Solomon Grundy

From Barbelith

In life, he was Cyrus Gold (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=29790), the miser of Gotham City.

After his death (and grisly half-rebirth in Slaughter Swamp), he became one of the great villains to fight Green Lantern (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon_Grundy_(comics)), and a general zombie-for-all-seasons. He's been on several different TV series (http://jl.toonzone.net/solomon/solomon.htm), fighting whole teams of heroes.

According to one origin,

Cyrus Gold, a wealthy merchant, was slain and dumped into the swamps
outside Gotham City in 1894, where he emerged fifty years later as a
swamp beast (just in time for the Golden Age).  Following his resurrection,
he wandered into a hobo camp, where he was named “Solomon Grundy” by the
inhabitants because all he could remember was that he was “born on a
Monday.”  The hobos convinced Solomon Grundy to help in a robbery and that
was the beginning of his second life. 

It was also revealed that whenever Solomon Grundy dies he regenerates and
then comes back to life with a different facet of Gold’s original
personality at the forefront of his own (which is why he’s sometimes
intelligent, sometimes mindless, sometimes good, and sometimes bad).  

He is "mostly composed of plant matter," and rose from the dead in a swamp, so he's currently considered a sort of failed plant elemental -- a Swamp Thing that didn't quite make it.

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