I'm slightly biased in favor of Swamp Thing in general since reading Snyder's work, and I'm willing to let some other things slide because this is still Alan Moore of Watchmen and V for Vendetta as he's first gaining his fame in the early 80's, so even when I'm juggling all this in my mind, where does this first volume actually land? 
 It's okay. It doesn't feel *at all* like a comic for children, and I keep this in my mind because at the time this was written, *MOST of them STILL WERE*. Instead, it's full of tales of descending into madness, loss of identity, fear, and even a bit of heroism when no one else wants to even attempt it. 
 I mean, who gives a crap about some bumluck Louisiana town being ravaged by some *other* green meanie? Not the Justice League, that's for sure. As we see. 
 I really enjoyed the story where Alec was on the autopsy table for the entire tale. It was a great twist on the ghost story, especially when he comes back and learns that his entire self-identity is a lie. 
 There's so much of that going on throughout this volume, too, and it's definitely not limited to Alec, himself. The Swamp Thing is hardly the only major character. In fact, the villains are all nicely rounded and fairly easy to sympathize with. :) 
 That being said, I'm judging this all by the time it was written. 
 If I judged it by today's standards, I might say that it has greater subtlety than most of the comics coming out, it suffers greatly in the actual artwork being produced, and the themes feel only a bit less well-defined and bigger than life than some of the best I've read out of the modern batch. 
 But is that merely a sign of changing tastes after more than 30 years? Possibly. After having attempted 40's and 50's comics, my auto-vomit reaction was in full bloom, so I can absolutely appreciate how adult this one is compared to all that dross. It's all relative. 
 I think it's safe to say that this one began to pave the way for all the wonderfully dark and adult comics that started flooding the market only several years later, and where would we be without our Gaimans and our Millers and, of course, our Moores? :) 
 Holy dreck, Batman!