Swamp Thing/Nightmare Fuel

• Two Swamp Thing stories stand out for me: The Anatomy Lesson and My Blue Heaven. Slasher films don't bother me, but those two single issue comics get inside my head.
  • Arcane: "How... how many years have I been here?" Swamp Thing: "Since yesterday." Arcane: "...yesterday?" That exchange, in context, remains one of the most horrifying things I have ever read.
    • What Arcane did just before finding himself in Hell. Short version: He arranged for his niece Abby's husband Matthew to be in a car accident, and offered him a Deal with the Devil: Arcane would save Matthew's life in exchange for Matthew becoming his new vessel. At first, Abby is impressed by her husband's newfound confidence and passion, until she realizes just what happened and just who she had been sleeping with:

She ripped all of her clothes off, tearing them up. They were dirty. They'd touched her skin. She tried to burn them, but her hands were shaking and the matches kept going out. In truth, she was a little crazy by this time. It was the smell. She couldn't get rid of the smell. In the shower she used up all of the soap, the shampoo, the bubblebath, the perfume... the smell was still there. Have you ever burned an insect with a magnifying glass? Just once, long ago, when you were a kid and didn't know any better? There. You know it. You know the smell. When the soap wouldn't get rid of it, she went to the kitchen and fetched the wire brush that she used for scraping the potatoes... twenty minutes later she passed out. Twenty whole minutes. Even then she could still smell it. She could smell it in her dreams.

• • • It Got Worse: Arcane tells her every detail about what he has done and what he will do, then tears her soul out and forces it into Hell. Arcane's punishment was too good for him.
  • Mommie needunt no....
  • "The Nukeface Papers." All right, the Green Aesop anvils are flying thick and fast, but mother of god, that guy's face...
    • What makes it worse is that Nukeface is portrayed as a nice, friendly guy who's completely oblivious to the damage he causes.
  • Scott Snyder has introduced all sorts of lovely things in his run on the title. Let's start with the Rot, the embodiment of all dead matter. It comes in various forms: a swarm of mosquitos that get into people's ears, force the victim's body to break its own neck, and then animate the corpse; a giant creature made from flies, dead shrubbery, rotten meat and a mammoth skeleton; or, probably its most terrifying form - William Arcane, Abby's sickly little brother who can manipulate any and all dead matter. He is, to all intents and purposes, the Rot's equivalent of Swamp Thing. Consider for a moment how many dead cells are in your body, how many skin cells you shed...and imagine what he can do with that. Nice, isn't it?

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