The tragic tales of the muck monsters Swamp Thing and Solomon Grundy include more than the creatures spawned in bogs. They also include the men whose consciousness gave them drive and purpose in their legendary lives. Consider Alec Holland of Earth-One and Dick Cashmere of Earth-Two, men who came decades after their predecessors, Alex Olson and Cyrus Gold.
While Alec was a biologist seeking the bio-regenerative formula, Dick was an amateur astronomer. While the formula was the catalyst that transformed as dying Holland into Swamp Thing, light-waves transformed a Solomon Grundy into Dick Cashmere!
Alec sought out his brother, Edward, who was himself a chemist who developed the means to reverse the process, allowing Alec to be human once more. This proved temporary, as he learned he was in fact a clone, created by his arch-enemy Anton Arcane, and reverted to Swamp Thing after only a few month in his homosapien form.
Dick sought out his father John, with the intent of slaying him and inheriting the man's fortune. His true identity is revealed in a confrontation with the Green Lantern, at which point this fake-Cashmere morphs back into Solomon Grundy. Freeing the original Dick Cashmere* and entombing Solomon Grundy within the ground, this version of the Marshland Monster ceases to exist while his human template lives on.
A previous Grundy had been reanimated prior to this encounter by the evil Professor, the counterpart of Arcane, using concentrated chlorophyll. That version of Solomon was preceded by the Cyrus Gold original, and a fourth Grundy was spawned from the buried variant pulled back in time by Per Degaton. Likewise, the original Swamp Thing was Alec Olsen, and following Holland's variant there was an artificially produced replica brought to life by Felix Faust... while a Solomon Grundy clone existed for a time, spawned by the Parasite. This Grundy even met Swamp Thing.
* While the Swamp Thing with Alec Holland's memories lived on Earth-One at the same time as the clone Solomon Grundy who was exiled to an alien world, the former Grundy human-template Dick Cashmere resided on Earth-Two simultaneous to the Degaton-temporal variant Solomon Grundy which he exiled to the moon.
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