My Crazy Youth: Swamp Thing vs...Time-Traveling Confederate Soldiers?

I haven't done one of these in a while.  I wasn't necessarily-looking to do one.

One night, a DVR and a 4am TV Airing changed all that.  Now that October is over, I can talk about this...

As a kid, I liked Swamp Thing a lot!  I loved both Films, even the one that is undeniably-bad.  I loved the Cartoon that lasted for all of 5 issues and is now super-obscure, since nobody has bothered to released it on DVD in the last Decade.  I also remember watching the Live-Action Show, although I have admittedly-few memories of it today.

Basically, here's the rundown for you...

Alec (yea!) Holland is a Scientist who gets transformed via a combination of chemicals and swamp water into the Swamp Thing.  He becomes the Avatar of this area, gaining vague, story-related powers from this.  He also looks bad-ass, especially considering the low-budget of the whole thing.

All caught up?  Great.

In 'Destiny,' Swamp Thing wanders in the Swamp and finds a random piece of architecture.  All of a sudden, a bunch of Civil War Soldiers show up!

Swamp Thing watches all of this go on, with the vision ending when a Confederate Soldier is about to be stabbed by a Union Soldier...only to disappear.  

The man appears in the present, ending up at our Hero's house.  He's confused, but still takes the young man hostage.

If you're wondering why Swamp Thing doesn't help him, well, he just kind of doesn't.  Blame the Swamp.

Another Confederate ends up coming with him and he's outright evil.  That makes the guy who fought to defend Slavery good...I guess.

Oh and this guy is Edgar Allen Poe IV.  No, really.

The reason for all of this: if the South had won this battle, the Swamp would have been burned up.  So, naturally, the Swamp used its time-travel ability to...send them to the future.  Naturally!

After eventually learning the truth about his disappearance (he was labeled as a deserter) and eventually dispatches the 'bad' Soldier.

He goes to see his future descendant give birth to a baby and...I guess the Swamp can send him back now.  Swamp magic!

So silly, but yet so serious.  Think about this Plot again- the Swamp teleported a Soldier to the future in order to stop the South from winning a battle, in order to save itself from being burned in the aftermath.  How?  What?  Even accepting the idea of the Swamp being magic and having vague powers without question, this implies that said powers include one of two options.  One- the Swamp can see the future.  Two- the Swamp was burned the first time and it managed to reverse the affect and do this to stop the event from happening again.  Which is less silly to you?  There's also the odd, schmaltzy element to it as well.  It took the guy away from his wife and newborn kid, but took him to the exact night that a descendant would be having a child named after him.  How...sweet?  Swamp Thing's role in this Episode is certainly odd too.  He's there to see a flashback of the trigger event and then tell his friend that he can't interfere with the Swamp's wishes.  That's it.  In their defense, that bad-ass suit wasn't cheap, so they couldn't do a whole lot with it all the time.  It's still odd to make the Title Character of a Show be such an observer and nothing more.  Imagine, for example, an Episode of Batman: The Animated Series where said Hero is given an Audio Tape by Ra's Al Ghul and simply listens to a Story about him fighting Jonah Hex.  Oh right.  In any event, I did still like the Episode, silliness and all.  The Show was often made on the cheap- on the Universal Studios Backlot- and it sometimes showed, but it always had heart and sometimes ideas crazy enough to be interesting 26 years later.  In lieu of a funny Stinger, here's a B&W Photo I colored in Photoshop (because why wouldn't I?)...

A random-ass Episode, sure.  It features Time Travel, the Civil War and a Swamp Avatar, so...it is the one for me.