WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Future State: Swamp Thing #1, by Ram V, Mike Perkins, June Chung and Aditya Bidikar, on sale now.
The premise of the Future State initiative is to offer a look at possible futures within the DC Universe, as well as present alternate versions of the heroes and villains of today. One of the most wide-sweeping and surprising changes comes in a world inhabited by the Swamp Thing. Humanity and fauna have always maintained a tenuous coexistence with the Green, but in one possible future, the balance has been completely disrupted, with Swamp Thing conquering the world.
And while humanity and various bestiary have been upended by the unrelenting wave of the Green, this particular version of Swamp Thing doesn't appear to be alone in a post-apocalyptic vision of the DC Universe overrun by plants, which have become the dominant life form in the universe in Future State: Swamp Thing #1.
Virtually every city in this particular Future State world, envisioned by Ram V, Mike Perkins and June Chung, is overgrown with plants. Swamp Thing is seen leading an entire family of similarly powered plant figures that see him as a paternal figure. Given that Swamp Thing has seemingly abandoned his humanity, he may or may not be connected to his past through his memories of Alec Holland or other human hosts to the Green. And as Swamp Thing tasks his children to scour the planet for signs of any humans that have survived the great cataclysm, he hints at what may have come to pass in this world years before the start of the story.
Swamp Thing recounts to his daughter Calla that man and machine teamed up to battle plants as the Green moved to conquer the world. The Parliament of Trees decided to become proactive after perceiving that the steady increase in violence perpetrated by the DCU's iconic superheroes and supervillains was constantly putting all life on the planet at risk of extinction. As civilization collapsed from infighting and disease, the Green rose as humanity consumed itself and reshaped the world in its image as the new dominant force in the wake of the heroes and villains being wiped out in the conflict.
The Green has threatened to upset the balance between humanity and the plants before, with the Parliament of Trees urging Swamp Thing to lead a conquest of the world during the "New 52" era. Alec was able to keep the Green from overrunning the planet, working together with Animal Man, his opposite number representing the Red, the life force uniting all fauna in the universe, to maintain order between their respective kingdoms. And while Swamp Thing has often reminded others of just how powerful the Green is in bouts of anger threatening to engulf entire cities, he always knew when to restrain himself from becoming a full-on enemy of humanity while maintaining his position as a fierce defender of the environment.
Swamp Thing's interest in locating any surviving remnants of humanity underscores that as much as the Green has conquered the Earth, the Green's champion still feels for the humans he coexisted with for years. And as Swamp Thing's children successfully locate humans living in the frigid north, where the Green isn't quite able to take hold due to the subzero temperatures, the truth behind Swamp Thing's rise to power may come out as the conflict between humanity and the Parliament of Trees is poised to resume.
A new Swamp Thing is coming to the DCU in the upcoming Infinite Frontier era, but Future State provides a frightening harbinger of things that may come to pass if the balance between humanity and the Green is disrupted.