Introduced in Swamp Thing (Volume 1) in November 1972, he was created by writer Len Wein and artist Bernie Wrightson.

Matthew Cable is a government agent assigned to protect Alec and Linda Holland as they work on their bio-restorative formula deep in the Louisiana bayou.

Cable fails to save them from the machinations of the Conclave, a secret organization that wants the couple to work for its own ends, and the Hollands are killed.

When the Swamp Thing rises from the bayou, Cable believes it was responsible for the Hollands' deaths and sets out to avenge his friends' murders.

[3] Eventually, Cable manages to send Arcane back to Hell, but at the cost of the effects of the car crash catching up with him, and only after Arcane molested and killed Abigail (the plot point, incidentally, that resulted in DC dropping the Comics Code Authority seal on Swamp Thing for good with issue #31 and Swamp Thing Annual #2, adding instead the words "Sophisticated Suspense" across the top).

Still possessing enough power to repair one body and not wanting to live, Cable manages to bring Abigail back to life (her soul is later rescued from Hell by the Swamp Thing).

[4] After lessons learned within the Dreaming while comatose (and in an effort to help Abigail move on), an emaciated Cable rises one final time and destroys the machinery sustaining him, thus ending his life.

He dies twice more during the series, once as a result of being tricked by the Coyote and for the final time by an accidental shot from Lucien during a fight with Echo and Eblis O'Shaughnessy.

After Cable's death, Daniel enlists Tethys, a deep-sea creature who dreamed of the surface world,[9] to serve him as a White Raven.