Swamp Thing #1 (1972)

From a one-shot to a series

Swamp Thing first appeared as a standalone horror story in House of Secrets #92, cover-dated July 1971. That creature was a man named Alexander Olsen. Len Wein came up with the idea while riding the subway in Queens and at first called it simply "that swamp thing I'm working on."

For the ongoing series, Wein and Wrightson started over with a new man inside the monster. Swamp Thing #1 went on sale on August 10, 1972, with an October-November cover date, as a bimonthly 20-cent comic of 36 pages.

The new version was Alec Holland. In "Dark Genesis!", the thugs Ferrett and Bruno blow up the lab, and Holland is transformed into the Swamp Thing. When they return to kill his wife, Linda, the creature is there to stop them.

Wein and Wrightson

Len Wein was born in New York City on June 12, 1948. Bernie Wrightson was born in Dundalk, Maryland, on October 27, 1948. Wrightson began as an illustrator for The Baltimore Sun in 1966 and joined DC in 1968. For a time he signed his work "Berni" to avoid confusion with an Olympic diver who was also named Bernie Wrightson.

On Swamp Thing #1 Wrightson did nearly everything visual: pencils, inks and colors for both the story and the cover. The colorist credit was confirmed on the letters page of issue #4. Gaspar Saladino lettered the story and designed the logo. A one-page letters column titled "Swamp Things" carried short biographies of Wein and Wrightson, with caricatures drawn by Wrightson.

Wrightson drew the first ten issues before Nestor Redondo took over for 13 more. Wein wrote issues #1 to #13, and David Michelinie and Gerry Conway finished the run.

A cast built for the long haul

Unlike the original short story, the first issue set up a world. It introduced Matt Cable, the villain Mister E. as a face in the shadows, a criminal group called the Conclave, and, as a hand only, the sorcerer Anton Arcane, with his Un-Men glimpsed in the background.

The story opens on a line about darkness crying through "the gnarled cypress branches" of the bayou. The issue won the 1972 Shazam Award for Best Individual Story in the dramatic category, and Wein won multiple Shazam Awards for his Swamp Thing work.

Copies, grades and the cover art

No print run or census count appears in the sources consulted here. Sales records for CGC 9.8 copies with white or off-white to white pages go back at least to August 11, 2005, when one sold at auction for $4,600. Prices dipped to $2,868 on March 27, 2016, and $2,629 that November, then peaked at $6,000 in November 2021. Results from 2022 to 2025 ranged from $3,480 to $5,520.

The original Wrightson cover art for the issue, ink over graphite on Bristol board with a 10-by-15-inch image area and signed by the artist, sold at auction in Dallas on August 5, 2016. That sale was for the drawing, not a copy of the comic, so it is not part of this issue's price history.

Buyers distinguish this 1972 issue from later Swamp Thing #1s, including The Saga of the Swamp Thing #1 from 1982, and from the many reprints of the story, which the Grand Comics Database lists more than 20 times.

From bayou horror to Vertigo

The first series ended with issue #24, cover-dated August-September 1976. DC revived the character in May 1982 as The Saga of the Swamp Thing, timed to Wes Craven's film that summer. Alan Moore took over the new series with issue #20 and wrote through #64; his "Anatomy Lesson" issue revealed that Alec Holland had died in the fire and the creature was a plant that had absorbed his memories. With art by Stephen Bissette and John Totleben, the run was a critical and commercial success and helped lead to DC's Vertigo imprint in 1993.

Len Wein later co-created Wolverine, revived the X-Men with Dave Cockrum in 1975 and edited Watchmen. He entered the Will Eisner Hall of Fame in 2008 and died on September 10, 2017. Wrightson, who spent seven years on about 50 pen-and-ink illustrations for a 1983 edition of Frankenstein, died in Austin, Texas, on March 18, 2017. The character has since appeared in film and on television, including a 2019 streaming series.

The numbers

Cover price

20 cents

Pages

36; lead story 24 pages

Frequency

Bimonthly

Print run

Not documented in the sources consulted

Census

No verified CGC census count found in the sources consulted

Series length

24 issues, 1972 to 1976

Timeline

1. 1966

   Bernie Wrightson starts as an illustrator for The Baltimore Sun.

2. 1968

   Wrightson joins DC.

3. Jul 1971

   A Swamp Thing story appears in House of Secrets #92.

4. Aug 10, 1972

   Swamp Thing #1 goes on sale for 20 cents.

5. 1972

   "Dark Genesis!" wins the Shazam Award for Best Individual Story (Dramatic).

6. 1976

   The first series ends with issue #24, cover-dated August-September.

7. May 1982

   DC launches The Saga of the Swamp Thing ahead of Wes Craven's film.

8. 1993

   DC creates the Vertigo imprint, in part on the strength of Alan Moore's Swamp Thing.

9. Aug 11, 2005

   A CGC 9.8 copy sells at auction for $4,600.

10. Mar 27, 2016

    A CGC 9.8 copy sells at auction for $2,868.

11. Aug 5, 2016

    Wrightson's original cover art for the issue sells at auction in Dallas.

12. Mar 18, 2017

    Bernie Wrightson dies in Austin, Texas.

13. Sep 10, 2017

    Len Wein dies in Los Angeles.

14. Nov 20, 2021

    A CGC 9.8 copy sells at auction for $6,000, the highest result in the sources consulted.

15. Jul 25, 2025

    A CGC 9.8 copy sells at auction for $3,480.

The world in 1972

• Feb 1972

  President Nixon makes an eight-day visit to China.

• Mar 15, 1972

  The Godfather premieres.

• Jun 17, 1972

  Burglars break into Democratic headquarters at the Watergate.

• Jun 23, 1972

  Title IX becomes law.

• Jun 29, 1972

  The Supreme Court rules the death penalty unconstitutional in Furman v. Georgia.

• Nov 7, 1972

  Nixon is reelected in a landslide.

• Dec 1972

  Apollo 17 returns; Eugene Cernan is the last person to walk on the Moon.

Price record

A realized auction price is what a buyer actually paid on the date shown, including the buyer's premium where the sale reported it. It is the strongest kind of reference price, and it is a record of one sale of one object on one day, not a promise of what the next example will bring.

By reference price, Swamp Thing #1 (1972) is number 60 of 100 in the comics entries of the FLOAT 100. 92 of those 100 rest on a realized sale; the rest carry an asking price or a guide value, and each page says which. Rank within the FLOAT 100 itself (74 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• Bernie Wrightson signed as "Berni" for a time to avoid being confused with an Olympic diver of the same name.
• Len Wein dreamed up Swamp Thing on a subway ride in Queens.
• The Swamp Thing of the first series is a different character from the one in House of Secrets #92 a year earlier.
• Wrightson penciled, inked and colored the first issue himself.
• Anton Arcane, the series' great villain, appears in issue #1 only as a hand.
• Alan Moore later revealed that the Swamp Thing was never Alec Holland at all, only a plant with his memories.