Swamp Thing #56, Page 11

This page is from my favorite issue of Alan Moore's run on Swamp Thing, a story called "My Blue Heaven". Forced to leave earth in order to save his own life, the Swamp Thing finds himself alive but alone on a blue planet, millions of miles away from home.

It's a story about lonliness and despair, love and madness. Out of boredom, the Swamp Thing creates a twin body of himself and struggles to master the movements and perceptions of two bodies at the same time. He plays chess with himself, finishing to a draw each time.

Before long he abandons one of the bodies and then does the unthinkable... he creates a body of his lover, Abigail Cable, and surrenders himself to the illusion of it. The large panel on the right of the page represents him looking at himself from both perspectives. Rick Veitch included a note in the margin that reads:

"Alfredo, blue line is for your reference, to show you the axis of this perspective. Don't ink blue line."

Eventually the Swamp Thing destroys his illusion and decides he has to leave the planet, even if he might die trying.

For continuity junkies, the planet was revisted in Starman #48.

A beautiful page from a touching story. It's one of two comics where it always gets dusty in the room whenever I read it.