned to oblivion from dehydration, it’ll come back too through this moisturization over the course of a few hours or days, but this is potentially limited to this specific swampwater. Furthermore, this mire is consistently adhesive and slows down people trekking through it, so the same should be true of Manny’s body since it’s made of the same thing.

However, not everything about this place is neat and helpful. Interdimensional monsters exist and lurk in the swamp, and Man-Thing can even weaponize the waters and drop people into the Nexus itself to either the crossroads or different, specific dimensions. It’s also quite dangerous to attempt to destroy this bog, since just draining it threatened to reopen a gate to the Netherworld. In fact, the Nexus itself being destroyed reverberates across realities, destroys universes, and causes the marshland to envelop the planet and choke out all non-swamp life.

Staff of the Creator

At the dawn of creation, when the Creator’s dream was but a whirlwind and torrent of dualities, a hand emerged holding this staff to form the dream of creation. From this act, the Fallen Stars, which included the first Man of Lineage, were created, and the Staff of the Creator was hurled into the boiling heart of the Earth. That is, until Termineus, who was secretly one of the aforementioned Stars, bestowed it upon Ellen Sallis, who swiftly learned that it responds to desires through thoughts with the capability to create feasts, songs, and portals to other locations. In Man-Thing’s hands, the wooden staff allowed him to speak since it housed and channeled Adam K’ad-Mon, the Man of Lineage and a Fallen Star, through taking over him.

One of the main uses for this relic is to open dimensional portals, which even allows Manny to enter newly formed realities, such as ones created out of mindscapes, or travel lightyears across the cosmos. It’s been able to amplify Man-Thing’s burning touch into an omnidirectional explosion of fire that engulfed everyone in an asylum to rescue them, as it closed the crater that was subsuming a Massachusetts town into Devil-Slayer’s mind, though this was teased to potentially be because of Adam’s influence. This fire didn’t kill Devil-Slayer either, instead it absorbed his mental torment and removed the Nexus fragment from within him through “psychic surgery”, which allowed reality to reassert itself in the town.

More abstract abilities include showing a person the beginning through the end of creation from touching it as it activates this power, which overloads their senses from all the information and knocks them out if they keep holding onto it. It’s made of weathered wood, is full of primal energies, and can sing songs that are purportedly beautiful. Plus, it can break ancient seals, though this might be more specific to the one it came across and how Adam, who was possessing Man-Thing, had influencing knowledge of his own. In fact, wielding the Staff means being able to warp the reality of all planes of creation through manipulating the Nexus itself, which explains the dimensional travel. And, since Man-Thing later fuses with the Nexus, this is maybe something he can do innately if he draws it down into him.

Adam K’ad-Mon

Born from the dream of the Creator with the light from their staff before time, Adam K’ad-Mon was among one of a handful of Fallen Stars created at the beginning of everything. Born responsible for the original sin, he was born as the first man and was left responsible for maintaining the dream of creation, a job for the Men of Lineage so everything doesn’t dissolve and dissipate. He’s adopted many different aliases throughout the years, such as Spyros and Oldfather, but they’re all confirmed to be the same Adam. But, it should be clarified that even though Eternity has referred to himself as “Adam Quadmon”, they are not the same character.

As a Fallen Star, he played a part in the creation of all things, could magically enhance others, could restore order to the Nexus, provides tree roots that require speed to break fusions, was able to emerge Ted Sallis to control Manny, would mentally dominate others, and later amplified powers like Penance Stares to erase the minds and free will out of people through eradicating sin. After summoning the Book of Life, which contains the entirety of creation’s history and future end, Adam stopped possessing Man-Thing midway through a bet with the Scrier to merge with the swamp, later emerging as his own independent, antagonistic entity during a Ghost Rider run. He then appears as the Oldfather to meet with Man-Thing again during a more modern run, and Adam can currently be found picking one-off fights with Doctor Strange.

Abilities

Swamp Thing

Elemental Avatar Physiology

Unsurprisingly for bodies that are all plant and zero percent human, Swamp Thing’s elemental avatars have quite a lot to cover. Before he even connected to the Green, his standard bodies were found to be 89 inches tall, weigh 547 pounds, breathe carbon dioxide, exhale oxygen, have innards that are all plant matter, lack organs that would be fatal if injured, lack blood, are “all muscle”, and contain roots along his body that are alive and move on their own. Likely because rain served as a catalyst for the creation of his body, his mossy “skin” is slippery and hard to grip. Standard physical pain from situations such as getting his arm lopped off, enduring fire, and getting shot cannot be felt at all either, but specifically induced pain can still be sensed by him. Because of his nature as a plant, his passive CO2 conversion allows him to not breathe in the traditional sense as an “earth elemental”. Yet, despite all of this, Swamp Thing’s origins resulted in his mind mimicking all of Alec Holland’s original consciousness and memories, which often lead to existential headaches about what he actually truly “is”.

This means that, early on, moments where he’d bleed sap or grow saturated, damp, and heavy at night would often torment him. So, before the story that would establish that he wasn’t Alec Holland at all, he would often state things that were later retconned to be psychosomatic assumptions, like how he supposedly had a physical brain or a trachea despite the fact that he could survive for a while without his head, which he’d rationalize as his consciousness not being “centered” there. Similarly, he previously attempted to recreate his origin story by remaking the chemical explosion and swamp dip to “return” his body to normal, which left him weakened and partially vulnerable. This process ended up being only temporary, since his plant body was beginning to regenerate and physically take him over again, a state that he assumed he could have made permanent if he re-synthesized the bio-restorative formula. There was even a point where necrosis, which was legitimately degenerating his tissue, stamina, and regenerative cells, was affecting the brain he still thought he had. This was caused by special bacteria, which was affecting the plant body that could withstand powerful water pressure and “apnea”. Though, this necrosis did leave his body especially more vulnerable to being dried out by heat or fire.

However, as time went on after he learned the truth, Swamp Thing came to grow used to how malleable his body was. Punches can potentially go right through him, objects can get locked in place within his body, and he learned to produce hallucinogenic spores that can not only share the feelings of suffering from within the Green to help people understand it, but can even adjust the empathy of those who breathe it in to slightly alter their behavior. Alec’s been able to fight without his head while staying aware, to a degree, of his surroundings without eyes, and while he used to claim the bio-restorative formula was what kept him alive, all he needs is regular plant tissue now.

In fact, his body has been previously detected as being planetary soil before, which allows him to do things like survive underwater without issue or naturally absorb poisons that previously incapacitated him so long as there’s not an overwhelming amount. And, while he’s still able to drink potions that clear up magical diseases and can examine objects and mystical presences on a cellular level by focusing his mind, his body isn’t infallible. For example, he’s not really an expert on magic, so it’s harder to understand. And, he’s been inconsistently unable to interact with intangible presences despite constantly grabbing souls later. Most dangerously, enough heat was capable of sealing his essence within his own bodily resin for 1,000 years.

Alan Moore’s Major Retcon: Prior to Swamp Thing #21 “The Anatomy Lesson” (February 1984), Swamp Thing had previously believed he was Alec Holland who had been transformed into a monster through the chemical explosion and swamp. However, Alan Moore stepped in to provide one of the most widely praised retcons in comic book history to a stagnating character:

After Swamp Thing is shot and cryogenically frozen, Jason Woodrue, the Floronic Man, performs an autopsy on his body and deduces the true nature of what this monster is. It’s revealed that none of Holland’s “organs” are actually working, since they’re plant matter mimics that merely resemble them. Woodrue confirms that the explosion of chemicals and bio-restorative formula had already killed Alec Holland as he fell into the swamp. This led to the microorganisms of the bog consuming his decomposing body, and the mix of chemicals during this process resulted in them “absorbing” and mimicking his consciousness and memories, resulting in a humanoid, plant-based body that was an ecosystem operating off the false assumption that it was the real Holland. This meant that Swamp Thing ended up with no vital organs, an artificial sentience, and a consciousness, so enough heat and moisture would return him to life so he could freely move on his own again. His “death” was a psychosomatic assumption that he would die from gunshots through his familiarity with how human bodies operated, which resulted in a cellular coma from the cold. After finding out he was just plant fiber with Alec’s copied consciousness, Swamp Thing went berserk and fell into a depressive state.

New 52 Reboot Changes: During the reboot for the New 52 era, the second Swamp Thing created was actually a result of the Parliament and the Green failing to transform Alec Holland’s body into a successor to the original. He was alive as a human once more and recalled Swamp Thing’s memories, but he rejected the call to action to become the avatar again until Abigail Arcane was in trouble. Once she was in danger. he assisted the bonding of the Green to his body by using the bio-restorative formula to become Swamp Thing, albeit as a shell around his human body at first. However, after being killed by Anton Arcane, the Parliament and the Green manage to revive Swamp Thing as a proper elemental without a body once again.

Connection to the Green: As a result of his cellular and molecular connection to the Green, Swamp Thing’s body often fluctuates in strength and sensation in tandem with it. If the environment and plant life as a whole is damaged, the Green will grow weaker or feel pain, something that those linked to it will also feel, such as destruction as a result of large forest fires. Conversely, Swamp Thing will be at the peak of his strength while inside of the Green. Later on, it’s suggested that Swamp Thing’s connection is more vibrational and thorough because his wavelength is attuned to Earth’s electromagnetic frequency to achieve his Green connection there. This is backed up by the time a druid had to separate the connection from his soul and seal it away.

Body Control: Swamp Thing has complete control and mastery over the forms, sizes, and looks his body can mold itself into. He’s capable of outstretching his arms or legs out of the ground or straight up extending their range when necessary. His body can squeeze itself through narrow spaces like pipe systems or drains in homes through materializing from miscellaneous flora found in them. On countless occasions, Swamp Thing has stretched out roots from himself as elongated limbs, like how his daughter could manipulate her own limbs as vine tendrils to restrain people. Additionally, he can freely grow extra limbs whenever he wants.

Natural Weaponry: By manipulating the shape of his body and the plant matter growing all over it, Alec can attack by extending branches from his fingertips to stab at multiple targets or morphing his hand into a massive, slashing claw.

Acid Manipulation: His body allows him to spew blinding acid from his mouth, and his powers let him to accelerate the growth of bacteria and fungi to produce an acid that can mineralize and dissolve solid rock.

Accelerated Development: After Abigail’s suggestion to mold himself into a bio-computer, Swamp Thing grew immobile and manually evolved his intellect and spread his awareness to a planetary scale. This enhanced mind let him view things on an atomic, quark, quantum, and pure probability level, and he could understand the entire history of elemental and human evolution, which he referred to as his “super-consciousness”. However, this process took him a month and a half to complete while sitting absolutely still and growing a massive cranium.

Life Vision: According to Swamp Thing, he can choose whether to view the world normally or in an exaggerated, glowing palette that indicates where life such as plants, insects, or babies exist through a form of "life awareness". By consuming the fruit that Swamp Thing produces, a person will absorb a small portion of Swamp Thing's consciousness and perceptions to view the world in the exact same way, which can also be done if a person touches the special plants he creates to view memories of a location. It can be compared to infrared vision, but instead of heat, he detects life based on its matter and energy. Additionally, he’s able to view both the scales of time and space simultaneously.

Astral Form

Despite how Swamp Thing comes across, his elemental bodies are more like shells that build around his consciousness, which is officially dubbed as his “Astral Form”. While it’s sometimes shown off as having an anthropomorphic shape, the reality is that Alec’s consciousness is a bit more complicated than “just” being the form his soul takes. While treated as his soul, such as when he possessed Constantine’s body after he tore the man’s soul out of it or when Technis referred to it as a ghost-form, ethereal, and untouchable, his “true form” serves the purpose of representing his “intelligence”. As in, it’s conflated as both a “frequency” and an intangible entity that serves as his mind. Its “substance” is that of pure, discorporated energy, a knot of light, and photons, which can even transmute itself into pure information by resonating with digital spaces to view data inside of computers. That aspect of him seems to fall in line with the Green itself being memory and information to an extent. However, despite all of the previous descriptors being true, what’s important is that Swamp Thing’s essence is a pure, self-contained field of electromagnetic energy, which can be detected by those that are “one with nature”.

Since he’s confirmed that he knows how to control the frequency of his electromagnetic field, it’s understood that Alec exists as a vibrational entity: a wavelength. With some help from a Mother Box, he was able to oscillate this wavelength at other “frequencies” so that they could both partially vibrate through the Source Wall (though, they failed to reach the Source itself). At that point in time, Swamp Thing says that once he understands this technique more, he might be able to master it in the future. His existence as a frequency is important, since all of existence in DC is purely vibrational at the most basic level.

Later, it’s explained that an electromagnetic spectrum exists in all humans, which rationalizes how acupuncture works since it works through “manipulating” this network and putting it back in harmony with nature, and this specific issue essentially describes Swamp Thing’s vibrational characteristics by using various analogous explanations like these. Basically, Swamp Thing’s electromagnetic field is attuned to the same frequency as Earth’s magnetic field, sort of like a radio, which is what provides his connection to the Green for whatever planet he’s on. This is why, when his bio-electrical pattern was scrambled, the Earth grew “incompatible” with his astral form and severed him from the Green for that planet. After a Green Lantern modified the vibrational rate of his bio-field, this connection was restored and Swamp Thing learned how to adjust his own wavelength further, nullifying that weakness and “mastering” this technique further as promised.

Astral Projection: This is Swamp Thing’s primary method of travel whenever he needs to go materialize another body elsewhere. Alec can exit his avatar body, abandoning it and allowing it to die as a husk, and fly as just his Astral Form as a green, luminous force. Wherever he darts to, nearby vegetation will accelerate their growth, suddenly blooming and leaving a trail of plants behind him. This bodiless form is visible, and it’s even capable of being caught on cameras. Though, while he’s zooming around, his mind can collide with other ones, like Adam Strange’s mind in the Zeta Beam. Swamp Thing’s even taken “leaps of faith” by projecting into deep space to attune to other planets or unknowingly slipping into the Timestream. Now, while the New 52 usually never addresses all this Astral Form lore, Swamp Thing is still capable of sending out his consciousness in this era, such as when he did it to materialize as a vegetation monster in another dimension. Even Earth 2 Alan Scott could astral project himself into the Grey when he was trying to bond with it.

Healing: By immersing her hand in the chaoplasmic form of Sprout’s immature Astral Form, Abby sensed the feelings and images that Sprout empathically shared. Additionally, doing this happened to heal her of the burn she sustained on her hand, so this could theoretically happen with Swamp Thing’s Astral Form too.

Duplication: By striking the right pitch via oscillating his soul, Swamp Thing can split his consciousness into “mindlets” when creating multiple bodies. This can even accidentally happen, such as when Swamp Thing was sent careening backwards through time while his mind was split in half.

Light Manipulation: Due to his Astral Form being made up of photons, Swamp Thing’s been able to use this form to flashbang and stun characters like Superman. Constructs that the Parliament patrolled with were also able to emit light, so Alec should be able to do this too.

Afterlife Travel: By letting himself go into the Green, Swamp Thing is able to let his essence travel into the Realm of the Just-Dead, which means his Astral Form has a backdoor to the afterlife realms at all times. During his journey to save Abigail from Hell, Swamp Thing was guided around and should theoretically know how to reach Heaven or Hell now, which initially required the Spectre’s permission to enter. But, in later issues, Swamp Thing could more simply wander around throughout the afterlife planes and simply return to Earth.

Wavelength Manipulation: Through his existence as a wavelength and his control over his oscillations as an electromagnetic field, Swamp Thing can adjust his frequencies to achieve a variety of different effects. Alec can vibrate his own frequency to disrupt those on the “vegetable wavelength”, which was able to expand as an AOE effect to nullify and burst another plant elemental’s body control while it was being puppeted by Parliament elders. After escaping to the moon and connecting to “The Gray”, the moon’s lunar frequency, Swamp Thing managed to channel, redirect, and oscillate these alien energies down to the roots of the Parliament Elders back on Earth to incinerate and dissolve them. This neutralized their powers and ejected them from the Green, binding all of their astral forms to the body of an elemental they were trying to create. Previously, this process left the Green unstable, which threatened collapse “all of creation”, but this was retconned later on as a lie. Later on in the New 52, this ability was used again after Swamp Thing fixed the vibrational frequencies belonging to Post-Crisis Superman, whose existence wasn’t attuning well to the Post-Flashpoint reality. He did this by ingesting Clark to fuse and connect him to the “world”, meaning that Swamp Thing can attune a character’s vibrations to the current continuity they’re in if they’re from a separate one, like how he connects to the frequencies of other planets.

The Aspect of Alec Holland: Within Swamp Thing’s Astral Form, there exists the mental aspect of Alec Holland’s mimicked human mind. Rather than a portion of his soul, this is the small chunk of Swamp Thing’s overall mind that contains a semblance of Alec’s original, echoed humanity, which can forcefully remerge with Swamp Thing should they be separated if his physical body is destroyed. This idea was reinforced when Swamp Thing heard the Voice explain to him that his “human soul” remained. The Parliament could even tear the aspect of Alec out of Swamp Thing in order to purge this humanity to leave a mindless, violent Swamp Thing that attacked people, a concept that popped up again later in the aftermath of Brightest Day. Sometimes, this process would merely cause him to forget all of Alec’s memories over time. Through sheer force of will, Alec Holland’s aspect even built itself a fake human body out of vegetation and implanted false memories into himself to believe he was human Alec again.

This portion of his mind was once broken off as an even smaller aspect called the Holland Mind after Swamp Thing released all of his elemental powers. When he released them, numerous ideas, feelings, and memories were sent across the universe, and that smaller aspect refused to rejoin the whole in the Green after waiting in thought-space, which was a result of it not wanting to return right away out of fear. This aspect could do things like communicate with people through their internal floral bacteria, and it was non-physical and independent in nature.

Regeneration

Alright, enough of that esoteric wavelength stuff. Let’s talk about the regenerative abilities that Swamp Thing’s elemental bodies have. Even before his connection to the Green, Swamp Thing’s arm being chopped off could simply regrow as a more durable and powerful one. He described it as his body regenerating lost tissue, and later on he no longer needed the bio-restorative formula to achieve this, only plant tissue in general. This regeneration can exhaust itself and be overtaxed, but it’s helped Swamp Thing’s body heal some ridiculous injuries. He’s been able to regrow his hand, reattach lost limbs, pull himself back together after being torn in half, and ignore bullets outright. After his head was blasted off, Swamp Thing just regenerated it, and half of his body could do the same after a few minutes.

In fact, whenever he’s dried out or frozen, enough heat and moisture will rejuvenate his body from cellular comas so it can move freely again, though in later issues he can act out of being frozen. Swamp Thing’s healing may even extend to souls to a degree, since his confrontation with Matango, Avatar of the Grey, had him face a fungal breath attack that would have absorbed and destroyed his Astral Form. Thanks to Ohtehrah’s help, both him and several Parliament members were able to consume their shed plant skins to “regain their souls”. His spirit was even once devoured by the prehistoric, dinosaur-like Astral Form of an old, renegade Parliament member, and he was able to survive by reforming inside of it to wrestle control of its elemental body. Constantine implies that this devouring didn’t destroy Swamp Thing, instead it only left him stuck in the Astral Form’s “belly”. His control over the body was actively resisted too, so Alec had to knock it out through the shock of leaving Earth with it to drop it off at another planet.

Shapeshifting

While Swamp Thing usually sticks to his more familiar, anthropomorphic avatars, he is fully capable of fully shapeshifting through his body control and manipulated plant matter. He’s morphed his body into a Mobius Chair for Metron, though it could only fly with a Mother Box, and he’s been able to fully take the form of humans. One time, this extended to shifting into the shape of Solomon Grundy entirely. Alec’s become a lake serpent, a Swamp Dog, a winged alien worm creature, and a massive, moss whale fish thing. Incomplete or previous elementals were capable of creating massive jaws to form a dome-like prison to block people in with their body and even just moving around as plant dinosaurs. This shapeshifting is aided by the fact that Swamp Thing’s body contains a substance similar to stem cells, except it instead lets him transform into any kind of known or unknown plant cell to assist him when materializing or shifting his body around.

Duplication

This is the ability that resulted in several Swamp Things jumping Batman with zero difficulty. It’s implied that, by splitting his consciousness into mindlets after oscillating his wavelength, Alec splits his mind across multiple bodies. Plus, Jason Woodrue was also able to send fragments of himself through the Green to create more imperfect duplicates too. He’s made little Swamp-Gremlins to help out around the Oblivion Bar, which can all merge together back into one body, and once kept one dipping partially into the Green to be able to constantly check on its status. Duplication has even happened unknowingly, such as when Swamp Thing’s arm was chopped off and abandoned for a while, leaving it to regenerate an entire extra, independent Swamp Thing.

Though, oftentimes these more independent, desynced copies end up with more childlike minds that want to rejoin the main body. In fact, leaving a body independent for too long to multitask can sometimes overwhelm and disorient his perceptions or turn against him if their goals clash. And, his duplication allows him to see out the new bodies' eyes simultaneously. However, when used for the short term and focusing on the same thing, Swamp Thing can create multiple copies near-instantly during fights. Copies can be spawned from the tubers left behind on the husks he ditches to materialize elsewhere too, though pollutants pretty handily decay the bodies. With enough reason to, Alec can manifest entire mimicked, tinted human bodies and structures that he knows well with incredible detail, as shown when he recreated an entire town full of people that operated down to their personalities. Considering that inexperienced candidates for Green avatars have made artificial humans out of flowers, though they died soon after they were made, and Holland can shapeshift into a human, it’s not unreasonable to say that any nearby person could potentially be a duplicate of his own making.

Supernatural Will

One of the odder aspects of Swamp Thing’s character involves his consistent themes of having a powerful amount of willpower. Through his own sheer determination, Alec could power through and break free from a magnetic compulsion that was overriding his will, mind, and control over his own body. Even when the Parliament tore the Aspect of Alec Holland out of Swamp Thing’s consciousness, this aspect was able to build itself a fake human body out of vegetation and implant false memories through a “sheer force of will”. This unnatural amount of willpower has applied to the following instances:

Mental Fortitude: Through willpower and physical strength, Alec resisted being mentally dominated and physically puppeted by psionic power. He willed himself to break the Psychometric Locket’s telepathic, psionic contact that showed him visions of a demon woman’s current atrocities. Swamp Thing later, through an act that was said to have taken a Herculean will, resisted the temptations of the elder members of the Parliament using the Earth’s oscillations to force him to stay rooted with them so that he could be replaced by Sprout. Even previous elemental souls can use their willpower to resist mind control to an extent, since Matango’s mass collection of them began to weaken his mental dominance over them all. This, of course, would imply that Swamp Thing’s own soul would be capable of resisting mind control to an extent as well.

Exorcism: Swamp Thing has forcefully exorcized himself free from a demonic woman trying to possess his body after initially resisting these attempts.

Plant Manipulation

Thanks to our metaphysical pal, the Green, Swamp Thing’s connection to it gave him the power that he is most famous for: the ability to manipulate plants in any way he pleases. Obviously, one of the more prominent ways he does this is by growing and controlling vines, thorny or otherwise, to attack and restrain characters. He can even outgrow numerous vines via the plant matter found in his severed body parts. Specifically, the way Swamp Thing manipulates plants is by flexing his mind within the Green, and he can connect to the roots of all plant life as if they were his own muscles and limbs. This is what allows him to control entire forests worth of them to do things like empty small lakes. By manipulating any kind of plant life that exists, Swamp Thing can mold his body into a kaiju out of redwoods, which is when he claimed he had no limits to this power and that he could manipulate the flora within human intestinal tracts to bypass organic durability. This was later horrifically demonstrated when he manipulated the plant matter within the body of one of his assailants to grow a tree out of him from inside of his digestive system. Swamp Thing’s power over this element lets him tell when plants aren’t part of the Green too. And, if something isn’t technically “part of nature”, like Prelapsarian Wood from the holy Garden of Eden, he’d need to manually whip graft and absorb the material into himself to use it. Basically, any form of greenery that exists can become an extension of his body.

For example, Swamp Thing has formed messages out of random vegetation that he wasn’t physically around to see, having been stuck in the Rot and away from that dimension. Avatars can create walls out of roots, manifest plant matter constructs to create structures like boats, and manipulate books in people’s hands to suddenly grow piercing spikes. There are so many examples spread throughout his run and this blog, but these should give the general gist of the flexibility of this ability. In fact, Alec can just speak with plants themselves through their own special language, and they can tell him where people that he’s looking for are. Specific aspects of what plants do can be adjusted as well, like how the oxygenation plants provide can be multiplied to break apart and purify toxic waste in the ocean through algae manipulation. Plus, over-oxygenating the air enough could make the sky itself flammable, and, of course, Swamp Thing can simply remove or lessen oxygen production to suffocate people too. Once, Woodrue used this to hyperoxygenate rooms of people to mess with their heart rate, and he caused a building to detonate by doing this before someone activated their lighter. His plan was to increase oxygen production tenfold on a global scale.

Alien Plants: Even on other planets without the Earth’s Green, Swamp Thing can still take over and control alien plants. He’s rematerialized off of a living, techno-organic planet’s plants, which melted down the core information and matter of the celestial body to form his avatar. Alec learned, through touch, how to commune with a Kryptonian plant, which originated from Krypton’s Green. In fact, during the events of the Convergence storyline, he connected to an alien planet’s Green in order to create and use garlic spray on vampires.

Subconscious Manipulation: During a particularly harrowing depressive bout, Swamp Thing’s mind began to manifest plant constructs and duplicates on its own without manual activation. The subconscious depths of his mind effectively make the plant kingdom he constructs become an automated security system that attacks intruders it doesn’t recognize. Several manifested duplicates will fight each other, but the copy that’s the aspect of his god-self persona will blast trespassers with fire. The overall intent from Alec was to merge with the Green in order to cease all thought, sort of like the retirement concept introduced later, until all of this ceased upon receiving a pep talk from Black Orchid.

Other Green Servants

Jason Woodrue: Also known as the Floronic Man or Seeder, Woodrue’s botanokinesis while tapped into the Green has similarly let him utilize massive vines offensively. As mentioned before, he could hyper-accelerate the production of oxygen by plants tenfold to hyperoxygenate people, detonate buildings from the flick of a lighter, and to do this on a global scale. After consuming some of Swamp Thing’s plant fibers and eating his mimicked organs, he found his link and connection to the Green, which boosted his already existing floral powers. Later on, he weakened Animal Man’s connections to the Red by killing every animal within miles of their fight with these granted powers.

Poison Ivy: Pamela’s own agonized screams made from Louisiana could affect plant life in Missouri. Plus, Ivy once used her connection with the Green to control the planet while using her own personal powers to keep nearly everyone in it under her thrall.

Air Manipulation

After passing the more intellectual, elemental trial from the Parliament of Vapors, Swamp Thing earned a connection to the White. In addition to his power over plants via the Green, he could now control anything related to air, such as manifesting or manipulating hurricanes or breathing. This element is described on Earth 2 as the power of the atmosphere, which avatars can thicken to prevent light or ultraviolet radiation from coming through onto the planet.

Water Manipulation

After delving into the depths of the Marianas Trench to find the Parliament of Waves, Swamp Thing completed their elemental trials and connected to the Blue, also known as the Clear. As expected, this granted Alec dominion over water, which made him capable of more niche abilities that include freezing blood, drying out cranial fluid, bursting blood vessels, and swiftly dehydrating people. This makes it so that he can control water in any state and materialize as massive storm clouds that can summon heavy rain to put out fires. The Parliament of Waves claimed that this connection gave powers over flood, drought, and storm creation in general.

Earth Manipulation

Once he defeated the Earth Thing, who could manipulate lava, Swamp Thing passed the elemental trial from the Parliament of Stones and connected to the Melt. Through this new element, Alec could materialize out of a mix of minerals and plant life at the underwater depths of the Marianas Trench. His duplicates could now properly be called true golems, who are able to be manifested out of sand and pebbles, that speak and fight for him on their own whenever Swamp Thing is away. In fact, his golems have their own earth powers, which they demonstrated by fashioning a chess game out of minerals. This control should extend to Swamp Thing himself, since this trial gave him dominion over earth, rock, and lava.

Fire Manipulation

Once he became the Swamp God, a state that persisted when Swamp Thing possessed all the aforementioned elemental connections except for this one, he made true on his god-self’s previous ability to blast things with fire. By finally reaching the sun with his Astral Form, he came across the Parliament of Flames within it, and they finally bestowed the connection to the fiery kingdom to him. A name for this realm is never given, but it exists with flames that are implied to reach the heat of a star based on where the Parliament lived. Like all the previous elements, Alec can manifest as an avatar made out of fire from existing or manmade flames. This persisted after his ascension to his true Swamp God state, as confirmed by Constantine. Uses of his pyrokinesis include placing flaming fruit in his bodies to keep them warm in cold environments and setting severed parts of his body on fire remotely.

Insect Manipulation

Swamp Thing was able to manipulate the scents emitted from vegetation to attract massive swarms of bugs. In fact, Tefé Holland, his daughter that inherited elemental powers, once commanded a swarm of bugs to eat a person alive using her own plant manipulation.

Swamp Breath

Swamp Thing has some special plant scents and spores that can be breathed out of his mouth to achieve a few different effects. He’s been able to use this to pacify Killer Croc after it was breathed in and induced a brief state similar to his tubers. Batman was struck with hallucinogenic spores that allowed Alec to share the feelings of suffering from the Green to help him empathize with his plight. These same spores were able to empathically adjust Killer Croc’s behavior so that he’d only kill for food instead of out of malice, and Swamp Thing somehow lured him to his swamp all the way from Gotham City earlier too. If nearby, he can manipulate valerian roots by producing a sedative scent from them to knock people unconscious.

Flight

In the New 52 era, Swamp Thing was able to grow fully functional, bird-like wings out of his back with plant matter to fly. This was made prominent during his Injustice 2 victories too. In fact, Earth 2 runs where the Green empowers Alan Scott as a Green Lantern has the Green be the reason he was granted flight in the first place.

Mind Manipulation

While not necessarily his go-to tactic, Swamp Thing’s powers have the full capability of messing with mentality. If the Green had semi-melded with a person’s mind, it could enforce its own current emotions onto them to overwrite whatever the person is feeling. In this same vein, characters that have been melded or infected with the Green can have mental attacks from it performed on them while still clinging to pieces of their consciousnesses. Swamp Thing should be able to access these effects by dipping people into that realm, or he could mess with them on his own. As his Astral Form, Swamp Thing could even dive into Superman’s eyes and mind to completely blind him.

Whenever Alec floods an area with plant matter to drown someone, it could potentially cause a person’s “individuality” to start to dissolve, sort of like the World Tree, which was something not even Nightmare Nurse’s mystic scalpel could cut free from. This mental erosion is said to be an effect from the Green potentially assimilating them, although the outcome of this attack doesn’t come to pass. He can later perform a ritual that has him press an extended, golden flower against a person’s forehead, which will leave their mind dormant while he takes over their body in a form of consciousness transference. However, his original body will remain dormant, which a cult took advantage of by poisoning the cultist he took over to induce incapacitation, all in order to steal the avatar form for themselves. The biggest downside to this mind swap is that it’ll kill both him and his host after a few days, though this deadline can be tempered and outright nullified through repeated rituals over a couple of centuries.

Soul Manipulation

Perhaps Swamp Thing’s most surprising power is his ease of control over souls. By adjusting the wavelength of a human while near their brain, which he refers to as a “soul” made of chaoplasm, he can eject their astral forms from their bodies to enforce astral projection. This ends up leaving the body vulnerable to Swamp Thing puppeting their brain with his own Astral Form too. Alec could resonate with the energies of a consciousness and spirit to telepathically commune with them, calm them down, and even convince less cognizant spirits to follow his lead or guidance, like how he led plane crash victims to the afterlife.

In a similar vein, Swamp Thing has forcibly torn Constantine’s soul from his body against his will and tossed him into the ethereal realm, another afterlife realm connected to the Green. Later on, Alec’s control is so potent that he was able to save his daughter’s soul from Matango’s corruption by ripping her essence from her body with little difficulty. Considering the electromagnetic essence of elementals are equalized as their spirits, the fact that Swamp Thing was about to chomp down on and consume Sprout’s essence means he can damage them himself. This is backed up in a future issue where he was able to both fight and grab specters that were able to phase through forcefields.

Possession

As mentioned in the previous section, when Alec adjusts the wavelength of a person’s brain, he is able to eject their soul and leave their vacant body available for him to possess. He’s able to do this by using his Astral Form to puppet their brain, and his confrontation with Constantine shows that this can be activated through physical contact and restraint too. Though, inhabiting bodies leaves him vulnerable to pain now too. In fact, enough pain can force an elemental spirit out of a possessed body. During his trip backwards through time, Swamp Thing split his consciousness to two different eras, and one of them attempted to manifest into and possess the body of a recently deceased person that suffered through a similar explosive fate. However, even after manually stitching the body together, Alec struggled to control or think in a body that was in such poor shape.

It should be noted that despite being in a non-avatar body, all of his previous abilities are available to him, along with the powers the host body possesses. One example followed the mind swap ritual being performed on the body of a Grey Avatar, which granted Swamp Thing access to the Grey and its control over fungus. In order to return to his own body after the mindswap process, he’d need to hop to a person and then to his avatar. Similarly, Alec’s daughter, Tefé, could inhabit inanimate, wooden objects like puppets, and she controlled them the way their build intended them to move. Swampy could enter soulless beings to attempt to control them, but his influence was only minor and he could not fully overwrite original hosts like Solomon Grundy that could resist his influence. Other elemental spirits that were tied to the Green of one planet were able to be sent into shock by stunning them through taking their spirits into space. But, Swamp Thing’s experience with this trick makes it so that it doesn't affect him.

Absorption

Naturally, as a being made of plants and soil, Swamp Thing can absorb dying bodies against his own to use their nutrients to replenish his life, a process that specifically speeds up their decay peacefully. He can putrefy plants at an “incredible rate” and quicken the rate of decay of a body in exchange for extra time for a spirit to stick around and commune with him. Alec’s body can innately siphon liquids too, such as collecting all the pollutants and toxins from bodies of water into his avatar to make him toxic to the touch. He’s temporarily absorbed water from a fountain in Eden, which made Swamp Thing even more aware of the minds around him, and he can siphon specific liquids out of people.

The Green itself, through Swamp Thing or infections, can attempt to absorb a character and their consciousness. This vegetative infection that was unable to be staved off by both Superman’s heat vision and Zatanna’s magic since it can reassert itself. If an offshoot of the Green grows independent, Swamp Thing’s been capable of defeating them and reabsorbing it back into the main Green to assert control over it. His domain over the realm he champions is so vast that sealing the Parliament in its depths allowed him to take their power for himself.

Memory Viewing

One of Swamp Thing’s more understated abilities is his power to view memories or dreams. While asleep, Alec could view someone else’s dream instead of his own, and plants in general both dream and can invade other ones freely. With just a touch, avatars can view other character’s memories or share their own in the same way. Alternatively, Swamp Thing can read brains, memories, thoughts, and feelings by slipping into their minds physically with vines or, again, with one touch, which also lets him temporarily share his scrying abilities. He’s not just limited to people either, since he’s been shown probing the minds of elder, sentient plants, tapping into the memories of objects, and reading the history of any location in any dimension through its soil. By using the Green, avatars are able to see the past experiences of previous champions and visualize previous events around locations that contain vegetation, which other people can also do if they touch the plants Swamp Thing creates to do so.

Reality Warping

Yes, the “plant guy” has been able to meddle with the laws of reality. Once, Swamp Thing was facing an eco-sorcerer that was controlling the Dead Zone Monster and bio mech entities within the Green from outside of the realm. In order to combat this, Alec managed to break through the dimensional aperture of one of their remote connections, which allowed him to manifest over to the location he was controlling the creature from. Additionally, the will of the Green itself is so potent that, in the Earth 2 stories, it could serve as a power conduit for a makeshift Green Lantern Ring. The Green itself exists in all dimensions, which is a fact that Giovanni Zatara knew about and conveyed so that Swamp Thing knew to bridge that realm to manifest in other dimensions, such as the Other Place housing the Upside Down Man. In fact, the Green has been stated multiple times to be an idea with the power to alter, manipulate, and define the boundaries of reality itself.

Law Manipulation: Upon arriving at the Other Place, Swamp Thing overrode the will of the Upside-Down Man, who served as the entire domain for this realm’s reality, with the will of the Green for a brief time to imprison the entity under Alec’s landmass and subdue this dimension. With the help of a synthesized catalyst of Alec’s own tissue from Man-Bat, Swamp Thing provided the biomatter upon this vial shattering to completely upend and change the reality of Upside-Down Man’s Other Place. He did this by introducing natural law after that amplification, with the possible aid of other Parliaments boosting the Green earlier too, which enforced the creation of life onto a lifeless realm. This weakened Upside-Down Man’s hold on it enough to allow for Zatanna to land a magical, mental coup de grâce against him. This was acknowledged as a sacrifice by Swamp Thing, but his consciousness survived in the Green in order to become the Other Place itself and stay there in case the dimension tries to reassert itself, effectively incapacitating that reality.

Time Travel

Yes, Swamp Thing can sort of time travel. This first happened when Alec had no way to connect to a wavelength or arrive at the Green thanks to the Dominators’ disruptions. These circumstances forced him into a Hail Mary play where he unintentionally and desperately slipped into the Timestream. This sent him backwards in time to 1945 to revive inside the recently deceased Alexander Holland, implying a connection to previous men with similar names in a string of logic similar to how the Green picks its new champions. During this journey, he slipped back into the Timestream several times, although he’s never shown traveling forwards in time. Between time hops, Swamp Thing somehow managed to split his consciousness in half across time to land at different eras too. Though, this ability isn’t mastered, since Alec found himself lost for a while, which Merlin explained as him hopping across alternate, endless timelines because of the Crisis on Infinite Earths. This process also has an effect on his immediate memory of his time travel escapades, so it’s somewhat unreliable. In fact, the only way he made it back to his time was by just waiting it out after being sealed away in his own amber.

Battlefield Removal

Swamp Thing’s been able to grab and bring people with him into the Green itself either physically or mentally via slipping into the mind of a character. In addition to viewing the memories of the Green, even new avatars have been capable of pulling people out of it. Because of the backdoor to the afterlife planes present in there, Alec could take people through the Green and into the Astral Plane, an infinite, higher plane of existence that could potentially become an unending maze to the uninitiated. In order to actually leave though, Swamp Thing has to be in total peace and harmony with whoever he brings there, since their physical bodies are left behind in comas and their forms there match their personal desires.

Power Source Severance

Swamp Thing’s experience with frequencies gave him the know-how to amplify and negate a fungal seal imprisoning a Parliament member. He severed the fungus from its connection to the Grey, the fungal counterpart to the Green, by amplifying its frequencies and energy fields, which cut them off from their life-source.

Swamp God

After completing the elemental trials of Earth, Water, and Air to add more kingdoms to his arsenal, Swamp Thing only lacked the trial of Fire to achieve “godhood”. However, in this incomplete state, the Swamp God was already pretty much halfway there. His main goal was to start up another ice age, replace the living things on the planet with a new dominant species, and rid the world of the Presence, the Word’s god. His strength in this state was so great that the Phantom Stranger conceded that a physical bout with him would be fruitless, and that taking him down would be a “team effort” and required the Word to act. After killing the Word with a special, antithetical harmony that specifically could one-shot and defeat him, Swamp God flew to the sun, achieved the final element of fire, and was granted access to the Parliament of Worlds upon becoming the Earth in its entirety.

However, amongst the other global consciousnesses of the solar system there, Swamp Thing lost his murderous, evil drives and was separated from the aspect of Alec Holland in this fourth-dimensional space where he’d choose his next incarnation, although he later reunites with this aspect of Alec again. After a star child named Alec was born, Swamp Thing descended back down to Earth from the Parliament of Worlds to rejoin everyone with his new perspective. While he’d eventually give up all of his extra elements after several runs with them, this Swamp God state granted him the following extra powers:

Telepathy: Swamp Thing could speak telepathically after completing four of the five trials.

Passive Clairvoyance: Likely thanks to his control over his entire kingdom and the air, Swamp Thing was able to read notes without directly looking at them.

Creation: Swamp Thing crafted a brand new human body for the reformed Anton Arcane.

Resurrection: Swamp Thing resurrected a bird he previously killed with a simple gesture.

Planetary Omniscience: After completing all the five elemental trials, Swamp Thing became one with the Earth, allowing him to see the world through everything’s perspectives with global consciousness. He could share this perspective too, like when he showed everyone in the world every living and nonliving perspective on Earth, from men to atoms, in a fraction of a second.

Planetary Omnipresence: After becoming one with everything on Earth and the celestial body itself, Swamp Thing also achieved planetary omnipresence through both the global consciousness and by manifesting over the planet to be everywhere at once.

Higher Dimensional Haven: Once he completed every trial, the Parliament of Worlds summoned him to a fourth-dimensional, wholly immaterial location with the other planet elementals. Here, he’d separate from the Aspect of Alec Holland and choose his next incarnation before descending back down to Earth. It’s unclear whether he’d be able to return to that space if he wanted to.

Miscellaneous Powers

Obviously, with a character as unique as Swamp Thing in comics, there are bound to be multitudes of one-off or rarely talked about abilities that he’s shown off over the years.

Biology Manipulation: While he hasn’t really shown off too many uses of it, Swamp Thing absorbed his daughter’s flesh manipulation powers, likely due to the fact that they’re elemental in nature. He’s admitted himself to seemingly having control over the kingdom of flesh too. Likely thanks to assistance from Tefé being connected to the Green, Swamp Thing could manipulate Tefe's flesh powers to change her appearance via transmutation at the cellular level. Later, Swamp Thing said that he could restore Alec’s flesh after they were separated.

Mimicry: After Swamp Thing covertly removed the infamous bombs that kept Suicide Squad members in check from Peacemaker, he had his vines mimic the electrical impulses of a brainstem so that they couldn’t tell that he removed it.

Resurrection: With the flesh domain, Swamp Thing could revive living things so long as a semblance of their body is intact. This is sort of similar to how the Swamp God could revive a bird with a hand gesture. In the Earth 2 stories, the Green could manually revive Alan Scott under the same stipulations.

Fusionism: After Abby burned both of them together with gasoline, both Swamp Thing and plant-body Alec Holland were able to recombine after the Parliament split them apart from their overall consciousness.

Healing: By controlling intestinal bacteria, Swamp Thing broke his and Batman’s consciousness free from a hypnotic, fungal hold on them from beyond the Green and physically purged Batman's body free of those spores single handedly. Swamp Thing was also able to stop bleeding from wounds and add natural painkillers himself.

Purification: By having allowed dark spirits from hell to rush through him and infect him with every poisonous thought in the world to purify a tree, Swamp Thing then alchemically transmuted their sinful toxins, before they could fully corrupt his soul, into perfumes from within his soul. Similarly, after White Lantern-amped Swamp Thing purified and defeated the Dark Avatar, regular Swamp Thing restored the Green on Earth after it was corrupted.

Minor Mystical Analysis: When Swamp Thing shrunk down to the cellular level, he could sense mystical presences, such as a sigil or curse, by focusing on it with his mind. Though, he's not as proficient or knowledgeable about magic, so it's harder for him to truly understand.

Minor Fate Manipulation: By assisting the potentially new Green champion’s spirit into the afterlife, Swamp Thing and Constantine intervened on a fated event that would have turned it into the new elemental for Earth. They continued to do so throughout the run until he had his daughter, Tefé Holland.

Non-Physical Interaction (Maybe): In addition to how Swamp Thing interacts with spirits, he could attack Red Tornado’s air elemental form with a barrage of leaves. However, in the new 52, Swamp Thing was unable to attack Blight’s incorporeal form and mentioned how he couldn’t interact with intangible beings.

Resistances

Naturally, as a legacy comic book character, Swamp Thing has developed a few resistances to better protect himself from harm in various ways. Examples of this include:

Fire Resistance: Swamp Thing both cannot feel pain against fire and remained unaffected by torchfire due to his avatar body’s mossy, slimy, and wet exterior. Levi could fight while inside of a blazing fire, and Alec could make himself bloom under heat and choke flames with carbon dioxide by materializing a body out of a sequoia tree. Additionally, Swamp Thing bodies have been able to withstand concentrated heat from Superman’s lasers for a short while on various occasions, and those attacks burn with the heat of a star without drying his body out right away.

Radiation Resistance: Swamp Thing was unaffected after being struck with a storm of radiation from a proton/neutron cluster when he was shrinking to subatomic sizes and beyond.

Minor Reality Warping: A German WWII bomb buried in the ground was emanating an “idea”, which was altering reality, changing people’s personalities, and adjusting their “political inclinations”. This process was sapping Levi’s strength, but he was able to persist through it to the point that he survived the idea bomb exploding at point blank range next to him. During the time that he conversed with the Great Darkness to broker peace, Swamp Thing was entirely submerged within it. The Great Darkness is an entity whose reality is constantly in a state of flux, change, shifting states, always conjuring shapes, always conjuring unknown colors, and it has no real geography. Later on, the Great Darkness was capable of altering the omniverse, though when Swamp Thing was inside of it, it wasn’t directly attacking him. Levi was able to shift and act as Superboy’s armor in order for them to partially dip themselves safely into the corrupted, burning Great Darkness in a future run as well.

Extreme Cold: By creating a controlled burn from decaying compost in his abdomen, Swamp Thing’s body could persist in subzero temperatures at the North Pole. Even after being frozen solid, Alec could still act out of it, and he was able to survive for years in the cold snow without the Green. Levi himself powered through and revived out of a double whammy of a bio-agent that impaired his connection to the Green and cryogenic blasts that affected an entire facility with the assistance of previous avatars.

Power Source Severance: Despite having his link to the Green severed by a bio-agent specifically meant to impair this connection, Levi was revived and reconnected by past champions of the Green appearing to him as a single entity.

Poison Resistance: Batman’s own weedkiller spray could cause Swamp Thing agony, but, ultimately, it didn’t stop him from simply reforming. Alec could power through hundreds of miles of the Rot-corrupted, barren air of Anton Arcane’s future. With the Green, he can synthesize plant-based antidotes for lethal poisons like strychnine to neutralize toxins that are plant-based. And, Swamp Thing remained immune and unaffected by nearly all of Scarecrow’s fear toxins until he used one that was based more on carbon dioxide that did cause him to lose control of his body to fear. This means that anything that can be breathed in aside from carbon dioxide-based gasses won’t affect him. Though, it should be noted that pollution is a harmful vulnerability in general to Alec, unlike typical poisons or barren land.

Disease Manipulation: Swamp Thing was able to interact with a deadly Kryptonian fungus harmlessly, which possibly might’ve exclusively harmed Kryptonians, that was driving Superman mad and threatened his life due to the disease. By dipping Superman into the Green, Swamp Thing completely healed him of the deadly illness in his system.

Mind/Will/Possession: In addition to his natural mental fortitude from his aforementioned willpower, Swamp Thing could resist the hypnotic commands of fungal spores that affected Batman and broke their consciousnesses free of their hold on them. While initially driven mad by Kryptonian energy that Superman infected him with, rooting himself to the Green ended up freeing himself from those effects. Within the Green itself, there is a constant, tempting, and lulling urge to allow one’s consciousness to dissipate peacefully, which Alec never succumbs to. Swamp Thing’s thoughts were unable to be read since they were on the Green’s frequency.

Energy Manipulation: While initially driven mad by the Kryptonian energy that Superman accidentally infected him with, rooting himself to the Green was able to free himself from it. Similarly, Swamp Thing’s vibrational powers could oscillate and redirect the alien energies of the moon, known as the Gray, back down to the roots of the Parliament Elders back down on Earth. Alec could completely resist energy being drained from the Green, which threatened him too, restored himself, and traced it to where it was being siphoned from. He found that this was a result of Woodrue tapping into the Green without experience and using its powers for himself.

Time Manipulation: Before passing partially through the Source Wall, Swamp Thing and Metron noted that Promethean Giants were left in a state of pseudo-stasis from their attempts, which left their heartbeats to only ever beat after long periods of time. This condition that left those entities in slowed,localized time for eternity was temporarily resisted by Swamp Thing, more seamlessly than others, in that space while they were subjected to that potential stasis.

Minor Soul Manipulation: While generally vulnerable to spiritual attacks, Swamp Thing had his soul devoured by a former elemental’s astral form, but he only survived by reforming inside of their avatar from their spiritual “belly”. The rot from Matango’s fungus threatened to trap Alec’s soul within the Grey, but he was able to barely scrape enough strength to send it to another avatar after being weakened. Similarly, souls from the Parliament resisted Matango’s influence over them as an overpopulated collective of souls with free wills that opposed him en masse.

Transmutation: Both Swamp Thing and his home swamp were wholly unaffected by a crystal entity that crystallized animals with a touch due to the bio-restorative formula. However, more aggressive exposure could transmute him at the molecular level. Yet, a part of him was still conscious and unaffected enough that the formula worked in tandem with his willpower to restore his body to normal. Later on, a dose of a liquid that began to transmute his plant body into flesh required an extra dose to even begin to take effect against his avatar.

Existence Erasure: During the Anti-Monitor’s multiversal Crisis on Infinite Earths, a universe-spanning antimatter wave struck Swamp Thing’s home. However, his essence managed to survive and merge with the Green to safeguard whatever life he could on the planet after his body was blasted into nothingness. Like that antimatter wave, Swamp Thing was able to survive existence erasure within Pralaya’s body just long enough for Zatanna to activate her omniversal regrowth spell within him.

Minor Acausality: Swamp Thing’s existence and long legacy of predecessors was a result of a closed time loop and grandfather paradox orchestrated by the Parliament. After sending himself back through time, they granted him the seeds to sow the founders of the champions and simultaneously acted as the first avatar for the Green chronologically. They then used his own memories from both Alec and Swamp Thing’s life to paradoxically manipulate his origin story into happening, thus incurring a paradox of duality. However, two versions of the same Swamp Thing were unable to come into contact without one of them being ejected further back in time.

Man-Thing

Quag-Beast Physiology

After his initial transformation, the entity formerly known as Ted was no longer human. Now, early on, the origins of Man-Thing sometimes would mention a sort of heartbeat, brain, or ears, but, later on, these statements would no longer fit the idea of what kind of entity he is. For starters, the writers would later establish that his auditory organs are actually on his “forehead”, meaning the top center of that weird trunk thing he has. He would also lack flesh or blood, lack the need to breathe, and, after getting detected by Daredevil’s Radar Sense, be confirmed to be living, wraith-like slime, alongside being composed of vegetable matter, roots, muck, water, earth, and mud. In fact, Daredevil himself proved that there was no heart inside of the Man-Thing, plus he’s described as being solid and made of foliage. Additionally, he lacks bones and vocal chords, so he cannot speak barring some odd exceptions during certain runs. Although there was one instance where he was described as an amalgam of swamp life in general, it’s not consistent with the portrayal of Manny mostly being a walking pile of muddy plant slime. Despite this, his brain cells are spread and located throughout his slippery, hard to grip body mass, and he can manually secrete pain blockers to numb physical pain for others. Because this entity lacks conventional organs, Man-Thing can simply ignore normally threatening weapons against humans like tear gas.

Because of his “quag-beast” body, he should be adhesive and slow things trying to attack or pass through him since both the nexus and the swamp are a part of and bound to him, “indivisible” from his being in that the swamp is his proper body rather than an immunity to being de-fused and made up of the sorcerous energies that dwell there. Speaking of which, the impact event from his origins ended up creating Man-Thing at the molecular level with the assistance of arcane forces, which aligns with the newer Faustian Bargain idea too. As such, his unique physiology makes it so that he can stand motionless for long periods of time without issue thanks to a lack of need for sustenance, which works well for a being that goes immobile without any emotional stimuli or curiosities nearby. Though, without contact with his swamp for a long while will eventually end up naturally and gradually weakening him, but exposure to moisture helps him recover from this. Similarly, if Man-Thing’s mind is consigned to “oblivion” from being fully dried out, he can come to in a few hours or days if he’s re-moisturized with water from his swamp. Additionally, another method that can revitalize him from this dried out state more quickly is by being near or within an area with a sorcerous or magical presence, even if it’s not his own swamp. This is especially helpful when he needs to survive being in states that are a result of a majority of his body being blasted off of him. Nowadays, his body is able to recycle itself to create a self-contained ecosystem so he can last longer outside of his bog. But, this process doesn’t assist him indefinitely, it only slowed down this rate after a chemical decomposition event. Otherwise, Manny’s body is ageless, immune to disease, can sense and attune to the emotions of ghosts, and can live underwater.

But, what about poor Ted? Where is he? Well, the Man-Thing doesn’t really have a mind, which will be touched on later, and attempts to restore Sallis have been a fruitless endeavor. It’d take constant mental massaging over several days to bring back the smallest bit of Ted’s mind to adult maturity and thoughts again, since it’ll naturally regress over time. Because his brain cells are spread uniformly throughout his mass, regenerating them to be active again requires that rigorous attention, since mystical restoration of his mind, even by Doctor Strange, proved to be only temporary due to his creation through both science and magic. Now, despite his mindlessness, Man-Thing still has a soul, with this idea only ever being contradicted once in the past. His soul has been possessed by the demonic Unnthinnkk before, which allowed them to mutate his body and increase its size. Unnthinnk is only defeated after Doctor Strange entered Man-Thing’s “miasmic soul”, met and empowered Ted in there, and assisted him in battling them, which led to Ted being “consigned to the darkness of Man-Thing” after this was resolved.

Other examples include Manny’s soul being referred to as human, the statement that Ted is a portion of his soul, and the claim that Manny is Sallis’s soul merged with the raw Nexus substance of the swamp. When Ellen and Doctor Strange entered Ellen’s mind, she initially mistook it for Manny’s soul, which implies the existence of one. An alternate version of him known as Man-Thing Thang Thoom, protector of the Nexus within the Soulworld of the Soul Gem, was directly said to have a spirit too. In fact, when Man-Thing has his soul torn out of him, this will only remove Ted Sallis and the creature can remain active without him.

Natural Weaponry: Man-Thing’s hands are claws for swiping at prey, and his body is sometimes covered in razor-sharp brambles. His arms can extend and coil around targets during a fight or to save people from falls, and he can extend his fingers like piercing vines to stab multiple targets. Portions of his body mass can reach out towards enemies like tendrils to grasp onto them or envelop them entirely. Manny has used his own body to press characters into it in order to suffocate them against his slime and knock them out. Plus, his swamp muck exterior can be flung at people with a splashing, swinging motion.

Mystical Sight: Due to his origin as an entity made from mad science and mystic forces, Man-Thing is capable of seeing through magical illusions and seeing invisible, magical portals.

Mystical Healing: Due to being partially created via magic, Man-Thing can never truly be destroyed in enchanted, magical locations and passively heals to full power in them. This mystical healing is especially potent, as magical atmospheres could immediately heal him from being entirely, instantly enveloped in white hot flames.

Electron Disruption: Manny’s body allowed him to not only pass through the grasp of an electrical entity that would’ve killed him, but also disrupt their electrons with his swamp matter.

Mindless Instinct: While Ted isn’t in control or emerged through some means, the Man-Thing entity is consistently described as a mindless being that cannot think in the traditional sense acting on animal-like instinct instead. Instead of thinking, the remnants of his mind sometimes piece together feelings to form a kind of “reason”. Manny has no emotions of his own aside from flighty feelings of curiosity and boredom. While he can occasionally be mentally manipulated, recall vague ideas of Ted’s past, or vaguely recognize things from his time as a human, the creature doesn’t have a memory of its own in addition to lacking a mind. Once, the entity was struck through the brow with mystical fire, which began to un-deaden the mind of Hallis and recognize the horrific, mouthless body he was in. However, his mind and intellect quickly receded upon sensing an outpouring of emotions.

Some bad guys said that his brain turned into “vegetable matter”, but it’s more accurate to say that the brain cells dispersed throughout his body were deactivated, his intellect drowned out and scattered to only act on instinct or emotion. This leaves him without a proper brain or intellect, and it falls in line with the idea of Lizard finding Ted under a microscope to view one of his cells. In fact, after entering Man-Thing’s soul to help Ted fight off Unnthinnk, Doctor Strange was unable to guarantee his powers could safely, mystically emerge his mind in the creature at that point. He instead asked Strange to shrink him down to consign him to “oblivion”, which fits in with the Dreadscape concept introduced later. Note that after Classic Man-Thing and Rebirth Man-Thing fused via Classic absorbing the other, Fused Man-Thing was capable of thought, but not speech. As of the Curse of the Man-Thing run, Ted learned how to emerge his mind to control Man-Thing at will.

Nonduality: Man-Thing is neither “alive” nor can he “die” in the traditional sense, allowing him to survive simple attempts to kill him like getting buried alive. He was able to merely be knocked out by Death-Stalker’s death touch as he was immune by virtue of being neither dead nor alive. This fact has been reiterated a few times, meaning he’s not “alive” like how an animal or a plant is a “living” thing. He’s something “more than plant than animal”, which was a trade as a result of the life manipulation from the Nexus when it made him a guardian. After burning out his power to stop Mahapralaya, he “died” despite never really being “alive” in the first place, but the Nexus fragment he owned revived him soon afterwards.

Power Conduit: Man-Thing himself can act as a middleman to allow characters to use their powers either through him or his connection to the Nexus. After allowing Professor X to share headspace with him, Xavier could do things like de-fuse an evil Jean Grey and Iceman from their alternate selves. Franklin Richards was able to mold reality from his subconscious mind and dreams by using Manny’s connection to the Nexus to facilitate this reality warping.

X'Zelzi'Ohr: After his rebirth, Manny not only developed speech for a time, but he spoke in colloquialisms that are most familiar to the person listening to him in their language. This is done because he speaks "X'Zelzi'Ohr", the universal language.

Malleability

Due to his nature as an entity made of swamp slime and ooze, Man-Thing’s body is extremely malleable and can simply pass through openings of any kind. It’s almost like a more limited, slimier version of phasing, since Manny’s body’s adhesive nature can trap physical bodies partially inside of it, completely get them stuck within him, or simply have charging assailants completely pass through his muck. Weapons and objects such as pickaxes, mystical flaming swords, chains, guns, and large pointed roots often harmlessly embed themselves in Man-Thing’s body and slide out, which sometimes causes clumps of his slime to come off of him. In fact, he sometimes sticks weapons in his body intentionally to keep the stuck items away from people. However, his body is still capable of being physically restrained or grabbed onto, and enough mass, force, or crowds can temporarily halt him or stop him, like being unable to pass through walls or mobs of people.

So, not only can the creature easily pass through cages, but he’s unable to be held back by things like lassos or, similarly, Reed Richards’s arms forming one, since he’ll start to pass through once they grow taut. This allows him to recognize things like nets when they entangle him and simply ooze through them, which can apply to more abstract grappling like the grasp of an electric entity that might’ve seriously harmed him. Manny’s even capable of slipping through Spiderman’s webs, even some that Peter said would halt anyone “short of the Hulk”. Because of this ludicrous level of malleability, Man-Thing is still able to control his body after it’s been hacked down and severely misshapen. While near a missing Nexus shard, he’s disgustingly been able to ooze himself into Howard the Duck’s intestines to retrieve it from inside of him. The creature is able to entirely dematerize himself into the Nexus swamp as well, and coming into contact with plants and air that are native to that swamp will incur his regeneration from just a head and showcase how he can grow out his body with massive vines.

Shapeshifting: With that much body control, Man-Thing is capable of manipulating his body mass into things like waves of swamp muck to crash against people. This involves shapeshifting as well, such as morphing into a swampy manta ray body in order to swim more gracefully underwater. His limbs can become slimy, yet working hammers or handaxes, and Manny could even spread his body across the ground like a mossy carpet to stealthily ensnare foes.

Phasing: After reincarnating from his egg, Man-Thing can now dimensionally phase through walls as well, no small space required.

Burning Touch

Like the old saying goes: Whatever knows fear burns at the Man-Thing’s touch! As in, the act of being afraid is what will cause the Man-Thing’s touch to induce a chemical reaction and burn anyone it touches either with caustic acid or with immolating, conjured flames. Any of his “luckier” victims will serve as living proof of the traumatic experience, since his burns can often leave disfiguring scars, sear flesh so hot that it fuses items to the wielder’s body, literally melts their flesh, and painfully seals mouths or body parts shut. Even disconnected or manipulated pieces of his body are able to react to fear and burn it away with just a touch. These flames can cause massive fires by themselves, entirely immolate a person until there’s nothing left of them, burn at the molecular level, irradiate cells, and purge infections.

However, he still has quite a bit of flexibility when it comes to this power, such as being able to redirect most of his flaming touch onto a bad guy to spare Daredevil when he tackled them into him. “Fear” in general is broad in definition for Man-Thing, since emotions such as anger can activate his ability because anger itself stems from fear. Plus, whenever he’s not agitated, his body will naturally neutralize the acid that causes his burns while he’s entirely unprovoked.

Exorcism: Man-Thing’s burning touch can bypass and burn out a demon that was possessing someone to avoid harming the person acting as the host, which burned the ectoplasm body of the demon into ash.

Non-Physical Interaction (Maybe): Manny’s ability to interact with the intangible is somewhat inconsistent. He has burned the ectoplasmic body of a demon to ash and attacked vapor phantasms manifested by a person’s madness, though the latter may have been briefly made real. However, on another occasion, he was unable to defeat this old woman’s hateful specter or interact with intangible spirits, astral projections, and demons. There’s another instance where Man-Thing could attack ghost pirates, though the story is unclear about them and went back and forth about whether they were undead from a curse or actual intangible ghosts. Much later, however, it was claimed that Man-Thing's burning touch will affect his target even if they were to be made up of gas, stone, or ice. Additionally, souls and astral bodies in Marvel tend to be made of ectoplasm and are informational and metaphysical, which Man-Thing has burned up a total of one time, so his interaction with spirits is overall very inconsistent and debatable.

Bypassing Fire Resistance (Debatable): Man-Thing’s touch ended up burning and melting Thog the Nether-Spawn, who is always on fire. However, Thog was able to re-form later, suggesting that the burning touch’s disintegration didn’t erase his spirit or presence.

Durability Negation: Man-Thing's burning touch can specifically target and burn through vital organs even if he only grasped their hands elsewhere on their body. While wielding a Nexus fragment, Manny burning Mahapralaya boiled his sins to the surface of his consciousness to burn him from the inside out like a pseudo-Penance Stare. This was described by Howard while he psychically experienced his fate due to the Nexus shard transmitting it.