Linda Holland
52 years ago - Linda Olsen Ridge is born.
34 years ago - 18-year-old Linda goes to college to study botany.
30 years ago - 22-year-old Linda gets his bachelor's degree in Botany, and begins a graduate program in environmental engineering.
26 years ago - 26-year-old Linda begins her doctoral work in Adaptive Plant Morphology, working alongside Alec Holland.
25 years ago - 27-year-old Linda marries Alec Holland.
23 years ago - 29-year-old Linda Holland earns her doctorate in Adaptive Plant Morphology.
22 years ago - 30-year-old Linda & Alec Holland begin working on Alex's Bio-restorative Formula in their Louisana Labs with funding from Avery Sunderland of the Sunderland Corporation.
20 years ago - 32-year-old Linda & Alec Holland's labs are broken into by men looking to steal his Bio-restorative Formula. She dies in the resulting explosion.
14 years ago - Linda's remains are secretly stolen by Avery Sunderland and tested, finding no trace of the same mutation that affected Alec Holland.
10 years ago - Linda is reunited with Alec Holland in the afterlife when the Swamp Thing recovers and buries his remains, allowing them to pass on.
Linda Holland's StoryThe original Swamp Thing story from House of Secrets #92 in 1972 was specifically about a husband who was turned into a monster by a rival for his beautiful wife Linda, so it of course follows that later that year when a modern version of the character was introduced in Swamp Thing #1, we were also introduced to a modern version of his wife, who is now also his partner in their experiments to produce a Bio-restorative Formula for plant life. Linda survives the explosion that turns Alec into the Swamp Thing, but she is later gunned down and killed, leading Agent Matthew Cable to think the monster is her killer (she was... shot?) and swear to track it down.
Linda is of course referenced constantly across all of Swamp Thing's appearances, particularly when he travels to the afterlife to actually meet Alec and see him reconnecting with her in heaven. There are also some later Swamp Thing series that heavily featured flashbacks of Alec and Linda meeting in college. For our story, we wanted to make sure Linda was an important part of Alec's life leading up to his accident, but as Matthew Cable isn't introduced to the Swamp Thing story until later we don't include the intrigue of HOW she died. Rather, she is killed in the same explosion that transformed Alec. |