Conclave

The Conclave is a fictional criminal cartel featured in comic books published by DC Comics. It was initially introduced as part of DC's Pre-Crisis mainstream universe, but it's existence and history was preserved following the events of the continuity-shifting Crisis on Infinite Earths limited series in 1985-86. The Conclave first appeared in Swamp Thing, Volume 1 #1 in November, 1972.

History
The Conclave was a suversive criminal cartel led by a strange man known only as Mister E. It was a consortium of various corporate enterprises, all of whom labored towards a common vision. Back in the 1970s, Mister E. learned about the top secret location of a government scientific research project headed up by the husband and wife team of Doctors Alec and Linda Holland. The Hollands were developing a bio-restorative formula that would promote vegetative growth in otherwise inhospitable environments. Should production of this program have continued, it would have greatly threatened Mister E.'s business interests. Mister E. sent his underlings Maxwell Ferrett and Bruno to the Hollands' Louisiana laboratory armed with a blank check, offering to buy their formula so that they could prevent it from reaching the open market. Alec and Linda immediately refused, and Ferrett made a veiled threat about how it would be in their best interests to sell it to them.

Though he had hoped to find a peaceful resolution to his problem, he was not above making use of more aggressive measures to get his way. He first had one of his cronies, Louisiana Blue, outfit a radio transmitter on a mutt that he then had infiltrate the Hollands' lab. He then sent Ferrett and Bruno back to the lab to try and muscle the Hollands a second time. This time however, he instructed his men to execute a more permanent solution to the problem should the scientists prove to be uncooperative a second time. They knocked Alec Holland unconscious then strapped a bomb underneath the laboratory work station to destroy the formula. When the bomb exploded, it doused Holland with chemicals and he ran off aflame into the nearby swamps. The chemical bath interacted with the swamp water and local vegetation and what was once Alec Holland was now a hulking mass of plant matter known as the Swamp Thing.

Notes & Trivia

 * The concept of the was developed by writer Len Wein and artist Bernie Wrightson.