Covering Swamp Thing 1989 (2026)…

After 37 years, DC Comics finally published the end of Rick Veitch’s late ’80s Swamp Thing run as the author had originally intended.

Appearances that I consider to be fairly minor are indented.  The below titles were published by DC Comics unless otherwise noted.

Swamp Thing 1989 #1
“Morning of the Magician”, June 2026
Rick Veitch [w, c], Michael Zulli, Vince Locke [p]
Swamp Thing sees all of the worlds of the multiverse converge at a single point in the future (‘The Crisis…’) but decides to travel further back into the past where the universes form in a mandala pattern. Here he finds himself in Roman times in the age of Jesus Christ. Three sorcerers (previously known as the Wise Men present at Christ’s birth) summon Belial to aid them destroy Jesus. After Marcus (aka Golden Gladiator) leaves the company of Mary Magdelene, he is attacked by Belial who infects him with a demon seed. Marcus begins turning into a rhyming demon when he meets his fellow Roman soldiers and goes to arrest Jesus on the orders of Pontius Pilate. Swamp Thing appears in an olive grove where Jesus and some of his apostles are meeting. Swampy inspects Jesus’ Grail but it does not yet contain the amber, so he instead deposits some juice as a gift to Jesus. Jesus and the apostles are attacked by Roman soldiers, but Jesus exorcises the demon from Marcus causing him to vomit up the infant Etrigan. Jesus drinks the juice from the grail and Swampy again disappears into the time stream. Jesus is arrested and crucified, with Joseph of Arimathia catching some of his blood in the Grail, and also placing a piece of amber inside.
The indicia of this issue refers to this book as Swamp Thing 1989 #1, though the cover treats this as if it were issue #88 of the 1980s Swamp Thing series, and the issue features similar paper stock and advertisements from that era. The original pencils for this issue were finished in 1989 by Michael Zulli, and Tom Sutton had begun inking the pages when the issue was cancelled. By the time DC were finally considering publishing this, Sutton had passed away (in 2002) and Zulli was very ill. Zulli had planned to produce new art for the issue but only got as far as layouts before he passed away, so this version features Vince Locke inking over Zulli’s original pencils.

[w] denotes writer, [p] denotes penciller, but I have included both penciller and inker if both are credited equally as artists. [c] denotes cover artist, but I have mostly only included the last in instances where Swampy is illustrated by someone other than the inside penciller.