Swamp Thing, Book Three: Time Upon a Once

by Rick Veitch, Tom Mandrake (Artist), Tom Yeates (Artist)

The final chapter of writer Rick Veitch's Swamp Thing saga, including the long-awaited, fully restored Swamp Thing 1989 #1-4 completing this historic run!

Thrust backwards in time, Swamp Thing must make sense of a universe drawing him towards its very inception. With the birth of the Sprout approaching, Abby desperately searches for answers and her missing husband while a monstrous entity from the past watches and waits. John Constantine will do whatever it takes to bring the Swamp Thing home before Hell, the Green, or worse comes to get them!

The final chapter to one of Swamp Thing’s most legendary saga collects Swamp Thing #80-87, Swamp Thing Annual #5, and Swamp Thing 1989 #1-4—the lost Swamp Thing #88-91 issues, released at last in 2026 and collected here for the first time!

Genres: Comics

416 pages, Paperback

Published October 20, 2026

About the author

Richard "Rick" Veitch is an American comics artist and writer who has worked in mainstream, underground, and alternative comics.

Reviews

[Hugo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Previously, on Swamp Thing, I wrote of Veitch's ignominious ending as the writer/artist:

Veitch, once he gets his breath back, is forging his own path and heading for something interesting. The time travel story—as well as the bizarre ape-centric Annual—is indicative of Veitch's issues as a writer, at least of largely mainstream, monthly fare: he's stuck in the shadow of Alan Moore, and seems to know it and play to it, subsuming his own strong voice, which otherwise makes itself known in ham-fisted preaching, extraneous characters, and clumsy allegory; also, he loves the DC pantheon, so they are jammed in here left and right, often inappropriately, often killing the mood and milieu, and further slowing the pace.

Here, finally, after decades, is Veitch's finale as close to how he intended it as seems possible, minus original artist Michael Zulli (who passed away in 2024) and seemingly in need to create some sort of narrative flow with the writers who followed Veitch, while also apparently writing his immediate successor Doug Wheeler out of the continuity. I don't know, this canon shit is complicated.

Any road up, what I said of this volume in its truncated form stands here, with Veitch's time travel story adding up to the sum of its parts, pulling what seemed disparate story threads into one and finishing on a finale that epitomises and rewards its cast of characters. The once-controversial Jesus issue seems almost tame these days (though no doubt there are some who will still get their knickers in a twist over it), and is handled with sensitivity by Veitch, adding the Christ figure into the DC Pantheon cleverly and with reverence.

Vince Locke does a decent job with Zulli's surviving pencils, Tom Mandrake brings his classy '80s style to the rest of the saga, Trish Mulvihill replicates Tatjana Wood's beautiful colouring with modern methods, and Todd Klein renders the lettering just as John Workman would have. Adding to the perfect recreation of an '80s comic that never was (I'm reading these as singles), DC have presented the issues with the trade dress, the newsprint stock, and even the old advert pages that would have appeared back in the day.

[Chris Lemmerman · Rating 4 out of 5]

The final volume of Rick Veitch's Swamp Thing is essentially all one long Invasion! tie-in (remember Invasion!?), as Swamp Thing's consciousness is ejected from his body and sent bouncing around the timestream. He had his intergalactic jaunt in Alan Moore's run, so this is Veitch's riff on that - with a heaping dose of historic DC characters and events thrown in for fun.

Also included is the recent Swamp Thing 1989 mini-series, which depicts the ending Veitch wanted for his run way back when, before he unceremoniously left the series after editorial didn't want Swamp Thing to meet Jesus. Which, in hindsight, I can kind of understand, but when you read the issues here, it's really not that big of a deal. Veitch handles the character well (he doesn't have a single line of dialogue) and the event of meeting Christ informs Swampy's life choices for the final three issues in a kind of sweet way actually. Veitch even manages to make Swamp Thing 1989 fit with current continuity in a clever little bait & switch that probably wasn't part of the original pitch, but works really well in my mind.

I think the story does kind of outlive its welcome overall since it's so long, and each issue is incredibly dense in terms of flowery prose (ha, Swamp Thing pun), while Abby's plotline is mostly her being sad and yelling at a neverending parade of people that Alec isn't dead, but it does all come together nicely in the 1989 conclusion.

I don't quite know why Swamp Thing Annual #5 was included here other than because it fit in the publication history, but the stories enclosed within don't really do much for either Swamp Thing's narrative (he's not in it at all) or Abby's, since the confrontation with Brother Power ends up being down to Chester of all people, but hey, it's a completionist's dream.

[Neb · Rating 4.5 out of 5]

Afraid that depicting Jesus in a comic would incite controversy, DC kicked Veitch of Swamp Thing in the late 80s.

And yet, when they finally published this "long lost" story, it really does seem like something a youth pastor might put in front of you at youth group before a 5 minute lecture on Christ being "the original superhero," in which he gets several famous superheroes' names wrong. This sermon would end with a scratchy DVD of BibleMan being played on a old box TV and then there's some pizzas for dinner.

I know this review doesn't have much to do with the book, but I think the book is very good and the whole Swamp Thing saga is a classic for a reason