Critical Approaches To Horror Comic Books Red Ink in The Gutter

‘This collection on horror comics does the essential work of bridging the
gap between the well-beaten path of EC horror and the much-needed study
of independent and international horror. The dominant orientation in the
chapters is effectively based in cultural studies but they also make over-
tures to other theories – demonstrating an aspect of this collection that is
very welcome. Finally, Darowski and Pagnoni Berns’ organizational scheme
highlights a rightly expanding focus of horror comics studies (on race and
gender) and enlarges the general discussion in a truly important way (with
horror and philosophy). Scary good and strongly recommended.’
– Terrence Wandtke, author of The Comics Scare Returns: The
Contemporary Resurgence of Horror Comics, 2018
Critical Approaches to Horror
Comic Books
This volume explores how horror comic books have negotiated with the
social and cultural anxieties framing a specifc era and geographical space.
Paying attention to academic gaps in comics’ scholarship, these chapters
engage with the study of comics from varying interdisciplinary perspectives,
such as Marxism; posthumanism; and theories of adaptation, sociology,
existentialism, and psychology. Without neglecting the classical era, the
book presents case studies ranging from the mainstream comics to the
independents, simultaneously offering new critical insights on zones of
vacancy within the study of horror comic books while examining a global
selection of horror comics from countries such as India (City of Sorrows),
France (Zombillénium), Spain (Creepy), Italy (Dylan Dog), and Japan (Tanabe
Gou’s Manga Adaptations of H. P. Lovecraft), as well as the United States.
One of the frst books centered exclusively on close readings of an
under-studied feld, this collection will have an appeal to scholars and
students of horror comics studies, visual rhetoric, philosophy, sociology,
media studies, pop culture, and flm studies. It will also appeal to anyone
interested in comic books in general and to those interested in investigating
the intricacies of the horror genre.
John Darowski is a PhD candidate in Comparative Humanities at the

University of Louisville, USA. He has edited an essay collection on Superman
adaptations (2021) and has published several essays on the history of
superheroes.
Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns (PhD) works at the Universidad de Buenos

Aires (UBA), Argentina. He teaches courses on international horror flms
and has authored a book about Spanish horror TV series Historias para no
Dormir (2019) and has edited a book on James Wan’s flms.
Routledge Advances in Comics Studies
Edited by Randy Duncan, Henderson State University
Matthew J. Smith, Radford University
Batman and the Multiplicity of Identity

The Contemporary Comic Book Superhero as Cultural Nexus
Jeffrey A. Brown
Contexts of Violence in Comics

Edited by Ian Hague, Ian Horton and Nina Mickwitz
Representing Acts of Violence in Comics

Edited by Ian Hague, Ian Horton and Nina Mickwitz
Performativity, Cultural Construction, and the Graphic Narrative

Edited by Leigh Anne Howard and Susanna Hoeness-Krupsaw
Immigrants and Comics

Graphic Spaces of Remembrance, Transaction, and Mimesis
Edited by Nhora Lucía Serrano
Superheroes and Excess

A Philosophical Adventure
Edited by Jamie Brassett and Richard Reynolds
Vertigo Comics
British Creators, US Editors, and the Making of a Transformational
Imprint
Isabelle Licari-Guillaume
Critical Approaches to Horror Comic Books

Red Ink in the Gutter
Edited by John Darowski and Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns
For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.

com/Routledge-Advances-in-Comics-Studies/book-series/RACS
Critical Approaches to Horror
Comic Books
Red Ink in the Gutter
Edited by John Darowski and Fernando

Gabriel Pagnoni Berns
First published 2023
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa
business
© 2023 selection and editorial matter, John Darowski and Fernando
Gabriel Pagnoni Berns; individual chapters, the contributors
The right of John Darowski and Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns
to be identifed as the authors of the editorial material, and of the
authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance
with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act
1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
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explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Darowski, John, editor. | Pagnoni Berns, Fernando Gabriel,
1975– editor.
Title: Critical approaches to horror comic books : red ink in the
gutter / edited by John Darowski and Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni
Berns.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York : Routledge, 2023. | Series:
Routledge advances in comics book studies | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifers: LCCN 2022006759 (print) | LCCN 2022006760 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781032195704 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032199443
(paperback) | ISBN 9781003261551 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Horror comic books, strips, etc.—History and
criticism. | Comic books, strips, etc.—Social aspects. | Horror in
literature. | Horror in art.
Classifcation: LCC PN6714 .C75 2023 (print) | LCC PN6714
(ebook) | DDC 741.5/9—dc23/eng/20220321
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022006759
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022006760
ISBN: 978-1-032-19570-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-19944-3 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-26155-1 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003261551
Typeset in Sabon
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Contents
Acknowledgments x
List of Figures xi
List of Contributors xii
1 Introduction 1
JOHN DAROWSKI AND FERNANDO GABRIEL PAGNONI BERNS
PART I
Horror Comic Books in a Socio-Historical Context 7
2 From Caligari to Wertham: When EC’s Horror

Comics Feared for Their Own Survival 9
RUI LOPES
3 “Men Have Sentenced This Fen to Death”:

Marvel’s Man-Thing and the Liberation Politics
of the 1970s 22
HENRY KAMERLING
4 The Horrors Haunting the City of Joy: Analyzing

the Traumas of the Counterinsurgency in City of
Sorrows 35
DEBADITYA MUKHOPADHYAY
5 Spanish Creepy: Historical Amnesia in “Las mil

caras de Jack el destripador” 50
FERNANDO GABRIEL PAGNONI BERNS
viii Contents
PART II
Race and Gender in Horror Comic Books 63
6 “A Sight to Dream of, Not to Tell!”: Orality and

Power in Marguerite Bennett and
Ariela Kristantina’s InSEXts 65
LAUREN CHOCHINOV
7 Gendered Violence and the Abject Body in Junji

Itō’s Tomie 78
TOSHA R. TAYLOR
8 Lily Renée’s The Werewolf Hunter and the Secret

Origin of Horror Comics 89
BLAIR DAVIS
9 The Wolf Only Needs to Find You Once: Food,

Feeding, and Fear in the Dark Fairy Tales of
Emily Carroll 105
ALEXANDRE DESBIENS-BRASSARD AND GABRIELLA COLOMBO
MACHADO
10 Borderland Werewolves: The Horrifc Representation

of the U.S.–Mexico Border in Feeding Ground 116
ANNA MARTA MARINI
PART III
Adaptation in Horror Comic Books 129
11 Flesh and Blood: Zombies, Vampires, and George A.

Romero’s Transmedia Expansion of the Dead 131
TREVOR SNYDER
12 An Alien World: A Comic Book Adaptation of

The Willows by Algernon Blackwood 143
YELENA NOVITSKAYA
13 Horror Transformed: Tanabe Gou’s Manga

Adaptations of H. P. Lovecraft 156
ANDREW SMITH
14 Mutant Gothic: Marvel’s Mainstreaming of

Horror in Uncanny X-Men 167
JOSEPH J. DAROWSKI
Contents ix
15 Franken-Castle: Monster Hunters, Monstrous
Masculinities, and the Punisher 179
JOHN DAROWSKI
PART IV
Horror Comic Books and Philosophy 193
16 Dylan Dog’s Nightmares: The Unheimlich

Experience of the Doppelgänger in Dylan
Dog’s World 195
MARCO FAVARO
17 Messages of Death: Haunted Media in “Kaine:

Endorphins – Between Life and Death” 214
INGRID BUTLER
18 Heterotopia and Horror at Show’s End 223

CHRISTINA M. KNOPF
19 The Hell Economics of Zombillénium 235

ANNICK PELLEGRIN
Index 248
Acknowledgments
John Darowski: To my parents, for their constant love and support. And to
Kerry Soper, Carl Sederholm, and Charlotte Stanford, who introduced me to
the studies of comic books and horror.
Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns: To Nestor for his unwavering support.
To Eduardo, Emiliano and Elsa for being such good friends. To Maribel
Ortiz for her generosity. And, as always, to my mother Irma and my sister
Fabiana. And thanks John Darowski for being such an amazing coeditor!
Figures
4.1 The terrifying image of the Mahabhairavi 38

4.2 Niyogi reveals the skinned corpse of Basab Roy 43
5.1 The bloody corpse of one of Jack’s victims horrifes and
excites as well 56
5.2 Even rich women can be the new Jack the Ripper 57
5.3 The corruption of the common citizen continues here with
the old landlady 58
8.1 “The Werewolf Hunter” frst page 92
8.2 The Witch Queen and her human puppets 97
8.3 The evil Spider Woman 98
8.4 A mysterious woman rides moonbeams down to earth 100
16.1 Dylan faces the personifcation of nightmare 197
16.2 Nightmares are bulletproof! 198
16.3 Dylan Dog and his loyal assistant Groucho 199
16.4 A familiar scene: Dylan is fghting a zombie 201
16.5 Dylan talks with his trusted friend, Inspector Bloch, while
a witch fies above their heads 203
16.6 Dylan meets his Doppelgänger! 205
16.7 Xabaras, between good and evil, life and death 207
Contributors
Ingrid Butler is a second-year Master of Library and Information Science

student at the University of Missouri, Columbia, USA. She holds an
MPhil in Education (specializing in children’s and young adult literature)
from the University of Cambridge and a Bachelor of Art in English from
the University of California, Davis, USA.
Lauren Chochinov is an instructor at Sheridan College in Ontario, Canada
and holds a PhD in Medieval Literature from the University of Edinburgh.
She is a member of the Comics Studies Society and the Canadian Society
for the Study of Comics and has recently presented papers on queer repre-
sentation in comic books and popular culture at both annual conferences.
Gabriella Colombo Machado is a PhD candidate in English Studies at the
University of Montreal. Her dissertation is on the Politics of Female
Friendship in Contemporary Speculative Fiction Across Media. She
earned an MA in Comparative Literature from Western University and
an MA in Literatures in English from VU University Amsterdam. Her
research interests are feminist theory, care ethics, science fction, and
graphic novels.
John Darowski is a PhD candidate in Comparative Humanities at the Uni-
versity of Louisville, Louisville, USA. He has edited an essay collection on
Superman adaptations (McFarland) and has published several essays on
the history of superheroes.
Joseph J. Darowski teaches English at Brigham Young University, Utah,
USA. He is a member of the editorial board of The Journal of Popu-
lar Culture and has previously edited essay collections on the ages of
Superman, Wonder Woman, the X-Men, the Avengers, Iron Man, the
Incredible Hulk, the Flash, the Justice League, and Black Panther. Addi-
tionally, he has coauthored with Kate Darowski volumes on the television
series Cheers and Frasier.
Blair Davis is Associate Professor of Media and Cinema Studies in the
College of Communication at DePaul University in Chicago, Illinois,
List of Contributors xiii
USA. His books include The Battle for the Bs: 1950s Hollywood and
the Rebirth of Low-Budget Cinema (Rutgers UP, 2012); Movie Com-
ics: Page to Screen/Screen to Page (Rutgers UP, 2017); and Comic Book
Movies (Rutgers UP, 2018). His newest book, Of Comics and Women:
Characters, Creators, Culture, 1935–1960, was published by University
of Texas Press in 2021. He has written about comics and pop culture
for USA Today, The Washington Post, and Ms. Magazine and has writ-
ten comics-related essays in numerous anthologies, including Comics and
Pop Culture (2019), Working Class Comic Book Heroes (2018), and the
Eisner-Award-winning The Blacker the Ink (2015).
Alexandre Desbiens-Brassard has recently obtained his PhD in Comparative
Literature from the Western University (London, Ontario, Canada). His
doctoral thesis explored the use of monsters to criticize or comment on
the intersection of scientifc research and capitalism. He also earned his
MA in Comparative Canadian Literature from the University of Sher-
brooke (Québec, Canada).
Marco Favaro obtained his doctorate in Human Sciences and Cultural Stud-
ies at the Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg in cooperation with the phi-
losophy department at the Università degli Studi di Verona. His thesis, The
Mask of the Antihero, defnes the structures of the contemporary super-
hero’s genre and its implicit philosophical concepts. In 2020 and 2021, he
worked as Lecturer at Bamberg University, presenting a seminar on the
“antihero.” Many of his numerous conference presentations, courses, and
papers are available online on: https://bamberg.academia.edu/MFavaro.
Henry Kamerling is Senior Instructor in the History Department at Seattle
University, Seattle, Washington, USA. He is a historian of crime and pun-
ishment in American history and a scholar of nineteenth- and twentieth-
century social and cultural history. Kamerling is also the author of Capital
and Convict: Race, Region, and Punishment in Post-Civil War America
(University of Virginia Press, 2017). Dr Kamerling is currently working
on a manuscript examining the pantheon of Marvel’s comic book mon-
sters from the 1970s.
Christina M. Knopf (PhD) is Associate Professor of Communication and
Media Studies at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Cortland.
Dr Knopf’s teaching and research broadly focuses on the intersections
of popular culture and political communication. She is Distinguished
Research Fellow of the Eastern Communication Association.
Rui Lopes is Lecturer at Birkbeck, University of London, and Assistant
Researcher at Lisbon’s Institute of Contemporary History, NOVA-FCSH,
specializing in Cold War visual culture.
Anna Marta Marini is a PhD Research Fellow at Universidad de Alcalá,
where she works on the representation of border-crossing and the “other
xiv List of Contributors
side” in American cinema. Her main research interests are: critical dis-
course analysis related to violence; representations of the US borderlands
and Mexican American heritage; otherness re/construction in flm and
comics, particularly in the noir, horror, and weird western genres.
Debaditya Mukhopadhyay is Assistant Professor of English at Manikchak
College, affliated with the University of Gour Banga, West Bengal, India.
He has contributed chapters to the collections entitled Parenting Through
Pop Culture (McFarland, 2020), Excavating Indiana Jones (McFarland,
2020), Critical Insights: Life of Pi (Salem Press, 2020), and Children and
Childhood in the Works of Stephen King (Lexington, 2020).
Yelena Novitskaya is Archives and Special Collections Librarian and
Assistant Professor at the City University of New York. She is also a
book editor and a translator specializing in cross-disciplinary studies,
twentieth-century Russian literary heritage, scholarly works on art his-
tory, and philological studies. Her previous publications include essays by
Virginia Woolf and Oscar Wilde and books by Hugh Lofting and other
authors translated from English into Russian. Weird and horror literature
is one of her special interests.
Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns (PhD in Cinema Studies, PhD candidate
in History) works at the Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA). He teaches
courses on international horror flm and has authored a book about Span-
ish horror TV series Historias para no Dormir (Universidad de Cádiz)
and has edited a book on James Wan’s flms and one on Japanese horror
culture (Lexington).
Annick Pellegrin graduated from The University of Sydney after completing
a doctoral thesis comparing representations of Latin America in Franco-
Belgian, Mexican, and Argentinian comics. She is a columns and articles
editor for the Comics Forum and sits on the editorial board of Studies in
Comics. Her research has been published in French, English, and Spanish
and she works as a Sessional Lecturer in the Department of French, His-
panic and Italian Studies at The University of British Columbia.
Andrew Smith (PhD in Literature) works for the University of Central Flor-
ida in the Department of Writing and Rhetoric. His dissertation, What
Do Manga Depict?, attempted to bridge the gap between general, out-
dated visions of Japanese manga and draw modern critical attention to
one of the largest comic cultures in the world. His interests include comic
studies, visual arts, video games, horror, Victorian literature, and Asian
literature.
Trevor Snyder is Instructor in the Department of English at Virginia Tech
University in Blacksburg, Virginia. Since 2015, he has co-hosted a pod-
cast concerning the cultural impact of X-Men comics, and in 2019 he
delivered the presentation “The Darkest Knight: Batman as Gotham’s
List of Contributors xv
Greatest Villain” at Bowling Green State University’s Batman in Popular
Culture Conference.
Tosha R. Taylor is a researcher in horror flm and comics who teaches in
the greater New York area. She has published a number of book chapters
and articles on horror and superhero comics, with a particular focus on
representations of gender and otherness. She holds a PhD from Lough-
borough University, where she studied the intersection of problematised
“American” identity and captivity in horror flms.
1 Introduction
John Darowski and Fernando
Gabriel Pagnoni Berns
Horror is a universal genre. Every culture throughout history has had a

storytelling tradition of terrifying thrills and frightening chills. Unlike most
other genres, horror is not tied to a narrative formula but defned by its
emotional effect. Fred Botting describes this genre’s negative aesthetic as:
“Bound up with feelings of revulsion, disgust, and loathing, horror induces
states of shuddering or paralysis, the loss of one’s faculties, particularly con-
sciousness and speech, or a general physical powerlessness and mental con-
fusion” (185). What a society deems scary constantly transforms and adapts
to address the cultural anxieties framing a specifc era and geography. As
such, horror, much like its related genre of the gothic, must be “a highly
unstable genre” that is “pliable and malleable” (Hogle 1–2). Since it is an
affective genre, its fexibility allows it to easily mix, cross, and blend with
other genres so that elements of horror may appear almost anywhere.
The appeal of horror is an intriguing contradiction. Noël Carroll sums
up this paradox in A Philosophy of Horror (1990) as “1) how can anyone
be frightened by what they know does not exist and 2) why would any-
one be interested in horror, since being horrifed is unpleasant?” (8). As to
the frst, at a basic level, horror is part of the human condition. The feel-
ings of disgust, revulsion, or abjection most commonly rely on a materi-
ality that places before the audience something from which they want to
avert their gaze, which is best accomplished through a visual medium like
comic books, flm, and television. The most powerful images that evoke a
negative emotional response are those that involve bodily harm, which can
range from violence to decay, because it is a vicarious reminder of mortality.
On a more existential level, horror can reveal the inherent contradictions
and instability of a society. And yet, and this is to Carroll’s latter question,
horror can subversively reinforce social mores. These moral messages can
be made through “an ironic distance that would distinguish the ‘preachies’
from actual preaching” (Whitted 84). The audience is then able to experi-
ence the thrill of breaking cultural taboos and the catharsis of witnessing
the perpetrator be punished. As Jeffrey A. Brown puts it: “Horror is meant
to be frightening and disruptive even if it ultimately manages to reestablish
the status quo however precariously” (197). This is not to say that horror
DOI: 10.4324/9781003261551-1
2 Darowski and Pagnoni Berns
presents a simple Manichean paradigm. In recent decades, postmodern hor-
ror has seen a more nihilistic approach where good people are harmed and
evil is left unpunished.
Horror comic books have had a turbulent history, waxing and waning
in popularity according to changing cultural anxieties; at times, they have
been a source of that anxiety. The historiography of American horror comic
books has been well documented. Mike Benton’s Horror Comics: An Illus-
trated History (1991) and Richard Arndt’s Horror Comics in Black and
White: A History and Catalogue, 1964–2004 (2014) offer guides and over-
views to the many titles devoted to the genre. The Horror Comic Never
Dies: A Grisly History (2019) by Michael Walton presents a historical anal-
ysis of the near-80 years of the genre’s publication. The Horror Comics:
Fiends, Freaks, and Fantastic Creatures, 1940s–1980s (2014) by William
Schoell gives a more in-depth examination of the frst half of that timeline
while Comic Scare Returns: The Contemporary Resurgence of Horror Com-
ics (2019) by Terrance R. Wandtke devotes itself to analysis of the latter
half. Particular attention is made to one of the most signifcant publishers
of horror in Qiana Whitted’s EC Comics: Race, Shock, and Social Protest
(2019), which examines how EC Comics engaged with the prejudices and
social issues of the early 1950s through subversive storytelling strategies.
A history of British horror comic books has also been developed. Martin
Barker’s A Haunt of Fears: The Strange History of the British Horror Com-
ics Campaign (2014) examines the campaign against horror comics in Great
Britain in the early 1950s, mirroring the similar campaign in the United
States spearheaded by Dr. Fredric Wertham. Gothic for Girls: Misty and
British Comics (2019) by Julia Round brings into focus the production and
cultural context of the popular 1970’s series Misty, which was specifcally
targeted to young female readers.
While the histories of horror comics in non-English countries still need
to be written, having a historiography established offers the opportunity to
apply other theoretical approaches. Gothic in Comics and Graphic Novels
(2014) by Julia Round applies not only historicism but also narratology and
cultural studies to both American and British comic books. Scott Bukat-
man’s Hellboy’s World: Comics and Monsters on the Margins (2016) is a
study focused on one creator, Mike Mignola, and his most famous creation,
Hellboy. Monstrous Women in Comics (2020), edited by Samantha Langs-
dale and Elizabeth Rae Coody, applies gender studies to a variety of genres
with an emphasis on horror comic books. Though all the books listed before
only represent a sample and are also not meant to preclude the essays pub-
lished in various journals on the topic, there does appear to be a perpetual
American- and Anglo-centrism within comic book studies.
There are three main areas in the study of horror comic books and
graphic novels which require academic attention: frst, a lack of close read-
ings analyzing the many meanings and themes within a particular work or
by specifc creators from an interdisciplinary perspective; second, too much
Introduction 3
focus on specifc periods in the historiography, such as the classic boom era
in the early 1950s, which marginalizes other periods; and third, the under-
representation of non-English texts. This edited collection addresses these
issues and will fll in many gaps with content aimed not only at various
eras but also at geographies. Though the majority of essays focus on Ameri-
can publications, attention is divided between mainstream and independ-
ent series while also providing ample analysis of diverse titles published in
Spain, France, Italy, India, and Japan. These essays apply a variety of inter-
disciplinary perspectives to the study of horror comics, varying from post-
humanism, politics, and psychology to adaptation studies, gender studies,
and economic theory. This volume thus offers new critical insights address-
ing zones of vacancy within comic book studies.
The frst section, “Horror Comic Books in a Socio-Historical Context,”
investigates how the horror comic genre taps into its cultural situation by
encoding and negotiating societal fears, anxieties, and national traumas. As
such, these comics address readers with depictions of monstrosity and hor-
ror which allegorize conficts and times of crisis. The section opens with
Rui Lopes’ “From Caligari to Wertham: When EC’s Horror Comics Feared
for Their Own Survival.” Lopes makes a close reading of two classic EC’s
horror comics to analyze how the Red Scare and the moral panics regard-
ing horror comics are addressed, revealing a self-conscious attitude about
the impeding and potential death of horror comics in the 1950s. Henry
Kamerling’s “‘Men have Sentenced this Fen to Death’: Marvel’s Man-Thing
and the Liberation Politics of the 1970s” traces how the countercultural
and leftist ideas delineating part of the American 1970s, including the green
agenda, are metaphorized into the monstrous body of Marvel’s bog man,
the Man-Thing. Not only the monstrous nature of the green creature but
also his adventures tapped into an effervescent climate of anti-bourgeois
culture. In “The Horrors Haunting the City of Joy: Analyzing the Trau-
mas of the Counterinsurgency in City of Sorrows,” Debaditya Mukhopad-
hyay addresses the fact that Indian horror comics mostly eschew talking
about national issues, with City of Sorrows being an exception. The story
offers a remarkable portrayal of real-life horrors from 1970’s counterinsur-
gency movements and their lingering trauma. Closing the section, Fernando
Gabriel Pagnoni Berns’ “Spanish Creepy: Historical Amnesia in ‘Las mil
caras de Jack el destripador’ ” investigates how one of the most overlooked
periods of Spain’s history, “la movida,” is refected, through a dark glass,
in the eternal return of Jack the Ripper, a metaphor for the end of history
dominating the country in the frst half of the 1980s.
The next section, “Race and Gender in Horror Comic Books,” explores
the horror comic genre and its monsters form an intersectional perspec-
tive with an emphasis on issues of race and gender, offering an analysis on
the processes of marginalization that defnes monstrosity. Lauren Chochi-
nov’s “‘A Sight to Dream of, Not to Tell!’: Orality and Power in Margue-
rite Bennett and Ariela Kristantina’s InSEXts” investigates forms of female
empowerment and the feminine voice. Drawing on Gothic inspirations
to subvert expectations regarding vampirism and body horror, the comic
defes Victorian ideologies pertaining to motherhood, marriage, and sexu-
ality. Tosha R. Taylor’s “Gendered Violence and the Abject Body in Junji
Itō’s Tomie” explores Itō’s horror manga and its questions about the nature
of patriarchal violence, invoking popular discourses of such violence while
complicating victim/villain dichotomies via body horror and grotesque
abjection. Blair Davis’s “Lily Renée’s The Werewolf Hunter and the Secret
Origin of Horror Comics” brings from obscurity one of the frst female art-
ists of horror comics, Lily Renée, and explores how her infuence is felt in
the period of classic horror in the 1940s. Giving visibility to female agency,
Renée’s oeuvre lies at the roots of the horror comics’ phenomenon. Gender
issues are central in Alexandre Desbiens-Brassard and Gabriella Colombo
Machado’s “The Wolf Only Needs to Find You Once: Food, Feeding, and
Fear in the Dark Fairy Tales of Emily Carroll.” Through an interdiscipli-
nary investigation that unites food studies and fairy tale studies, the authors
address the interlinking of monstrosity and actions such as feeding, biting,
and chewing as the primary vectors of otherness. Closing this section, Anna
Marta Marini investigates issues of race in “Borderland Werewolves: The
Horrifc Representation of the U.S.–Mexico Border in Feeding Ground.”
Through an interdisciplinary lens linking border studies and horror comics,
the author explores how the werewolf trope is used as an allegory of the
tensions marking the limits dividing the United States from Mexico and the
normal from the abnormal.
“Adaptation in Horror Comic Books” investigates how a source text is
transformed in the passage to illustration and panels, varying from respect-
ful takes on classics by authors such as H. P. Lovecraft to an irreverent
rewriting of the Frankenstein’s myth. Using transmedia studies, Trevor Sny-
der investigates one of the most overlooked facets in horror master George
Romero’s body of work: his comic books. In “Flesh and Blood: Zombies,
Vampires, and George A. Romero’s Transmedia Expansion of the Dead,”
Snyder analyzes how Romero continues and expands his “living dead”
universe in the comic books’ medium. In “An Alien World: A Comic Book
Adaptation of The Willows by Algernon Blackwood,” Yelena Novitskaya
explores how a comic book’s adaptation of Blackwood’s novella bleeds
into H. P. Lovecraft’s mythology, producing a complex text that taps into
the imaginative universes of both authors. Andrew Smith’s “Horror Trans-
formed: Tanabe Gou’s Manga Adaptations of H. P. Lovecraft” offers a new
take on the many diffculties found at the moment of translating Lovecraft’s
horrors into another medium, using Tanabe Gou’s manga as a case study.
“Mutant Gothic: Marvel’s Mainstreaming of Horror in Uncanny X-Men”
from Joseph J. Darowski traces the presence of Gothic horror in the popular
X-Men comics. According the author, the inception of this Gothic thread
is found in Dracula’s frst intervention in the now classic Uncanny X-Men
#159, a story blending superhero tropes with horror. The section closes with
Introduction 5
John Darowski’s “Franken-Castle: Monster Hunters, Monstrous Masculini-
ties, and the Punisher,” an adaptation of ideas and narratives from Mary
Shelley’s immortal novel. This new take revolves around Marvel’s favorite
anti-hero, the Punisher, being turned into one of the most famous anti-
heroes of literature, the Frankenstein monster. This shift emphasizes issues
of monstrosity and toxic masculinity inherent to the Marvel’s character.
At the end, “Horror Comic Books and Philosophy” explores the juncture
between philosophy and comics, offering new insights on the ontology of
horror and being. Marco Favaro investigates the fgure of the double and
the uncanny in one of the most long-lived – and often overlooked – hor-
ror comic series: Italy’s Dylan Dog. Using Freudian and Jungian concepts,
Favaro analyzes issues of human ontology, the Doppelgänger, and monstros-
ity. In “Messages of Death: Haunted Media in ‘Kaine: Endorphins – Between
Life and Death,’ ” Ingrid Butler offers new readings on the theme of the dou-
ble in relationship with the power of media to (re)create the human identity
in Kaori Yuki’s manga. Drawing from Michel Foucault’s philosophy, Chris-
tina M. Knopf explores issues of homogeneity and difference in her chapter
“Heterotopia and Horror at Show’s End.” Knopf reveals that the circus life
offered by the comic oscillates between transgression and warnings about
the danger of such transgressions through the concept of “freakery.” Closing
the section, Annick Pelligren explores extreme capitalism in the French hor-
ror comic Zombillénium. “The Hell Economics of Zombillénium” takes on
capitalist realism, investigating how the comic allegorizes naturalized forms
of exploitation and abuse in the contemporary world.
Conclusion
Currently, horror comic books are in the midst of a renaissance, a fact which
should not be surprising. For many, the present day is a horror story: politi-
cal crises – both neoliberal and populist – jaded cynicism, terrorism, global
pandemics, ecocide, etc. Horror comic books are only becoming more rel-
evant and successful. Mainstream superhero titles are planting a fag in the
horror landscape, with popular titles such as Marvel Comics’ Immortal
Hulk (Aug. 2018 to Dec. 2021) by writer Al Ewing and penciler Joe Bennet,
DC Comics’ DCeased (July–Dec. 2019) by writer Tom Taylor and penciler
Trevor Hairsine, and DC vs. Vampires (Oct. 2021 to present) by writers
James Tynion IV and Matthew Rosenberg and artist Otto Schmidt. DC
Comics has also found success partnering with author Joe Hill for the Hill
House Comics imprint beginning in December 2019 as well as establishing
the DC Horror imprint as of August 2021. Horror comics are being adapted
as never before, with varying degrees of success, in shows such as The Walk-
ing Dead (2010–2022, AMC) and its spin-offs, Locke and Key (2020 to pre-
sent, Netfix) and Sweet Tooth (2021 to present, Netfix). Horror comics are
also becoming more accessible in a global market. The popular web comic
app WEBTOON has a section devoted to the genre with its most popular
title, Carnby Kim and Youngchan Hwang’s Sweet Home (14 Jan. 2018–29
Sept. 2020), having received over 17 million views. The South Korean televi-
sion adaptation of Sweet Home topped the daily viewing charts in multiple
countries when it premiered on Netfix in December 2020 (Ji-won). Horror
comics are as popular as ever, but their reach into popular culture makes
them present as never before. How they will transform to address the ongo-
ing crises and anxieties only remains to be seen.
Works Cited
Botting, Fred. “Horror.” The Handbook of the Gothic. 2nd ed., edited by Marie
Mulvey-Roberts. New York University Press, 2009, pp. 184–191.
Carroll, Noël. The Philosophy of Horror, or, Paradoxes of the Heart. Routledge,
1990.
Hogle, Jerrold E. “Introduction: The Gothic in Western Culture.” The Cambridge
Companion to Gothic Fiction, edited by Jerrold E. Hogle. Cambridge University
Press, 2002, pp. 1–20.
Ji-won, Kim. “Korean Dramas Growing Popularity on Netfix.” UPI, 29 Janu-
ary 2021, www.upi.com/Entertainment_News/TV/2021/01/29/Korean-dramas-
growing-in-popularity-on-Netfix/3831611936669/. Accessed 1 October 2021.
Whitted, Qiana. EC Comics: Race, Shock, and Social Protest. Rutgers University
Press, 2019.
Part I
Horror Comic Books in a

Socio-Historical Context
2 From Caligari to Wertham
When EC’s Horror Comics
Feared for Their Own Survival
Rui Lopes
EC Comics’ classic horror anthologies The Haunt of Fear (cover dates May/
June 1950 to Nov./Dec. 1954), The Vault of Horror (Apr./May 1950 to Dec.
1954/Jan. 1955), and Tales from the Crypt (Oct./Nov. 1950 to Feb./Mar.
1955), to which can be added the diverse thriller-themed Shock Suspen-
Stories (Feb./Mar. 1952 to Dec. 1954/Jan. 1955), featured several recurring
sources of fear, from vampires and werewolves to ghosts and ghouls.1 Along
with supernatural monsters, much of the horror derived from human ruth-
lessness, presenting seemingly average citizens driven to murder by greed,
lust, revenge, and/or marital strife. Additionally, a prominent source of fear
was fear itself, that is, the probability that actions prompted by unthinking,
unjustifed paranoia and by exaggerated or misdirected panic could ulti-
mately prove themselves more harmful than whatever terror they sought
to placate in the frst place. The villains of the latter stories, then, were not
those perceived by the characters themselves but by the psychological ele-
ments (prejudices, mental illness) and people (fanatics, demagogues) that
exacerbated, manipulated, and exploited their fear.
An analysis of this strand of stories reveals their engagement with two dis-
tinct, if increasingly interconnected, sociopolitical phenomena of the United
States of the early 1950s. One of them is the second Red Scare (1947–1957),
the widespread fear over the possible rise of communist forces in the United
States coupled with the perceived threat of an attack by the Soviet Union.
Cold War geopolitics, most notably the US involvement in the Korean War
(1950–1953), and domestic espionage scandals, particularly the 1951 trial
of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, gave the fear of communism a prominent
place in public imagination. This strain of fear was further exacerbated
by the investigations of the House Un-American Activities Committee
(HUAC), Senator Joseph McCarthy’s accusations of top-level communist
infltration, and the American Legion’s lobbying campaigns, leading to the
practice known as “red-baiting,” that is harassing and persecuting peo-
ple on account of their suspected – or fabricated – communist sympathies
(Schrecker 42–85, 240–65). The other phenomenon was the growing outcry
over comics’ alleged harmful infuence on children, which found expres-
sion in comic-book burnings, boycotts, bans, and publications accusing
DOI: 10.4324/9781003261551-3
10 Rui Lopes
comics of promoting illiteracy and antisocial behavior, including Dr. Fre-
dric Wertham’s sensationalist book Seduction of the Innocent, published on
19 April 1954. While Wertham, a left-leaning psychiatrist, did not link his
campaign against comics to anti-communism, the two causes found com-
mon defenders and argumentative strategies, warning against the erosion
of American values and accusing their critics of fronting for hidden con-
spirators. Notably, both culminated in televised Senate hearings beginning
in April 1954: one to investigate conficting accusations between McCarthy
and the US Army, including the charge that the latter was infltrated by com-
munists (22 April to 17 June) and the other to investigate comics’ potential
impact on juvenile delinquency (21–22 April and 4 June). At the latter, Wer-
tham gave an extensive testimony as an expert witness, using imagery from
EC’s horror titles to sustain his position (Wright 86–108).
Close readings of the tales “You, Murderer” (Shock SuspenStories #14
[Apr./May 1954]), written by Otto Binder and drawn by Bernard Krigstein,
and “The Prude” from the fnal issue of The Haunt of Fear, #28 (Nov./Dec.
1954), written by Carl Wessler with art by Graham Ingles, demonstrate that
EC developed horror narratives that served to address the Red Scare and
eventually applied them to the moral panic over comics. EC thus ultimately
came to fctionalize the fear of its own extinction, appealing to readers’
identifcation with the publisher’s anxiety.
“You, Murderer”: McCarthyism as Expressionistic

Nightmare
EC’s horror comics were shaped by an antiestablishment slant from the
onset. Founded in 1944 by one of the medium’s pioneers, editor Max
Gaines, EC (originally Educational Comics) had frst been geared toward
wholesome, patriotic, and pedagogical publications such as Picture Stories
from the Bible (#1–3 [1944–1946]). Following Gaines’ death in a boating
accident on 20 August 1947, EC was inherited by Gaines’ 25-year-old son,
William “Bill” Gaines. Bill was initially disinterested in the comics’ business,
in whose studios he had been subjected to violence and humiliation by his
father. Soon, however, he developed a prolifc partnership with the editor,
writer, and artist Al Feldstein, co-plotting hundreds of stories as part of a
radical shift in content, starting with a move toward crime, romance, and
western series and with a change to a more commercially appealing com-
pany name, Entertaining Comics. In 1950, EC launched its New Trend line
of horror, crime, war, and science fction anthologies. Aimed at teenagers
rather than at the prototypical 8-year-old readers, New Trend comics stood
out not only due to their pool of talented artists with innovative styles,
but also because of their penchant for grisly, tongue-in-cheek tales desa-
cralizing the Cold War consensus and institutions like the military, police,
marriage, and racial segregation (Geissman 8–299; Jacobs 25–88; Whitted
3–24). Although not entirely devoid of ethnic stereotypes (its voodoo stories
From Caligari to Wertham 11
betrayed an ethnocentric depiction of otherized cultures) or of misogynistic
tropes (the gold digger, the femme fatale, and the nagging wife), those com-
ics tended to combine a black sense of humor with a liberal social sensibility,
vigorously condemning mob violence and bigotry. While their caustic spirit
upset parents’ associations, it appealed to young audiences and proved to
be highly infuential in popular culture. A relatively small publisher with
a weak distribution system, the most EC ever sold of each horror comic
was about 400,000, half of the sales fgures of the average issue published
by the leading Dell (Gabilliet 39–40). Yet, its output inspired a plethora of
derivative series and a prominent place in the debate over comics’ nefarious
infuence.
Many of the Gaines/Feldstein horror stories – whose formula was often
emulated by other writers – involved abusive authority fgures receiving a
vicious, ironic comeuppance, easily lending themselves to Freudian inter-
pretations about Bill Gaines’ relationship with his father. Yet, it is just as
tempting to read a bitter commentary on McCarthyism in the way they
persistently denounced and/or mocked acts of intolerance. This connection
was not merely allegorical but sometimes quite explicit: for example, “The
Patriots!” (Shock SuspenStories #2 [April/May 1952]) is set at a military
parade for soldiers returning from the Korean War where a mob beats a
sneering man to death after having mistaken him for a communist for failing
to take off his hat in front of the fag. The fnal twist comes when the man
turns out to be a disfgured, blind war veteran himself (19–24).2 Co-plotted
by Gaines and Feldstein, with pencils and inks by Jack Davis, the story
not only denounced the undiscriminating rage of the era’s anticommunist
brand of jingoism, but it also linked it to racist xenophobia, as the mob’s
leaders assumed the man was foreign based on his nose and skin tone (21).3
Although unsubtle, “The Patriots!” is not without a subtext since the notion
that anticommunism could mobilize the masses toward displaying lethal
violence against foreigners ultimately mirrored the United States’ ongoing
mobilization for the Korean War on display in the parade. While the latter
was not necessarily challenged by this juxtaposition, the war was at the very
least presented as fueling hate crimes at home.
The depiction of the Red Scare as a dangerous trigger for misdirected
violence was given a more cynical spin in “You, Murderer,” where a stage
hypnotist, Professor Galby, hypnotizes the unnamed protagonist into beat-
ing to death Galby’s wife’s lover with an old, rusting chain. Acknowledg-
ing that hypnotism “can never force a subject to violate his own moral
code . . . commit a crime he does not himself desire to commit,” Galby
explicitly announces the need to disguise the murder’s motive, tricking the
protagonist. The villainous hypnotist therefore tells him that the victim,
John Storch, is actually “a dangerous criminal . . . a spy . . . a communist
spy . . . a saboteur.” The improvisational fow of Galby’s words suggests a
hierarchy, as if each new label is increasingly hateful. More than ideologi-
cal antagonism, the villain utilizes fear, explaining to the protagonist that
12 Rui Lopes
Storch is “assembling an atomic bomb” in order “to blow up the entire
downtown area of this city” so that “thousands upon thousands of people
will be killed.” Twisting conventionally positive values into a justifcation
for an unsympathetic act, Galby adds: “It is your patriotic duty to kill him
with the chain! . . . It will be a noble deed! You’ll save your friends . . .
countless innocent lives . . . Gain honor . . . respect. You’ll be a hero!” (19).
Unlike in “The Patriots!”, here anticommunist patriotism is no longer just
a problematic idea with unintended consequences but a weapon effectively
wielded by a callous manipulator pursuing personal aims – that is, Galby’s
marital revenge – and framing someone else for the deed: “You’ll be killing
my wife’s lover for me . . . leaving your fngerprints on the chain . . . going
to the electric chair in my place!” (20). Despite the conjugal motivation and
the literal use of hypnotism, it is not hard to discern a veiled reference to
Joseph McCarthy affrming his personal power by directing anticommunist
fear against his adversaries, a tactic on growing public display by the time
the story was published in early 1954.4
A set of key choices by writer Otto Binder, artist Bernie Krigstein, and
colorist Marie Severin added extra layers to an otherwise linear six-page
narrative. One concerns the framing device of simultaneously illustrating
the entire story from the protagonist’s viewpoint while having the narra-
tion speak to him through the second-person singular. This creates a double
identifcation in the readers: by accessing the action through a subjective
pair of eyes and seemingly being addressed by the text, readers are immersed
in the protagonist’s position rather than witnessing his tragedy from an out-
sider’s vantage point. The horror of the murder scene (21) therefore stems
from: a) graphically visualizing a brutal murder; b) knowing the victim is
innocent of the murder’s justifcation; c) facing the shock of the victim’s
lover, Irma Galby, who walks in, screams, and faints; d) feeling trapped in
the protagonist’s body without control over his unfair actions; e) knowing
the protagonist is putting himself in a position where he will be framed (by
leaving fngerprints on the chain) and probably convicted with a death pen-
alty; and f) being aware that such a vicious situation draws on real-world
attitudes, associating the ensuing unpleasantries with the existing manipula-
tion of aggressive hatred and suspicion of communists.
Marie Severin emphasized the frst and fnal elements through visual puns.
In the panel where the protagonist, killing John Storch, swears at him and
calls him “red” while the narration describes the illusion (“You fnished
your job as a loyal American . . . beating the bloody chain down”), she
colored the protagonist’s hands, clothes, and chain in an unnaturalistic red,
in contrast to John and Irma, whose skin and clothes retained realistic hues.
Thus, contrary to the protagonist’s words, the color red is not linked to a
communist enemy agent but to the vehicles of American bigotry. The fol-
lowing panel, depicting John bleeding on the foor, switches metaphors: the
whole panel is now colored in red, thus illustrating not only the narration
(“the thing on the foor was nothing but a mass of oozing scarlet pulp”),
but also the notion that the protagonist is possessed by uncontrollable rage,
literalizing the common expression “seeing red” (21).
The ending conveys that the narrator was Professor Galby all along,
talking near the protagonist’s bed the day after the murder, so that the
narration retroactively sounds like the villain bragging about his triumph
and the visuals like fashbacks taking place within the protagonist’s mind.
This late revelation places readers in an even more manipulated position,
which furthers the identifcation with the hypnotized protagonist. Driving
home the point that the readers themselves could be targets of jingoistic
propaganda, the penultimate panel is a close-up of the hypnotist’s right
hand pointing in the direction of the protagonist/reader in a way evocative
of Uncle Sam in the iconic World War I “I Want You for U.S. Army” recruit-
ment poster. In the fnal panel, Galby stares in the direction of the “fourth
wall” and asks “Don’t you remember me?” as if daring readers to search
their memories for the sources of their manipulation (22).
Finally, an additional layer is brought about by the comic’s allusions to
Robert Wiene’s classic of German expressionist cinema The Cabinet of
Dr. Caligari (1920).That flm’s central plot concerns the titular stage hypnotist
sending out a hypnotized somnambulist, Cesare, to commit crimes for him,
including murder, in the fctional city of Holstenwall. Besides modeling Galby
after Caligari’s physiognomy and facial features, Bernie Krigstein’s artwork
appears to channel the flm’s nightmarish, angular set design, an intertextual
nod underlined by the opening splash’s signature as “Dr. Caligari Krigstein”
(17). Asked if he had emulated the movie in a later career interview, Krigstein
claimed the connection was looser: “No, it was just that I felt that there is
a similarity of genre, that’s all. Both very weird, and rather expressionistic”
(15). Nevertheless, the description of the flm’s visuals in Siegfried Kracauer’s
seminal study From Caligari to Hitler (1947) closely applies to “You, Mur-
derer,” particularly to the frst couple of panels on page 22:
the canvases of CALIGARI abounded in complexes of jagged, sharp-

pointed forms strongly reminiscent of gothic patterns. . . . With its
oblique chimneys on pell-mell roofs, its windows in the form of arrows
or kites and its treelike arabesques that were threats rather than trees,
Holstenwall resembled those visions of unheard-of cities which the
painter Lyonell Feiniger evoked through his edgy, crystalline compo-
sitions. In addition, the ornamental system in CALIGARI expanded
through space, annulling its conventional aspect by means of painted
shadows in disharmony with the lighting effects, and zigzag delinea-
tions designed to efface all rules of perspective.
(68–9)
Likewise, Severin’s palette often matched the movie’s recurrent dyes by

drenching entire panels in shades of blue or orange, along with the afore-
mentioned red one.
14 Rui Lopes
The most provocative aspect, however, was the comic’s very departure
from this source of inspiration. According to Kracauer, The Cabinet of Dr.
Caligari had originally been written by the pacifsts Hans Janowitz and Carl
Mayer as “an outspoken revolutionary story” half-intentionally stigmatiz-
ing “the omnipotence of a state authority manifesting itself in universal con-
scription and declarations of war,” creating Cesare “with the dim design
of portraying the common man who, under the pressure of compulsory
military service, is drilled to kill and to be killed” (64–5). This intent had
then allegedly been perverted by Wiene’s fnal product, which had bracketed
the central story – where the hero, Francis, seeks to expose Caligari’s evil
deeds – within a framing device that reveals the story as Francis’ deluded
account. The hero is now shown to be committed to an insane asylum whose
director, played by the same actor as Caligari (Werner Krauss), is actually a
mild-mannered doctor seeking his patient’s cure. Kracauer argued: “While
the original story exposed the madness inherent in authority, Wiene’s CALI-
GARI glorifed authority and convicted its antagonist of madness” (66). If
the recovery of the original script has largely discredited Kracauer’s inter-
pretation of the story’s creative progression (Budd 28–9), “You, Murderer,”
by contrast, does ultimately fulfll the revolutionary potential undermined
by the flm’s epilogue. After all, while the comic’s main story is also a subjec-
tive fashback of a distorted mind, the distortion now stems not from a men-
tal patient unfairly rebelling against a benign authority fgure but from the
authority fgure’s own manipulative actions. Moreover, without a Francis-
like hero/narrator, readers are ushered to identify with the position of the
Cesare-like protagonist, perhaps recognizing themselves as being drilled by
powerful war-mongers into exerting the government’s aggressive agenda,
whether at home or in Korea.
Regardless of this political subtext, the reference to The Cabinet of
Dr. Caligari can be understood as an effort to validate the medium of com-
ics. Biographer Greg Sadowski stresses Krigstein’s commitment to develop
the potential of graphic storytelling, placing himself in a tradition stretch-
ing back to the earliest cave drawings and arguing that the problem with
comics’ legitimation was their mass consumption: “It’s so popular it doesn’t
have artistic respect” (qtd. in 78). It therefore made sense to call back to a
horror flm that had contributed to cinema’s own historical appreciation
as an art form. Such concern was particularly noteworthy at a time when
comics appeared to be under attack and their industry accused of proft-
ing – like Galby – from exploiting insecurities and inciting heinous behavior.
In a 1973 interview, Otto Binder recounted that there “was a period right
around the Senate hearings on comics [in 1954] when you didn’t say what
you wrote for a living,” adding:
I think Wertham knew he could get attention and make money criticiz-
ing comics. Just like McCarthy and the commies. Who was going to
stick up for comics? He probably doesn’t believe a word he said about
comics. . . . God, he got me mad back then. He infuriated the hell out
of me.
(qtd. in Schelly, Otto Binder, 126)
Revealingly, if Prof. Galby/Dr. Caligari shared obvious traits with Sen.

McCarthy, then – in Binder’s view – so did McCarthy share traits with Dr.
Wertham, whose actions apparently weighed heavily on the writer’s mind
at the time.
“The Prude”: EC’s Final Revenge

Anticommunism was explicitly linked to the anti-comics campaign on the
pages of EC comics, even if the company’s satirical bent may have blurred
the message. Issues published in early 1954, including The Haunt of Fear
#26 (Aug./Sept. 1954), Shock SuspenStories #16 (Aug./Sept. 1954), Tales
from the Crypt #43 (Aug./Sept. 1954), and The Vault of Horror #38 (Aug./
Sept. 1954), featured a humorous editorial piece titled “Are You a Red
Dupe?” written by Bill Gaines and EC’s business manager, Lyle Stuart.
A caricature of red-baiting rhetoric, the piece ironically reversed the charges
leveled against comics’ disruptive infuence, claiming instead that “the
group most anxious to destroy comics are the communists!” The text was
accompanied by a short strip drawn by Jack Davis in a highly cartoony style
depicting comics’ censorship – and a publisher’s execution – in Soviet Rus-
sia, as well as a couple of excerpts: one from the newspaper Daily Worker,
identifed as communist between brackets, attacking comics for “brutalizing
American youth, the better to prepare them for military service in our gov-
ernment’s aims of world domination”; the other by cultural critic Gershon
Legman – mistakenly identifed as Wertham’s ghost writer – warning that
“fantasy violence” would siphon off children’s “resistance against society,
and prevent revolution.” In a tone spoofng over-the-top propaganda, the
editorial claimed that “there are some people in America who would like
to censor . . . who would like to suppress comics” – the dot-dot-dot ellipsis
suggesting that critics’ euphemistic language hid a call for censorship. The
piece bombastically concludes:
So the next time some joker gets up at a P.T.A. meeting, or starts jabber-
ing about the ‘naughty comic books’ at your local candy store, give him
the once-over. We’re not saying he is a communist! He may be innocent
of the whole thing! He may be a dupe! . . . It’s just that he’s swallowed
the red bait.
Gaines, Stewart 1
In the context of EC’s history of condemning McCarthyite attitudes, the

piece was clearly a parody, joking with the fact that comics were criticized
by both Left and Right. However, lacking such context, this did not prevent
16 Rui Lopes
the Hartford Courant from presenting it as a serious example of red-baiting
(Geissman 420–21).
The reliance on context refected the unprecedented degree of complic-
ity between EC and its readership. One of the publisher’s innovations had
been to encourage and publicize each artist’s individualistic style – in con-
trast to other companies’ standardized “house style” and uncredited work –
drawing greater attention to their creative process. Further complicity was
generated by the dialogue developed in the letter columns and by the fan
organization National EC Fan-Addict Club (Schelly, Golden Age, 17–20).
Occasional metafctional tales featured EC’s staff, such as “Horror Beneath
the Streets!” (The Haunt of Fear #17 [Sept./Oct. 1950]), where the ghoulish
hosts of the horror titles – the Crypt Keeper, the Old Witch, and the Vault
Keeper – force Al Feldstein, who wrote and drew the story, and Bill Gaines
to sign a book deal for them. Given this engaged relationship, it was reason-
able to expect fans to be aware of the publisher’s place at the center of the
pushback against comic books, which was also addressed in another, less
playful EC editorial asking readers to write letters in support of comics to
the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency (Geissman 418).
Against this backdrop, writer Carl Wessler became particularly devoted
to tales of unfair persecution that resonated with EC’s general discourse
about the comic book scare. Shock SuspenStories #16 – one of the issues to
carry “Are You a Red Dupe?” – contained three Wessler-scripted tales with
variations on the same motif. Turning McCarthyism itself into an allegory,
“The Hazing” tells the story of a college student who, in order to join a
fraternity, manages to get a professor fred by falsely accusing him of being
a communist (8–14). An especially disturbing take on the topic of mob vio-
lence, in “A Kind of Justice” Sheriff Paul Judson rapes a teenage girl and
frames a vagrant for the deed, leading to the vagrant’s death at the hands of
an angry mob (16–23). Once again dramatizing the power of defamation,
“The Pen is Mightier” follows reporter Zack Hamlin, who rises from rags
to riches through slanderous lies (24–30). Like Judson, Hamlin gets away
with his crimes, including murder, culminating in a bitter-yet-resigned nar-
ration: “And so it is with ‘gods’. They stand above us mortals and they pull
the strings. They can do no wrong!” (30). A couple of months later, in Tales
from the Crypt #44 (October/November 1954), Wessler’s “The Sliceman
Cometh” fctionalized the contemporary zeitgeist through another provoca-
tive displacement: during the French Revolution, Jean Courbeau conspires
with executioner Andre Vache to have Courbeau’s brother guillotined – thus
inheriting his fortune – through fake charges of being a royalist sympathizer.
This time, however, there is some poetic justice rendered by EC’s goriest art-
ist, Graham “Ghastly” Ingels: the dead man’s corpse hunts down Vache and
tears off the executioner’s head (23–9).
Meanwhile, EC’s notoriety kept increasing, as Bill Gaines voluntar-
ily became the only publisher to testify at the Subcommittee’s hearing on
21 April 1954. He defended the thrills of horror fction, EC’s anti-racist
agenda, children’s consumer rights, and the readers’ ability to distinguish
sheer entertainment from encouraging messages. Faced with intense, hos-
tile questioning concerning EC’s horror output and the “Are You a Red
Dupe?” editorial, however, Gaines struggled to justify his standards of
“good taste,” resulting in a public relations disaster amply reported on
mainstream media. Responding to the ensuing backlash, Gaines organized
an industry-wide joint front, but his efforts backfred: the Comics Magazine
Association of America (CMAA), formalized in September 1954, adopted
a self-regulating code effectively prohibiting all of the visual elements and
subject matter associated with horror, even banning the words “horror” or
“terror” from appearing in covers. Although initially refusing to join the
CMAA, Gaines was unable to counter the tide; that September, EC can-
celled its entire horror line (Geissman, 413–37; Wright 167–77). The Haunt
of Fear’s fnal issue (October/November 1954) opened with an obituary for
the “deceased” series, addressing recent events with a typical mix of outrage
and acerbic wit:
As a result of the hysterical, injudicious, and unfounded charges leveled

at crime and horror comics, many retailers and wholesalers throughout
the country have been intimidated into refusing to handle this type of
magazine. . . . Economically our situation is acute. Magazines that do
not get onto the newsstands do not sell. We are forced to capitulate. . . .
Naturally, with comic magazine censorship now a fact, we at E.C. look
forward to an immediate drop in the crime and juvenile delinquency
rate of the United States. We trust there will be fewer robberies, fewer
murders, and fewer rapes!
Feldstein, “In Memoriam” 1
Given this prologue, an antipathy toward the anti-comics campaign was

bound to inform the reading of the issue’s frst story, the seven-page “The
Prude” by Carl Wessler and Graham Ingels, about “the life and death of
a blue-nosed reformer.” The context was emphasized by Ingels’ signature,
which read “Farewell Ghastly,” and by the introductory words of the host,
the Old Witch, explaining that “this will probably be the last issue of my
putrid periodical” and that “the sad details are in my idiot editor’s column
opposite this page on the inside of the front cover” (2). Thus, despite the
remote setting in a fctitious American town in the early nineteenth cen-
tury, readers were ushered to identify the protagonist, Warren Forbisher, as a
stand-in for another moral crusader, Fredric Wertham – notice the switched
initials.
Having already installed the death penalty for adultery, the titular “prude”
runs an increasingly radical campaign against sin. Through demagogu-
ery, intimidation, and defamation, he manages to outlaw kissing in public,
18 Rui Lopes
holding hands, and couples alone without a chaperone. He even imposes
separate cemeteries for each sex, directing gravedigger Seth Hoskins to open
women’s graves and bury their coffns in a new cemetery across the road,
because “who is to say what goes on in the afterlife” (4). The narration
leaves little ambiguity about the tale’s moral economy, sarcastically labeling
Forbisher “the self-appointed guardian of public morals . . . the pillar of
society . . . the righteous judge of all” (3) and later commenting, with regard
to the cemetery law, that “the anti-immorality campaign had reached the
point of ridiculousness!” (4). This implied that the same held true for the
anti-comics’ crusade.
Unlike the protagonists of Wessler’s aforementioned stories, Warren For-
bisher was not a mere calculating hypocrite, but – as explained in fash-
back – a fanatic moved by a guilty conscience. As a younger man, he had
a long affair with Laura Adams; yet, he refused to divorce his wife, so
Adams took poison and Forbisher watched her die without calling a doc-
tor, for fear of exposing himself to scandal. The narration interprets his
psychology:
He’d fnally found escape from his own guilt by convincing himself that
fate had driven him to sin so that he might know its torment and thus
save others. He’s subconsciously set about righting his own wrongs by
exposing and demanding the end of the wrong doings of others.
(6)
More: “who is to say that the presence of Laura Adams’ body in the town
cemetery was not the subconscious inspiration for Forbisher’s demand for
“separate graveyards”?” (7). Although replacing cynical motivations for
tragically unresolved personal issues, the story once again linked populism
to an individual’s private agenda, even adding that “the ‘good’ folks” who
rallied to Forbisher were themselves plagued by “their own secret hidden
guilts” (7), attributing a key scapegoating dimension to their reforms.
Besides denouncing the moral campaign’s warped worldview, “The
Prude” provides a cathartic response through a supernatural twist. The
reburied women keep getting up, taking their tombstones, and returning to
the original graves, near their husbands, which sets up a payoff along classic
EC lines: in the fnal page, Laura Adams’ “mouldy, maggot-infested, rot-
ting corpse” advances toward a panic-stricken Forbisher. After a suggestive
ellipsis, Seth Hoskins fnds Forbisher and her corpse in a common grave.
The gravedigger’s words – “Why, Mr. Forbisher! Don’t you know there are
laws about that sort of thing! Gasp . . . Shame on you!” – could refer merely
to the fact that Forbisher has been dragged into a woman’s grave. Yet, the
taboo-tinged description – Hoskins “blushed to the roots of his sparse grey
hair and he shook his head” – strongly hint the former lovers are in a nec-
rophiliac position (8). Since readers are not shown if Forbisher ended up
there voluntarily or was forced, or his current expression, it is up to the
imagination whether he was the victim of lust or rape; but any interpreta-
tion puts the conservative protagonist in an especially undignifed position
for his own standards. Like in many EC horror tales, the shocking ending
doubles as a darkly comedic punchline suitably followed by a string of puns
by the story’s host, in this case inviting readers to laugh at the expense of an
ersatz-Wertham.
Ironically, much of the impact stems precisely from censorious impulses.
The implicit ambiguity and invisibility of Forbisher’s fate leave part of the
payoff to the readers’ imagination while preventing any empathy derived
from witnessing his gruesome condition. The text’s mocking spirit was toned
down by a respectful artwork: the narration claims Hoskins “grinned at
what he saw,” but Ingels gave him a shocked expression (8). The panels with
the living corpses are covered in a blue tinge, a common strategy deployed
by Marie Severin to obscure the gore – according to her, less because it
offended her sensibility than out of fear that EC would get in trouble with
the law (Ringgenberg 91) – which in this case heightens the dusky mood of
a nocturnal scene. This coloring choice helps restrain even the panel where
the allegory reaches its peak, at the top of page 8, with the ultimate censor
helplessly yelling at unstoppable zombies (a horror icon now symbolic of
dead comics, like The Haunt of Fear, doing one last deed): “Stop! Stop this
wickedness! There are laws against this!”
Conclusion
Just as horror fction relies on the craft of exacerbating, manipulating, and
exploiting fear, it can also be a vehicle to expose and ridicule the use of fear
by outside parties. In the early 1950s, EC’s horror comics targeted the anti-
communist and anti-comic panics stirred up by fgures like Joseph McCa-
rthy and Fredric Wertham, denouncing those who consciously used fear to
achieve or exert personal power and to attack freedom by promoting war,
persecution, or censorship. While “You, Murderer” drew on an expression-
istic flm to present such tactics as a scary phenomenon that could affect the
readers themselves, “The Prude” used a genre trope to simulate a cathartic
revenge against the perceived main opponent of horror comics. If the former
tale visualized the latent violence of Cold War ideology (just as EC’s war
comics were visualizing its overt violence in Korea), the latter literalized
horror’s libidinal appeal, even as it demonstrated the benefts of its own
restraint.
These works therefore sought not only to provoke readers’ fear but also
to comment on fear itself, including on the fear of the very comics that car-
ried those tales. By doing so, EC did more than satirize the sociopolitical
role of certain contemporary strains of panic: it invited fans to share the
publisher’s own existential and commercial dread.
20 Rui Lopes
Notes
1 Each title was published on a bimonthy basis. The Haunt of Fear published 28
issues (#1–28). Tales from the Crypt published 27 issues (#20–46), continuing
the numbering from previous titles: International Comics (#1–5); International
Crime Patrol (#6); Crime Patrol (#7–16); and The Crypt of Terror (#17–19). The
Vault of Horror published 29 issues (#12–40), continuing the numbering from
War Against Crime (#1–11). Shock SuspenStories published 18 issues (#1–18).
2 Page numbers refer to the (unnumbered) sequence of original pages per issue,
including editorials, prose stories, and letter columns. They do not correspond to
the numbers printed on the actual pages, as each story within an issue has its own
autonomous numbering, starting from 1.
3 The issue’s cover emphasized this aspect, showing one of the attackers yelling
“Yuh don’t like it here, why don’t you go back where yuh came from?”
4 The issue was cover-dated April–May, but that signaled when issues were meant
to be removed from newsstands. Issues were published and placed on newsstands
up to 4 months ahead of the cover dates.
Works Cited
Binder, Otto (w), Bernie Krigstein (a) and Marie Severine (c). “You, Murderer.” Shock
SuspenStories #14 (April/May 1954). EC Comics, 1954, pp. 17–22.
Budd, Mike. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari: Texts, Contexts, Histories. Rutgers Uni-
versity Press, 1990.
Feldstein, Al (w, a). “Horror Beneath the Streets!” The Haunt of Fear #17 (Septem-
ber/October 1950). EC Comics, 1950, pp. 24–30.
____. “In Memoriam.” The Haunt of Fear #28 (December 1954/January 1955). EC
Comics, 1954, p. 1.
Gabilliet, Jean-Paul. Of Comics and Men: A Cultural History of American Comic
Books. University Press of Mississippi, 2010.
Gaines, William (w), Al Feldstein (w) and Jack Davis (p/i). “The Patriots!” Shock
SuspenStories #2 (April/May 1952). EC Comics, 1952, pp. 19–24.
____, Lyle Stewart (w) and Jack Davis (a). “Are You a Red Dupe?’ Shock SuspenSto-
ries #16 (August/September 1954). EC Comics, 1954, p. 1.
Geissman, Grant. The History of EC Comics. Taschen, 2020.
Jacobs, Frank. The Mad World of William Gaines. L. Stuart, 1972.
Kracauer, Siegfried. From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German
Film. Princeton University Press, 2019 [1947].
Krigstein, Bernard. Interviewed by Bhob Stewart and John Benson. “An Interview
with Bernard Krigstein.” Squa Tront, n.6, 1975, pp. 3–30.
Ringgenberg, Steven. “Marie Severin.” The Comics Journal Library Volume 10: The
EC Artists Part 2. Fantagraphics Books, 2016, pp. 84–95.
Sadowski, Greg. B. Krigstein: 1919–1955. Fantagraphics Books, 2002.
Schelly, Bill. Otto Binder: The Life and Work of a Comic Book and Science Fiction
Visionary. 2nd ed. North Atlantic Books, 2016.
____. The Golden Age of Comics Fandom. Hamster Press, 1995.
Schrecker, Ellen. Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America. Little, Brown, and
Company, 1998.
Wessler, Carl (w) and Reed Crandall (a). “A Kind of Justice.” Shock SuspenStories
#16 (August/September 1954). EC Comics, 1954, pp. 16–23.
____ and Graham Ingels (a). “The Sliceman Cometh.” Tales from the Crypt # 44
(October/November 1954). EC Comics, 1954, pp. 23–29.
____, Graham Ingels (a) and Marie Severin (c). “The Prude.” The Haunt of Fear #28
(December 1954/January 1955). EC Comics, 1954, pp. 2–8.
____ and Jack Kamen (a). “The Pen Is Mightier.” Shock SuspenStories #16 (August/
September 1954). EC Comics, 1954, pp. 24–30.
____ and Joe Orlando (a). “The Hazing.” Shock SuspenStories #16 (August/Septem-
ber 1954). EC Comics, 1954, pp. 8–14.
Whitted, Quiana. EC Comics: Race, Shock and Social Protest. Rutgers University
Press, 2019.
Wright, Bradford W. Comic Book Nation: The Transformation of Youth Culture in
America. The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001.
3 “Men Have Sentenced This
Fen to Death”
Marvel’s Man-Thing and the
Liberation Politics of the 1970s
Henry Kamerling
Inside the pages of Marvel Comics’ May 1971 issue of Savage Tales #1
(May 1971), readers meet for the frst time “a monstrous shambling collage
of roots and muck – in the shape (almost) of a MAN!” (Gerber and Alcala,
“Blood of Kings!,” 232). This hulking beast lumbering through the verdant
Everglades, like the surrounding marsh, proved to be an amalgamation of
the bog itself. The swampman known as Man-Thing had enormous crimson
eyes and a mossy brown–green “body” with bulbous pockets of mud, vines,
and rocks protruding from its plant-like “fesh.” While Man-Thing possesses
astonishing power, razor-sharp claws, and a burning touch, the creature’s
plant-like frame often becomes porous as needed. Readers would fnd that
bullets, fsts, and sharp teeth sailed right through it. The creature also oozed
through and beyond the nets and jail-cell bars meant to capture it, all leav-
ing Man-Thing unharmed, uncaged, and free. While Man-Thing emerged
from the human body of Dr. Ted Sallis and took a humanoid form, it lacks
any memory of its prior human self. The swampman possesses no interior
human skeletal or physiological structure: no heart, no lungs, and no brain.
Lacking memory and any purchase on rational thought, the only surviving
element of Man-Thing’s former humanity is a vestigial remnant of his once
human consciousness, a state of being fnding expression in the creature’s
sensing and feeling nature. “The macabre swamp beast called Man-Thing,”
one narrative panel explained, “is a creature not of intellect, but of emotion.
His very nature is empathic. He can ‘read’ the emotions of others. He feels
what they feel” (Gerber and Buscema, “Song-Cry of . . .” 173).
The comic book industry had revised its Comics Code in early 1971, allow-
ing for (among other things) the reintroduction of monster-based comics, a
topic that had been previously forbidden. Marvel Comics moved forcefully
into this newly expanded space, rapidly producing a number of horror-
themed titles (Nyberg 139–143). Running through various anthology titles
and its own self-titled series from 1971 through 1975,1 Man-Thing, written
chiefy by Steve Gerber, proved to be a surprise success for Marvel Comics.
Man-Thing’s lack of consciousness and memory made him a strange pro-
tagonist for Gerber to build stories around. However, the creature’s empathic
abilities and marshy habitat, it turned out, made Man-Thing the perfect
DOI: 10.4324/9781003261551-4
“Men Have Sentenced This Fen to Death” 23
monstrous-but-heroic representation of the era’s New Left liberation poli-
tics and countercultural perspectives. In the hands of Gerber, Man-Thing is
found championing anti-Vietnam War protesters and the bourgeoning envi-
ronmental liberation movement. At the same time, the swampman battled an
array of seemingly conservative villains, from greedy real-estate developers
to otherworldly demons pursuing unending wars and imperial conquests.
Throughout these stories, Man-Thing proved to be an unerring defender of
the downtrodden and other misshapen characters who, like himself, found
their way into the swamp and to safety.
The savage yet thriving Everglades functioned as a rebuke to the decaying
civilization that existed beyond its edges. In this context, Man-Thing can be
viewed as a hero set against the wider values defning early 1970s’ society,
a grotesque creature misunderstood by a nation that has lost its way. In
a world defned by the Vietnam War, Watergate, and a fracturing political
consensus, it is the human community and formal law-giving society, what
comics’ scholar Neal Curtis calls points the “nomos,” that is exposed to be
misguided and corrupt (59). Over and over, Man-Thing rescues the set-upon
humans who fnd their way into his fen. In doing so, the comic imagines
the creation of a new nomos, one where monsters, misfts, and outcasts will
forge a more inclusive community apart from human-built world outside
the swamp. In different ways, then, Man-Thing should be read as speaking
to both the New Left’s and hippies’ perspective on America at the tail end of
what historians call the “long 1960s” (Hall 655).
When the Machine Is Not God: Living the Revolution

Like the swamp creature who stalked the Everglades, the frst half of the
1970s is a diffcult era to comprehend. Looking back on the decade from
afar, the seventies are often understood as an in-between period, one char-
acterized by a profound of failure and malaise. However, viewed from its
starting point, the early 1970s seem a continuation of the liberation poli-
tics that had come to defne American life during the mid-1960s. If any-
thing, New Left political forces and countercultural perspectives appeared
only to be gathering steam as the decade opened (Berger 1–5). Often called
a “movement of movements,” historian Van Gosse explains that at their
core these New Left liberation struggles “sought to overturn existing struc-
tures of racial, gender, and economic privilege in favor of a radical vision
of equality and democracy” (Gosse 4, 189). The counterculture of the hip-
pies emerged both alongside and apart from these liberation efforts. While
both movements hated war and sought pathways to genuine equality, hip-
pies believed, as Timothy Miller argues, that “politics held no salvation for
anyone” (108). From the hippies’ perspective, Western civilization itself had
“reached a dead end” (103), strangled by the plastic nature of capitalism,
military adventures abroad, and authoritarian political impulses at home.
The solution to such catastrophic failure was simply “living the revolution”
24 Henry Kamerling
(108). As one counterculture troubadour put it, the hippie communes that
formed throughout the era represented a withdrawal “from a culture where
the machine is God” (qtd. in Greene 141). In this context, Steve Gerber’s
“misshapen Man-Thing” (Gerber and Mayerik, “Day of the Killer, . . .” 310),
imagined as an unthinking primordial swampgod lacking rational thought
and guided instead by empathy for mainstream society’s cast-offs, became
the perfect monstrous-but-heroic emblem of the era’s liberation politics.
The New Left’s and hippie’s efforts to remake society presented an unu-
sual challenge for Seventies’ superheroes and monsters. In his book Sover-
eignty and Superheroes (2016), Neal Curtis insists that “we must understand
superheroes as defenders of the law; they are defenders of the stories that
speak of a path from injustice to justice, from chaos to order, from dark
to light” (60). Curtis uses the Greek term “nomos” to describe the law-
giving society supers work to protect. Nomos, however, does not simply
mean “law” but also the spatial boundaries of an imagined legal realm
that encompasses those included and excluded from the law’s jurisdiction.
Curtis explains that superheroes, like monsters, exist on the boundaries of
society, operating “at the point where the law is paradoxically maintained
or protected precisely by suspending itself” (107). The extralegal authority
assumed by mainstream superheroes is meant to “prevent the onset of law-
lessness” (108) and restore order to the normative universe in defense of the
nomos. In the land of superheroes, monsters exist as creatures beyond the
edge of this legal realm, and thus, according to Curtis, the “monster sheds
light on how society sees itself, it shows us something about the community
to which it is both tied and from which it is expelled” (119).
But what happens when there is no easily defnable nomos for superhe-
roes to safeguard? What happens when the monster becomes the hero? In
the context of the United States in the early to mid-1970s, as the Vietnam
War raged, the Watergate scandal blossomed, and as the New Left liberation
struggles challenged traditional social and political confgurations, society
appeared to be on the precipice of social anomie. It was a dark time for main-
stream and nationalist superheroes, as they struggled to locate meaning in
restoring sovereignty to a moribund society (Goodrum 178–179, 215). But
as the post-World War II liberal consensus shattered, monsters-turned-heroes
like Man-Thing did not carry the burden of reviving a nation perceived by
some as being terminally ill. As a sympathetic creature who existed beyond
the boundaries of the law-giving society, Man-Thing’s presence off the map
augured for the creation of an entirely new community. The swamp itself,
depicted as a feral and fertile “liminal ecosystem” (Cade), functioned as its
own kind of hippie commune. As will be seen, while Man-Thing did not
exactly beckon people to his swamp, he did protect the refugees feeing the
frayed and dying exterior human society. Throughout the pages of the comic,
this leviathan of the swamp is imagined as a beast-god occupying a dominion
apart from the formal World of Men. The creature’s location off the map,
his radical deployment of empathy, and his offering of aid to outcasts can be
read both as an argument for the abandonment of the existing nomos and
the creation of a new one.
No More Super Soldiers: Man-Thing’s Anti-War Politics

Nearly all the themes detailed earlier fnd expression in very frst Man-Thing
comic, “. . . Man-Thing!” in the black-and-white magazine Savage Tales #1,
which explain the creature’s original story. In a tale written by Gerry Con-
way and Roy Thomas with pencils and inks by Gray Morrow, government
chemist Ted Sallis is in a clandestine lab deep in the heart of the Florida
Everglades. Sallis has just successfully created a secret Captain America-like
serum that will turn U.S. soldiers currently fghting in the jungles of Vietnam
into super-soldiers. Instead of feeling elation, Sallis expresses a deep sense
of anguish about the serum to his lover, Ellen, who he brought with him to
the swamp. “It’s bad enough that the chemical will be used for more kill-
ing,” Sallis explains, as he glances down at a newspaper with the headline
“NAPALM BOMB” plastered across the front page. Ellen suggests rest. The
next panel has Sallis with his head buried in his hand, replying, “rest? Every
time I close my eyes, I hear them – the people I’ve helped KILL – thousands
of them . . . SCREAMING all around me. And you tell me to get some rest?”
(8). Sallis’ horror over his role in creating a biochemical weapon highlights
the story’s New Left sensibility and anti-war politics. That Sallis expresses a
profound compassion for those he’s helped kill further deepens the comic’s
connection to the hippies’ embrace of empathy as an ideal valued higher
than reason. Naturally, Ellen turns out to be a spy. When her partners show
up to help capture the serum, Sallis resolves to destroy everything. In the
ensuing melee, the chemist fees deeper into the swamp. As the enemy agents
gain, Sallis determines that the only way to prevent the last vial of the serum
from falling into rival hands is to inject himself with it. As Sallis plunges
the needle with the serum into his arm, his car plunges into the muck of the
swamp. In the embrace of the Everglades, the chemical cocktail mixes with
the bog’s unique ecology, turning Sallis into Man-Thing.
Man-Thing’s origin is not just an anti-war tale. It is a saga that also inverts
and re-writes the origin story of Captain America and the good war narra-
tive of World War II, turning it into a tale of horror. Steve Rogers, the war-
time volunteer who will become Captain America, is a willing participant
in his confict. Rogers is a patriotic citizen eager to help his country fght an
unquestionably monstrous enemy. The super-soldier serum that turns Rog-
ers into Captain America is presented as a triumph of technology and in its
own way is an expression of American exceptionalism (Dittmer 8–12, 107).
The very frst Captain America comic, Captain America Comics #1 from
December 1940 (a year before Pearl Harbor), has Cap punching Hitler in
the face right on the cover! In contrast to this, Sallis appears as a reluctant
participant in the United States’ war-making from the outset. Instead of
being proud of his creation, Sallis is horrifed by it.
26 Henry Kamerling
World War II is understood to be presenting the United States with well-
defned enemies and clear moral choices. The confict also represented a
moment of shared sacrifce that helped generate national unity. The Vietnam
War readers glimpse in Man-Thing’s origin tale inverts the good war nar-
rative, foregrounding the horrors of war and the meaninglessness of the
confict. The fnal narrative panel explains, “Well, you MADE it, Ted Sallis.
You HAVE your super-soldier – your indestructible KILLER. Too bad you
couldn’t have known that your ULTIMATE victim would be YOURSELF!”
(Conway et al. 15). Instead of Sallis’s “eureka” moment being depicted as
a triumphal expression of American scientifc capability, the comic’s bleak
ending constructs this discovery in horrifc terms. In this imaginative space,
one that duplicates in substantial ways the real-world politics roiling coun-
try at the same moment in time, readers are presented with a Vietnam War
that produces no national unity, no collective sacrifce, and no super-soldiers
punching Nazis in the face. Instead, readers fnd that the Vietnam War pro-
duces only monsters.
Steve Gerber picked up writing duties on the Man-Thing comics starting
with Adventure into Fear #11 in December 1972 and deepened the crea-
ture’s already strong Anti-Vietnam War perspective. Over the next several
years, Gerber came back again and again to stories which highlighted both
the pointlessness of the war and the unfortunate toll combat took on the
everyday soldiers used to fght it. In the comic titled “A Question of Sur-
vival” (Fear #18 [Nov. 1973]), a drunk salesman crashes his car into a bus
carrying 50 passengers. All but fve die, the remaining being fung into the
swamp. Among the survivors are Jim, a Vietnam War veteran; Holden, a
student pacifst; Mary, a young nurse; Kevin, a wounded child; and Ralph,
the drunken salesman. While the soldier and pacifst bicker, each are given
space to make good points about how best to make change in the world.
Holden, however, is given the last word, explaining:
Take soldier Jim, here. He just came back from a war of attrition. That’s
where the whole fght is to see which side can kill more people! It’s sick!
And here at home – we dump chemicals into our waters – poison the
fsh – then we eat ‘em and poison ourselves! That’s suicide – but it’s also
our way of life! We really are out to destroy ourselves!
(Gerber and Mayerik 230)
In the end, it is the businessman, not the soldier, who turns out to be the
real villain. Tired of Holden’s gripping, Ralph yells: “SHUT UP! Don’t
you point a fnger at me – you flthy commie scum! You deserve to die –
for runnin’ down this country!” (232). After Ralph fnds a gun and kills
Holden, he insists, “I had to girlie – it was my patriotic duty!” Mary, who
has been balanced in her position throughout, comes around to Holden’s
way of thinking, replying, “Lord in heaven . . . you’re a lunatic! Not just a
super-patriot – a madman! ‘The Punk’ was right!” (233). Albeit a bit late,
eventually Man-Thing shows up and kills the businessman with his burning
touch and carries the wounded child out of the swamp.
The New Left anti-war, anti-capitalist, and pro-environmental politics of
this story are clear. The one person who makes the most openly patriotic
comments and views himself as standing up for his country is shown to be
venal and morally bankrupt. The businessman has no interest in anything
beyond his own survival. What is more, because Ralph is revealed to be such
a horrible person, his insistence that the student-pacifst is nothing more
than a “flthy commie scum” serves only to discredit the charge and similar
accusations leveled by conservatives against student protesters and activists
throughout the era. While comics’ scholars observe that Stan Lee, Marvel’s
Editor-in-Chief, sought to keep explicitly political material out of his com-
ics (Howe 94–96), Gerber clearly proved to be successful in saturating his
stories with the era’s New Left anti-war perspectives and counterculture
sensibilities.
The Marshland That Sustains His Life: The Anti-Capitalism

of Man-Thing’s Ecology
Alongside Man-Thing’s anti-war politics, Gerber also took aim at another
enemy of the New Left and counterculture: capitalism. Deepening a critique
commonly found among both New Left activists and hippies, Gerber’s Man-
Thing comics consistently depicted businessmen to be obsessed with money
giving it more importance than connection with people and business inter-
ests as a cancerous blight on humanity and the environment. In “Song-Cry
of the Living Dead Man” (Man-Thing #12 [Dec. 1974]), Gerber presents the
story of Brian Lazarus, an advertising man who has lost his grip on reality
and is haunted by demons and self-loathing. “I’m a blind disease blot on the
face of planet chrom-earth,” Lazarus says of himself in one panel, explain-
ing, “while there’s a capital man on earth, my labor will birth in the song-cry
of the living dead man” (Gerber and Buscema 183). Gerber populates his
stories with business-minded characters such as Lazarus and the murderous
salesman who crashes his car into a busload of people. Even Man-Thing’s
frst real arch-villain, F. A. Schist (or “fascist”), is an especially greedy con-
struction magnate and real-estate developer who wants to drain parts of
the swamp in order to build a new airport. In a series of comics stretching
almost a year (September 1973 to August 1974),2 Schist’s construction plans
bring him in confict with environmental protesters who want to stop the
endeavor, Native Americans struggling to protect their ancestral homelands,
and, naturally, Man-Thing.
“Cry of the Native!” (Fear #16 [Sept. 1973]), a story detailing the efforts
of the Everglades’ indigenous people to halt Schist’s plans, crystallizes these
fashpoints. Black Eagle, a young “brave,” urges his father, the tribal chief,
to take action: “I tell you, father, we have no choice! The excavation begins
tomorrow,” Black Eagle proclaims, “unless we stop it! And if we fail, we
28 Henry Kamerling
have only months – before the swamp – our homeland – is gone – replaced
by an airport” (Gerber and Mayerik 157). Black Eagle leads his “braves” –
wearing traditional Indian clothing and fghting, for some reason, with bows
and arrows – into battle with the Schist’s construction workers. The white
labors give voice to their racism, calling the native people “blasted redskin
savages” (160). In the ensuing melee, Black Eagle is shot and killed by Jake
Simpson, the foreman of the job site. Man-Thing’s compassion compels the
creature to emerge from out of the swamp and to carry Black Eagle’s lifeless
body back to his father.
But the swamp creature’s work is not done. Man-Thing’s feeling nature
allows him to sense the wider danger posed by Schist’s construction plans.
One narrative panel explains that Man-Thing “senses that something is ter-
ribly wrong here. For this marsh-land sustains his life, and if it is destroyed –
! He struggles now and succeeds, momentarily, in bringing some of the jig-
saw fragments together” (Gerber and Mayerik, “Cry of the Native!” 168).
Inarticulately, emotively, Man-Thing returns to the construction site. Simp-
son attacks Man-Thing with a pickaxe that sails right through the creature’s
oozing body. Retreating in fear, Simpson cowers, covering his head with his
hands. Man-Thing advances on the worker, placing a single, mossy hand over
Simpson’s head, searing together the foreman’s hand, head, and face. Utter-
ing the monster’s infamous catch-phrase, a panel explains that “for whatever
knows fear – BURNS at the Man-Thing’s touch!!” (173). While Man-Thing
wins this battle, the comic ends with a particularly bleak coda. The fnal panel
displays a worker’s hard-hat on the ground in close-up with Man-Thing wan-
dering back toward the verdant swamp in the distance. The ending narration
explains that “the story has not ended. Tomorrow the work will begin anew.
Men have sentenced this fen to DEATH . . . and with it, the Man-Thing. They
will likely carry out that sentence. Eventually. They always do” (174).
“Cry of the Native!” is an environmental tale that takes sides against the
forces of modernization. Of course, the comic reduces Native Americans
to the racist stereotype of the Noble Savage. Gerber and artist Val Mayerik
depict indigenous peoples as being messengers from a bygone time. Their
“primitiveness” seemingly make them more alive to the possibilities of hav-
ing a spiritual connection with the natural world because they are imagined
as not having been contaminated by “civilization” or capitalism. Neverthe-
less, the comic uses this trope to express the counterculture’s reverence for
indigenous practices and to side with the New Left’s environmental poli-
tics. The Everglades are the homeland of both the native peoples and Man-
Thing. Their common habitat connects the two groups, identifying their
cause as the same. Like the environmental protesters seen elsewhere in the
story, these forces understand that an airport, with its concrete runways,
pollution, and wider connection to capitalist modernity, will destroy the
delicate swampland ecosystem.
Man-Thing is presented as being connected to the swamp in a deep and
spiritual way. It could be said that Man-Thing is the swamp, an avatar of
the Natural World. Like the native people of the Everglades, Man-Thing is,
in his own way, a “Noble Savage”: a powerful pre-modern creature who
draws his vitality and purpose from his interconnectedness with the organic.
Man-Thing’s empathic abilities, both his burning touch and his inarticu-
late sympathy for the downtrodden, signal his connection to a pre-modern
world, a realm that existed before scientifc thinking and its toys – cars,
planes, buildings, cities – claimed and then paved over the wilderness. Like
the indigenous people he befriends and the environmental protesters he aids,
Man-Thing cannot allow Schist’s airport development, or any other similar
project, to continue.
The Nexus of All Realities: The Ecology of Man-Thing’s

Plant Horror
If the cojoined forces of war and capitalism emerge as the hallmark of bad
guys over the course of the Man-Thing comics, then Gerber presents read-
ers with Man-Thing and his swamp as potential solutions to these ills. In
the sub-genre of plant horror, the sense of fear comes from, as Brittany
Roberts argues, plants that “refuse to stay a ‘thing’ ” because the often sen-
tient, mobile, and hungry-for-human-fesh plants “resolutely breach the
taxonomic and ontological boundaries in which plant life has historically
been fxed” (61). As T. S. Miller explains, “the monster plant” exists as “an
error to be corrected” (462). Man-Thing certainly has a purchase on this
expression of horror. His protean, unstable properties make the bog man
incoherent and potentially horrifc. As Noël Carroll argues, monsters like
Man-Thing are frightening precisely because they are “creatures that trans-
gress categorical distinctions” (137).
And yet, the Man-Thing comics invert the dread typically found in plant-
horror. In contrast to Miller’s assertion that vegetative monstrosities exist
chiefy as “an error to be corrected,” in Gerber’s imaginative landscape it is
the human-built, capitalist, and war-making society outside the swamp that
is, to barrow Carroll’s terminology, “impure” (147). Gerber’s marshland is
presented as a potent, mystical realm, full of weird natural forces, including
ancient spirits, a hidden fountain of youth, and the plant-god Man-Thing.
In “The Blood of Kings” (Giant-Size Man-Thing #3 [Feb. 1975])3 – a par-
ticularly trippy storyline – psychedelically colored good and evil creatures
from across the universe and throughout time feel compelled to converge on
the swamp in a battle-royale, drawn to the marsh’s supernatural qualities.
An old wizard explains that the swamp is “the nexus of all realities” where
Man-Thing’s “powers will be at their PEAK” (Gerber and Alcala 253). Nat-
urally, Man-Thing shows up and defeats the evil demons, securing the safety
not just of the swamp or earth but the universe itself. Gerber, who acknowl-
edged in interviews that he spent some time on the edges of hippie culture,
channels both the counterculture’s aesthetics and perspectives throughout
stories such as these (Howe 134–135). Gerber presents the preternatural
30 Henry Kamerling
bog as a rebuke to the coercive and deadening experience of those forced to
live in the body of capitalism, outside the swamp.
The marsh is not just a reproach to mainstream society, it is also a refuge.
Across the pages of the comics, a number of sympathetic outcasts living
on the borders of the Everglades are introduced, people who come to view
Man-Thing as their friend and protector. The Kales are one such family,
appearing in several stories over the comic’s 4-year run.4 Andy, a pre-teen
boy, and his sister Jennifer, an older teenager, forge a special friendship with
the swampman. “For the Man-Thing has dimly recognized the young ones –
his friends,” one panel in the comic “Where Worlds Collide!” (Fear #13 [Apr.
1973]) explains, “and he knows he must keep them from harm” (Gerber and
Mayerik 109). Jennifer and Man-Thing develop an exceptional connection
as the tale “From Here to Infnity!” (Fear #15 [Aug. 1973]) reveals. “There
exists between this creature – who was once Ted Sallis – and the girl – a
bond, a psychic link – not telepathy, but empathy,” the comic discloses, “so
when their eyes meet, she feels what is to come. And she weeps without
tears” (Gerber and Mayerik 140).
In addition to locals like Andy and Jennifer, readers were also introduced
to a range of other misfts feeing the hostile environment of the larger
human world beyond the bog. This set-upon gang includes in places a young
hippie couple (Man-Thing #2 [Feb. 1974]), circus performers (Man-Thing
#5 [May 1974]), a black man attempting to avoid capture by a white police
offcer (Fear #12 [Feb. 1973]), and bullied teenagers (Giant-Size Man-Thing
#4 [May 1975]), among others. All these folk are, in one context or another,
people presented as living on the margins of conventional society. Their
escape into the swamp duplicates the foundational hippie act of retreat-
ing from the plastic nature of American life; a withdrawal premised on an
escape from cities, from capitalism, from war, from sexual hang-ups, and
from the expected. In Gerber’s hands, the swamp becomes its own kind
of hippie commune, one premised on the value of empathy over intellect,
nature over civilization. William J. Rorabaugh explains that the countercul-
ture “was openly anti-intellectual. Hippies blamed reason and linear thought
for most of the world’s troubles” (10). By offering the primal swamp, with
the empathic Man-Thing as its protector, Geber hints at a possible, radi-
cal reconfguration of the nomos, one that upends traditional structures of
authority and ways of knowing in favor of forging a more inclusive and
authentic community.
These themes come together and are deepened in the tale “Of Monsters
and Men!” (Giant-Size Man-Thing #2 [Nov. 1974]). Here, we fnd a story
that duplicates the basic King Kong narrative in broad strokes. Dr. Dane
Gavin, a professor from the New York Ecological History Museum, travels
to the Everglades, manages to capture Man-Thing, and brings him to New
York City for study. At a museum board meeting attended by, among oth-
ers, Reed Richards (Mr. Fantastic of the Fantastic Four) and Tony Stark
(Iron Man), the board debates whether or not to place Man-Thing on
display to the public. Richards and Stark, who are notable as the leading
men-of-science in Marvel’s comic book world, argue in favor of a public
showing. “From what I’ve read of your test results – there’s nothing human
about him,” Richards explains to Dr. Gavin, “IT, I mean it’s NOT fesh and
blood . . . its intellectual capacity is minimal” (Gerber and Buscema 127).
Rejecting his own scientifc conclusions, Gavin instead relies on his intuition,
sensing that an exhibition is a bad idea. Slamming his fst on the table, Gavin
responds that Man-Thing “is not what he seems to be! Put him on display –
and there’s going to be trouble!” (128). Naturally, Gavin is overruled. This
sets the stage for a classic unfolding of events in the plant-horror sub-genre.
Gavin’s instinct is correct: Richards’ and Stark’s assessments, grounded in
scientifc knowledge, technological mastery, and human arrogance, are the
real faws in organizing and ordering the modern world.
In the fnal act, Man-Thing is presented at the Ecological History Museum
to an auditorium packed with people dressed in their fnery. It is like a scene
paying homage to King Kong (Marion C. Cooper and Ernst B. Schoedsack
[1933]), an earlier horror story about a primitive jungle-god captured and
removed from a primordial world and transported against his will to a
supposedly more civilized land. In his prose establishing the scene, Gerber
works to capture the human’s lack of understanding and appreciation of
the natural world. One panel explains: “There is a bizarre kind of irony
about it all – about these men and women bedecked in their silks and pre-
cious stones . . . come to gaze upon perhaps the least opulent creature on
earth, a being of slime and mud” (Gerber and Buscema, “Of Monsters and
Men!” 129). Of course, once the curtains are drawn back and Man-Thing
is revealed, the cultured audience reacts with fear, the one quality above all
that Man-Thing loathes. A text-box informs readers that
in short order, his hatred of that emotion overcomes even the torment
it causes him. And slowly, he lifts his huge arms above his head . . .
holding them there for one second . . . two . . . three . . . until their own
enormous weight causes them to drop, shattering the transparent bar-
rier between himself and those who fear him!
(130–131)
As Roberts explains, “in Western culture, plants ossify into a kind of

‘thing-hood,’ reifed into features of broader topographical landscapes and
stripped of liveliness” (55). However, here the plant world comes to active
life, animated by feelings and emotions and endowed with great power. One
bystander exclaims: “If Mister Fantastic can’t hold that thing, no one can!”
But of course, Richards’ attempts to lasso the creature with his plastic body
simply “ooze though his slimy, semi-solid substance, as he walks on” (Ger-
ber and Buscema, “Of Monsters and Men!” 132). Like Richards’ lasso arms,
police bullets also pass through Man-Thing without wounding or slow-
ing down the swampman. Richards’ and Stark’s powerlessness against the
32 Henry Kamerling
reignited plant creature from the elemental swamp is great drama. However,
Mr. Fantastic and Iron Man are also heroes who sit at the apex of scien-
tifc understanding and technological achievement in the Marvel Universe.
Thus, their failure can be read as a way of discrediting intellect and rational
thought, characteristics so often derided by the era’s hippies. By presenting
Man-Thing and his swamp as an alternative way of being to the cosmo-
politan and capitalist world outside the marsh, the comic can be under-
stood as channeling the counterculture’s questioning of the zoo centric and
anthropomorphic foundations of Western civilization. In Gerber’s hands,
the contest here between civilization and nature, plant and superhuman,
and science and emotion is won more often than not by Man-Thing. Eventu-
ally, surrounded by the concrete jungle of New York City, Man-Thing loses
strength and collapses in Columbus Circle fountain. Dr. Gavin, again draw-
ing on his empathy for the set-upon creature, resolves to return the beast to
his swamp where he belongs.
The Plant-God Who Will Save Us All

Mainstream superheroes must act to defeat threats to humanity not only to
protect everyday people but also to secure society’s foundational organizing
structures so that police, businesses, and governments can resume their role
as stewards of the public. As Curtis observes, the superheroes’ struggle to
defeat evil works to carve out a space for the prevailing nomos to possess
vitality and secure legitimacy (59–61). However, throughout the pages of
the Man-Thing comics, the set-upon monster inverts the formal dynamics
of both the superhero tale and the imperialist dimensions of previous wil-
derness escapades. In contrast to the superhero’s journey, Man-Thing’s role
is not to resuscitate a decaying society. And, in opposition to earlier jungle
adventures, the bog creature also does not serve as a “celebration of white,
male Anglo-Saxonism over ‘others’ ” (Regaldo 8). Indeed, the Man-Thing
comics suggest there is another way forward: a path to be found in the
counterculture’s retreat from conventional society.
In the hands of Steve Gerber, Man-Thing and his swamp are offered up
as both a rebuke to the early 1970s capitalist and war-making social order
outside the fen and as a refuge for those feeing the culturally lifeless experi-
ence that defned for some the (white and Western) Post-World War II lib-
eral world order. The outcasts and misfts who wandered into the feral but
spiritually alive marsh, together with the protection of the swamp creature
Man-Thing, seek to build a fresh land. This newly confgured nomos would
be predicated on a deeper purchase of the New Left’s and counterculture’s
embrace of radical empathy, their championing of equality, and search for
communion with the natural world. In this new environment, away from
the Things-of-Man, Man-Thing, lord of the swamp and defender of the
downtrodden, might just become the plant-god who will save us all.
Notes
1 The swamp creature Man-Thing appeared in an array of distinct titles over the
course of its initial four-year run. These included the Marvel Comics’ series Sav-
age Tales #1 (May 1971); Astonishing Tales #12–13 (June-Aug. 1972), #15 (Dec.
1972), and #18 (June 1973); Adventure into Fear #10–19 (Oct. 1972-Dec. 1973);
Monsters Unleashed #5 (Apr. 1974) and #8–9 (Oct.-Dec. 1974); The Man-Thing
#1–22 (Jan. 1974-Oct. 1975); and Giant-Size Man-Thing #1–5 (Aug. 1974-Aug.
1975). Man-Thing also occasionally appeared as a character in Marvel’s more
mainstream superhero titles, like Marvel Two-in-One #1 (Jan. 1974), Master of
Kung-Fu #19 (Aug. 1974), and Daredevil #113–114 (Sept.-Oct. 1974).
2 Franklin Armstrong Schist appeared in Fear #16 (Sept. 1973) and Man-Thing
#2–4 (Feb.-Apr. 1974) and #7–8 (July-Aug. 1974).
3 “The Blood of Kings” continues a sword and sorcery story arc begun in “Night
of the Nether-Spawn” (Fear #11 [Dec. 1972]), which was also Steve Gerber’s frst
Man-Thing comic.
4 The Kales appeared in Fear #11 (Dec. 1972) and #13–19 (Apr. 1973-Dec. 1973),
Man-Thing #1 (Jan. 1974), and Giant-Size Man-Thing #3 (Feb. 1975).
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4 The Horrors Haunting the
City of Joy
Analyzing the Traumas of
the Counterinsurgency in
City of Sorrows
Debaditya Mukhopadhyay
Relating Indian horror comic books with their social context has been sig-
nifcantly challenging due to its problematic trend of copying Western hor-
ror elements. As argued by Marcin Ciemniewski, “the spookiest elements”
of vernacular horror in India are derived from iconic characters or tropes
of Western horror, like zombies, haunted houses or graveyards, and even
characters such as Dracula and Freddy Krueger (169).1 In this context, the
parasitical relationship with American superhero comics should also be
taken into account.2 Apart from lifting the aforementioned characters or
tropes from Western horror in its early stage of development – primarily
during 1980s – Indian horror comic books lifted elements from American
superhero comics, particularly by showing its ghosts and monsters to be,
like superheroes, protectors of the status quo (170–71). In so doing, these
generic stories simply relocate the superhero fgure from American comics
to “a new gloomy world of crime and the supernatural” (172) and distance
the horror elements featured in their narratives away from social contexts
and cultural anxieties.
Published by Speech Bubble Entertainment, the four-part mini-series City
of Sorrows by writer Shamik Dasgupta, artists Bikash Satpathy (#1 [Jan.
2014] and #3 [Sept. 2015]), Tamal Saha (#2 [Jan. 2015], #3, and #4), and
Naval Thanawala (#4 [Oct. 2017]), and colorist Viswanath Manokaran
marks a departure from the trends mentioned earlier by offering a remarka-
ble portrayal of real-life horrors from 1971s’ counterinsurgency against the
Naxalite movement in Kolkata. Sarita Sharma and Vipin Singhal outline the
Naxal movement as an armed Maoist insurgency that intensifed in 1967
in the village Naxalbari of West Bengal.3 Under the leadership of the Mao-
ist Charu Majumdar, the Naxals aimed to overthrow the exploiters of the
landless farmers and agricultural laborers (765). Eventually, this movement
started impacting the city of Kolkata when supporters of the Naxal insur-
gency faced a brutal counterinsurgency from the state as well as national
administration, leading to a series of murders and tortures of Naxalites by
the police, army, and the henchmen of local political leaders.
DOI: 10.4324/9781003261551-5
36 Debaditya Mukhopadhyay
City of Sorrows splices supernatural horror elements derived from Indian
myths, demonology, and tantric traditions with the cityscape of present-day
Kolkata – often referred to as the City of Joy – and episodes from the violent
past of the counterinsurgency, thereby offering a notable scope for reading
its elements of horror in a social context. The analysis of this mini-series will
be presented in three sections. The frst, outlining the sociocultural images
of present-day Kolkata and the supernatural elements that this series joins
together, will explain what makes these city images and horror distinctly
Indian. The second will locate the anxieties lurking beneath these ghostly
threats by analyzing how City of Sorrows shows the horrors of the 1970s’
counterinsurgency-ravaged society returning to haunt present-day Kolkata.
The third section will determine the sociological signifcance of this haunt-
ing by drawing on theories of post-memory and intergenerational trauma.
Outlining the Shape of Horror in City of Sorrows

In City of Sorrows, a world of supernatural horror is convincingly con-
joined with the post-millennial cityscape of Kolkata through the protagonist
Taranath (TNT from here onwards when referring to the character of the
comic book). Unlike the generic Indian horror comics discussed by Ciem-
niewski, City of Sorrows does not limit its narrative to clichéd settings like
a haunted house or graveyard. Even in Bengali ghost stories, from which the
protagonist TNT is derived, ghosts are shown as “a creature of the house”
(Almond 216). But in this series, they haunt nearly the entire city, unleashing
horror in public places like the metro railways, hospitals, and households
that are markedly different from the generic haunted houses. These disturb-
ing supernatural forces invading the city are eventually explained as powers
from a parallel world known as the City of Sorrows. TNT moves the story
between these two worlds by narrating his experience of the other world
and journeys to it in order to protect Kolkata.
Even before the supernatural disturbances begin, the narrative offers
glimpses of other-worldly horrors through TNT. In Part #1, he is shown
entertaining his friends Shankar and Vibhu with his frst experience of the
supernatural world. This introductory episode reveals the series’ connec-
tion with the Bengali horror story “Taranath Tantriker Golpo” (1937), writ-
ten by Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay and frst published in the collection
Janma o Mrityu. In this story, Taranath Chakraborty appears as an astrolo-
ger of more than 60 years of age suffering from fnancial setbacks due to his
womanizing, alcoholism, and gambling. The story does not present Taranath
playing an active role in fghting some evil entity; rather, the unorganized tale
reveals how Taranath found his powers by doing Sadhana4 under the guid-
ance of a female tantric Matu Pagli.5 While engaging in an informal adda6
with the anonymous narrator – implied to be Bibhutibhushan himself – and
his friend Kishori Sen, Taranath tells how he developed a penchant for the
mystic world of tantra7 after meeting a Sadhu (holy person) in Banaras.
The Horrors Haunting the City of Joy 37
Searching for a true worshipper of tantra to become a tantric him-
self eventually takes Taranath to a cremation ground of Birbhum where
he meets Matu Pagli, a mysterious woman who changes him forever by
bringing him in contact with the world of tantra. Even though “Taranath
Tantriker Golpo” does not contain any gory details, Taranath’s meeting
with Matu does feature moments of fright and descriptions of other-
worldly horror. According to Anirban Mukhopadhyay, this story is set
apart from its contemporary Bengali ghost stories for its use of elements
of Bibhatsarasa (disgust) (35). This revulsion is primarily portrayed in the
scenes detailing how evil supernatural forces disrupt Taranath’s Shava Sad-
hana8 and particularly the detailed depiction of Mahabhairavi, described as
a demoness with burning eyes who emerges by piercing the sky and flling
the air with putrid smell (Bandyopadhyay 272). Toward the conclusion of
the story, Taranath sees this ominous entity Mahabhairavi coming in his
direction and passes out.
City of Sorrows utilizes these scenes of Bibhatsarasa from “Taranath
Tantriker Golpo” by bringing out their abjection in a remarkable way.
Writer Shamik Dasgupta begins the comic book at the very climax of TNT’s
meeting with Matu, where she starts warning Taranath about the dangers
involved in doing the sadhana necessary for becoming a tantric and then
continues this episode up to Taranath’s encounter with Mahabhairavi. Inter-
estingly, the comic book makes a signifcant change to Bibhutibhushan’s
story by describing TNT’s encounter with the Mahabhairavi to be a result
of drinking a potion given by Matu and hearing some mysterious mantra
from her.
The artwork by Bikash Satpathy and the color choice by Viswanath
Manokaran complement Dasgupta’s tense narrative beginning in medias
res by flling the panels with scary images and dark colors. The very frst
panel of the series is a large one showing the angry face of Matu Pagli with
the fre of the cremation ground in the background. Thereafter, the readers
are introduced to the horrors of the cremation ground and tantra sadhana
further through the depiction of Matu sitting over a fayed corpse and the
terrifying image of the Mahabhairavi (Dasgupta and Satpathy 3, 7; see Fig-
ure 4.1). Such strategies create an atmosphere of horror that is absent from
generic Hindi horror-comic books, which rarely feature dark-colored panels
(Ciemniewski 169).
Immediately after offering glimpses of the scary world of tantra sadhana
and the entities the tantrics worship, the narrative takes the reader to Kol-
kata of 2014. TNT cuts his story short by telling his two friends, Vibhu
the writer and Shankar the police offcer, that he does not remember what
happened after seeing the horrors that Matu’s potion and spell showed him
because he fainted. TNT, Bibhu, and Shankar then engage in adda, smoking,
and eating jhalmuri, a snack typical to Bengali culture.9 Apart from shifting
the action to present-day Kolkata, these scenes also refect the Bengali soci-
ety of urban Kolkata, which the series depicts in great detail.
Figure 4.1 The terrifying image of the Mahabhairavi.

Source: Courtesy of Speech Bubble Entertainment.
The way TNT shares the story of his frst experience of the world of tan-
tra – sitting in his own cozy drawing room, surrounded by friends, enjoying
cigarettes and snacks – is reminiscent of the traditional tall-tales written by
popular Bengali writers, in particular the tales by Premendra Mitra featuring
Ghanshyam Das, alias Ghanada. Ghanada, a senior resident of a “mess”10
and fond of quality food and cigarettes, keeps telling his juniors how he
saved the world on multiple occasions by facing threats like evil scientists
and secret agencies.
After the adda-episode, City of Sorrows moves around various corners of
everyday Kolkata, showing its busy traffc, Metro station, and working men
and women in detail. The series keeps itself grounded in the society of Kolkata
throughout, showing its cultural icons, politicians, food joints, protests, and
the city space in general. Overall, it presents the post-millennial Kolkata soci-
ety with adequate details – at least until its citizen start turning into cannibals.
Amid this present-day sociocultural setting, City of Sorrows unfolds a tale of
horror that draws upon elements embedded in Indian myths and demonology.
The Mahabhairavi, for instance, has similarities to the goddess Kali in
appearance but is described as “something older, darker . . . a personifca-
tion of chaos” by TNT during the adda (Dasgupta and Satpathy 8). While
the series does not add anything further on the true nature of this entity, it
seems signifcant to relate this fgure of Mahabhairavi to the demonic god-
dess Shakti mentioned by Nandita Krishna in her study of Indian demons,
The Book of Demons (2007). According to Krishna, Shakti is similar to the
fearsome Kali and other “malevolent goddesses who command by causing
fear” and are worshipped chiefy in rural villages (126). While explaining
the origins of these malevolent Shakti goddesses further, Krishna adds that
the “great goddess Shakti of mainstream Hinduism” – of whom goddess
Kali happens to be a manifestation – owes her origin to these malevolent
Shakti goddesses of rural India, despite having multiple differences from
them (129). In so doing, Krishna makes readers aware of the existence of a
darker version of Kali in Indian myths. When TNT describes the entity he
saw as “older” and “darker” than Kali, his words actually evoke these old,
malevolent Shakti goddesses.
The Mahabhairavi’s worshippers, the tantrics of City of Sorrows, are
shown as being signifcant sources of horror. However, it is important to
note that none of the tantrics depicted in the series takes after the typical
sinister tantrics shown in Bollywood horror. Analyzing the generic flm fg-
ure of tantric, Hugh B. Urban describes this sinister being as a “dangerous
yogi who uses his knowledge and power to deceive, manipulate, exploit,
and/or destroy those around him” (78; emphasis added). While this generic
fgure described by Urban is typically a male one, City of Sorrows begins by
showing the powerful female tantric Matu, who, despite being scary, does
not exploit or destroy anyone. Although in “Taranath Tantriker Golpo,” she
does deceive Taranath multiple times, in this comic book she appears simply
as a strict senior tantric who warns the eager TNT, reminding him of the
dangers of tantra sadhana. Yet, Matu is also a source of fear for her connec-
tion with the abject.
As explained by Urban, the tantrics have a notable association with abjec-
tion in the Kristevan sense for their close links with things like “corpses,
skulls, severed heads, cremation grounds, etc.” (91). Since Matu is shown
to be surrounded by all of these and even uses a severed skull for drink-
ing (Dasgupta and Satpathy 3), her appearance certainly evokes fear. TNT
himself is arguably the most unique subversion of the sinister tantric trope.
Instead of manipulating or destroying, he appears as a savior. Even in his
appearance, he looks very different from the popular tantrics in Indian vis-
ual culture, typically depicted with a naked, ash-smeared upper body, long
beard, and hair tied in a bun. Unlike them, TNT wears clothing popular
among present-day Kolkata people and looks similar to John Lennon, sport-
ing the iconic “teashades” – albeit with dark glasses – and wearing his hair
long. More importantly, he is never shown to use any of the abject objects
listed before after becoming a tantric. In fact, TNT uses tantra only to fnd
out the underlying causes behind the supernatural disturbances in Kolkata
and resolves them like an investigator. As explained by series producer Sree-
priya Bhowmik, the founder and producer of Speech Bubble Entertainment,
the decision to adopt this character of a Bengali tantric from the stories of
Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay was largely infuenced by her intention to
introduce an Indian psychic investigator in tandem with the post-millennial
“rise of psychic investigators” in Western popular culture like DC Comics’
John Constantine or investigators such as The X-Files’ Dana Scully and Fox
Mulder (Introduction Part #1 1).
While the extent to which TNT succeeds as an Indian counterpart to these
iconic investigators is debatable, the adaptation of the Bengali tantric char-
acter provides a signifcant cultural depth to the series by connecting the
fgure with the psychic investigator. Yet, TNT too has scary features that
he generally does not reveal. Glimpses of these are shown twice, namely
in a panel in Part #2 where, in a fashback, TNT is shown consuming raw
human meat in the cremation ground (Dasgupta and Saha 14) and in the
fnale where Vibhu notices the unnaturalness of TNT’s eyes, which accord-
ing to TNT resulted from the visions he was shown by Matu (Dasgupta,
Thanawala, and Manokaran 54). The third tantric in the series and the
harbinger of chaos, Arko Roy, resembles the sinister tantric fgure for his
destructive activities as well as for his use of body fuids for conjuring the
evil world. As the series introduces Arko by revealing that, instead of lusting
for power like the tantrics Urban mentions, he is using tantra to avenge the
death of his father, even Arko does not exactly resemble the typically sinister
tantric. However, the evil forces that he unleashes function as the key source
of horror in this narrative.
These supernatural horrors that Arko brings to the City of Joy, gradually
turning it into a city of terror and sorrows, start making their presence felt
toward the end of Part #1 when Shankar’s girlfriend Sneha Bose and Vibhu
witness one of their co-passengers of Kolkata Metro suddenly transforming
into a feral cannibal. The panels showing this transformation reveal that
the man receives a voice message in his mobile and, after listening to it,
starts looking possessed and then starts feasting on his co-passengers’ fesh
and blood (Dasgupta and Satpathy 18–19). While Part #1 ends without
revealing the exact source or nature of the message that causes this horrid
transformation, TNT detects the presence of tantra behind this incident and
refers to his own experience in the cremation ground, explaining that what
happened to the Metro passenger is similar to his own experience in the
hands of Matu. Tantrics like Matu use a combination of certain potions and
spells to excite the pineal gland of the human body, exposing the concerned
person to the sights of a world beyond this one, thereby driving the person
into fts of insanity. Similar incidents of normal people suddenly transform-
ing into cannibals happen throughout the series. In Part #2, Arko is revealed
to be the tantric causing these incidents.
Though these incidents apparently look similar to zombie outbreaks, in
Part #3 they are explained as being the result of Vetaal summoning by TNT.
He reveals that Arko was once his disciple; they had a falling out when Arko
demanded to learn the evil magic of Vetaal summoning, which involves the
summoning of “vengeful spirits of the past who have been tortured and cor-
rupted and turned into a demonic force” (Dasgupta, Saha, and Sitpathy 21).
Seeing the incidents of people turning into cannibals, TNT realizes that
Arko had fnally learned this evil ritual and is using it to cause havoc in
Kolkata. Though the word Vetaal has been used in diverse ways by Indian
and Western writers, TNT’s explanation echoes Krishna’s description of the
Vetaal being the leader of the “spirits” who are called Bhutas (255). Accord-
ing to Krishna, Bhutas are the malevolent spirits of Indian demonology,
which owe their maliciousness to “the form of their death, either by murder,
execution or suicide” (115). In the fnale of the series, it is revealed that
beyond the colorful boundaries of the City of Joy, there is an opposite ver-
sion of Kolkata that Arko and TNT calls City of Sorrows where all the Bhu-
tas created by the violent past of Kolkata reside in great suffering (Dasgupta,
Thanawala, and Manokaran 35–36). When Arko’s back-story is revealed in
Part #2 and #3, the social context lying behind this supernatural dynamic of
past horrors haunting the present day is exposed in detail.
Horrors Lying behind the Supernatural

In Part #2, Arko’s past is shown using a vivid dream sequence which relives
the capture, inhuman torture, and subsequent death of Arko’s father, Com-
rade Basab Roy, at the hands of police offcer Rono Niyogi in 1972 (Das-
gupta and Saha 1–10). Arko is haunted by this traumatic incident because
he saw his father’s horribly tortured body and the killer in person. This
episode taps into the real-life horrors of the counterinsurgency that brutally
smothered the Naxalite movement in 1970s’ Kolkata.
Though the Naxalite movement originated in the rural areas of Bengal,
it affected the society of Kolkata no less. Initially, the movement gained
momentum in Naxalbari through the exploited agricultural workers. When
the police started attacking these Naxalites, the revolt against the landlords
turned into a revolt against the state administration in general, thereby
gaining support of a signifcantly large section of the people of Kolkata, the
center of government for West Bengal. Sipra Singha Roy mentions police
attacks on 23 and 25 May 1967 in Naxalbari, adding that the incident of
25 May resulted in the death of seven women and two children in the hands
of the police (237). In the absence of farmers in Kolkata, it was mainly the
students and intellectuals who started spreading the Naxalite movement,
particularly in its reputed educational institutions such as Presidency Col-
lege (now known as Presidency University) and University of Calcutta. In
the words of Asim Chatterjee, one of the leading faces of the movement,
the Naxalites of Kolkata reacted immediately to the police atrocities in
Naxalbari and started their protest from Presidency College (qtd. in Singha
Roy 237).
It is very signifcant that Basab Roy of City of Sorrows is shown to be
a Naxal leader who used to be a faculty member of Presidency College.
Though such characterization apparently contradicts the Naxalite descrip-
tion of teachers as their class enemy and the Naxal’s frequent attacks on
teachers (Singha Roy 241–242), this portrayal of a teacher as a Naxal leader
does not make the narrative far removed from history of the insurgency. The
creators of City of Sorrows show their awareness of the anti-teacher rheto-
ric developed by the Naxal leader Charu Majumdar – who himself appears
as a Bhuta or spirit in an important sequence in Part #3 (Dasgupta, Saha,
and Satpathy 9–14) – in Dasgupta’s “Afterword,” arriving at the end of Part
#4 (Afterword 2). Thus, their decision to feature a faculty member of the
Presidency College as a Naxal leader in Kolkata basically appears to be a
tribute to the institution known as point of origin for the students’ wing of
Naxalites. This portrayal is also reminiscent of the large involvement of the
“urban middle class” in the Naxalite insurgency of Kolkata (Kennedy and
Purushotham 847).
Recounting the strategy used by the West Bengal state government for
countering the Naxals, Sipra Singha Roy informs that from March 1970,
the central government began a counterinsurgency by imposing President’s
rule in West Bengal and using the Central Reserved Police Force to curb
the movement. This counterinsurgency eventually took recourse in adopting
extra-legal measures like mass murder, which resulted in gross violations of
human rights (243–244).
Without pulling any punches in its unraveling the murky past of Kolkata’s
administration during the counterinsurgency era, City of Sorrows shows
how the henchmen working under an MLA (Member of Legislative Assem-
bly) of the Indian National Congress party and a powerful police offcer
joined hands in butchering the Naxalites in the city. Offcer Runu Guha
Neogi, who appears in the series as Rono Niyogi or the butcher of Kol-
kata, tortured numerous citizens during the 1970s. The fact that he merely
received a 1-year prison sentence in 1994 for torturing Archana Guha, a
suspected ally of a Naxalite, reveals how the administration attempted to
cover up his atrocities (Roy 2069). The comic book unmasks Neogi, show-
ing his extremity as a torturer through an enlarged panel wherein Niyogi,
with an evil grin, reveals the skinned corpse of Basab Roy, hanging upside
down, to young Arko (Dasgupta and Saha 10, see Figure 4.2). Just as in real
Figure 4.2 Niyogi reveals the skinned corpse of Basab Roy.

Source: Courtesy of Speech Bubble Entertainment.
life, Rono Niyogi goes unpunished in City of Sorrows and is depicted wait-
ing for a rather peaceful death in a hospital. Also, the MLA Soumen Mitra
is shown to have escaped his due punishments and is working with the state
government as the Minister of Transports.
The supernatural disturbances in the series target both Niyogi and Mitra.
At frst Niyogi, shown in his deathbed, is tortured mentally by Arko with
videos showing the entire Niyogi family cannibalizing on each other (Das-
gupta and Saha 21–22). Then Mitra is slaughtered during a rampage of
Metro passengers possessed by Vetaals during a grand inaugural journey
of Kolkata Metro’s AC rakes11 (Dasgupta, Thanawala, and Manokaran 8).
Arko organizes these to avenge his father but in the end is stopped by TNT
when he tries to kill TNT’s friend Sneha, who is the love-child of Niyogi.
Through this plotline involving Arko, Niyogi, and Mitra, City of Sorrows
shows the lingering and haunting presence of the horrors of the 1970s in the
post-millennial society of Kolkata. While Arko’s story arc presents him as a
victim of the counterinsurgency haunted by his past, the portrayal of abus-
ers like Mitra and Niyogi enjoying unblemished reputations in the present-
day reminds readers how the administration and society chose to forget the
ugly past of human rights’ violations, making it diffcult for people like Arko
to come to terms with the tortures they had to endure directly or indirectly
during the counterinsurgency.
Beyond the Horrors of City of Sorrows

While it is tempting to read Arko’s revenge and its subsequent end as a
metaphorical representation of the ways victims of the counterinsurgency or
their family members were traumatized by the brutalities they experienced,
multiple moments show a greater sociocultural signifcance behind the crea-
tors’ decision to conjoin real life horrors with the supernatural. During their
adda session in Part #1, after TNT cuts short his account of encountering
Mahabhairavi and then passing out, Vibhu mocks TNT as well as tradi-
tional Bengali ghost stories, commenting: “In every Bengali ghost or horror
story, when the hero faces the ultimate horror he very conveniently blacks
out . . . Later he fnds himself in the safety of a hospital or home” (Dasgupta
and Satpathy 7). When Shankar asks Vibhu whether he is dissatisfed with
such trends because they look different from Western horror writers like
Bram Stoker, Vibhu signifcantly replies that he dislikes it because Bengali
writers deliberately avoid using the potential of genres like horror or ghost
stories to depict the real-life terrors witnessed by Kolkata city during Parti-
tion12 or “the age of Naxalites” (Dasgupta and Satpathy 7).
In a personal interview, writer Shamik Dasgupta confrmed that he cre-
ated a villain out of the horrors of counterinsurgency in Kolkata because he
wanted to come up with a story that would be a departure from typical Ben-
gali stories. He felt that to fnd a fgure capable of unleashing such horrors,
he had to tap into the legends and real-life incidents of counterinsurgency in
Kolkata. It is also signifcant that when asked to offer his take on the inci-
dents of counterinsurgency, Dasgupta revealed that, as a Bengali born and
brought up in Kolkata, he grew up hearing that it was an era of unspeakable
horrors, which always made him visualize Kolkata of the early 1970s to
be essentially an era of political unrest and state-organized terror. It is also
important to note in this context that, in Dasgupta’s opinion, many of the
present-day West Bengal political problems, particularly the dominance of
violence in politics, have their origin in the years of Naxalite insurgency and
its countering by the state.
Most discussions on the violence in early 1970s’ Kolkata attest to Das-
gupta’s opinions. Data provided by Singha Roy lists the names of students
killed during the Naxal movement; it runs for two pages with a note on
its incomplete nature (244–45). Anwesha Sengupta’s article “Calcutta in
the 1950s and 1970s: What Made it the Hotbed of Rebellions?” (2019)
describes the 1970s as “a strange decade for the city and the state, marked
by violence all around,” mentioning how the streets of Kolkata are flled
with multiple martyr columns that the Leftist government of West Ben-
gal built after coming in power. Though Sengupta does not discuss how
adequately these columns portray the number of people tortured and
killed during the counterinsurgency, it is not diffcult to imagine that the
columns built by the government with a specifc ideology would be more
concerned in remembering its political members rather than the victims
in general.
It is important to note that the existing body of flms, especially consisting
of horror flms by Indian, as well as Bengali directors, has safely distanced
itself from portraying the horrors of the counterinsurgency, just like the
Bengali ghost stories that City of Sorrows critiques through Vibhu’s opin-
ion. Someswar Bhoumik’s overview of Bengali flms of and about the 1970s
mentions how these flms by eminent directors like Satyajit Ray or Mri-
nal Sen, as well as lesser-known directors like Saikat Bhattacharya or Ajit
Lahiri, present the social picture of 1970s’ Kolkata by showing the helpless-
ness of young job seekers or the opportunism of the middle-class Bengalis
(187–191). But this overview does not mention any direct portrayal of the
gruesome horrors of this period in any of these flms.
Though Satyajit Ray’s Kolkata trilogy – Pratidwandi (The Adversary
[1970]), Seemabaddha (Company Limited [1971]), and Jana Aranya (The
Middleman [1976]) – depicts “the spectrality of the modern city, a place of
memories, desires, ghosts” (Chaudhuri 254), his recollection seldom enters
the uncomfortable territories of counterinsurgency, even though this trilogy
was made with 1970s’ Kolkata as the setting. While discussing the por-
trayal of the 1970s in Ray’s flms, Rwita Dutta mentions how the director
disliked the extremity of the Naxalites (282). It is also to be remembered
that throughout his long career, in which Ray directed genre flms featur-
ing ghosts and detectives, he always refrained from showing gruesome ele-
ments on screen. Reading in the light of such information, Ray’s reluctance
to present the violence of his contemporary society seems like the response
of a craftsman who carefully avoided indulging in Bibhatsarasa. Addition-
ally, Bollywood also distanced itself from depicting the counterinsurgency of
Kolkata. Despite having its “frst foray into horror proper” with the Ramsay
horror flms in the 1980s and having qualities of “trauma texts,” the social
unrest of this era appeared in these horror flms in the form of violence
against women (Sen 57, 69). But as shown before, the horrors of counterin-
surgency that Kolkata witnessed demand a more detailed portrayal in order
to fnd a proper expression for its unspeakable horrors.
It is therefore justifed to argue that the horrors of the counterinsurgency
era have mostly remained “shrouded in silence,” just like the horrors of
Indian central government’s Emergency era in general (Tarlo 2).13 Yet, the
horrors of this era never disappeared from the sociocultural sphere of Ben-
galis. In the words of the academician Binayak Bhattacharya:
Whenever, wherever in the urban space of present day West Bengal the
terms like Sottorer Doshok (the Seventies) or Naxal Andolon (Naxalite
movement) arises during discussion, some distinct urban images readily
pop up in popular mind – police, black van, barren roads, bomb, slo-
gan, destruction, a boy is being chased by police through narrow lanes,
encounter, death, etc.
(166)
Bengali society and its popular imagination are indeed suffering a trauma
of the counterinsurgency which is quite similar to what Gabriel Schwab
describes in Haunting Legacies (2010). Schawb defnes haunting legacies as
events that are “hard to recount or even to remember, the results of a vio-
lence that holds an unrelenting grip on memory yet is deemed unspeakable,”
adding that such “legacies of violence not only haunt the actual victims but
also are passed on through the generations” (2).
City of Sorrows can be read as a cultural response to the legacies that
Schwab describes. When Arko searches for his father among the skinless
Bhutas (Dasgupta, Thanawala, and Manokaran 35–36) that inhabit the
City of Sorrows, the parallel version of Kolkata, his behavior reminds
the victims of the haunting legacies mentioned by those who “refuse(s) to
mourn” by denying the death of the person they are supposed to mourn
(Schwab 2). It is also signifcant that the series shows the return of trau-
matic memories in Arko’s mind through fashbacks showing his nightmares
(Dasgupta and Saha 1–11). According to Schwab, this is a signifcant mani-
festation of the effect of haunting legacies. Moreover, read in the light of
Dasgupta’s interview and the words of Bhattacharya, the series as a whole
itself becomes an expression of anxieties originating from unprocessed
traumatic memories buried within the popular imagination of present-day
West Bengal society.
Conclusions
Arko’s tale in City of Sorrows moves beyond a horror story featuring an
overreaching villain and becomes an exceptional case study for Indian hor-
ror comic books and their engagement with anxieties specifc to Indian soci-
ety. The series ends showing Vibhu and TNT drinking and discussing how
their friend circle and the City of Joy as a whole would gradually recover
from the traumas they had to face due to Arko’s return to the city, sitting in
their favorite room of adda, that is, in TNT’s drawing room.
A return to this relaxed mood of adda toward the end seems remarkable
for the way this return gives the narrative of City of Sorrows a signifcant
narrative structure. The tale begins and ends with the relaxed adda sessions.
In both these sessions, the characters, particularly TNT, discuss troubling
past events, and he speaks about how he himself has been moving forward
in life after these events by understanding the ways his past experience has
changed him. With time, TNT himself managed to gain control over the
frenzy he initially experienced when he faced the horrors of the world of
tantra, and the series testifes how successful he has been in using his tantric
powers wisely, despite retaining certain marks (his eyes, as explained before)
from his past experience. Similarly, the city of Kolkata, as implied by this
comic book’s conclusion, is likely to move forward, albeit bearing some
marks from its traumatic past of counterinsurgency and with time, just like
TNT, is expected to gain a better understanding of its past. Such connota-
tions fnd a notable expression in the fnal pages of the series, when TNT
calmly tells Arko, “It will be some time till this city recovers from the disas-
ter” (Dasgupta, Thanwala, and Manokaran 52).
Notes
1 This holds true for Indian horror flms as well, particularly the Ramsay Broth-
ers’ cult horror flms from the 1980s and 1990s that imitate iconic characters
like Freddy Krueger (in the flm Mahakaal, released in 1994) as well as borrow-
ing numerous tropes from Hollywood horror flms such as haunted house and
possession.
2 Though tracing the frst appearance of American superhero comics in India is
diffcult to determine, it is important to note that comic strip characters like
Mandrake the Magician, Flash Gordon, and The Phantom had become signif-
cantly popular among Indian readers when Indrajal Comics published them in
large numbers during the 1960s, both in English and translation. These charac-
ters have gone on to have a great impact on Indian superhero comics, horror
comics, and superhero flms. As argued by Marcin Ciemniewski: “For an aver-
age Indian comic book reader, a comic was almost always linked to a superhero
fgure” (172).
3 As per the observations of Kennedy and Purushotham (cited before), Naxalbari’s
movement, known as Naxalite movement, happens to be the beginning of the
Second Wave of Maoist insurgency in independent India (833).
4 In Indian culture, sadhana means meditating through rigorous methods. These
varying methods are characterized by an emphasis on remaining focused despite
all hardships and distractions like carnal desires or ailments through which an
individual attains his/her goals.
5 The exact nature or limits of Taranath’s power are never clearly mentioned in
Bibhutibhushan’s stories. In “Taranath Tantriker Golpo,” he is shown to be a
capable astrologer, and, as Taranath tells the narrator in the story, he also knows
a magic called Chandra Darshan which offers a vision of the full moon and two
angels who can grant any wishes of the conjurer.
6 Though adda can be translated as “conversation,” it is more than that in Bengali
culture. It is considered as a favorite pastime of Bengalis involving frank and
relaxed discussions on a wide range of topics, mostly intellectual ones involving
art, literature, and metaphysics, accompanied by delicious snacks and tea.
7 As explained by Hugh B. Urban, tantra is indeed “notoriously diffcult to defne”
(80). For the present discussion, tantra signifes a Hindu religious system that
involves worshipping of the great goddess Shakti through methods that trans-
gress codes of behavior, characteristic of majority of Indian religious sects, like
celibacy, refraining from eating non-vegetarian foods, and consuming intoxicants.
8 One of the many methods of attaining mystical powers as explained in the note
no. 4. In case of Taranath, he adopted the method of meditating on a corpse,
which is a typical characteristic of tantrics.
9 Jhalmuri is one of the favorite snacks of Bengalis as well as Indians. It is mostly
a mixture of puffed rice, spicy chanachur (Bombay mix), mustard oil, shredded
onion, green chillies, and cucumbers. It goes well with the relaxed mood of addas
because munching this snack takes a fairly long time.
10 The word “mess” has a signifcantly different meaning in Bengali culture. It
refers to rented boarding houses, where students and offce workers working at
a distance from their residence live together sharing food and rooms.
11 In Indian Railways, this word stands for conjoined coaches of trains. It is similar
to “train consist.”
12 The Partition of Bengal has happened twice. The frst was in 1905; Vibhu’s com-
ment refers to the Partition of 1947.
13 On 25th June 1975, the Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, with the permis-
sion of the then Indian President Fakhruddin Ali and following the Article 352
of the Indian Constitution, initiated a period of highly authoritarian governance
of the Indian citizens. This strict and often aggressive governance continued till
21st March 1977 and has been known as the Emergency era. In her analysis of
the Emergency era, Emma Tarlo highlights the lack of academic discussions on
Emergency era, despite the presence of numerous representations of this era’s
horrors in popular media. In case of Kolkata’s counterinsurgency, a lack of simi-
lar kind is perceived.
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Krishna, Nanditha. The Book of Demons. Penguin, 2007.
Mukhopadhyay, Anirban. Atoh Kim, Bhoot? A Collection of Features on Uncanny.
Ravan Prakashan, 2018.
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5 Spanish Creepy
Historical Amnesia in “Las mil
caras de Jack el destripador”
Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns
Zombies; werewolves; witches with long, curved noses; vampires with

blood-stained lips; and, of course, putrefed corpses had risen from humid
graves in mist-covered cemeteries.
These images were common tropes for Creepy, an American horror-comic
anthology magazine launched by Warren Publishing in 1964 and which
lasted until 1983, with a revival by Dark Horse Comics from 2009 to 2016.
The original run was published without the “specter” of the Comics Code
Authority, a seal of approval that promoted self-censorship.1 The cover of
the frst issue (Nov. 1964) was clear in its love for “monstermania”: Uncle
Creepy, who offciates as host, is reading the Creepy magazine circled by
famous creeps such as the Frankenstein’s creature, a spook, a rotting corpse,
and other monsters.
Spain’s relationship with Creepy started in the 1970s, when Spanish
black-and-white magazines such as Vampus2 and Rufus3 mixed stories from
both Creepy and other magazines – and publishers – such as Scream (1973–
1975), Psycho (1971–1975) or Nightmare (1970–1975), all of them from
Warren competitor Skywald.4 A Spanish version of Creepy, wearing the
name on the cover, fnally appeared in March 1979. Published by Toutain
until issue # 79 (Jan. 1986), this series again offered a mix of stories. The
mix, this time, was not the result of putting together stories from different
publishers – all the stories were now from Warren – but by grouping, under
the same cover, reprints from American authors and illustrators with origi-
nal stories by Spanish artists and writers.
The quality was high and the magazine a success. The artistic styles varied
from story to story and from nationality to nationality, but the tales were
genuinely interesting, provoking, and, fttingly, creepy. Yet, a stark differ-
ence can be spotted between the American stories and the Spanish ones.
While American authors favored the supernatural monsters of lore and Hol-
lywood cinema such as zombies and vampires, Spanish creators were more
inclined to human monsters and realistic grounding. Supernatural horrors
were mostly absent – except in beautiful adaptations of H. P. Lovecraft’s
works5 – in the Spanish stories, the horror rather being born from alienation
and human cruelty.
DOI: 10.4324/9781003261551-6
Spanish Creepy 51
This inclination for human evil was epitomized in “Las mil caras de Jack
el destripador” (“The thousand faces of Jack the Ripper”), a serial begin-
ning in Creepy #66 (Dec. 1984) that lasted until issue #75 (Sept. 1985). The
serial was written by Santiago Segura with the art of José Ortíz. The action
takes place in London in 1888 when the infamous serial killer Jack the Rip-
per unleashed a bloodbath in the streets of Whitechapel, then one of the
poorest districts. The serial’s originality lies in the formula encapsulated in
the title: there is no one Jack the Ripper, but thousands. Any citizens, of any
age, social class, or gender, can be the killer. Segura offered a bleak vision
of London and, by extension, of human nature. Rather than going with the
idea of the evil being focalized in just one subject, it is to be understood that
malevolence resides in everyone.
This realistic approach to horror storytelling, sustained by the majority
of the Spanish writers, was not born in a vacuum. Spain was coming out
from a cruel and lengthy dictatorship that lasted more than three decades
(1939–1975) and that was witness throughout the early years to execu-
tions, imprisonments, and disappearances of “subversive” citizens to later
meet, through the sixties, disenchantment, political apathy, and alienation.
The Spanish Creepy was published during the time of the “transition” from
dictatorship to democracy – roughly 1975 to the frst years of the 1980s –
a period where “undemocratic behavior” was still the norm (Mihr 270).
“Las mil caras de Jack el destripador,” however, was published in the mid-
1980s, a period in which the festive la movida dominated the Spanish cli-
mate. La movida was a counterhegemonic cultural response to the Spanish
elite and the politics taking place in the cities of Madrid (capital of Spain),
Vigo, Barcelona, Bilbao, Valencia, and Sevilla. It was characterized by sexual
openness, antiestablishment artistic impulses, eclecticism, and versatility. La
movida was “generous in hopes” (Lechado 258), but it presented darker
sides. It was considered excessive, apolitical, and post-historical, a period
detached from chronological time rather than a critical refection on Fran-
coism (Vilarós 20). In this context, Spanish horror stories within the pages
of the vernacular Creepy offered more a refection on cultural amnesia and
the dread of potential repetition than a revision of dusty old horror tropes.
As a case study, “Las mil caras de Jack el destripador” offers readers a grim
portrait of human (post)history where the horror, rather than being resolved
and dealt with, circulates and reproduces itself to infnity. The serial, set
in London in 1880, was nevertheless deeply informed by this “culture of
amnesia.”
Terrorism, Amnesia, and the Spanish 1980s

Francoist Spain can be divided, broadly speaking, into three main stages
taking place after the Civil War (1936–1939) that devastated the country
and provoked the collapse of the Spanish Republic: fascism (1939–1945),
isolationism (1946–1959), and modernity (1960–1975). The frst stage was
52 Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns
fascism, right up until the end of World War II. Those were years in which
Franco tried to graft onto Spain the fascist governments of Adolf Hitler or
Benito Mussolini (Payne 326). After the fall of the fascist regimes in Europe,
Spain adopted autarchic economy6 and international isolation right up until
1959. At the end, and after the complete failure of this autarchic stage, Spain
embraced “modernity,” dominated by a sense of “peace and progress” which
lasted until the death of the caudillo (military leader) in 1975. Part of the
legitimation of Franco’s power in this third stage rested on the memory of
the mayhem of the Spanish Civil War and the desire to gain and keep peace.
Further, there was an economic boom from 1962 to 1972, giving birth to
a consumerist society which ran parallel to political apathy. As Cazorla
Sánchez explains, those were years in which “nothing (threatening) seemed
to happen” (102). The apathy and the calmness were the products of dec-
ades of Franco’s governance and a past of violence in the streets still haunt-
ing Spaniards. Franco died in 1975, and, after a period of transition from
dictatorial practices and thinking of democracy, Spain became fully modern
after decades of obscurantism and stagnation.
Creepy was born during the transition. Still, the magazine offered no real
critiques of the Francoist past, neither warning about the dangers of fascism
nor authoritarianism. The only exception is found in the frst issue. “Exor-
cismo!” (“Exorcism!” [Apr. 1979]), created by two Spaniards, writer Luis
Vigil and artist Auraleon, is the only explicit act of ridicule on Francisco
Franco’s reign of terror. A priest is taken to a home where a young girl is
possessed, seemingly by the devil. The girl follows all the tropes popularized
years earlier by William Friedkin’s The Exorcist (1973). She changes her
physical appearance, drops blasphemous lines, vomits unclean liquids, and
so on. Yet, she is possessed, as revealed in the climax, by an extraterrestrial
being who answers to the leader of a race committed to global conquest.
In page 41, this leader is called “generalísimo” (as Franco was called) and
holds a strong resemblance to Franco. The story is a reprint from the Ameri-
can Vampirella # 70 (July 1978) titled “The Terrible Exorcism of Adriennes
Pompereau.” Yet, with two Spaniard creators, it is ftting that Vigil changed
the original “commander” (51) for “generalísimo” in the Spanish version.
The cruel, tyrannical commander having Franco’s face is an internal joke
that only Spaniards can fully grasp, while Americans reading Vampirella get
just a nice horror story.
Still, the lack of more direct darts against the man who put Spain under
a reign of horror is striking, especially keeping in mind that Franco was
dead when the Spanish Creepy started its ventures. But it is understandable
if the historical moment is contextualized: the transition was the moment
of mourning with anxieties and uncertainty for the future – the nation
was not yet very sure that democracy would prevail at the end. After this
mourning time, the party properly started, called la movida. It is diffcult
to fnd an English translation to la movida, the term referring to “move-
ment” and commonly translated as “the Madrid Scene.” La movida was
Spanish Creepy 53
that: movement. Spain was fnally moving: from dictatorship to democracy,
from obscurantism to modernity, and from a daily sense of dread to hope
and joy. La movida was a cultural movement that celebrated all things mod-
ern and new: privileged excess, hedonism, creativity, saturated colors (in
clothes, furniture), music, dance, and happiness in general (Pavlović et al.
163). The central idea was to fnally embrace life after decades of horror.
It was accompanied with another vernacular phenomenon, “el destape”
(roughly translated as “the revealing,” as “lifting the veil”), a new open-
ness to sexuality, nudity, and queer sensibilities, advocating “pleasure as a
new Spanish morality” (Pavlović 92). It was, seemingly, a revolutionary and
counterhegemonic movement.
Yet, it was depoliticized. The glamour of the modern came with amnesia:
the past needed to be forgotten for la movida to exist. Artists and citizens
celebrated that they were apolitical and without ideology. Spanish flmmaker
Pedro Almodóvar, one of the most visible representatives of la movida, con-
ceded that the main representatives “had no memory . . . There wasn’t the
slightest sense of solidarity, nor any political, social or generational feelings”
(quoted in Pérez-Sánchez 106). In her book El mono del desencanto – “the
monkey of disenchantment,” mono being slang for withdrawal syndrome –
Teresa Vilarós argues that the death of Franco signaled the beginning of
postmodernism in Spain (25), a time flled with a sense of “end of the his-
tory.” The latter was now replaced with an empty ethos, counterhegemonic
in appearance but conservative in heart. A leftist utopia of freedom was
replaced with consumerism, and the end of the dictatorship confronted citi-
zens – especially from the intellectual world – with the problem of having
to acknowledge their role as silent accomplices (Vilarós 34). Víctor Lenore
agrees with Vilarós and in his Espectros de la movida: Por qué odiar los 80
(Specters of the movida: why to hate the 1980s), the author explains why
to hate this particular decade. Following Lenore, the “absurdly idealized”7
(12) decade changed the ideology for consumerism and accepted political
amnesia as the main premise for daily life.
Civil war, state terrorism, social alienation, and the horrors of Francoist
Spain explain why the majority or writers and artists working on Creepy
magazine opted for stories grounded in realism. Yet, Francoist horror was
not explicitly mentioned. It is interesting to highlight a Spanish series run-
ning through Creepy: “Notas de terror” (“Notes of terror”), which started
in Creepy #63 (Sept. 1984) and lasted until the penultimate issue (#78 [Dec.
1985]). “Notas de terror” basically ran in parallel with “Las mil caras de
Jack el destripador,” both serials keeping the horror frmly within the non-
supernatural sphere. “Notas de terror” was a series of self-conclusive short
stories where the horror was born from alienation and social prejudice. The
frst story, written and illustrated by Jordi Díaz Castrillo, titled “El ultimo
metro” (“The last metro”) revolves around a citizen (Spanish, presumably)
traveling to home in the last metro of the day. He is alone except for another
passenger, a young man wearing punk clothes and hair. The frst man – who
wears a suit – starts to fantasize and fear what the punk youngster would
eventually do to him, alone as they both are. When the lights go out momen-
tarily, the older man cannot keep his fears under control and dies victim of a
heart attack. The short story (only two pages, a norm for “Notas de terror”)
playfully attacks the classist prejudices invading Spain, where conservative
thinking coded counterhegemonic youth to be dominated by drugs’ con-
sumption, a trait which began in the late 1960s when the Francoist regime
characterized hippies as ills from abroad.8
Even bleaker is “Rutina” (“Routine”) by Jordi Diaz Castrillo from Creepy
#66 (Dec. 1984). A man holds a hostage, a pistol aimed at his head. The
criminal wants to clean the cities from “maricas, degenerados” (“fagots,
degenerate people” [46]). The police arrive and take aim with their guns.
At some point, the cops shoot. The man killed, however, is the hostage.
The unnamed hostage-taker is the sergeant of the police department, and
the cops were running to the place to help him in their “cleaning process.”
All the stories of “Notas de terror” works on the premise of human hor-
rors coming from the obscurantist, prejudicial Spain that la movida was
not completely able to erase. The “notes” are about people hunting down
people, harming other citizens. The series is the perfect companion to the
general narrative of Spaniards within Creepy’s pages: mundane horror stem-
ming from social malaise after decades of isolation, alienation, and paranoia
directed at any glimpse of openness – to the exterior world and the ideas
of democracy, to modernity, to youth culture, etc. “Las mil caras de Jack
el destripador” elevates this climate of alienation and dread, reaching to
new extremes through the constant loop of amnesiac (post)history where
chronological time, rather than advancing toward social and cultural bet-
terment as promised by modernity, halts to an eternal loop where Jack the
Ripper returns over and over again to execute his/her victims with complete
impunity, all the times wearing different faces. Spain in the 1980s encour-
aged “historical amnesia” aimed to “avoid a confrontation or a repetition
of a traumatic past” (Sánchez 102). Yet, amnesia and lack of closure favor
the repetition of traumatic experiences. This repetitive loop of Jack and his/
her murder cycle mirrors the cycle of trauma, which, unless addressed and
worked through, returns to haunt both citizens and national history.
Postmodern Repetition in “Las mil caras de Jack

el destripador”
It is necessary to give a precise detail of the plot underlining “Las mil caras
de Jack el destripador.” The series consists of self-contained stories, each
narrating the massacres of Jack the Ripper. Each story featured a different
Jack, although the setting is always the same: Whitechapel in 1888. It must
be said that the stories do not present a supernatural contraption to justify
its premise: the different “Jacks” are not possessed by the spirit of the origi-
nal killer nor is there a virus spreading through the city, infecting people
Spanish Creepy 55
with homicidal insanity. It is simply different possible identities of Jack in a
universe that replicates itself, changing the identity of the monster. The basic
premise sustaining the series is that monsters are born from social malaise –
such as corruption, alienation, and urban decay – rather than being aberra-
tions, evil consequences of chance.
Following this logic, sometimes the stories present two Jack the Rippers
and, in some cases, even three in the same tale. The latter is best exemplifed
with the serial’s frst story in Creepy #66. This frst entry starts with the bru-
tal killing of Annie Chapman – Jack’s second victim – and, after an ellipsis,
what happens after the fve canonical killings. Jack is gone, and a man called
Robert, who gets sexually aroused at the sight of Jack’s victims, decides he
will be the new Ripper. He needs the blood to run to keep his basic urges
satisfed. He chooses a prostitute to kill, but before he can kill her, she cuts
his throat with a knife, proclaiming herself the new Ripper.
This story offers three Rippers. Curiously, the frst two are members of
the law. The frst Ripper (the “original”) is an anonymous cop patrolling
the city. Using his status as an agent of law, he can approach sex workers
without raising suspicions. The second Jack is Robert, a man who works for
the police; his role within the cop force is ambiguous – is he a photographer,
a caricaturist, or a forensic? He works with the detectives in charge of the
investigation, and the sight of Annie’s butchered body – her entrails coming
out from her ripped abdomen – triggers his psychosis while sexually arous-
ing him (see Figure 5.1).
Turning the main killers into agents of law is coherent with the story of a
country where the state, embodied in Franco and his politics, oppressed and
even executed citizens rather than protect them. Francoist Spain offered a
law corrupted from inception, since the State sanctioned norms to protect
Franco’s regime of horror against any citizen labeled “subversive,” meaning
anyone acting or talking against the government. It was not as simple as
“corruption” within law, but was a law essentially created to oppress and
kill those deemed as “enemies” and, as such, monstrous by nature. Legal
power, sustained exclusively by the military (della Porta 49), was active
in serving State oppression, just like the cops in Segura’s story who were
responsible for the reign of terror invading the city.
Urbanity, as narrated by Segura and illustrated by José Ortíz, is a bleak
landscape of extreme misery, metropolitan decay, and moral corruption.
Annie walks the streets knowing a killer is at the loose, but she needs some
money to pay for a bed; her landlady is not open to lend her a bed for the
night if Annie does not pay frst. The detectives in charge of the investiga-
tion rush to declare the case closed after some days without new crimes as
a way to cover their incompetence. Ortíz’s realistic drawings fll the streets
of chiaroscuros, which encases London under fog and decay as well. With
exception of the cops, all the characters wear ragged clothes. Amid this sce-
nario of corruption, monsters are born. It can be argued, and rightly so,
that the new Jack the Ripper wants to start a new bloodbath because the
Figure 5.1 The bloody corpse of one of Jack’s victims horrifes and excites as well.
Source: Courtesy of Maribel Ortíz.
dismembered bodies of women excites him. Furthermore, the woman who

kills Robert dresses richly, coding her as a citizen of the upper class. Yet, the
fact that British citizens are basically battling for the Ripper mantle cannot
be overlooked: the city and the economic environment has bred at least
three monsters (see Figure 5.2).
Segura’s suggestion about moral dishonesty is emphasized in the next
story in Creepy #67 (Jan. 1985), simply titled “Jack el destripador” (“Jack
the Ripper”), where the author returns to some of the themes framing the
frst story while adding new ones. There is a new Jack, now called Horacio
Seymor. Like the previous Jacks, this killer also works for the police, now
as the coroner’s helper. Horacio is killing a woman in her bedroom: the
landlady hears noises in the victim’s room and asks a resident to investi-
gate. Disturbed, the murderer must fee the crime scene, even if the victim
has snatched away Horacio’s pocket watch which can point to his identity.
Spanish Creepy 57
Figure 5.2 Even rich women can be the new Jack the Ripper.
Using his role as a fgure of authority, Horacio returns to the crime scene
minutes later to retrieve the clock. However, the victim’s arm has been bru-
tally cut off, and the clock has vanished. The explanation comes in the last
panel: the old landlady has cut the victim’s hand so she can take the expen-
sive clock the corpse held rigidly in her hand. Like in the frst story, fgures
belonging to the law are coded sadist-killers, thus emphasizing the argument
about how the protection of citizens is left in the hands of torturers who
abuse their power and authority. Further, this second story adds the twist in
what seems at frst an innocent, frail citizen (the landlady) who, at the end,
is as corrupt as Jack himself (see Figure 5.3).
Segura’s portrait of London is a bleak one. It is a city where moral corrup-
tion runs amok and where each citizen hides a Jack the Ripper within. Fur-
ther, the stories present no resolution in the traditional sense: Jack is never
arrested. Jack is fnally captured in “Mal perdedor” (“Bad loser”) in Creepy
Figure 5.3 The corruption of the common citizen continues here with the old
landlady.
#72 (June. 1985), or, better said, he delivers himself to the police. Yet, this
is just a psychopath who wants to gain notoriety. The real Jack the Ripper
soon shows up to brutally kill his fan, cutting his fngers and pushing him
into the dirty waters of the Thames.
The lack of real resolution favors amnesia and allows Jack to come back
over and over, always hiding behind a new prestigious citizen. This keeps
London trapped in a temporal loop where the killer’s spree is always begin-
ning anew. The postmodern amnesia sweeping Spain in the 1980s was
the perfect philosophy to propose what Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht calls the
“Chronotope of the Broad Present”:
Different from the ever shrinking and therefore “imperceptibly short”

present of the historicist chronotope, the new present (that continues to
Spanish Creepy 59
be our present in the early twenty-frst century) is one in which all para-
digms and phenomena from the past are juxtaposed as being available
and ready-to-hand. For this present, instead of leaving the past behind,
is inundated with pastness.
(273)
Both la movida and “Las mil caras de Jack el destripador” are flled with a
“broad present” where the only experience is an everlasting now. Segura’s
series never really goes forward, as the stories are trapped in “pastness” that
is, in essence, present as the characters never leave the Whitechapel of 1880.
Every story is about the killing spree of Jack the Ripper coming back to haunt
a nation that is unable to pass over his ever-haunting presence. It may be
argued that the action takes place in London rather than in Spain; yet, Span-
iards already naturalized that fantastic stories in media took place always
abroad – London being the most used location – to avoid censorship. As
Rubén Sánchez Trigos argues, Spanish censorship tolerated creatures of the
night such as werewolves and vampires roaming the city, but only if the action
was geographically localized abroad. For the Francoist mind, nothing really
horrible can take place in Spain (123). Further, monsters such as the were-
wolf or the walking mummy were “exotic” enough to avoid any clear linkage
with the Spanish social and cultural context (Sánchez Trigos 143). Jack the
Ripper, his history inextricably linked to London, is such a creature. Yet, it
is impossible to ignore the connections between Jack as an opium addict in
“Veneno Amarillo” (“Yellow poison”) in Creepy #71 (May. 1985) and the
“epidemic” of drugs fooding Spain through la movida, a phenomenon linked
explicitly with countercultural life and evil deviance (Pérez-Sánchez 174). In
the story, Jack is poisoned by a Chinese drug lord who wants to hire the Rip-
per as his weapon of execution against the man who raped his daughter. Jack
drawn vomiting on the streets and walking under the effects of poison evokes
the national fears about young people walking aimless under the effect of
drugs, with evil intentions – at least for the conservative thinking – in the
mind. Jack kills his objective but, later, kills the innocent daughter of the drug
lord in revenge for being used as a tool. In the end, Jack is free to roam the
streets of London once again, the criminal captured only by a broad sense of
“always-present” but, as argued by Gumbrecht, “inundated with pastness.”
Segura’s version of London ran in parallel to la movida, a mindset celebrat-
ing eternal present but in love with the postmodern tropes of “fragmenting
and decentralizing the subject and rewriting history” (Pérez-Sánchez 108).
Segura, like Spain in the earlier 1980s, brought eternal present to the center
and made it the legitimate grounds on which to build a larger political pro-
gram. The past must be resolved if the country – the U.K. in the 1880s or
Spain in 1980s – really wants to heal and progress. Spain wanted to cel-
ebrate life after decades of oppression, but the country needed to address the
monsters of its past to escape from the temporal trap and welcome democ-
racy in healthier and durable ways.
Conclusions
“Las mil caras de Jack el destripador” re-creates but altered aspects of the
past, inevitably offering a partial repetition of traumatic events. Through
the serial, time repeats itself, recycling or annulling time, which is perhaps
another way of describing the effect of the postmodern end of the history
with a capital H.
Spanish Creepy ended in 1985 with #79 (Dec. 1985). The reasons, as
stated, were failing sales but especially poor American materials. Certainly,
horror comics were not in the best of states by mid-1980s, with less and
less horror comics being published.9 Further, Spain was leaving la movida
behind, democracy increasingly naturalized and practiced. Spain was fnally
able to leave the horrors of Francoism behind and heal, not through the
politics of cultural amnesia but by addressing the past and its many faults.
The systematic excavation of corpses from mass graves (Silva and Macías
5) and political stability by the hand of Felipe González, elected Prime Min-
ister four times in consecutive elections (1982–1996), opened the path to a
re-evaluation of the past, addressing the trauma rather than obscuring it.
Traumatic heritage is open-ended and it survives; Franco is still a topic of
heated discussion, especially after his remains were moved from the cem-
etery Valle de los Caidos (“Valley of the Fallen”), a site of remembrance of
those killed during the Spanish Civil War, to a private cemetery in 2019. This
movement was part of the Ley de Memoria Histórica (“Historical Memory
Law”) signed in 2007 as a way to give visibility to those oppressed by the
Francoist dictatorship (DeLugan 49).
A revision of the imposed narratives of the historical past, including the
Civil War and the Francoist era, paved the way to begin to speak about the
damaging effect of a perceived “democratic defcit” and/or “disremember-
ing” (O’Byrne 9). Coming to terms with the damages and divisions produced
by the Civil War and Franco’s presidency was the healthier way to address
the past and secure democracy. In this social and cultural context, maybe
Segura’s Jack was fnally arrested and incarcerated, thus giving proper rest
to his victims and history.
Notes
1 Warren Publishing overcame the problem of Comics Code Authority arguing they
were a magazine (sold in magazine racks) rather than a comic book and aimed at
adults (Roach and Cooke 37).
2 Published by Ibero Mundial de Ediciones 1971–1975 and by Garbo by 1975–1978.
3 Published by Ibero Mundial de Ediciones 1973–1974 and by Garbo by 1974–1978.
4 For a detailed study of the story of horror comics in Spain, see Manuel Barrero
“Tebeos de terror españoles de los setenta.”
5 For example, “La sombra sobre Innsmouth” (issue # 63, September 1984) or “La
cosa en el umbral” (issue # 64, October 1984), both by Norberto Buscaglia and
Alberto Breccia.
Spanish Creepy 61
6 The period of autarchic economy considered that Spain was sustainable with its
own resources, and, as such, the country needs to step out from the global context.
The ideological underpinning of this idea was to keep Spain away from demo-
cratic and modern ideas through a strong isolationism.
7 My translation.
8 The Francoist regime depicted Spain as being free from hippies. Those running
through the country were “imported” by tourism – at least, that was how there
were presented – and were a bad example for the healthy vernacular youth.
Through Francoist Spain and the years to follow, countercultural youth were
coded “the enemy.” See Pagnoni Berns, Alegorías televisivas del franquismo: Nar-
ciso Ibáñez Serrador y las Historias para no dormir (1966–1982), pp. 119–181.
9 Until the British Invasion of the late 1980s, there had also been a move away from
anthology titles to more serialized storytelling due to the market shifting from the
newsstands to the specialty comic book shops. My thanks to John Darowski for
the information.
Works Cited
Barrero, Manuel. “Tebeos de terror españoles de los setenta.” Tebeosfera, 20 Novem-
ber 2009. www.tebeosfera.com/documentos/tebeos_de_horror_espanoles_en_los_
setenta.html. Accessed 9 July 2021.
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(October 1984). Toutain, 1984, pp. 13–23.
Buscaglia, Norberto (w) and Alberto Breccia (a). “La sombra sobre Innsmouth.”
Creepy #63 (September 1984). Toutain, 1984, pp. 12–28.
Cazorla Sánchez, Antonio. “Order, Progress, and Syndicalism? How the Francoist
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della Porta, Donatella. Clandestine Political Violence. Cambridge University Press,
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DeLugan, Robin María. Remembering Violence: How Nations Grapple with Their
Diffcult Pasts. Routledge, 2020.
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Toutain, 1984, pp. 54–55.
___. “Rutina.” Creepy #66 (December 1984). Toutain, 1984, pp. 45–47.
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2015, pp. 273–281.
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torical Memory. Tamesis, 2014.
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Cádiz, 2019.
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Francisco Franco to Jesús Franco. State University of New York Press, 2003.
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Part II
Race and Gender in Horror

Comic Books
6 “A Sight to Dream of, Not
to Tell!”
Orality and Power in
Marguerite Bennett and Ariela
Kristantina’s InSEXts
Lauren Chochinov
In 1872, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu published what would become the most
infuential work of Sapphic vampire fction with his novella Carmilla. The
titular character was certainly not the frst female vampire, but Carmilla
provided inspiration for generations to come with its depiction of the deadly
cost of same-sex desire. At the end of the novella, its protagonist Laura
recounts the end of her vampiric temptress who meets her doom at the
hands of Laura’s uncle and a group of like-minded men set on rescuing her
from Carmilla’s clutches. Laura reads from a letter describing the event,
recounting
[Carmilla’s] body, therefore, in accordance with the ancient practice,

was raised, and a sharp stake driven through the heart of the vampire,
who uttered a piercing shriek at the moment, in all respects such as
might escape from a living person in the last agony.
(Le Fanu 92)
Carmilla, who used words to lure Laura into a confusing fog of desire
and dread, is silenced, with a cry from an almost-human throat in her last
moment. Perhaps there is no better way to describe the Gothic’s traditional
handling of dangerous women than a silencing.
In Marguerite Bennett and Ariela Kristantina’s comic series InSEXts,
however, the idea of unspoken desire is all but eliminated as the protago-
nists, two women very much in love, battle patriarchal and heteronormative
power structures with the strength of their words, and more importantly,
the transformative nature of their physical bodies, especially their mouths
and tongues. InSEXts draws on Gothic inspirations to subvert expectations
regarding vampirism and body horror while reimaging the possibilities of a
queer Gothic tradition. InSEXTs challenges the nineteenth-century stereo-
type of the predatory lesbian vampire and posits body horror as a gendered,
transformational experience that defes Victorian ideologies pertaining to
motherhood, marriage, and sexuality.
DOI: 10.4324/9781003261551-8
66 Lauren Chochinov
The Origins of Monstrosity in InSEXTs
The frst volume of InSEXts, titled Chrysalis, was initially published as seven
single issues from Dec. 2015 to Aug. 2016 by AfterShock Comics. Written
by Marguerite Bennett and illustrated by Ariela Kristantina, InSEXts fol-
lows the story of Lady Lalita Bertram and her lover, Mariah, her lady’s
maid. Lady, as she is called by her servants and by Mariah, is a woman in
the process of a transformation. After the death of Lady’s abusive husband,
Lord Henry Bertram, Lady and Mariah use sex to trigger newfound pow-
ers that they use to hunt down sex-traffckers, murderous abortionists, and
The Hag, a vicious female spirit haunting Victorian London. Lady’s increas-
ingly dangerous transformations see her change from human to a volatile
insect creature capable of brutal violence. Together, Mariah and Lady try to
protect London’s most vulnerable populations while raising their newborn
son, William, a child born through parthenogenesis (asexual reproduction
wherein an embryo develops without fertilization from sperm).
InSEXts is a comic that is well aware of its Gothic inspirations. Ben-
nett liberally scatters references to nineteenth-century literature throughout
the book, alluding to works that specifcally contain intensely close rela-
tionships between women including the aforementioned Carmilla; Christa-
bel (1816), a poem detailing a female vampire and her innocent victim by
Samuel Taylor Coleridge; and “Goblin Market” (1862), Christina Rosset-
ti’s poem about the close bond between two sisters tempted by forbidden
knowledge. Despite the presence of proto-lesbian characters in novels and
poetry of the nineteenth century, homosexuality in women was not seriously
considered by doctors until the mid-nineteenth century. According to Patri-
cia E. Stevens and Joanne M. Hall, close relationships between women were
not seen as being problematic in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
(294). This changed, however, with the pathologizing of lesbianism later in
the period. Where previously lesbianism had been grouped with male homo-
sexuality as a sin that required the intervention of the church, the shift from
religious doctrine to medical diagnosis saw lesbianism “become ensnared in
an ideological netherworld between immortality and madness” (294). Early
medical studies of lesbianism believed that same-sex desire in women was
hereditary. Although this notion was challenged, the association between
lesbianism and “unnatural” behaviour became a cornerstone of nineteenth-
century medical theory. This legacy lasted well into the twentieth century. As
Stevens and Hall explain: “Medical writings during the frst three-quarters
of [the twentieth century] portrayed homosexuality as both a disease and a
moral corruption” (296).
Le Fanu’s Carmilla, for example, depicts a fgure in camoufage, whose
outward appearance is a cover for inner corruption. Carmilla is able to enter
Laura’s world because they are so alike: their class, their age, and their sex
make Carmilla initially a trustworthy fgure in the eyes of Laura’s uncle.
Victorian physicians tried to “morbidify” (Faderman 73) same-sex love
“A Sight to Dream of, Not to Tell!” 67
between women, and literature approached these desires from a similar per-
spective. Characters like Carmilla were depicted as a threat, a disease, and a
gateway to a lifetime of madness.
Nineteenth-century literature exploration of sexuality, and more directly
same-sex desire, exhibit an overwhelming sense of a mind torn asunder, as
feelings and impulses become a path towards destruction. As Laura says of
her emotions toward Carmilla: “I experienced a strange tumultuous excite-
ment that was pleasurable, ever and anon, mingled with a vague sense of
fear and disgust. . . . I was conscious of a love growing into adoration, and
also of abhorrence” (29). Laura’s acknowledgment of this paradox, her fear
and lust in the face of Carmilla’s wooing, establishes these sexual advances
as something confusingly pleasurable but surely wrong. As Tammis Elise
Thomas explains: “the identity of Le Fanu’s lesbian vampire is constituted
by two interrelated and ultimately inseparable secrets: the secret of Car-
milla’s vampire identity and the secret of her same-sex desire” (43). Even
speaking aloud these potential desires was too dangerous, as exemplifed in
Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Christabel.” When the innocent Christabel sees
the vampiric Geraldine’s naked body, she experiences “A sight to dream of,
not to tell!” (Coleridge 254). This duality then, the anxiety and want, the
abhorrence and lust are arguably a refection of the nineteenth century’s
opposing attitudes towards its own duplicitous nature.
Marguerite Bennett writes with a self-awareness that voraciously con-
sumes nineteenth-century theories of queer identity and reimagines a Vic-
torian landscape where “monstrous lesbianism” is celebratory. In InSEXTs,
fears of domestic destruction are met with the dismantling of a heteronor-
mative marriage. The anxiety around the impossibility of queer reproduc-
tion is replaced with a lesbian couple capable of having children. And the
defnition of lesbianism as a disease is reinterpreted as a life-giving virus
rather than a life-destroying illness in need of a cure.
In the introduction to InSEXts, Bennett writes that “to be a woman is to
live a life of body horror” (Bennett i). She explains that societal expecta-
tions and pressures placed on women’s bodies often clash with the physical
transformations brought on by puberty. The body changes seemingly of its
own will, and the result is unpredictable and comes with a brand-new set
of societal expectations and assumption. InSEXts, therefore, was written
“about all the horror and power and sensuality and rage of the bodies of
women, metamorphic. What is soft becomes hard; what is gentle becomes
sharp. Clicking teeth and chittering mandibles live under warm fesh. What
was colonized and enslaved breaks free” (Bennett i). Bennett’s version of
body horror seeks to appropriate the most terrifying transformative female
fgures from the Gothic tradition and re-imagine them not as villains, but as
saviours.1 As Bennett explains: “[Lady and Mariah] . . . discover a form of
body horror that allows them to escape and transcend the confnes of their
lives, and punish those who harmed them and others like them all these
years” (Morris).
68 Lauren Chochinov
While “body horror” has long been a facet of literature, the terminology,
coined by Philip Brophy in the 1986 essay “Horrality – The Textuality of
Contemporary Horror Films,” is more often associated with horror flms.
The visual medium of flm created a new way for audiences to experience
the fears and perversions of shifting bodies. As Brophy explains in reference
to the emerging genre of body horror flms in the 1980s, these flms are
notable because they are concerned with “The act of showing over the act of
telling; the photographic image versus the realistic scene; the destruction of
the family, the body, etc” (2). Arguably, the same can be said of body horror
depicted in comics due to the medium’s use of visual components.
Comic books and body transformation go hand in hand. While crea-
tors like Junji Ito are famous for horror graphic novels that involve body
transformations, superhero comics feature bodies that shift and change as a
means of metamorphosis. As Aaron Taylor explains:
Reading the superbody is in many ways an attempt to understand a

physiognomy that continually collapses and reforms itself from panel
to panel, comic to comic, reader to reader. To a certain extent, the
medium itself is conducive to unstable corporeal identities, which can
be extended to the instability of gender construction and reinforcement.
(348)
In InSEXts, Lady’s body is the site of increasingly unstable changes, but

her newfound abilities continue to challenge gender and biological norms –
much in the same way “superbodies” are capable of collapse and reforma-
tion. Kristantina’s art is confrontational and unfinching. It depicts graphic
scenes of bodies torn asunder while also lavishing attention on the eroticism
of Lady and Mariah’s sexual exchanges. Bodies in InSEXts are capable of
horror and wonder, sometimes simultaneously.
Monstrous Reproduction
Bennett and Kristantina begin InSEXTs with a direct challenge to Victorian
sensibilities regarding domestic spaces and gender roles in a sequence that
imagines the possibility of lesbian reproduction. The domestic sphere was a
strictly heterosexual space in the nineteenth century, to the point that “Vic-
torian domestic ideology prohibited female expression of sexual emotion
and accompanying physical sensations outside of marriage and the realm
of reproduction” (Brock 128). Not only do Lady and Mariah graphically
touch each other, but the result of their “sexual emotion” and “physical sen-
sations” is an act of reproduction as well. The seminal text The Monstrous-
Feminine (1993) by Barbara Creed explains: “All human societies have a
conception of the monstrous-feminine, of what it is about woman that is
shocking, terrifying, horrifc, abject” (1). Creed argues: “when woman is
represented as monstrous it is almost always in relation to her mothering
and reproductive function” (7). Lady and Mariah’s frst act as a couple is to
become mothers through a deadly act of conception.
Previously, Lady had been unable to conceive, suffering a series of still-
births that her husband, Henry, refused to let her mourn. His brutish, abu-
sive behaviour and his penchant for mistreating the servants provoke Lady
and Mariah towards their frst sexual union in the book. Mariah promises
Lady that she can give her a child, and in their frst intimate scene, Mariah
“impregnates” Lady, spitting a small chrysalis into her mouth. Later, Lady
repeats this scene with Henry, regurgitating the same chrysalis from her
mouth into his. Henry’s “pregnancy” is short and painful and ends with the
fetus tearing its way from his abdomen, a self-inficted Caesarean section
that kills its male incubator. Mariah frees the baby, still encased in an amni-
otic sack, with her teeth, and it is there, with the destroyed body of Henry
Bertram behind them, that Lady, Mariah, and their son, William, become a
family.
The source of Mariah and Lady’s fetus, then, is not a physical act of het-
eronormative impregnation through penetration, but rather an ineffable
magic passed between women in much the same way that Carmilla passed
forbidden knowledge to Laura through her words and physical attacks.
Mariah’s ability to “give” Lady a child is shrouded in mystery. When Lady
asks, Mariah says: “I knew a woman . . . a lady’s maid to an offcer’s wife in
Burma. He never let her be, kept her with child even when she said too much,
too many, too” (Bennett and Kristantina 15). The implication that the offc-
er’s wife used the same method to kill her over-eager husband indicates that
parthenogenesis is inspired by a shared sense of pain and injustice, an injus-
tice that inspires gendered vengeance. When Lady bemoans her husband’s
abuse of sex-workers and impoverished women, Mariah explains: “We will
be the revenge they could not take. We will be the revenge we all could not
take” (Bennett and Kristantina 15). How Mariah carries the chrysalis after
her encounter with the offcer’s wife is never explained, but the genetic con-
nection between Lady, Mariah, and William is later confrmed when Mariah
says “Oh, my Lady! He has your hair!” which Lady follows with “and your
eyes, my sweet” (Bennett and Kristantina 18).
Among the many anxieties featured in vampiric fction is the idea of
impregnation through penetration. The vampire does not kill so much as
it conceives, as each of its victims becomes another vampire. The instru-
ment of penetration in the vampire is the creature’s teeth, making the oral
exchange between monster and victim an act of assault. InSEXts features
a monstrous conception, but it serves as a moment of transformation, both
physically – as it causes a body to shape and shift – and because it enables
freedom from the patriarchal structures placed on Lady and the society she
lives in. This impregnation does not cause death, but rather, it creates life.
Lady and Mariah’s apathy towards Henry’s corpse and Mariah’s use
of her teeth to tear her son from his amniotic sack speaks to what Creed
referred to as the abject horror inherent in women. Julia Kristeva famously
70 Lauren Chochinov
wrote of the abject: “It is thus not lack of cleanliness or health that causes
abjection but what disturbs identity, system, order. What does not respect
borders, positions, rules. The in-between, the ambiguous, the composite”
(4). Henry’s cisgender male body rejects pregnancy; his wombless physiog-
nomy cannot support the parasite Lady delivers to him, and it is this break-
down of gendered roles that ultimately destroys him.
According to Gina Wisker: “Desire and devouring feature as twin motifs
in lesbian Gothic horror” (123). This refects the nineteenth-century anxiety
surrounding women, especially the emergence of the “New Woman,” who
was closely associated with the dangers of sexuality unleashed. As Marilyn
Brock explains in reference to the New Woman and her newfound sexual
appetites: “Beneath the suppression of the New Woman’s bodily urges waited
an intense and monstrous hunger, caused by the denial of naturalized bodily
processes, such as reproduction” (Brock 127). The New Woman’s intelli-
gence, her awareness of her own desires, desires that placed her at odds with
the traditional domestic sphere of women and mothers, was seen as its own
form of appetite and consumption. According to nineteenth-century medi-
cal theory, the New Woman was “prone to anorexia nervosa” (Brock 127)
because her intelligence was a distraction from the natural processes of her
body. As the New Woman consumed knowledge, she “forgot” to consume
what sustained life: food and the natural company of a husband.
Nineteenth-century writers like Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu and Bram Stoker
used vampires to explore fears surrounding the New Woman and the dan-
gers of female sexuality unleashed. Characters like Carmilla or Stoker’s Lucy
Westenra are “a literary role model of the excitement and potential of trans-
gression, questioning patriarchal relations and conventional identity con-
structions” (Wisker 124). The vampire is seductive, it is a forbidden desire
made manifest. It is able to transform and represents baser desires. And
most importantly, the vampire infects. It is a virus that spreads, much like
the sexual knowledge so feared by Victorian society. As Heller elaborates:
That lesbianism is a form of nonprocreative sexuality would render it

obnoxious to proponents of domestic ideology, and yet, in “Carmilla,”
female homoeroticism does represent one type of propagation. Mimick-
ing the process of hysterical contagion, lesbianism in Le Fanu’s tale sets
in motion a kind of mental or intellectual parthenogenesis whereby one
woman’s knowledge spawns another’s.
(88)
Carmilla infects Laura with the knowledge of her own sexual desires, and
while Laura survives her encounter with the vampire, there is a sense that
she is never free from her “illness.” She does not marry nor does she ever
have children. Carmilla’s bite is enough to permanently remove her from the
possibilities of a domestic life. InSEXts uses imagery common for vampiric
characters but presents the monstrosity with its forbidden knowledge and
diseased infection as a cure for infertility and a gateway to domestic bliss.
The mouth, a locus of such anxiety in Gothic vampire fction, is reimagined
in InSEXts as a weapon and a cure. Lady and Mariah orally worship each
other; they speak loudly to defend their love, their family, and their commu-
nity; and, when threatened, Lady’s mouth is weaponized only against those
that would do her harm.
New Monsters
It is ironic then that the villain of InSEXts’ frst arc is a woman, or at least
a possessing spirit of a woman, called The Hag. She frst inhabits the body
of Lady’s sister-in-law Sylvia, a woman who clearly represents the ideals of
Victorian womanhood. Sylvia’s views on women reveal a seething internal-
ized misogyny that she unleashes on Mariah in an accusatory speech. When
Mariah asks why Sylvia hates her, she explains:
Women have the chances to be the angels of the house – virgins, wives,
mothers, grace incarnate – yet they are ungrateful. They emasculate
those they should honor and protect, then shame them, then cry when
they are given what they deserve. It is nature. Spite is the nature of
women. To be dissatisfed. To be disobedient.
(Bennett and Kristantina 42)
The decision to hide the true villain of InSEXts among a sea of evil men is a
pointed choice. The Hag sees women as weakness and plays on that weakness
to infict pain. Her violent actions, including the gruesome mass-murder of
an entire jailhouse, lead the people of London to grant her the nickname, The
Butcher of London, though at frst a secret fraternity of werewolves, The Order
of Christopher the Cynocephalus, are framed for her crime.
The inclusion of werewolves in InSEXTs is once more a subversion of genre
expectations because werewolves, like vampires, inhabit the pages of Gothic
texts, though their particular monstrosity is notable within the context of
Lady’s ever-changing body. As Chantal Bourgault Du Coudray explains:
The werewolf’s moment of change highlights the contrast between the

classical human form (“young, handsome, and splendidly attired”) and
the grotesque Other. Thus, the werewolf can be classical or grotesque at
different moments, but it is always at its most grotesque as it transforms.
In the nineteenth-century this was a unique kind of monstrosity. Other
monsters such as Frankenstein’s creation or the vampire were equally
grotesque, but their representation of the classical form was limited to
their manifestations of difference from the ideal types personifed by the
other characters in the texts. In contrast, the werewolf’s bodily excesses
could encompass both extremes or archetypes within an individual body.
(8)
72 Lauren Chochinov
The werewolf is unique in that it does not maintain its humanoid shape in
the midst of transformation. It may simultaneously be human and beast, but
its monstrous appearance challenges the borders of the human body. Lady’s
transformations become increasingly insectile throughout the comic. Like
the werewolf, she initially retains recognizable human body parts, but with
each transformation, she loses more and more of her human form during
her monstrous transitions.
It is notable too that the werewolf is also an “old” monster, a creature
born of ancient folklore unlike Lady and Mariah, who revel in their new-
ness. They self-identify as “New Monsters,” undoubtedly a reference to the
Victorian “New Woman,” and repeatedly emphasize their newness, both
agreeing that “There are no monsters like us” (Bennett and Kristantina 35).
Later, as they discuss the role of The Order, Brother Asher remarks, “You
are no ladies. You are something new” (Bennett and Kristantina 79). The
nature of Lady and Mariah’s monstrosity is a complex combination of what
Robert Allan Lopez Crus has called “biological horror”2 and a subversion
of Gothic tropes relating to the predatory female vampire. Lady’s uncon-
trollable transformations certainly appear monstrous, but the fact that her
power and Mariah’s power are heightened by sex removes the anxieties
the Gothic traditionally exhibits towards the possibility of Saphhic love. In
InSEXts, sex is a source of power, but only when the two participants are
women.
These moments of transformation are not without their problems,
however, as Lady is at the constant mercy of her body. Where at frst
her powers seem triggered by male threat, she later develops a stinger
that appears in her mouth after Mariah offers her food. Unlike the
often-non-consensual bite of the vampire, however, Lady and Mariah
embrace Lady’s new body to the point of sexual worship. Elizabeth Brei
has argued that by “link[ing] the sexual lives of Mariah and Lady to
their lives as bug creatures, [it] makes it impossible to fully sexualize
them, therefore rejecting a non-queer or male gaze.” Unlike Carmilla or
Dracula, where men serve to protect their women from their own sexual
desire and its potential repercussions, InSEXts links the queer and the
monstrous, and then pushes further, equating this grotesque monstrosity
with strength and agency.3
Monstrous Mouths
The mouth continues to be the centre of power, which again provides a
point of departure from the vampiric tradition Bennett draws from in order
to reinterpret the genre. Christopher Craft explains that:
As the primary site of erotic experience in Dracula, this mouth equivo-

cates, giving the lie to the easy separation of the masculine and femi-
nine. Luring at frst with an inviting orifce, a promise of red softness,
but delivering instead a piercing bone, the vampire mouth fuses and
confuses what Dracula’s civilized nemesis . . . works so hard to sepa-
rate – the gender-based categories of the penetrating and the receptive.
(218)4
Lady’s mouth becomes increasingly grotesque throughout the series. When

a murderous abortionist attempts to provide a gynaecological exam, Lady
reveals a vagina dentata that soon extends vertically upwards so that Lady’s
entire body becomes a gaping, fang-flled mouth. The doctor’s hand, at frst
a penetrative symbol of danger, is consumed, and then his entire body is
devoured. According to Casey Ryan Kelly, “The vagina dentata is the primal
myth that women’s genitals are equipped with teeth capable of castration”
(86). Furthermore, Casey argues that in the context of modern horror flms,
the vagina dentata has been coded as “feminist responses to sexual violence”
(91). Lady’s body is inviting and deadly, soft and sharp; she is the vam-
pire’s mouth in its entirety. While she causes horrors for the darkest souls
in London, for her family, her servants, and her friends, she is both sword
and shield. Bennett makes the myth of the vagina dentata a reality in Lady’s
physical appearance. She is a castrating entity whose unstable transforma-
tions increasingly take the form of a gapping mouth.
The mouth continues to be the central fxation of InSEXts, its physical
anatomy and its ability to deliver speech making it the most volatile pres-
ence in the text. In a confrontation between Lady and the possessed Syl-
via, The Hag’s monstrous powers transform Sylvia’s face, giving her a wide,
fang-flled mouth that stretches from cheek to cheek. Lady transforms, as
well, and defeats Sylvia only after demanding that she “still [her] tongue”
(Bennett and Kristantina 87). The Hag’s speech is weaponized repeatedly so
that after she kills Sylvia and acquires a new host in the form of Madame H,
a brothel owner, it is her words that prove to be her most dangerous feature.
Hattie, one of Madame H’s sex workers, explains the coming of Madame
H and her slow domination of the brothel:
We didn’t know her for what she was, at frst . . . at frst indeed, we
loved her. When she made us feel ashamed, we wanted to please her.
When she made us feel wanted, there was no pleasure greater. She spoke
of good girls, of ladies, of the things she esteemed and we struggled to
be them . . . but it was all a way to keep us in her power.
(Bennett and Kristantina 95–96)
Haddie concedes that Madame H was likely molded by a patriarchal society

that tortured her but then notes,
Perhaps she was willing to kneel to the order of the world . . . to play
a brutal game . . . so long as it meant she was on the winning side. But
whatever made her doesn’t matter. She chose what to do with the power
she gained. And she chose to hurt us.
(Bennett and Kristantina 97)
74 Lauren Chochinov
Here, internalized misogyny is equated to compliance. Women who give
into the demands of their society ally themselves with the patriarchy and, in
the world of InSEXts, are equally if not more responsible for the suffering
of other women. InSEXts posits The Hag’s submission to the patriarchy as
an act of ultimate betrayal.
The only way to stop The Hag is by silencing her. Her hate spreads in the
same way that vampirism spread in Gothic fction: from the mouth. The
Hag’s physical body grows multiple mouths and a long, slithering tongue,
which she uses to speak evil into the world. The Hag claims that “hatred
of women is the oldest law there has ever been” (Bennett and Kristantina
103) but willingly participates in their destruction. When The Hag turns
on Mariah, Lady appears, and The Hag forces her poisonous tongue down
Lady’s throat. Lady proceeds to tear off the tongue with her teeth, though
not before consuming The Hag’s venom.
These scenes rely heavily on The Hag’s ability to speak about the fears of
her enemies. She taunts Mariah with the thought of Lady leaving their union
for a heterosexual marriage. She then tortures Lady with a vision of Mariah
and their child dead. Her words are her greatest weapon, despite the toothed
tentacles surrounding her body. When The Hag murders Lady’s friend Wil-
liam, their son’s namesake, it triggers Lady’s most extreme transformation
into an entirely insectile creature. Her human torso and face are replaced
with a vertical, fanged mouth, as her body contorts from the violence of her
metamorphosis. She kills The Hag with her gaping jaws, cracking the other
creature in half before falling to the ground, once more in human form.
The complexity of this moment posits a battle between two women, each
affected by patriarchal institutions that would see them punished merely
for existing in the world. Yet, The Hag’s willingness to ally herself with
misogyny in order to gain power turns her grotesque. The internalized
misogyny rots her so that, while both The Hag and Lady transform physi-
cally in similar ways, The Hag’s internalized hate makes her grotesque form
unsustainable. Her words are meant not to seduce but to torture and destroy
those that hear them. To let The Hag speak is to invite death. Alternatively,
Lady recognizes that in order to defeat The Hag, she must silence her. This
subversive reimagining of the vampire trope creates a dichotomy between
the villain – a monstrous woman whose words, despite her physical appear-
ance, are her ultimate weapon – and a hero, a fellow monster, a vampiric
avenger. The act of silencing a vampire is traditionally the sphere of men,
but in InSEXts, Lady destroys a creature who outwardly resembles her but
inwardly is corrupt due to her consumption of patriarchal ideology.
In InSEXts, the mouth and its numerous capabilities are the constant
focus of the narrative’s most powerful moments of strength. The words
uttered from the mouth offer either hate or love. The mouth gives pleasure,
just as it inficts pain. Lady and Mariah’s mouths offer an arguably queer
space, where sex and Otherness converge as an invitation for both voyeur-
ism and acceptance from an audience – both within the textual universe
and, arguably, for the comics’ readers, as well. Lady, whose ever-changing
body evokes the shape-shifting abilities of Carmilla, uses her powers for
good, even while she appears increasingly un-human. Lady and Mariah fear
the former’s body because it is uncontrollable, but they never speak of it as
being something evil or disgusting. It is an unknown entity, frightening but
not unwanted and refective of the body horror Marguerite Bennett ascribes
to cisgender female bodies.
Unlike Carmilla and Dracula’s Lucy, whose vampiric bodies are reclaimed
by men, at the end of InSEXts’s frst volume, Lady is entombed in a cocoon
where she is given time to heal from The Hag’s poison. She is undeniably
linked to the butterfy, hidden away until she is ready to emerge in a new
form. Her body, a queer body, is not grotesque or something to be destroyed
and erased. Instead, it is something beautiful. It offers hope and the continu-
ation of life. It is something new and different, but positively so, completing
Bennett’s reimagining of a Gothic vampiric fgure.
As Mariah and their son wait for Lady’s re-emergence, their patience is
indicative of modernity breaking through at the end of the century. There
is anticipation in this moment, anticipation for Lady’s next evolution, and
anticipation for this small, queer family to be reunited. The text ends with
an evocation to mouths and speech in acknowledgment of the strength and
danger implicitly found within. In InSEXts, mouths are capable of concep-
tion and death. They spread hate and speak truth. They infect and offer
purifcation. Mouths grant pleasure and mouths grant pain. How they are
used and who they are used by indicate the duplicitous power inherent in
their physiognomy and as the location that emits speech and sound. As
Elsie, one of the women saved by Lady, tells Mariah, they must speak in
order to “defy” a world that “will always want [women] to suffer” (Bennett
and Kristantina 124). In the fnal panels, Mariah wanders with Will in her
arms and reminds him that despite the temporary loss of Lady, they must
“Speak . . . sing . . . and try to be happy” (Bennett and Kristantina 124–125).
Mariah sings throughout the end of the text, her voice a continuous exem-
plifcation that in the world of InSEXts, silent women do not exist.
Notes
1 Lady and Mariah’s relationship is also a nod to the popular nineteenth/early twen-
tieth century trop of obsessive relationships between mistresses and their female
servants. Cf. Holly Blackford (2005).
2 According to Cruz, “biological horror” refers specifcally to the rejection of “nor-
mal anatomy and function in biological species” (161). Lady’s insectile trans-
formations synthesize the metamorphosis of many creatures found in nature
including butterfies and mantids.
3 As Geoffrey Harpham has argued, “The grotesque is the slipperiest of aesthetic
categories” (461). While the meaning initially referred to the uncomfortable
depiction of human/animal hybrids found in ancient Roman art, the defnition of
the grotesque has repeatedly shifted as each age seeks to re-defne its meaning. In
his discussion of Wolfgang Kayser’s comprehensive study of the grotesque, The
76 Lauren Chochinov
Grotesque in Art and Literature, Harpham explains that according to Kayser, “the
grotesque is a structure of estrangement. Suddenness and surprise . . . are essential
elements in this estrangement; the familiar and commonplace must be suddenly
subverted or undermined by the uncanny or alien” (Harpham 462). Ironically for
this discussion of InSEXts, one of the most common examples of the grotesque
in modern literatures comes from Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, a novel in
which Kafka’s main character awakes one morning to discover that he has trans-
formed into a beetle.
4 Christina Rossetti’s “Goblin Market,” which Mariah references in InSEXts, also
uses mouths as both objects of danger and restoration. When Laura eats the for-
bidden fruit of Goblin Men and develops a wasting disease, her sister, Lizzie, res-
cues her by visiting the Goblin Men and withstanding their assaults. As they try to
force feed her, “Lizzie uttered not a word;/Would not open lip from lip/Lest they
should cram a mouthful in” (430–432). Lizzie’s ability to withstand this tempta-
tion enables her to escape the Goblin Men and bring her sister a much-needed cure
in the form of fruit juices smeared over her mouth. As Lizzie tells Laura, “Hug me,
kiss me, suck my juices/ . . . Eat me, drink me, love me” (468, 471). Lizzie proceeds
to lick and kiss the juice from her sister’s face, regaining her health in the process.
Works Cited
Bennett, Marguerite. “Introduction.” InSEXts Vol. 1: Chrysalis, edited by Bennett
and Kristantina. AfterShock Comics, 2016, p. i.
Bennett, Marguerite (w), Ariela Kristantina (a), Jessica Kholine, Bryan Valenza (c)
and A Larger World (l). InSEXts Vol. 1: Chrysalis. AfterShock Comics, 2016.
Blackford, Holly. “Haunted Housekeeping: Fatal Attractions of Servant and Mis-
tress in Twentieth-Century Female Gothic Literature.” Literature Interpretation
Theory, Vol. 16, Taylor & Francis, Inc., 2005, pp. 233–261.
Bourgault Du Coudray, Chantal.“Upright Citizens on All Fours: Nineteenth-Century
Identity and the Image of the Werewolf.” Nineteenth Century Contexts, Vol. 24,
No. 1, 2002, pp. 1–16.
Brei, Elizabeth. “Bug Ladies in Victorian England: Queer Sexuality in InSEXts
(NSFW).” WomenWriteAboutComics.com, 17 August 2016, https://women-
writeaboutcomics.com/2016/08/bug-ladies-victorian-england-queer-sexuality-
InSEXts/. Accessed 20 April 2021.
Brock, Marilyn. “The Vamp and the Good English Mother: Female Roles in Le
Fanu’s Carmilla and Stoker’s Dracula.” From Wollstonecraft to Stoker: Essays on
Gothic and Victorian Sensation Fiction, edited by Marilyn Brock. McFarland &
Company, Inc., 2009, pp. 120–131.
Brophy, Philip. “Horrality – The Textuality of Contemporary Horror Films.” Screen,
Vol. 27, No. 1, January/February 1986, pp. 2–13.
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. “Christabel.” Coleridge: Poems. Knopf Doubleday Pub-
lishing Group, 2014 [1816], pp. 51–78.
Craft, Christopher. ““Kiss Me with Those Red Lips”: Gender and Inversion in Bram
Stoker’s Dracula.” Speaking of Gender, edited by Elaine Showalter. Routledge,
1989, pp. 216–242.
Creed, Barbara. The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis. Rout-
ledge, 1993.
Cruz, Ronald Allan Lopez. Mutations and Metamorphoses: Body Horror in Biologi-
cal Horror. Taylor & Francis Group, 2012.
Faderman, Lillian. “The Morbidifcation of Love between Women by 19th-Century
Sexologists.” Journal of Homosexuality, Vol. 4, No. 1, Fall 1978, pp. 73–90.
Harpham, Geoffrey. “The Grotesque: First Principles.” The Journal of Aesthetics and
Art Criticism, Vol. 34, No. 4, 1976, pp. 461–468.
Heller, Tamar. “The Vampire in the House: Hysteria, Female Sexuality, and Female
Knowledge in Le Fanu’s “Carmilla” (1872).” The New Nineteenth Century: Femi-
nist Readings of Underread Victorian Fiction, edited by Barbara Leah Harman
and Susan Meyer. Routledge, 1996, pp. 77–95.
Kelly, Casey Ryan. “Camp Horror and the Gendered Politics of Screen Violence:
Subverting the Monstrous-Feminine in Teeth (2007).” Women’s Studies in Com-
munication, Vol. 39, No. 1, 2016, pp. 86–106.
Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, translated by Leon S.
Roudiez. Columbia University Press, 1982 [1980].
Le Fanu, Joseph Sheridan. Carmilla, edited by Kathleen Costello-Sullivan. Syracuse
University Press, 2013 [1872].
Morris, Steve. “Bennett’s Shape-Shifting, Victorian Horror Series “InSeXts” Also Has
Kissing.” CBR.com, 17 September 2015, www.cbr.com/bennetts-shape-shifting-
victorian-horror-series-insexts-also-has-kissing/. Assessed 25 April 2021.
Rossetti, Christina. “Goblin Market.” Poems and Prose, Oxford University Press,
2008 [1862], pp. 105–119.
Stevens, Patricia E. and Joanne M. Hall. “A Critical Historical Analysis of the Medi-
cal Construction of Lesbianism.” International Journal of Health Services, Vol. 21,
No. 2, 1991, pp. 291–307.
Stoker, Bram. Dracula, edited by Glennis Byron. Broadview Press, 1997 [1897].
Taylor, Aaron. “He’s Gotta Be Strong, and He’s Gotta Be Fast, and He’s Gotta Be
Larger Than Life: Investigating the Engendered Superhero Body.” The Journal of
Popular Culture, Vol. 40, No. 2, 2007, pp. 344–360.
Thomas, Tammis Elise. “Masquerade Liberties and Female Power in Le Fanu’s Car-
milla.” The Haunted Mind: The Supernatural in Victorian Literature, edited by
Elton E. Smith and Robert Haas. Scarecrow Press, 1999, pp. 39–65.
Wisker, Gina. “Devouring Desires: Lesbian Gothic Horror.” Queering the Gothic,
edited by William Hughes and Andrew Smith. Manchester University Press, 2009,
pp. 123–141.
7 Gendered Violence and the
Abject Body in Junji Itō’s
Tomie
Tosha R. Taylor
Junji Itō’s horror manga Tomie presents the story of an eponymous entity
who, in the form of a beautiful young woman, torments her peers and leads
men frst to lust and then insanity, sometimes followed by death. Yet, even
as she preys on men’s sexual desires, she falls victim to them, as it is her fate
to be brutally murdered and regenerated in a cycle of violence from which
even she cannot escape. In each cycle, she wreaks havoc through seduction
and dies violently (often being dismembered afterward), and her dead body
yields new copies of herself who repeat the cycle. Both the manga and the
character treat the cycle as an inevitable result of male desire. Men, accord-
ing to arguments characters form throughout the text, cannot help but kill
Tomie, placing the blame for her many deaths entirely upon her. The manga
thus implicitly poses questions about the nature of misogynistic violence,
invoking popular discourses of such violence while complicating victim/vil-
lain dichotomies. Tomie simultaneously embodies patriarchal fears of the
domineering woman and feminine-coded fears of assault. Grotesque physi-
cal transformations throughout the manga render Tomie an abject monster
while also revealing the terror of losing bodily autonomy, thus aligning the
series with the body horror subgenre, a subgenre for which Tomie is often
overlooked despite Itō’s other works being popular examples of body horror
in comics. Examination of the relationship between bodily abjection, gender,
and genre in Tomie demonstrates that the manga both reveals and, at times,
subverts discourses of gendered violence. While horror comics, including
horror manga, are typically associated with male perspectives, even through
a male creator, Tomie’s depiction of violence against women holds particular
resonance in feminist readings.
Shōjo Horror
While widely acknowledged as being a horror manga, the primary genre
in which Tomie was originally published is shōjo, an identifer that is often
neglected or outright ignored in many popular treatments of the manga.
From 1987 to 1995, Tomie was serialized in Monthly Halloween, a shōjo
horror magazine aimed particularly at teenage girls that offered horror
DOI: 10.4324/9781003261551-9
The Abject Body in Junji Itō’s Tomie 79
stories, art, photography, and features that blended the occult with teen cul-
ture. Some subsequent installments of the story were published in a similar
shōjo horror magazine, Halloween Shōjo Comic Kan.1 These early appear-
ances invite study of the series not only as a horror manga but specifcally
as shōjo horror, and this classifcation is essential to the analysis of its body
horror and body politics. Informally speaking, “shōjo” is frequently used
as a label for manga and anime that focus on young female characters for
a primarily young female audience. Shōjo creators are often women, with
editors still typically male (Takahashi 115; Prough, “Shōjo” 93). On the
surface, it may be partly distinguished from male-oriented texts through
feminine-coded aesthetics, especially in marketing materials, and in plots
that center “human relations” and “sensitive inner feelings” over action
(Prough, “Shōjo” 93–4; Dollase 59). Contrasts to the equivalent male-
oriented genre, shōnen, commonly dominate discussions of shōjo, though
this approach reductively overlooks shōjo’s complexity and internal contra-
dictions (Aoyama et al. 5).
Yet, its meaning is much more nuanced, leading to a number of compet-
ing defnitions even among scholars of the genre that go far beyond the
scope of studying Tomie. Akiko Sugawa-Shimada notes that English trans-
lations of the word “shōjo” do not reproduce its Japanese cultural conno-
tations, which invoke contrasting associations with both feminine purity
and feminine sexuality. This juxtaposition, unsurprisingly, results in a stark
dichotomy in Japanese consumption of shōjo, with stories featuring “hyper-
sexualized girls” having a primarily male audience and their opposite having
a primarily young, female audience (182). These categories, of course, are
not exclusive binaries, and indeed the larger shōjo genre contains mature
elements that, if occurring in Western texts, would not be similarly mar-
keted for or received by older male or, respectively, young female audiences.
For instance, despite the availability of the josei label, which refers to texts
aimed at older female teens and young women, rape and incest occur in
some texts marketed as shōjo, revealing another complexity of these gender-
and age-based genre labels.
Shōjo’s intersection with horror appears less acknowledged in popular
and academic discourse than its history would suggest, perhaps initially due
to a derision of shōjo itself. Mizuki Takahashi identifes gender prejudice
as a factor in shōjo’s critical neglect and, furthermore, notes a tendency
for critics to discuss singular creators, or mangaka, rather than situating
their works within the genre (130). In the West, shōjo appears most com-
monly associated with magical girl stories popularly exemplifed by Sailor
Moon. While this has led to a rich fandom and scholarship on such media,
which Kumiko Saito notes, there remains a larger misconception outside
these circles that shōjo is fuffy, apolitical, and not deserving of the same
critical credibility as mainstream androcentric Western comics (145). Such
misconceptions may be bolstered by the recognition that the shōjo label was
codifed for marketing purposes and that links between shōjo content and
80 Tosha R. Taylor
commodifcation remain strong (Maser 558; Saito 144). Tomie’s perpetual
regenerations certainly have a covert marketing value, as they enable not
only the long series of chapters that ran in Monthly Halloween but also
flm and television adaptations (Wada-Marciano 35).2 However, shōjo is
not apolitical and indeed often explores Japanese gender politics (Sugawa-
Shimada 181–206). Saito reminds us that even classic magical girl shōjo
anime used magic as a means of navigating and problematizing young girls’
expected trajectories from idealized girlhood to the strictures of marriage
and, furthermore, that the genre evolved to refect both developments in
women’s representation in anime and manga and social developments in
Japan (154–8). Shōjo, Jacqueline Berndt writes, “is not anymore confned to
straightforward representation; it probably never was” (2). Ultimately going
beyond texts themselves, shōjo functions not only as a genre label but also
as a means of referencing girls, a subculture or multiple subculture, and an
articulation of complex female-coded concerns and anxieties.
The complexity of shōjo is less acknowledged in the West, particularly in
marketing. Perhaps not surprisingly, the offcial English language edition of
Tomie published by VIZ Media in 2019 does not apply the shōjo label to
the book’s cover, though VIZ does use it on their English editions of other
manga. To readers who are familiar with the manga’s origin, this lack may
seem a correction of sorts, one that removes the violent horror story from its
inception in a girls’ magazine; to readers who are not familiar, the context of
the genre seems entirely erased. Similarly, much of the most visible writing
on and fandom of shōjo seems to keep horror and shōjo strictly separated.
However, Hiromi Tsuchiya Dollase argues that shōjo horror is able to depict
emotional feelings that “regular shōjo” cannot, and thus its “cultural func-
tion is to serve as a means for girls to recognize the fearful truths within
themselves” (60). This is certainly true of Tomie when viewed through the
lens of shōjo studies and positions the manga’s default perspective not as the
male one commonly assumed of horror but as a young female one.
As noted previously, shōjo studies often highlight the work of female
mangaka, whose personal stake in Japanese gender politics is more evident,
thus leaving accidental room for works by male mangaka to be overlooked
within the genre. Tomoko Aoyama notes, however, that feminist elements
are present in works by male mangaka who are not explicitly feminist, and
Tomie particularly invites such a reading (316). Discourse about Itō is not
overtly political and typically creates a humorous juxtaposition between his
reserved public persona and the graphic violence of his work. Therefore, it
is not my contention that Tomie is an intentionally feminist work, nor is it
within the scope of this chapter to uncover Itō’s personal views on feminism.
Instead, this essay’s concern is the text itself, which, as Itō often does, fre-
quently deploys young female focalizers early on as stand-ins for the reader
and, through Tomie’s evolving narrative, genders horror and calls the vio-
lence she suffers into question.
Gender and Bodily Abjection
Nearly every installment of Tomie’s story presents a heavily gendered plot
in which Tomie exploits male desire for her, driving men to obsession, until,
inevitably, they murder her. Due to her manipulation of men, Western dis-
cussions of Tomie frequently characterize her as being a succubus, to the
point that VIZ Media’s offcial English edition refers to her as such on its
back cover. Certainly, Tomie’s patterns of seducing and destroying men, frst
spiritually and then physically, align her with this trope. Yet, the succubus
originates in Western mythology, and, while Itō’s work is not devoid of inter-
est in Western culture, Tomie herself resists easy mythological categorization.
Somewhat similar fgures exist in Japanese folklore – for instance, the yuki-
onna (snow woman) or the kawahime (river princess) – and some Tomie
installments such as “Revenge” and “Waterfall Basin” may take inspiration
from these; Itō himself has noted Tomie’s similarity to folkloric ghosts (An
29–30). Critical analyses based on the manga’s Japanese cultural context
have, however, avoided identifying the character as being a succubus, yuki-
onna, or kawahime and have focused instead on Tomie as an embodiment
of several cultural concerns. Raechel Dumas, for instance, draws a parallel
between Tomie’s effect on men and enjo kōsai, a cultural phenomenon in
which young women were “compensated” with money and material goods
for dates with older men and which caused great cultural anxiety in Japan
in the 1990s (27). Tomie’s demand for material goods in the stories “Morita
Hospital,” “Assassins,” and “Adopted Daughter” certainly invokes similar
anxieties. Such a parallel enables the consideration of Tomie herself as a
product of a “deep concern with the burgeoning power of Japanese girls
and the threat they pose to established paradigms” set amid “the evolving
topography of late-capitalist Japan” (27). For Tomie’s postmodern embodi-
ment and replications, Dumas links her more closely to Sadako of the Ringu
series than classic archetypes (22).
Tomie’s role as the manga’s primary villain corresponds closely to the
monstrous feminine, and indeed the grotesque nature of her true appear-
ance further establishes her as a monster. Barbara Creed writes that the
“monstrous-feminine . . . speaks to us more about male fears than about
female desire or feminine subjectivity” (7). In the context of shōjo, how-
ever, the monstrous-feminine may articulate female fears and desires linked
to subjectivity. Tomie’s characterizations do refect masculine anxieties, but
their refection of young women’s fears is far greater: Tomie’s social life
consists largely of bullying other teenage girls. It is a photograph taken by
another girl of her that frst exposes the truth of her appearance, a distorted
second head attached to the easily visible, beautiful one (Itō 144–5). Tomie’s
frst sexual partner in publication order is her teacher, Mr. Takagi, and many
subsequent partners are similarly exploitative even when Tomie seems to be
the driving force of the relationships. Yet, her power is temporary and full
82 Tosha R. Taylor
of familiar caveats. Men fnd her attractive, but their attraction means that
they will inevitably harm her in a very violent fashion. She can control these
men but still at the cost of her own body and life. The only way Tomie can
maintain her identity is to eradicate her social competitors who are them-
selves born of her body. She is thus an embodied site of young, female-coded
social drama even in her monstrosity.
Due to the concurrence of romance and murder, Tomie might fgure even
less as a succubus and more as a femme castratrice, as the anxieties refected
in her are commonly associated with this horror trope. However, she also
resists this categorization. As Creed explicates, the femme castratrice reacts
from a place of trauma; she has been wronged, and her violence is vengeance.
Just as she has been symbolically castrated by either misogynistic violence or
by denial of something she desires (often, romance, marriage, or children),
she seeks to similarly disempower her male victims (122–123). Tomie cer-
tainly does not act out of denial: she receives romantic and sexual overtures
in excess, shirks the strictures of monogamy, and loathes her own repro-
ductions, as they threaten her place in the world as the Tomie. Her actions
seem more aligned with the castratrice who responds to trauma, yet her
cyclical existence complicates this positioning. Are her own violent actions
the result of her victimization, or do they predate her victimization? Despite
her visual and narrative correspondence to modern concerns, since Tomie is
a supernatural entity, is linear time even relevant to her motives? Moreover,
as Tomie’s replications occur from the very beginning of the manga, there is
no sense of a stable, original Tomie; each Tomie who appears, including the
frst, is likely a copy. In this way, Tomie seems less a supernatural person and
more a supernatural phenomenon. The femme castratrice associated with
patriarchal anxiety, thus, cannot wholly account for Tomie. She continues
to prohibit a reductive reading that would attribute her characterization to
tropes of male-focalized fears.
Shōjo has long challenged patriarchal structures, and a number of the
few critics who have written on Tomie note the character’s value as an
embodiment of such a challenge (Dumas 25; An 29; Pacheco and Rodríguez
132). The tension between Tomie’s desirability and the violence she experi-
ences works toward that challenge, furthering the sense of horror by call-
ing gendered violence into question even as Tomie becomes more evil and
unhinged. The patriarchal order makes Tomie the villain of her own story.
An elderly adoptive father in “Mansion” posits that Tomie acts entirely
out of selfshness and explicitly states that her male suitors’ drive to kill
her – and, specifcally, to dismember her – is the result of her egotistical
behavior (Itō 254). He confrms that these repetitive dismemberments rob
Tomie of her agency, as through them “she begins to multiply against her
will.” Furthermore, Tomie may replicate without being dismembered if she
is “faced with enough psychological trauma” (255). The subsequent install-
ment “Revenge” (which immediately follows “Mansion” in the VIZ edition)
reinforces the idea of Tomie as a victim of an inevitable cycle when she tells
Tanimura that her previous boyfriend, Tanimura’s brother, dismembered
her, after which Tanimura quickly begins to feel the same urge to harm her.
Tanimura justifes his brother’s actions: “He couldn’t help it. It was . . . an
expression of his love” (302). An older, married man in the story “Hair”
refers to Tomie as “the love of [his] life” despite having murdered one of her
incarnations (459). In “Moromi,” Ishizuka bludgeons Tomie’s body so badly
that her remains resemble “dog food,” because, as he explains, “I loved her
too much. Way too much” (561).
Insistence within the text that Tomie’s many deaths are brought about
by male desire places the onus of the violence on Tomie rather than the
men who attack her. In doing so, the manga invokes common discourses
of sexual violence. The desire-framed, yet brutal, misogynistic violence of
Tomie’s deaths invites consideration of the oft-studied relationship between
horror and sexual media. Isabel Cristina Pinedo compares the “money shot”
of the porn flm to the “involuntary spasm” of the dying body of the horror
flm, whose blood provides “visual proof of the violation”; the dismembered
body thus resembles the pornographic visual focus on the body as a series
of parts (62). Despite its distance from the ero-guro manga genre, which
explicitly combines pornographic sexuality and gore, Tomie is rife with such
imagery. Yet, although Tomie is the object of male violence, she is not shown
being sexually assaulted. In this way, the manga also aligns with slasher
horror, in which “violence and sex are not concomitants but alternatives”
(Clover 29). Like the slasher, the manga uses visuals that hearken acts of
sexual violence instead. Tomie’s dismemberment by her classmates in Itō’s
frst installment, led by the teacher who has sexually exploited her, bears
visual similarity to a gang rape (23–24). Similar scenes occur throughout
the text, as do suggestions that the true root of such violence is not love but
a reclamation of patriarchal power. Driven insane, Mr. Takagi returns in
“Morita Hospital,” pretends to be Tomie’s father, and consents to have her
kidney removed and transplanted into another teenage girl, Yukiko (58). In
“Top Model,” Tomie is murdered by a lover, Ryo, who frst ties her to a bed,
straddles her, and then slashes her face to intentionally disfgure her. His
taunt “Now let’s see if you heal” makes it clear that he means to take away
her bodily autonomy and even enjoys the prospect of fnally transgressing
her regenerative abilities (703). Though statements of blame evoke popular
discourses of rape and other forms of gendered violence, and even as the
reader may eschew Tomie’s cruelty, the shōjo context thus establishes male
violence as the manga’s true source of horror.
It is through gendered violence that Tomie achieves the height of its treat-
ment of abjection, which is itself associated with the feminine in horror
(Clover 59). Tomie experiences abjection in three ways: through her own
murders, her grotesque transformations, and her replications (An 31). Her
abjection is inevitable, for, as Julia Kristeva writes, the ultimate form of
abjection is the corpse, who is “death infecting life” and an “imaginary
uncanniness and real threat” that “beckons to us and ends up engulfng
84 Tosha R. Taylor
us” (4). Tomie must always become a corpse, both due to the cycle of sexu-
ally charged, gendered violence and her doppelgangers’ need to generate
from her murdered body. The brutality of her murders establishes a visual
abjection that contrasts men’s professions of love and romance with vis-
cera that spawns new Tomie bodies. Kristeva initially describes abjection
through imagery of grotesque self-reproduction marred by bodily waste (3).
While Tomie’s head remains fairly intact in some stories, in many others she
is reduced to pieces and indefnable gore. Piles of viscera inspire disgust at
times, such as in “Moromi” where she is rendered into a pulp that can be
mixed into liquid, but in other instances men take pleasure in mocking her
remains. In the frst Tomie installment, for instance, her male classmates and
Mr. Takagi play with her intestines, creating an early link between misogyny
and abject bodily destruction.
Tomie’s deaths thus draw attention to the young female body. In its early
history, the shōjo fgure originates from “a socially conservative gender role”
that was visually codifed in a “privileged body” (Takahashi 116). Tomie
revels in the destruction of this body, recreating and then annihilating its
hegemonic beauty in perpetual cycles. Manga’s visual nature imbues each
cycle with heavy elements of the body horror subgenre, which is “character-
ized by manipulation and warping of the normal state of bodily form and
function” (Cruz 161). Body horror is a prominent theme in Itō’s work, most
notably in another multi-story manga, Uzumaki (1998–1999), in which
human bodies transform into spirals and which also frequently focalizes
events through a teenage girl. Tomie’s body takes a number of monstrous
forms: partial, malformed bodies in the process of regeneration; a beautiful
girl with a grotesque second head; human-object hybrids (“Kiss,”“Waterfall
Basin”); a giant worm (“Mansion”); parasitic hairs (“Hair”); sperm-shaped
spirits in sake (“Moromi”); tumors; and countless doppelgangers. Her
physically abject forms are established to be more accurate representations
of whatever Tomie actually is. Where Tsukiko, the teen girl protagonist of
“Photo,” frst discovers Tomie’s grotesque second head, “Painter” confrms
it to be her true appearance. Mori, an artist obsessed with Tomie, shocks
Tomie with a portrait of her with the second head visible. Mori describes the
portrait as his “masterpiece,” telling Tomie “At last I’ve captured it. This . . .
is your beauty. A perfect likeness” (365).
Yet, though linked to bodily waste and destruction, abjection’s greatest
danger is the challenge it poses to the subject’s identity (Kristeva 4). The
abject confronts the living with death, the healthy with sickness and destruc-
tion and with, ultimately, an “Other” or “alter ego” (Kristeva 10). It is no
coincidence, then, that while Tomie appears to accept that she must be mur-
dered, she is disturbed by her doppelgangers. Notably, Tomie regards her
doppelgangers with even more hatred and fear than the men who will kill
her (An 31). They serve as a new and less graphic form of body horror, trans-
forming Tomie’s brutalized fesh into other women, identical to her, who
attempt to usurp her position. Tomie’s sense of self, already compromised by
her unwilling ability to self-replicate, relies on being the most beautiful girl
in any given time and place. Yet, her hegemonic beauty is not always guar-
anteed. She is vulnerable during regeneration and subject to environmental
factors. Her cells implanted into Yukiko’s living body in “Morita Hospital”
result in a perfect Tomie copy, but her body is grotesquely fused to a plastic
liner under a carpet that was soaked in her blood in “Kiss.” An even more
grotesque regeneration is disrupted in “Little Finger” in which Hiroya burns
Tomie’s severed fngers after his brothers murder her. Each fnger becomes
a beautiful Tomie copy except for “Pinky,” who was too badly burned and
remains hideously disfgured until she gains enough power to complete the
transformation. Tomie’s fear of ugliness is not simply vanity but a terror of
losing her tenuous social role and subjectivity. The fear of replication also
corresponds to both hegemonic, male-coded anxieties and those more asso-
ciated with young women.
Modern and contemporary Japanese horror is implicitly concerned with
identity in a changing society, and its monsters often present coded threats
to identity (Napier 11–13; Iles “The Problem . . .”). Shōjo, too, reveals a fas-
cination with identity, and Dumas, Juan A. García Pacheco, and Francisco J.
López Rodríguez identify Tomie as a manga that particularly reveals anxi-
eties about young women’s identities due to Tomie’s temporary upendings
of patriarchal power and visual coding as the modern Japanese girl (21–29;
132). Tomie’s cruelty and egocentrism create a conspicuous threat, but this
threat is heightened by the abjection of her replications. The female body
as the site of body horror is rendered particularly “terrifying” to male audi-
ences when it engages in parthenogenesis (Cruz 165). Tomie’s replications
further remove her from humanity, aligning her instead with animals that
self-reproduce such as the planaria, which Tomie physically references in
“Mansion” and “Moromi” (An 27). In addition, while Tomie bears little
resemblance to the zombie, the combination of her bodily abjection, seem-
ing immortality, and the challenge she poses to human/female identity grant
her some parallels with this monster, particularly when its relation to gen-
der and sexuality is considered. Steve Jones links the female zombie and
her “perpetuation of disease” with cultural anxieties about “uncontrolled”
women and “unregulated reproductive capacity, thus connoting that female
sexuality is a social ill” (44). Such anxieties echo those regarding young Jap-
anese women that shōjo and shōjo horror refect. While most of Tomie’s rep-
lications are copies of herself spawned from her own corpse, she is capable
of “infecting” others, as her regenerative abilities cause physical transfor-
mations in other young women when their bodies come into close contact
with parts of her. In “Morita Hospital,” following the transplantation of
Tomie’s kidney into Yukiko, Yukiko’s abdomen begins to swell, and medical
imaging reveals a human skull and limbs growing inside her in a perverse
pregnancy. In the story’s climax, the head bursts from Yukiko and identi-
fes itself as Tomie. In the third installment, “Basement,” it is revealed that
Yukiko has survived, while doctors secretly incubate the extracted Tomie
86 Tosha R. Taylor
tissues. However, some of Tomie’s cells remain in Yukiko, who gradually
transforms into Tomie herself. Where Yukiko was kind and reserved, Tomie-
Yukiko shares the prior Tomie’s vanity and rude demeanor, particularly with
regard to men. In “Hair,” strands of Tomie’s hair stolen by an obsessed man
grow into other teenage girls’ heads and faces, penetrating one girl’s brain
and fatally engulfng the body of another.
Yet, the previously identifed social dilemmas commonly associated with
teenage girls are what frame Tomie’s narrative in publication order. Here,
again, the manga’s origin in the shōjo genre is signifcant. Tomie’s confict
with other girls, which is particularly shown in “Morita Hospital,” “Base-
ment,” “Photo,” and “Hair,” reaches its apex in her doppelgangers and
speaks more to the precarious subjectivity of young women. Tomie is a bully
to girls like Yukiko and Tsukiko early in the narrative, and her fear of her
other selves reveals that her bullying of other girls is, at least in some part,
due to an imperative for young women to compete for social standing and
male attention. Fear of Tomie is heavily gendered, and what other girls expe-
rience from contact with her is far different from the experiences of men;
indeed, to Reiko, Yukiko, and Tsukiko, Tomie is a haunting presence, as is
initially evidenced by Reiko’s closing narration of the frst Tomie installment
when she discovers Tomie regenerating: “It seems that Tomie has found me
again” (Itō 34). To men, Tomie is a domineering woman who rejects their
desire when the patriarchal society demands she should accept it. But to
other young women, she is an embodiment of competitive social hierarchies,
the threat of male violence, and female alienation. Even in her replications,
Tomie has no refuge or allies, an isolation that is refected in other girls as
they navigate the scenarios in which they encounter her. Reiko witnesses
Tomie’s gang-rape-coded murder and dismemberment and has no recourse.
Yukiko and Tsukiko are similarly isolated and traumatized once Tomie has
noticed them. It is for similar reasons that Colette Balmain lists the frst flm
adaptation of Tomie as an example of the prevalence of loneliness in Japa-
nese horror (“Inside . . .”).
Currently comprising more than a dozen manga installments with subse-
quent collected editions, a live action flm franchise, and multiple episodes of
an animated series, Tomie is undoubtedly an essential horror manga deserv-
ing of more scholarly attention. As discussed, the manga does not offer easy
answers to questions regarding gendered violence. On one hand, Itō’s use of
focalizers who are all fearful of or enraged with Tomie may easily be inter-
preted as an endorsement of male violence against her, offering sights of her
gorily destroyed body for patriarchal catharsis. Yet, further examination of
the manga’s gender politics in the context of its genre intersections prohibits
the conclusion that the manga glorifes misogyny. Instead, as argued here,
acknowledging the manga’s intersection of gendered characters and read-
ership with body horror enables the recognition of its greater complexity.
Tomie calls into question the very structures that govern its cyclical nar-
ratives, offering space for its monster to be at least partly vindicated and
violence against her highlighted and problematized. In this way, the manga
pays respect to its own origins in female-centric media and emphasizes the
power of the feminine in horror.
Acknowledgments
The author thanks Hye Young Chyun of Concrete Temple Theatre and the
Keurida Project for providing additional translations and information on
cultural contexts.
Notes
1 This magazine’s title is sometimes written as Asahi Sonorama: Halloween Shōjo
Comic Kan.
2 To date, these adaptations include: the live action flm franchise currently consist-
ing of Tomie (1998, Ataru Oikawa), Tomie: Another Face (1999, Toshirō Ino-
mata), Tomie: Replay (2000, Fujirō Mitsuishi), Tomie: Re-birth (2001, Takashi
Shimizu), Tomie: Forbidden Fruit (2002, Shun Nakahara), Tomie: Beginning
(2005, Ataru Oikawa), Tomie: Revenge (2005, Ataru Oikawa), Tomie vs. Tomie
(2007, Tomohiro Kubo), and Tomie Unlimited (2011, Noboru Iguchi); an episode
of the animated series Junji Itō Collection (“Painter”); and two OVA [Original
Animation Video] as part of the same series, Tomie Part 1 and Tomie Part 2 (2018,
Shinobu Tagashira). A planned live action adaptation by French director Alexan-
dre Aja is in fux at the time of this writing. In addition, the Thai television series
Girl from Nowhere (2018–2021) has not, to date, been explicitly acknowledged
as an adaptation of Tomie by its makers, but its plot is incredibly similar, and its
lead actress has identifed Tomie as one of her inspirations for her performance.
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8 Lily Renée’s The Werewolf
Hunter and the Secret Origin
of Horror Comics
Blair Davis
The origin of horror comics is a tricky tale to tell. Trying to determine a

defnitive cause and effect about how any genre got its start is usually an
effort fraught with footnotes and qualifers: it’s not always easy to declare
what came frst and what came next with any real accuracy. The medium
of comics encompasses an ever-shifting range of publishing formats; in the
1930s alone, this included newspaper strips, pulp magazines, and comic
books, complicating how historians make pronouncements. Even some of
comics’ most famous titles evoke this sort of ontological complexity: did
Superman’s debut in the pages of Action Comics #1 in 1938 (cover date
June 1938) mark the frst appearance of the superhero or was it the Phan-
tom’s arrival in newspapers on February 17, 1936? Was the frst superhero-
ine the Woman in Red (Thrilling Comics #2 [Mar. 1940]), Fantomah (Jungle
Comics #2 [Feb. 1940]), pulp magazine character Olga Mesmer, the Girl
with the X-Ray Eyes (Spicy Mystery Stories [Aug. 1937]), or none of these?
Was Crime Does Not Pay the frst crime comic book in July 1942, or was
it Centaur’s Keen Detective Funnies in July 1938? If not the latter, what
about DC’s Detective Comics in March 1937 with its various tales of crime-
fghting detectives? Trying to determine an easily agreed-upon starting point
for most genres is complicated, as we attempt to solidify a given genre’s
distinctive tropes, images and boundaries.
The same dilemma is found with horror comics – those stories dedicated
to instilling dread in their readers with their chilling characters, terror-flled
narrative tropes and unnerving atmospheric elements. Scholars and fans
often point to Avon Comics’ Eerie one-shot issue in January 1947 as the
frst horror title and consider the late 1940s as the genre’s starting point. But
as with our understanding of the most genres in most media, the grand nar-
rative that has formed around the origins of the horror genre within comics
has more to it. While titles devoted solely to tales of terror weren’t com-
monplace until the end of the 1940s, series with occasional stories about
ghouls and ghosts had been published for around a decade prior to Eerie’s
debut. In April 1940, Fox Feature Syndicate debuted Weird Comics, which
gave readers a mixture of horror, science fction, and other fantastic genres.
DOI: 10.4324/9781003261551-10
90 Blair Davis
The frst issue contained such tales as “Doctor Mortal” about a scientist
who creates inhuman creatures in a laboratory (Whitman 31–38) and “The
Voodoo Man Cometh” which sees doctor Bob Warren travel to Haiti, where
we are told “black magic reigns and dead men walk” (Spectre 39). The fact
that these horror stories were outnumbered by sci-f and fantasy tales within
the pages of Weird Comics has kept the series from being more celebrated
by horror fans.
The year before Weird Comics debuted, Centaur Publications offered a
pair of horror tales by writer/artist June Tarpé Mills in 1939. “The Vam-
pire,” about a blood-thirsty attacker terrorizing a rural village, appeared in
the second issue of Amazing Mystery Funnies (Vol. 2, Feb. 1939), while “The
Ivy Menace” depicted an unstoppable, city-conquering plant-based force
that destroys civilization in Amazing Man Comics # 6 (Oct. 1939). Mills
also created “The Purple Zombie” in 1940’s Reg’lar Fellers Heroic Comics
# 1 (Aug. 1940), a multi-genre tale about a reanimated corpse that was seri-
alized in that series through issue #12 (June 1942).1 Similarly, Prize Comics
offered readers the ongoing adventures of Frankenstein’s monster, written
and drawn by Dick Briefer, starting with issue #7 in December 1940.2 While
some of the aforementioned stories might not have always been as grue-
some and grisly as those found in EC Comics by the early 1950s, these sto-
ries from the late 1930s and early 1940s still featured characters that were
decidedly born out of the horror genre and its gothic literary origins.
While the ongoing “Purple Zombie” and “The New Adventures of Frank-
enstein” features demonstrate the fact that readers in this era were eager for
stories of terror and suspense, they are now often overlooked because of
how they appeared within anthology series like Prize Comics that featured
a range of genres. Comics’ historians have yet to fully grapple with the role
that shorter features played within anthology series of the Golden Age era, a
fact that seems true across all genres. While most comics’ fans and scholars
tend to point toward full-length titles when declaring the so-called “frst”
example of a comic book from a certain genre, defning examples were often
found within the pages of multi-genre anthology series long before the debut
of series devoted primarily or exclusively to that particular genre. This was a
common format throughout the 1930s and 1940s: Action Comics contained
superhero, Western, comedy, adventure, mystery and non-fction features,
for example, while Prize Comics served up such genres as adventure, war
and superheroes with characters like Leif Larson of the Khyber Kingdom,
aviator Ted O’Neill and costumed heroes The Black Owl and Doctor Frost.
As such, the horrifc thrills of “Frankenstein” were balanced with numerous
other genres within each issue, in keeping with the larger publishing trends
of the era.
It was within this format that another publisher tried out a new horror
feature in 1943 – “The Werewolf Hunter.” Debuting in Rangers Comics # 8
(Dec. 1942) from Fiction House, “The Werewolf Hunter” was created by
artist Gus Schotter and a writer listed as Armand Weygand (a nom-de-plume
Lily Renée’s The Werewolf Hunter 91
which appears to be the pen name of an unknown writer).3 But the creator
who really made “The Werewolf Hunter” so memorable was eventual artist
Lily Renée, who began drawing the character with issue #14 in Decem-
ber 1943. Renée’s career is a prominent example of how a female artist in
the Golden Age of comics could use her work as a forum for presenting
women in more multifaceted ways than were found in most stories of the
era. In examining “The Werewolf Hunter” through the lenses of genre and
gender, I analyze how Renée’s stories offered complex representations of
women in an era when non-male characters were routinely marginalized
and/or hyper-sexualized as well as how the series was a pioneer within the
horror genre through its use of imagery and its treatments of key tropes and
themes.4 The ways in which a genre gains traction in any given medium is
always worth studying, even if such origins aren’t always clear-cut. Since
there wasn’t a steady torrent of horror stories within comics throughout
most of the 1940s, the ways in which a feature like “The Werewolf Hunter”
helped establish some of the narrative and visual patterns that would even-
tually come to dominate the horror genre by the end of the decade are all the
more vital to study (see Figure 8.1).
Although the frst issue of Eerie, with its January 1947 cover date, is often
considered to be the frst horror comic, many of the visual and rhetorical
patterns found therein are predated by “The Werewolf Hunter.” In one of
the earliest studies of horror comics, A Haunt of Fears: The Strange History
of the British Comics Campaign (1984), Martin Baker describes how the EC
horror titles that have become the best remembered examples of the genre
were “presaged in Eerie and the like,” without elucidating the early history
that he alludes to (8).5 These earlier examples demand further exploration
if we are to fully understand the origins of horror comics. While other fea-
tures like Prize Comics’ “Frankenstein” and such Weird Comics’ characters
as Dr. Mortal, The Voodoo Man and The Sorceress of Zoom deserve closer
attention, by focusing on the longer-running “Werewolf Hunter” stories by
a prominent creator like Lily Renée I hope to shine a brighter spotlight at
the need to study all of the sporadic examples of horror storytelling in com-
ics of the late 1930s and early/mid 1940s.
“The Werewolf Hunter”: Horror Comics and Genre

“The Werewolf Hunter” presented the ongoing adventures of Professor Paul
Broussard, an investigator of the supernatural in New Orleans. Initial install-
ments saw him confront werewolves exclusively, with the feature eventually
shifting to a range of mystic and/or unearthly threats. Many stories are set in
the present-day 1940s, while others are drawn from the pages of Broussard’s
diary recounting his earlier encounters with the uncanny as a young man
circa 1912. Much like Eerie would soon do, “The Werewolf Hunter” drew
upon common narrative tropes of the horror genre – supernatural creatures,
gothic settings and an atmosphere marked by dread and terror.
92 Blair Davis
Figure 8.1 “The Werewolf Hunter” frst page.
Both also offered images that were common within horror flms of the
1930s and 1940s, allowing comics’ readers to draw parallels in their read-
ers’ mind with common images from the horror genre, which were preva-
lent in the era’s popular culture. Film and literary scholar Bruce F. Kawin
describes how the collective whole of horror flms forms a “landscape,” with
the best horror flms taking us “down into the depths to show us something
about” that landscape (325). Audiences of horror media texts, whether they
are print, visual or a comic book hybrid of both, commonly understand
the general terrain of the horror genre’s common tropes and images, which
frequently form visual and rhetorical patterns across various media forms.
In turn, the frst issue of Eerie contains a story called “Dead Man’s Tale,”
penciled by Jon Smalls and inked by George Roussos, which features an
undertaker with the ability to possess the recently dead and access their life’s
memories. The tale opens with an image of a desolate graveyard inhabited
by two spectral fgures, followed by several panels set within the under-
taker’s dimly lit embalming studio. Such images immediately offer the reader
both settings and characters that would be recognizable as part of the horror
genre based on their prevalence within prior literary and cinematic examples
to do with morgues and corpses (such as 1932’s Murders in the Rue Morgue
[dir. Robert Florey] and 1945’s The Body Snatcher [dir. Robert Wise], to
name just a few). Similarly, the frst few “Werewolf Hunter” stories from
1942’s Rangers Comics #8 through #10 (Apr. 1943) all contain settings
reminiscent of various horror flms of the 1930s and 1940s. In issue 9 (Feb.
1943), for instance, we learn of Prof. Broussard’s earliest encounter with
werewolfsm in “the Carpathian mountains” (Weygand and Tuska 22), a
locale featured prominently in such horror flms as Nosferatu (directed by
F.W. Murnau [1922]) and Dracula (directed by Tod Browning [1931]).
These visual tropes continue in the “Werewolf Hunter” tale from Rangers
Comics #10, which opens with the image of a werewolf chasing a young
woman under the cover of a full moon. While the moon looms behind a row
of tall evergreen trees to the left of the werewolf, the right side of the panel is
lined with a bare, gnarled, moss-covered tree which frames the feral attacker
and its victim in the center of the panel (Weygand and Rosen, “Werewolf
Hunter” 21). When comparing “The Werewolf Hunter” to Eerie #1, a simi-
larly ominous tree appears in the latter series’ story “The Eyes of the Tiger,”
with its bare, crooked limbs providing a similarly spooky tone to the story’s
opening moments (Fujitani 1). Another bare, crooked tree greets Broussard
in issue 12 as he arrives at an old, gated mansion on a fog-strewn evening
(Weygand and Rosen, “The Dungeon Dweller . . .” 44), combining together
visual elements found in many earlier horror flms, most notably 1932’s The
Old Dark House (director James Whale). In issue 18 (Aug. 1944), Broussard
enters the secret underground lair of a group of Satan worshippers described
as “those whose souls are vile and black . . . members of the devil’s cult”
(Broussard and Renée, “The Devil’s Bride” 38), akin to those in the 1943
horror flm The Seventh Victim.
Genres, according to theorist Steve Neale, function akin to “a sign sys-
tem” and an “agreed code” between audience and creator (7) by which cer-
tain images create particular symbolic associations that can stand in for
larger tropes and phenomena (such as how fog can create an ominous tone
or mood). With comic books turning to the horror genre several years after
94 Blair Davis
cinema had already done the same, readers would have understood the
visual codes and signs of the genre used by comics’ creators to tell spooky
stories based on their prior experiences with other media.
Along with this visual pattern of horrifc settings, the rhetorical patterns of
“The Werewolf Hunter” also served to readily align the feature with the hor-
ror genre for readers of a multi-genre anthology series. The frst “Werewolf
Hunter” story from Rangers Comics #8 opens with four paragraphs explain-
ing the history of lycanthropy, using lurid rhetoric to tell readers of how
Once cursed by this savage sickness of the blood, no human tainted by

the werewolf strain can ever escape his hideous destiny. Whatever he is
by day, by moonlight he must feast on human blood. . . . Death may be
a welcome relief to his night-prowling soul.
Weygand and Schrotter 19
The story from Rangers Comics #13 (Oct. 1943) entitled “The Tentacle
Terror from Beelzebub’s Void!” is even more direct in its appeal to the
reader’s sensibilities: “Don’t read it, if you fear the dark!” (Weygand and
Mooney 41).
Rangers Comics #10 opens with a similarly stern passage that introduces
the main character along while also setting up the shocking scope of the
story and the explicit role of the horror genre therein:
Few mortals have crossed a werewolf’s trail and lived to tell their ghastly
tales . . . thus most folk doubt that a vicious bloodstrain can transform
humans into Wolf Men . . . dreaded prowlers of the night who lust for
warm red blood!
Folk-lore of every race and land records the grisly history of this ter-
ror curse . . . for which the only cure is death! Among the few who
dare to deal with this menace is Professor Broussard . . . The Werewolf
Hunter!
(Weygand and Rosen, “Werewolf Hunter” 19)
By emphasizing such words as “cursed,” “savage,” “ghastly,” “dreaded,”

“grisly” and “menace,” such stories consistently set out to instill feelings
of dread and terror in their readers. Issue 10 continues to use lurid rhetoric
throughout the story to advance the plot and hold the reader’s attention.
At one point, as Broussard pulls his car over, the narrator tells us of how
“above the moaning wind they hear a horrible cry . . .” which one character
describes as “The wail of a prowling werewolf . . .” In turn, when they later
lure the werewolf with blood-soaked bait, a narrative caption informs the
reader: “Suddenly the beast whirls towards Lily with a spine-chilling snarl”
(Weygand and Rosen, “Werewolf Hunter” 20–21). By using such horrifc
adjectives as “horrible,” “prowling” and “spine-chilling,” the story seeks
to terrify readers with its dread-inducing phrasing as well as its ghastly
images.
Throughout the feature’s run in Rangers’ Comics, Professor Broussard
was used as a heroic foil for all manners of supernatural creatures. While
later horror series like EC’s The Haunt of Fear and Vault of Horror used
various characters such as The Old Witch and the Vault-Keeper as hosts
who introduced each tale,6 Broussard was a recurring lead character whose
investigations served as a vehicle for the creatures in each story. While
few comics’ fans seem to be aware of the horror genre’s efforts before EC
Comics’ esteemed efforts arose, it was a common trend in Golden Age
comics for creators to experiment with new genres in various anthology
series by introducing leading characters who starred in their own ongoing
adventures before other titles cemented the genre. In turn, the horror genre
regularly revolved around starring characters like Prof. Broussard, Frank-
enstein and the Purple Zombie in the earliest years of comic books before
moving on to offer readers stories hosted by ghoulish presenters such as
those from EC.7
As Neil Labarre (one of the few comics’ scholars who has studied the
origins of horror comics prior to the late 1940s) suggests in Understanding
Genres in Comics (2020), within the early history of comics horror “func-
tioned as a peripheral attraction, not as an aesthetic or narrative center of
gravity” (47). He makes the point in reference to newspaper strips, but the
same holds true for the early years of comic books as well – whereby horror
was subject to “the complex mechanisms of genre formation” as it gained
ground within the industry (59). While there were several anthologies serv-
ing up diabolic doses of horror tales throughout the 1940s, it wasn’t until
titles like Eerie and Adventures into the Unknown (Fall 1948) began spe-
cializing in the genre that readers could fnd more than a handful of chilling
tales on newsstands each month. This emphasis on single-genre titles has in
turn led to the popular and critical neglect of pioneering characters like Prof.
Broussard when discussing how horror comics began.
Lily Renée: Horror Comics and Gender

The amnesia that often surrounds the origins of horror comics has in turn
led to the neglect of several key creators, many of them women. Just as
“The Purple Zombie” was created by June Tarpé Mills, so too is “The Were-
wolf Hunter” most associated with artist Lily Renée. The feature thrived
thanks to her creative presence: when she took over as artist with issue #14
in December 1943, it quickly hit its stride with more consistent charac-
terization and thematic elements as well as some truly chilling artwork. She
remained on the series through April 1948’s issue #40 (drawing all except
#39).8 With the feature ending shortly after her departure with issue #41
(June 1948), it is clear that her infuence was pivotal to its success.
Renée was among the most prolifc female artists of the Golden Age; she
was the only woman, for instance, to draw covers for the publisher Fiction
House, which hired numerous female artists in the 1940s.9 She began draw-
ing the “Jane Martin” feature in Wings Comics (#31–48 [Mar. 1943 to Aug.
96 Blair Davis
1944]) and soon drew two other features for Fiction House in addition
to the adventures of Prof. Broussard: “The Lost World” in Planet Comics
(#32–49 [Sept. 1944 to July 1947]) and “Señorita Rio” in Fight Comics
(#33–44 [Aug. 1944 to June 1946] and #47–51 [Dec. 1946 to Aug. 1947]).
Despite her prominence at Fiction House, she still felt the need to disguise
her gender in her signed work – a common trend among non-male artists in
this era. Renée frequently used pseudonyms when signing her work, includ-
ing L. Renée and Reney, as a way to hide her gender: “The readers never
knew I was a woman. I got a lot of fan mail, especially from soldiers, and
they all wrote ‘Mr. Renée’,” she recalled (Amash 18–19).10
But Renée was not shy about using her artwork as a platform for show-
casing powerful women. While most artists working from someone else’s
script had little input into the stories they drew, Renée was able to help
shape the direction of “The Werewolf Hunter” once she took over as its art-
ist. At her suggestion, the stories began to evolve from focusing primarily on
lycanthropic foes to those presenting readers with a broader range of super-
natural threats: “I made it into something else,” says Renée. “I talked to the
writer and convinced him it should be about magic, where people change
into other creatures, not werewolves . . . ‘The Werewolf Hunter’ stories were
all my ideas,” she recalled (Amash 8, 11).
With this change toward a wider range of villains, Renée was able to
draw more women, many of whom offered readers examples of command-
ing villainesses. While some villains are implied as being part of a tribe of
werewolves they are rarely shown as such, allowing Renée more creative
freedom to draw a wider range of horrifc imagery. She also changed Brous-
sard’s look for several issues, updating him from an older gentleman to a
younger, more vibrant looking character. Those stories shifted from ones set
in the present to tales from Broussard’s past when he was younger – giving
readers a range of gothic settings as well as a more dynamic leading man.
Renée clearly knew what she wanted to draw and made the creative changes
happen upon her arrival on the series.
This new focus began within Renée’s frst story for Rangers Comics #14
(Dec. 1943), “The Puppets of the Witch Queen,” in which Broussard encoun-
ters a carnival worker named Madame Speszi whose puppet show consists of
people who have been turned into life-sized marionettes. This was followed
in issue #15 (Feb. 1944) by “Priestess of the Spider Death” in which a vil-
lainess referred to only as the “Spider Woman” leads a cult whose victims are
fully under her rule once transformed into giant spidery-beings which she
calls her “disciples”: “Souls of our ancestors! Hear me. Today another disci-
ple was born! He felt the sting of our brother” (43). With themes of female
power and control at the center of these narratives, Renée’s women quickly
became the central focus of “The Werewolf Hunter,” with Broussard often
placed in a reactive position as his investigations get underway. Women were
no longer just victims as they were with the werewolf attacks of previous
stories, they became empowered fgures who controlled and transformed
men – a rare scene in Golden Age comics (see Figures 8.2 and 8.3).
Figure 8.2 The Witch Queen and her human puppets.
As a former artist’s model, Renée seems to have had a keen interest in draw-
ing women the way she herself often posed for other artists. She was also
interested in incorporating different fashions, in keeping with the elaborate
outfts she often drew for “Señorita Rio” and in the pages of Planet Comics. In
issue 14, Madame Spezi’s outfts includes various ruffes, scarves and jewelry,
98 Blair Davis
Figure 8.3 The evil Spider Woman.
while the spider priestess in issue 15 wears a web-patterned dress. In issue #16
(Apr. 1944), a trio of kittens transform into three women, each wearing a dif-
ferent elaborately designed dress; issue #17 (June 1944) offers a masquerade
ball allowing Renée to draw a variety of different women’s costumes; in issue
#19 (Oct. 1944), she draws a range of elaborate carnival costumes and dresses
for a group of gypsy dancers and musicians; and issue #23 (June 1945) centers
around a dress that possesses its wearer. This emphasis on fashion is especially
notable in a series called Rangers Comics that featured war characters like
the U.S. Rangers, the Commando Ranger and the Phantom Falcons. Rather
than the drab uniforms of the series’ other features, Renée regularly brought
an element of style to her characters in a feature dedicated to dread and fear.
As the series continued, Broussard was increasingly placed in an entirely
helpless position and reactive position as he encountered women who acted
less like victims or villains. In more empowered role, these women endured
and survived rather than be punished for their actions at the tale’s con-
clusion. In Rangers Comics #19, he encounters a young woman named
Magra who has been shot by a group of hunters who believe her to be a
“wolf-witch” (Broussard and Renée 18). Broussard gives her shelter, and she
explains how the hunters have already killed her husband Ivan by burning
him alive on a wooden cross. After discovering Ivan’s burnt body, Broussard
fnds Magra’s three children hiding among the snowy brush and returns to
his cabin with them. Emerging from the fames of the freplace, frst in the
form of a wolf and then as a woman, Magra embraces her children as she
proclaims her role as a mother and a protector. “I am Magra, wife of him
they killed with a silver bullet and oaken stake. These are mine – mine alone
now and I take them far away. Farewell!” she cries (22). Backing into the
freplace with her children in hand, they disappear among the fames. When
he then hears a cry outside, Broussard soon fnds “a she-wolf and her three
white cubs” who disappear into the snowy countryside as Broussard shouts
an unheeded offer of aid (23). This powerful tale of motherhood is effective
in no small part because of Renée’s haunting drawings of Magra’s unfinch-
ing presence among the fames as she reclaims her children. Renée may have
suggested the ideas for each story, but her evocative artwork is key to their
haunting effect on the reader.
A similarly empowered woman is found in issue #21’s story from Febru-
ary 1945, “The Mistress of the Moonblood,” about a mysterious woman
who rides moonbeams down to earth. The former assistant of an astronomer
named Professor Roget but committing suicide, the young woman has been
reborn – made of moonlight and literally radiant as drawn by Renée. Now
part of a new society of called the “creatures of the moonbeam,” she has
returned for the Professor’s meteorite (a moonstone that he uses to hypnotize
people with, including his former assistant whose death it is revealed was
caused by him). She picks it up and holds it up before the doctor, turning him
into a creature like them. “Look doctor! Look and obey!” she cries. “No!
No! Take it away! It’s burning into my soul – blinding my reason!” begs
Roget (Broussard and Renée 24). She lures him away onto the moonbeams,
and it is later discovered that his soul has left while his dead body remains
behind. In addition to rendering an entirely different concept of the body and
the soul, Renée’s luminescent depiction of the unnamed women embodies
her with power on a visual level as much as it aids the metaphoric empower-
ment as she takes her revenge on the man whose actions caused her death.
100 Blair Davis
With her ability to draw both beautiful women and terrifying imagery, Renée
turned “The Werewolf Hunter” into a forum for exploring female characters
in new and often morally complex ways via the horror genre (see Figure 8.4).
Figure 8.4 A mysterious woman rides moonbeams down to earth.

Conclusion
As horror comics became more prominent on newsstands by the late 1940s,
women were often portrayed in ways they hadn’t been in other genres in
prior years. While they were still frequently seen as helpless victims, they
were also regularly portrayed in imaginative, complex, ambiguous and/
or more sophisticated ways in horror stories. With the initial stirrings of
second-wave feminism gaining traction in the 1950s in the wake of shifting
labor roles for women via the Rosie the Riveter movement, horror comics
offered a forum in which female characters could be used to explore themes
of power, equity, reprisal and empowerment at a time when many women
were growing increasingly restless with the societal expectations for gender
roles and the distribution of labor.
By placing women in powerful supernatural roles,“The Werewolf Hunter”
gave female readers a chance to see themselves represented in formidable
new ways that often saw them in new types of societal roles. Magra, for
one, decides to leave her town to raise her family elsewhere, while Profes-
sor Roget’s assistant joins a new society of “moonbeam” creatures. Other
women sat atop of their own self-made societies, whether they be carni-
valesque, cult-based or otherwise. In issue #32, for instance, a female ruler
named Lustra commands a subatomic civilization that exists on the surface
of a diamond. In each case, these women exist outside of traditional patri-
archal structures, offering readers a chance to imagine a different societal
organization of gender roles.
As her work for Rangers Comics proves, Lily Renée was one of the most
talented women ever to work in the comics’ industry. Her art helped to make
“The Werewolf Hunter” a milestone – albeit an unheralded one – for the hor-
ror genre in comics. The feature was a pioneer within horror comics through
its use of a wide range of supernatural imagery and its treatments of key genre
tropes and themes while also offering relatively complex representations of
women at a time when most genre stories were content to have their female
characters serve as distressed damsels. Along with Prize Comics, Weird Com-
ics and other anthology titles, the “Werewolf Hunter” tales in Rangers Com-
ics prove how horror stories had been serving readers for nearly a decade
in comics by the time that Eerie debuted in 1947. By using her artwork as a
forum for the depiction of women in powerful, complex roles, Renée deserves
to be heralded as an auteur creator. In turn, comics’ fans and scholars alike
should revise how they approach the grand narrative surrounding comics’
history, especially when it comes to how various genres like horror evolved.
Notes
1 “The Purple Zombie” combined multiple genre elements, including horror, crime
and adventure. While later issues involved time travel, earlier issues involved
common horror genre tropes including skeletons and a mad scientist (alongside
the titular zombie character). See Chera Kee, Corpse Crusaders (University of
Michigan Press, forthcoming).
102 Blair Davis
2 “Frankenstein” switched genres from horror to horror-comedy in 1943 starting
with issue 33. In Prize Comics, the “Frankenstein” feature appeared in issues 7
through 68 of Prize Comics (ending with the fnal issue of the series), except for
issues 10 and 55. In August 1943’s issue 33, the feature was changed from hor-
ror to humor. In 1945, the character was given a solo series called Frankenstein
Comics which lasted 17 issues, ending in January 1949. It was then revived by
Briefer with issue 18 in March 1952 as a horror title once more and not a com-
edy, which lasted two more years.
3 Pseudonyms were commonplace in the Golden Age, with publishers attempting
to disguise the fact that they had a smaller roster of talent than readers might
have suspected. Pen names were also regularly used by non-male creators as a
way of hiding their gender from readers.
4 See chapter four of Peyton Brunet and Blair Davis, Comic Book Women: Charac-
ters, Creators and Culture in the Golden Age (Austin: University of Texas Press,
2022) for further examination of how the tropes and themes of horror comics in
the 1940s connect with the issues of gender and genre.
5 Other histories of comics omit everything that came before EC Comics, such as
Hubert H. Crawford’s Crawford’s Encyclopedia of Comic Books. He describes
how William Gaines “dared to reopen the door to the supernatural realm and
bring out a series of ‘fright comics’ as part of the E-C New Trend series” in
1950, suggesting that it was pulp literature magazines like Weird Tales that
were the sole domain of print-based horror stories prior to EC titles like Tales
From the Crypt and Vault of Horror [(Middle Village, NY: Jonathan David
Publisher’s Inc., 1978), p. 308]. While some comics’ fans might also point to
Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel’s “Doctor Occult” from New Fun in 1935 as an
early horror feature, such a proclamation is complicated by the fact that the
character’s adventures combined a wide range of genre tropes, from detective
fction to superhero storytelling. In many stories, his trench coat and fedora
position him visually as a Sam Spade-type investigator, while other install-
ments saw him don a red cape and gain the ability to fy just like Siegel and
Shuster’s later, more popular superhero character. More scholarly research on
“Doctor Occult” as a pioneering multi-genre feature is certainly necessary, in
keeping with just how much more work is needed overall regarding how we
make distinctions about the ways in which genres originated within comics’
history.
6 The Old Witch debuted in The Haunt of Fear Vol. 1 #16 (July–August 1950) by
Al Feldstein and Jack Kamen, while the Vault Keeper was created by Feldstein in
War Against Crime! #10 (December 1949 to January 1950) before going on to
star in The Vault of Horror.
7 A few horror hosts appeared sporadically in the 1940s before the rise of EC
Comics’ horror series, most of them witches. Hit Comics had an old witch host
the feature “Weird Tales” in 1940 in issues #1–14 (July 1940 to Aug. 1941),
while Yellowjacket Comics had another witch host “Tales of Terror” in 1946
issue #7–10 (Jan. to June 1946). Neither had sustained a presence within their
series as regular characters like “Frankenstein” and “The Werewolf Hunter,”
however.
8 George Evans drew the feature in issue 39. It is possible that he also drew #38,
but since neither Evans nor Renée signed their name in that issue, it is unclear
whether Evans drew it or just inked over Renée’s pencil breakdowns.
9 See Peyton Brunet and Blair Davis, Comic Book Women: Characters, Creators
and Culture in the Golden Age (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2022).
10 Renée states that she usually sent drawings to the soldiers who asked for them:
“I wanted to be nice because they were fghting the Nazis” (Amash 18–19).
Works Cited
Amash, Jim. “’I’m Not Typical for Doing Comics, You Know!’: The Life and Times
of Golden Age Artist Lily Reneé.” Alter Ego, Vol. 3, No. 85, May 2009, pp. 3–23.
Barker, Martin. A Haunt of Fears: The Strange History of the British Comics Cam-
paign. Pluto Press Ltd., 1984.
Briefer, Dick (w/p/i). “The New Adventures of Frankenstein.” Prize Comics #7
(December 1940). Feature Publications, Inc., 1940, pp. 22–29.
Broussard, Armand (w) and Lily Renée (p/i). “Mistress of the Moon Blood.” Rangers
Comics #21 (February 1945). Fiction House, 1945, pp. 19–24.
___. “The Devil’s Bride.” Rangers Comics #18 (August 1944). Fiction House, 1944,
pp. 33–38.
___. “The Werewolf Hunter.” Rangers Comics #19 (October 1944). Fiction House,
1944, pp. 17–23.
___. “The Werewolf Hunter.” Rangers Comics #23 (June 1945). Fiction House,
1945, pp. 19–24.
Brunet, Peyton and Blair Davis. Comic Book Women: Characters, Creators and Cul-
ture in the Golden Age. University of Texas Press, 2022.
Crawford, Hubert H. Crawford’s Encyclopedia of Comic Books. Jonathan David
Publisher’s Inc., 1978.
Fujitani, Bob (p/i). “The Eyes of the Tiger.” Eerie (January 1947). Avon Periodicals,
1947, pp. 1–8.
Kawin, Bruce F. “Children of the Light.” Film Genre Reader III, edited by Barry
Keith Grant. University of Texas Press, 2003, pp. 324–345.
Labarre, Neil. Understanding Genres in Comics. Palgrave Macmillan, 2020.
Mills, June Tarpé (p/i). “The Ivy Menance.” Amazing Man Comics #6 (Octo-
ber 1939). Centaur Publications, Inc., 1939, pp. 50–57.
___. “The Purple Zombie.” Reg’lar Feller Heroic Comics #1 (August 1940). Eastern
Color Printing Co., 1940, pp. 14–17.
___. “The Vampire.” Amazing Mystery Funnies Volume 2 #2 (February 1939). Cen-
taur Publications, Inc., 1939, pp. 45–50.
Neale, Stephen. Genre. BFI Books, 1980.
Rangers Comics, No. 32, December 1946. Fiction House.
Small, Jon (p) and George Roussos (i). “Dead Man’s Tale.” Eerie (January 1947).
Avon Periodicals, 1947, pp. 9–19.
Spectre, Alan (p). “The Voodoo Man Cometh.” Weird Comics #1 (April 1940). Fox
Feature Syndicate, 1940, pp. 39–46.
Weygand, Armand (w) and Jim Mooney (p/i). “The Tentacle Terror from Beelzebub’s
Void!!!” Rangers Comics #13 (October 1943). Fiction House, 1943, pp. 41–46.
Weygand, Armand (w) and Lily Renée (p/i). “Priestess of the Spider Death.” Rangers
Comics #15 (February 1944). Fiction House, 1944, pp. 41–46.
___. “The Cats of Señor Shaitan.” Rangers Comics #16 (April 1944). Fiction House,
1944, pp. 32–37.
___. “The Puppets of the Witch Queen.” Rangers Comics #14 (December 1943). Fic-
tion House, 1943, pp. 40–46.
___. “The Soul Slaver.” Rangers Comics #17 (June 1944). Fiction House, 1944,
pp. 35–39.
___ and Saul Rosen (p/i). “The Dungeon Dweller of Horror House.” Rangers Comics
#12 (August 1943). Fiction House, 1942, pp. 43–48.
104 Blair Davis
___. “Werewolf Hunter.” Ranger Comics #10 (April 1943). Fiction House, 1943,
pp. 19–24.
___ and Gustaf Schrotter (p). “The Werewolf Hunter.” Rangers Comics #8 (Decem-
ber 1942). Fiction House, 1942, pp. 19–24.
___ and George Tuska (p/i). “The Werewolf Hunter.” Rangers Comics #9 (Febru-
ary 1943). Fiction House, 1943, pp. 19–24.
Whitman, Bert (w/p/i). “The Man Who Made Monsters.” Weird Comics #1
(April 1940). Fox Feature Syndicate, 1940, pp. 31–38.
9 The Wolf Only Needs to Find
You Once
Food, Feeding, and Fear in
the Dark Fairy Tales of Emily
Carroll
Alexandre Desbiens-Brassard and Gabriella
Colombo Machado
Introduction
Food and horror often go hand in hand in popular culture. One only has
to think about famous monsters – bloodsucking vampires, brain-eating
zombies, and fesh-consuming werewolves – to realize how often they are
defned by their appetites. In their monograph about food and horror in
flm, Cynthia Miller and A. Bowdoin Van Riper explain that “[t]o eat the
wrong thing, or to eat the wrong way, is to risk being Other – monstrous –
‘a fgure on whom fears and anxieties can be projected’ ” (1). The process of
becoming an Other through food and eating can be linked to Julia Kristeva’s
notion of the abject, since the Other, like the abject, is that which “disturbs
identity, system, order. What does not respect borders, positions, rules” (4).
The link between food and abjection is clear for Kristeva, as she claims that
“[f]ood loathing is perhaps the most elementary and most archaic form of
abjection” (2). Food horror disturbs by displaying not only horrifc foods,
such as human fesh, excrements, and inorganic matters, but also by show-
ing the act of eating the forbidden. In essence, food horrors touch “on fun-
damental fears of both the act and the consequences of taking the horrifc
into the body” (Miller and Van Riper 4).
With her Eisner-winning graphic short story collection Through the
Woods (2014), Canadian writer and artist Emily Carroll has quickly estab-
lished herself as a new maven of horror comics. This anthology collects fve
stories and creates a cohesive reading experience by bookending them with
“An Introduction” and “In Conclusion.” Thematically, the stories are all
inspired by well-known fairy tale tropes, often featuring young women (in
four out of the fve stories), lurking monsters, and supernatural phenomena.
One key element of Carroll’s stories is the portrayal of feeding, biting, and
chewing as the primary vectors of horror. In this chapter, we will explore
how, in Through the Woods, eating can mark one to be monstrous and Other.
We will underline specifc moments in which consumption is conceptualized
DOI: 10.4324/9781003261551-11
106 Desbiens-Brassard and Colombo Machado
as neither neutral nor mundane but as a warning that important boundaries
are being crossed. As part of this analysis, we will also argue that Carroll’s
emphasis on food and eating as a source of horror comes directly from
Carroll’s choice of the fairy tale as a primary mode of storytelling. Indeed,
fairy tales such as “Hansel and Gretel” and “Red Riding Hood” – the latter
of which Through the Woods deliberately calls back to in its conclusion –
heavily feature food and the fear of becoming food.
The motif of food and eating in Carroll’s work is established on the
very frst page of “An Introduction” by a drawing of an open book that
“resembl[es] a pair of lips, with the red ribbon of the page-marker sticking
out like a snaking, licking tongue – a book as a mouth not just telling tales,
but ready to devour its user” (Dokou 4–5). This page-marker’s blood-red
color and forked tongue signal to the reader that these tales are not con-
sidered as safe reading. In fact, the readers might be as much at risk as the
characters of encountering famished monsters threatening to eat them. The
multifaceted interactions between horror, food, and fairy tales in Carroll’s
work take centre stage in two particular stories that will be the focus of
our analysis, namely “A Lady’s Hands Are Cold” and “The Nesting Place”
(hereafter referred to as “ALHAC” and “TNP”).
A Lady’s Hands Are Cold

In “ALHAC,” Carroll deliberately references and refocuses on the infamously
dark folk tale of “Bluebeard” about a man with a propensity for murder-
ing his wives and a young woman’s attempt to escape being his next bridal
victim. In Charles Perreault’s 1697 seminal version of the tale, Bluebeard’s
monstrous character is advertised quite clearly by the unnatural (and never-
explained) colour of the titular’s character’s facial hair, “which made him
so frightfully ugly that all the women and girls ran away from him” (Per-
rault). Eager to fnd a new wife despite this, Bluebeard invites two sisters to
his country house for a week “flled with parties, hunting, fshing, dancing,
mirth, and feasting” (Perrault), which is enough to make one of the girls look
past the tonsorial warning sign and agree to take Bluebeard as a husband.
Since three of the six items mentioned in the list quoted earlier are related to
either the consumption or production of edible matter, it could be said that
in Perrault’s “Bluebeard” (and most versions based on the same framework,
such as the Brothers Grimm’s [1812]), food is an obfuscator of monstros-
ity, a diluter of the horror inherent to having to marry a wealthy, ugly, and
potentially murderous man. This makes sense since food is an “appropri-
ate mechanism for the expression of meanings and values concerning the
relationship between Nature and Culture, between the spheres of Human
and Animal species and concerning the boundaries of ‘civilization’ (that is,
‘our’ way of life, whoever ‘we’ may be)” (Atkinson 11). By extension, food
can also speak of the relationship between the monstrous and the normal,
the dangerous and the safe, and the unknown and the known. “Bluebeard,”
The Wolf Only Needs to Find You Once 107
both the man and the story, thus uses food as a mechanism to establish a
relationship between the world of the dead (wives) and the world of the liv-
ing, allowing the former to lure in inhabitants of the latter.
In her rewriting, Carroll makes sure to preserve the signifcance of the
colour blue by applying it liberally throughout the story. The walls of the
nameless husband’s mansion are covered in so much blue wallpaper that
our young and equally nameless female protagonist often gets lost in it, a
solitary yellow fgure awash in a sea of oppressive azure. And while the hus-
band himself sports no cerulean beard in this version, the story is bookended
with a triptych of panels, two of them sporting a dark red background while
the middle panel sports a contrasting vivid blue background and the words
“And there was a man” (Carroll, “ALHAC” 37).
On the frst read, however, this strong built-in association between the
husband and the colour blue, which is obviously designed to remind the
reader of Bluebeard as soon as the story opens, reads like a red herring, a
clever misdirect on Carroll’s part. Unlike Bluebeard, the murderous hus-
band in “ALHAC” does not try to kill the protagonist when she discov-
ers the corpse of his previous wife. Rather, it is the dead wife’s body that
attacks and tries to murder the protagonist to satiate her desire for revenge,
not on her murderous husband but on his young new wife. “ALHAC” can
thus easily be interpreted as Carroll’s attempt to switch the focus – and the
threat – of the tale of Bluebeard from the husband to the jealous dead wife,
as announced by the title Carrol gives to her rewriting. One can thus even
wonder if the husband is truly monstrous or murderous. The story infers
that he is but provides no strong evidence. Consequently, this story, like so
many in the collection, might seem ambiguous at frst blush.
This ambiguity, however, is the real misdirect. The husband is monstrous,
though he hides it well and almost gets away with it, too, if it had not
been for a single dinner scene. This dinner is the frst activity that the pro-
tagonist and her husband share together. Notably, the narration indicates
that the new bride “dined with her groom at a long, white table” (Carroll,
“ALHAC” 41). The use of the specifc word “groom” here indicates that the
wedding ritual is still ongoing. On a symbolic level, therefore, this dinner
scene acts as the wedding night, the moment where a married couple is tra-
ditionally supposed to be physically intimate with one another for the frst
time. This moment, often referred to as the consummation of a marriage,
is here replaced by an act of consumption. The substitution of one with
another makes symbolic sense because, in addition to sharing an etymologi-
cal origin, consummation and consumption are both highly intimate acts.
It is true that, in this instance, there is no physical proximity between the
newly-weds, since both are sitting at one end of a long table. However, while
the act of sitting relatively close to one another around a table is certainly
part of the intimacy of a meal, the physical proximity of the diners is far
from being the only or most important cause of such intimacy. As Lorna
Piatti-Farnell explains:
The meal, especially when seated at the table, is an exceedingly intimate
experience. . . . It is intimate because it exposes the opening of the body
to the outside world. The opening of the mouth and the disclosure of the
boundaries of the body are profoundly personal acts. . . . At the table,
general movements are restricted, while the mouth is given free rein,
the intake of food revealing the individual to the world, and vice versa.
(Consuming 223)
In this specifc dinner scene, it is the husband who is revealed to the world,
since the girl herself does not eat. And in order to ensure that what is revealed
is clearly seen, Carroll presents us with “a number of telling closeups: a fork,
the husband putting bloody meat to his mouth, his wife’s neck, a dinner
knife and his wife’s red cheek. . . . In the centre of the page sits a bloody cut
of meat, penetrated by a carving knife and fork” (Corcoran 10).
This page acts as a perfect example of how, for Carroll, food is an uncanny
substance. Especially since “[o]nce the food is swallowed, it becomes us,
and as such, we become the other, the unfamiliar matter, the unknown”
(Piatti-Farnell, Consuming 15). Eating food irremediably marks a person as
uncanny, monstrous, and non-natural – that is, as an Other.
In this specifc scene, the uncanny, monstrous nature of the husband is
frst emphasized by the attention paid to his eating utensils. On this one page
alone, forks and knives are seen in close-up four times and twice, respec-
tively. In each case, they are smeared with red. This red smear, symbolizing
blood, allows Carroll to defamiliarize otherwise commonplace objects by
reminding the reader of their terrible potential of violence. Indeed, while we
often forget it in our daily acts of consumption, eating is
a profoundly violent activity. . . . Any utensil at the table could read-

ily be turned into a weapon. No one would be so unwise to deny the
damage done to an eyeball by a fork wielded by an enraged and vicious
maniac. Food can easily be thrown, while plates and glasses can be bro-
ken, used as sharp instruments to injure others very severely. All dining
artefacts hold a violent potential, as does the forcibly intimate set-up of
consumption in such a close and inescapable circle.
(Piatti-Farnell, Consuming 232)
As Piatti-Farnell goes on to explain, table manners, that is the culturally spe-

cifc set of rules that dictates what can and cannot be done at the table, are
usually what prevents dinners from turning into violent bloodbath.
Unfortunately for the heroine, her husband lacks any such table manners,
as evidenced by the specks of sauce and blood that coat his mouth and that
he leaves on the table. Since “food leftovers are a well-known category of
abjection,” then the “inability to properly dispose of food remainders recalls
the notion of the abject.” This destroys the protection conferred by table
manners and marks the husband not only as violent and dangerous, but
also as “the culturally unacceptable and social Other, an alienating and off-
putting presence whose food habits and behaviours mark him as an outsider
as far as the bounds of propriety and decency are concerned” (Piatti-Farnell,
“Ravenous” 51). This is compounded by the close-ups of his new wife’s
neck and cheeks found among “the series of fuid vignettes: teeth, blood,
meat, fesh” that the dinner “dissolves into” (Corcoran 10). The close-up of
the neck is especially interesting. Women’s necks are already common sites
of monstrous consumption in the horror genre thanks to the fgure of the
bloodsucking vampire. The addition of a choker coloured in the same red
as the blood smeared everywhere else on the page reminds us that while the
girl does not eat (a sign of her normality), she can still be eaten herself – a
fact the narration later renders explicit by noting that the girl “was being
prepared for dinner” (Carroll, “ALHAC” 47).
At the end, the dinner scene in “ALHAC” reveals and predicts the horrors
to come through its very form as sequential art. Indeed, “[o]n its own . . .
the dining sequence is chaotic. The panels, lacking the stability of frames
and the punctuation of gutters, simply bleed into one another and the black-
ness beyond” (Corcoran 12). The chaos originating from the arrangement
of the panels mirrors the chaos emanating from the subject matter, that is
food and the consumption of such food. If “Bluebeard” used food to mask
the monstrous and provide the appearance of order and peace, “ALHAC”
does the opposite. In this story, and many others from the collection, “eating
is a conduit for disorder and chaos: the otherwise everyday, even mundane
grounding presence of food is instead employed to destabilize and subvert
the boundaries of rationality and the cultural everyday” (Piatti-Farnell,
“Ravenous” 45). This applies equally well to bloody meat as it does to more
commonplace edibles, as demonstrated by the second story mentioned pre-
viously: “The Nesting Place.”
The Nesting Place

While “ALHAC” reframes “Bluebeard,” “TNP” revises another fairy tale
trope, that of the wicked stepmother. As usual with fairy tales, the father is
completely absent, being replaced here by an older brother, Clarence, who
is enamored with Rebecca, his young and pretty fancée. Her mother hav-
ing passed away, the young protagonist Mabel, or Bell, is forced to spend
her summer vacation with her brother and his beloved. While Bell is well
taken care of during her stay with the young couple, the monstrous nature
of Rebecca, as the wicked stepmother, lingers throughout the story, waiting
to be revealed. Much like in “ALHAC,” it is through food, and specifcally
the act of eating, that the true nature of Rebecca is revealed to both Bell and
the readers.
The wicked stepmother is a familiar fairy tale trope in which an adoles-
cent protagonist must overcome obstacles created by an evil stepmother.
Some obstacles include mistreatments, as in “Cinderella,” or exile, as in
“Snow White.” According to Jerilyn Fisher and Ellen S. Silber regarding the
perpetuation of patriarchal stereotypes through fairy tales:
the wicked stepmother assumes a starring role as the girl’s tenacious

adversary. In terms of narrative signifcance, a fercely competitive, vicious,
and pathological mother becomes the extant symbol of adult woman-
hood. . . . Thus the dutiful daughter assumes instead the passive, feminine
identity of the frst queen, avoiding any identifcation with the active prin-
ciple embodied in the characterization of the bad mother/witch.
(123–4)
The traditional wicked stepmother trope thus employs a strong villain cun-
ningly trying to plot the demise of the protagonist, who instead relies on
her delicate feminine traits to attract a male suitor who can rescue her from
the grip of her wicked stepmother. In a very real sense, the protagonist is
saved by a heterosexual marriage that initiates her into womanhood within
a patriarchal society. The stepmother, having displayed initiative and action,
“surely incur[s] severe social criticism, a fate unequivocally represented by
[her] demise” (Fisher and Silber 124). In Carroll’s tale, however, it is Rebecca
who personifes a more traditional female role while Bell uses her own wits
to save herself from danger. According to Miranda Corcoran, “Rebecca
attempts to inculcate in Bell the correct method of performing culturally-
appropriate femininity” (20) by inviting Bell to play dress-up with the older
woman’s clothes and to learn how to apply makeup. Bell, though an adoles-
cent girl, is not shown to have these traditionally feminine interests, prefer-
ring instead to spend her days reading or exploring the woods. Corcoran
sees Carroll’s adolescent protagonists as “both existing within the liminal
space between childhood and adulthood, and anxious about an impending
womanhood that is understood as indeterminate and ontologically unstable”
(20), of which Bell is a supreme example. For Corcoran, Rebecca’s insistence
on performing womanhood with Bell and Bell’s refusal to do so demonstrate
Bell’s anxieties about growing up and becoming a woman herself.
Rebecca “is portrayed as a light, lilting presence” (Corcoran 20), full
of delicateness and femininity, both in personality and appearance. She is
drawn in pastel colors and, unlike everything else in the story (including
her own clothes and other characters), her skin is outlined in white rather
than black. She is introduced to the reader in a full page spread that serves
to highlight her presence as her white outline stands in contrast to the dull
grey and black tones of her surroundings. In her frst interaction with Bell,
Rebecca asks if the girl’s nickname is derived from another fairy tale, “La
Belle et la Bête” (“Beauty and the Beast”). Unsurprisingly, in its original
French version by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve (1740), this story
also featured wicked family members, namely jealous siblings. More impor-
tantly, however, the mention signals to the reader the overall infuence that
fairy tales have on Carroll’s oeuvre. Bell is quick to reject the association
with the tale and instead offers her own interpretation of the nickname as
coming from the poem “For Whom the Bell Tolls” (1624) by John Donne.
Dismissing the association with the fairy tale and insisting on her own liter-
ary tastes mark Bell as being decisive and active in making her own choices.
Bell refuses to identify with a fairy tale princess who needs a prince to save
her from her problems. Corcoran’s point that Carroll’s protagonists embody
anxieties about growing up dismisses its fairy tale intertextuality. Carroll’s
story subverts the wicked stepmother plot by having a traditionally feminine
villain and a non-conforming female protagonist. This signals more than
Bell’s anxiety about growing up; it also demonstrates a resistance to the
patriarchal notions of womanhood promoted by fairy tales and embodied
in “TNP” by Rebecca’s hyperfemininity.
Rebecca’s performance of femininity also functions as a ruse to protect
her monstrous nature. Like in “ALHAC,” this monstrosity is hinted at dur-
ing Bell and Rebecca’s frst dinner together, when Bell notices a disturbing
sound coming from Rebecca: “tlk thk tlk” (Carroll, “TNP” 144). Rebec-
ca’s mouth gets a close-up panel showing her teeth moving and clanking
as she chews her dinner. Chewing loudly and making noises while eating
are already marked in Western culture as bad table manners. Carroll takes
this up a notch by emphasizing Rebecca’s teeth and showing them not only
making a distasteful sound, but also wiggling and shaking. Teeth are sup-
posed to be strong, immoveable parts of the body. Consequently, moving,
soft teeth are associated with disease, aging, and the abject. Like other parts
of ourselves that become abject once removed from us (like hair, body fu-
ids, or nails), falling teeth have the ability to provoke feelings of horror and
abjection:
Removed from their clean and proper place (the mouth), teeth, both real
and metaphorical, become abject, objects of horror, revulsion, and dis-
taste. Teeth are more than the mere sum of their parts; they are the repre-
sentation of that which remains rooted within us, repressed yet obsessively
revisited, . . . rotting tooth, fascinated and yet repelled, but seeking to
establish union with that which is part and yet not part of ourselves.
(McGlasson 23)
At the dinner scene, both Bell and the reader are faced with the shocking
revelation that Rebecca’s teeth betray her true nature as monstrous. While
in “ALHAC” the emphasis is on the food as being a parallel to the young
bride as edible and the husband as a monstrous eater lacking table manners,
in “TNP,” the very act of chewing her food is what marks Rebecca as an
Other, as wicked.
Having witnessed the disturbing way in which Rebecca eats her food, Bell
seeks to distance herself not only from the woman, but also from all other
food she might be offered in the house. Carroll insists on the theme that food
is a vector of potential Othering. Thus, time and again, her protagonists
abstain completely from eating. As Piatti-Farnell explains, “Eating trans-
forms our bodies, but it also affects our identities: for what we eat, and how
we eat it, is never truly separate from our notions of ourselves” (Consuming
232). Avoiding eating something might be seen as a way to prevent having
one’s own identity to be colonized by the ingested substance. Moreover, if
Rebecca’s wicked nature is revealed by the act of eating, the very food she
is consuming might therefore also be poisonous and dangerous. Although
Bell does not have any real indication that the food is dangerous (after all,
all other characters ingest it without problems), Bell decides to avoid both
Rebecca and all offered food, lest she risks becoming monstrous herself.
At the end, the full scale of Rebecca’s monstrousness is shown on another
full-page spread, one that shocks and horrifes in equal amounts. After Bell
falls down a cave while exploring the woods surrounding the property, she
hears a tender voice speaking in motherly tones to something. When she
approaches the voice, what she sees is Rebecca in her true form, red tenta-
cles oozing from all of her orifces – eyes, nose, and mouth – while she makes
another disturbing, sibilant sound. Rendered as “sschhhkk,” this sound flls
the page as much as the visual excess of the tentacles does (Carroll, “TNP”
170). Rebecca’s body is but a shell that houses this amorphous mass of red
tentacles. This panel marks the gothic excess of this tale, as “Carroll’s use
of the bleed underscores and exacerbates the horror of the image, as the
worm-like appendages do not merely traverse the borders of Rebecca’s sud-
denly diffuse form, but they also mass at the borders of the page and slip out
beyond its confnes” (Corcoran 22). Rebecca’s form can barely be contained
by her skin, always threatening to exceed the human form and present itself
as Other. Similarly, the page itself cannot contain Rebecca’s true nature and
must exceed its borders. Rebecca’s Otherness is on full display in this scene.
Annette Cozzi argues that “Otherness is not merely fgured as radical or
oppositional difference; it is also fgured as superfuity, a monstrous excess
that threatens to topple the balance of power” (5). Rebecca’s appearance
threatens to engulf the narrative through the overfowing bleeding page.
Additionally, Rebecca fnally asserts her power over Bell, something she
could not do when she tried molding Bell into another feminine version
of herself by playing dress up. In the cave, unlike in the house, Bell is com-
pletely at the mercy of Rebecca.
When Bell wakes up, in the comfort of her bed, back at the house, the
imminent danger posed by Rebecca seems to have been averted. However,
Rebecca soon comes into the room to reveal that despite not wishing to
harm Bell, she needs the teenager as a host for her babies. Rebecca is actu-
ally a mother and needs her babies to thrive by her side. Thus, she needs
someone young whose skin can accommodate her growing offspring. The
implication is that Bell herself will be eaten by Rebecca’s babies, but not
entirely. At the very beginning of the story, we learn that Bell’s mother used
to tell her scary stories growing up. One such story talked about the worst
kind of monster, the burrowing kind: “The sort that crawled into you and
made a home there . . . The monster that ate you alive from the inside out”
(Carroll, “TNP” 135). Rebecca’s babies would eat Bell’s insides, leaving her
skin intact so they can live in/as her. This act of monstrous consumption is
another example of eating being depicted in Through the Woods as a way to
exert power over someone else. As Cozzi explains, “[e]ating is about more
than physical nourishment or sensual pleasure, it is about power: power
over life, and power over death, power over the self and over the Other” (6).
Rebecca exerts power over Bell by threatening to eat her and use her body
to house her children. If Rebecca’s plan succeeds, Bell will no longer exist as
herself, but only as a shell to be manipulated by a monster.
As Rebecca explains her plan, the reader sees her worm-like tentacles
distort Rebecca’s skin into a number of different shapes and forms. It seems
that Rebecca’s body has neither bones nor muscles but is entirely occupied
by shape-shifting tentacles. Carroll draws another close-up of her mouth
and shows that, despite not being able to secure them through bones, the
monster maintains Rebecca’s teeth, sometimes manipulating them individu-
ally or smiling through her tentacles with them. The moving teeth are a veri-
table abject image that reinforces the horror of the scene. It evokes common
nightmares of losing one’s teeth. It also points once again to the Otherness
of eating. Since teeth are the primary way one has to consume solid food,
Rebecca’s unstable, monstrous teeth point to her unstable, monstrous diet
that includes not only “normal” edible foods, such as those served during
dinner, but also adolescent young girls like Bell.
Unlike the princesses in fairy tales featuring the traditional wicked step-
mother trope, Bell does not get rescued from Rebecca by a charming prince.
Instead, Bell uses her reasoning and storytelling skills to thwart Rebecca’s
plan of using Clarence to move to the big city. Bell paints a bleak picture of
a grimy city where Rebecca and her offspring would be discovered as the
creatures they are and subsequently probed, dissected, and experimented
on by curious doctors. In other words, Bell appeals to Rebecca’s motherly
instincts to protect her children from the dangers of the city.
The tale, however, does not end there. On her way to the doctor with
her brother Clarence, Bell hears once again the disturbing sound that clued
her in Rebecca’s true nature – “tlk tlk tlk” – only this time, it is com-
ing from her brother eating an apple (Carroll, “TNT” 192). The tale ends
with another close-up, this time of Clarence’s moving teeth as he chews on
the apple, signaling that Bell’s brother has been burrowed in by Rebecca
and that Bell will need to keep fghting the monsters if she wants to avoid
becoming a puppet herself.
Conclusion
Be it bloody meat or mundane refreshing apples, Through the Woods is
replete with foodstuff that acts as harbingers of category crisis, where the
boundaries of humanity break down and let the monstrous inhuman crawl
through. Interestingly, while food always heralds danger in Through the
Woods, at no point does the collection “make any suggestion that the con-
sumption of horrible foods – culturally and aesthetically speaking – will
actually put the consumer in any danger” (Piatti-Farnell, “Ravenous” 49).
The apples in “TNP” are not poisonous, like in “Snow White,” nor is the
meat in “ALHAC” coming from any objectionable source (i.e. human
beings). Rather, “the consumption of food” in Through the Woods “signals
the entry to, and encounter with, an Otherworld,” the titular woods, where
hungry wolves roam (Piatti-Farnell, “Ravenous” 49).
Emily Carroll being a relative newcomer to the genre of horror comics,
it is hard to determine if the themes of horrifc consumption that riddles
Through the Woods will be an integral part of her own personal poetic,
but all signs point to this being the case. Her second published work, When
I Arrived at the Castle (2019), offers another Gothic fairy tale where con-
sumption acts as a vector of inhuman terror. As hinted at by the cover, which
features two nearly naked women embracing each other while displaying
sharp claws and bloody fangs, this sophomore book is a more mature tale
than any featured in Through the Woods. Clearly aimed at an older audience
than her frst collection, When I Arrived at the Castle features gory violence
and explicit sexual imagery throughout. Similarly, the role of consumption
is more direct, intense, and explicit in this tale, becoming the centerpiece of
the book’s horror rather than a simple warning sign. It also takes on sexual
connotations that are mostly absent from Through the Woods. Biting, chew-
ing, and eating are still shown as savage, inhuman, monstrous acts, but that
monstrosity is this time around mixed with animalistic eroticism. In this
way, and many more, When I Arrived at the Castle is a continuation of the
journey through the deep dark woods of womanhood that Carroll sends
the readers on in her frst book. And while our own trek through the woods
must stop here, it is our hope that enterprising scholars will relay us and
follow Carroll as she ventures once more into a “deep, dense forest.” Such
scholars should better beware, however: Carrol’s woods are full of raven-
ous wolves who would love nothing more than transforming you into food.
Unfortunately, while “you must be lucky to avoid the wolf every time . . .,
the wolf only needs enough luck to fnd you once” in order to swallow you
whole, body and soul (Carroll, “In Conclusion” 203).
Works Cited
Atkinson, Paul. “Eating Virtue.” The Sociology of Food and Eating: Essays on the
Sociological Signifcance of Food, edited by Anne Murcott. Gower, 1983, pp. 9–17.
Carroll, Emily. Through the Woods. Margaret K. McElderry Books, 2014.
___. When I Arrived at the Castle. Koyama Press, 2019.
Corcoran, Miranda. “Bleeding Panels, Leaking Forms: Reading the Abject in Emily
Carroll’s Through the Woods (2014).” The Comics Grid: Journal of Comics Schol-
arship, Vol. 10, No. 1, 2020, pp. 1–32. https://doi.org/10.16995/cg.198.
Cozzi, Annette. The Discourses of Food in Nineteenth-Century British Fiction. Pal-
grave Macmillan, 2010.
Dokou, Christina. “Un(th)inkable Tales: Unimaginable Folklore Horror in Emily
Carroll’s Through the Woods.” Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, Vol. 8, No.
6, 2017, pp. 1–16. doi:10.1080/21504857.2017.1383282.
Fisher, Jerilyn and Ellen S. Silber. “Good and Bad Beyond Belief: Teaching Gender
Lessons Through Fairy Tales and Feminist Theory.” Women’s Studies Quarterly,
Vol. 28, No. 3/4, 2000, pp. 121–136. www.jstor.org/stable/40005478.
Roudiez. Columbia University Press, 1982.
McGlasson, Dianne. “A Toothy Tale: Themes of Abjection in John Marsden and
Shaun Tan’s Picture Story Book, The Rabbits.” The Lion and the Unicorn, Vol. 37,
No. 1, 2013, pp. 20–36. doi:10.1353/uni.2013.0009.
Miller, Cynthia J. and A. Bowdoin Van Riper. “Introduction.” What’s Eating You?:
Food and Horror on Screen, edited by Cynthia J. Miller and A. Bowdoin Van
Riper. Bloomsbury Academic, 2017, pp. 1–12.
Perrault, Charles. “Bluebeard.” Edited by D. L. Ashliman, 7 October 2003 [1889].
www.pitt.edu/~dash/perrault03.html. Accessed 19 August 2021.
Piatti-Farnell, Lorna. Consuming Gothic: Food and Horror in Film. Palgrave Mac-
millan, 2017.
___. “Ravenous Fantasies and Revolting Dinners: Food and Horror in Children’s
Literature.” The Routledge Companion to Food and Literature, edited by Lorna
Piatti-Farnell and Donna Lee Brien. Routledge, 2018, pp. 43–54.
10 Borderland Werewolves
The Horrifc Representation
of the U.S.–Mexico Border in
Feeding Ground
Anna Marta Marini
Scripted by Swifty Lang and drawn by Michael Lipinski, Feeding Ground

(Sept. 2010 to June 2011, Archaia) is a horror comic book set on the trans-
national trail known as the Devil’s Highway, often used by illegal migrants
to cross from Sonora, Mexico, to Arizona, the United States. The six-issue
mini-series1 falls into a niche segment of comics that tackle border-related
issues2 through the exploitation of horror tropes and cross/subgenres, draw-
ing metaphoric connections between horrifc ambiances and the harrowing
realities existing on the U.S. –Mexico border. Interestingly, Feeding Ground
enriches its diegetic development by building on a wide range of characters
that illustrate and reconstruct effectively the present border context. The
main characters’ perspectives span from that of Border Patrol agents to the
migrant experience and include the presence of local vigilantes, grappling
with the variety of actors actually involved in border dynamics. An analy-
sis of the monstruous elements intrinsic to the representation of the U.S.–
Mexico borderlands and the border-crossing experience allows to draw
connections to the fundamental themes underlying the comic book, related
to the Spanish conquest, the U.S. neocolonial exploitation of migrants, as
well as the political and orographic character distinctive of the region itself.
Forced monstrosity is achieved through the Latinx characters’ passive and
initially unwitting role in experimentation that will transform them into
werewolves – in a process evoking to an extent that of mestizaje itself in
colonial times. Nonetheless, if in reality the Latinx migrants’ destiny seems
to have been partially imposed by historical and socio-economic conjunc-
tures, in Feeding Ground their monstrosity eventually becomes a means of
revindication of their agency and place in society.
Migrants, Coyotes, and Minutemen: Reconstructing the

Border
The graphic novel opens with a few sequences introducing the main Mexi-
can characters – the members of the Busqueda family3 – living in a border
town stricken by poverty and lack of opportunities. Unable to fnd any bet-
ter occupation, father Diego resorts to helping migrants cross the border
DOI: 10.4324/9781003261551-12
Borderland Werewolves 117
illegally as a smuggler or “coyote,” bringing them into the United States
along the track known as Devil’s Highway, which corresponds to the his-
torical El Camino del Diablo trail through the Sonoran Desert. Back home,
his wife Bea is accosted by local narco Don Oso, who aggressively threatens
her family upon rejection. When her son Miguel accidentally kills the man
(Lang and Lipinski 44), she decides to escape northbound with her children
and brother-in-law, leaving a message for Diego in the hopes of rejoining in
the desert. Once reunited (68), the family undertakes the crossing among
diffculties, as their daughter Flaca was bitten by a dog-like animal shortly
before leaving (12) and seems to be suffering from what locals call “desert
sickness.” Furthermore, the Busquedas discover the existence of werewolves
in the borderlands – something Diego was aware of and hid from them.
Increasingly erratic and sickly, Flaca herself undergoes a werewolf meta-
morphosis despite being a female human, a circumstance revealed to be
extremely rare as the mutation itself destroys the body of female specimens.
Such mutating monsters seem to attack humans – both migrants and border
enforcement agents alike – by transforming whenever they feel fear or hun-
ger. When the family bumps into the Border Patrol, Flaca is frightened by
the agents’ overbearing attitude and the sudden aggression by a few enraged
werewolves; consequently, she transforms and kills her uncle Hector (92).
The reader progressively discovers that the monstruous threat originates in
genetic experiments carried out by a fctional enterprise operating across
the boundary known as Blackwell Industries. The agro-industrial company
employs illegal Mexican migrants for manual labor and, at the same time,
exploits some of them as test subjects for the owner’s purposes of experi-
mentation, aimed at creating a perfect werewolf specimen.
Border crossing is one of the fundamental pivots characterizing the devel-
opment of the comic, both diegetically and metaphorically. The construc-
tion of the border context is simple and yet quite accurate, based on the
fundamental actors related to the reality of the boundary. The depiction
of the local population living along the border is simplifed by using the
same characters as migrants, reconstructing the dynamics that lead Mexican
men in particular to cross illegally in order to fnd a source of income and
support their families back home. Illegal immigrants are often exploited as
peons and are employed mainly in the felds of farming and agriculture,
construction, and service; currently, unauthorized migrants constitute up to
a half of the U.S. farm labor workforce (USDA).
The initial sequence in which Diego leads a small party of migrants
through the desert ends with the encounter between the group and a Black-
well surveillance team (Lang and Lipinski 28). The operation unfolds as a
Border Patrol operation would: the team surveys the boundary in military
vehicles capturing wandering migrants. Private enforcement clashes with
federal border enforcement throughout the comic, as the power relations
between Blackwell Industries and local agents unfold. The depiction of Bor-
der Patrol operatives is suffciently accurate, as border technology – such as
118 Anna Marta Marini
surveillance systems, drones, listening devices scattered along the border – is
partially shown and so is the attitude with which agents approach their
tasks as if it were a job “like any other” (40). Correctly, Feeding Ground
highlights the presence of Mexican American citizens enrolled in the agency
(117), a rather controversial reality characterizing border enforcement. It
represents as well the enforcers’ systematic shunning of responsibilities
toward migrants – for example, abandoning Bea and her son in the desert,
stating that they “are not [the agents’] problem anymore” (131). Both Bor-
der Patrol and local police enforcers seem to have a limited knowledge of
the actual experimentations carried out by Blackwell, even though they are
bound to overlook the disruption caused by the werewolves. Nonetheless,
things go awry when a pack of monsters attacks and massacres local agents.
The survivors team up and decide to carry out a suicidal mission on the
premises of Blackwell Industries (141, 150–151, 166–168).
The reconstruction of the borderland environment is completed by the
insertion of two opposite fgures: the activist who helps migrants survive
their journey and border vigilantes pursuing them. Red is an old man who
scatters water jugs along the crossing path to make sure migrants will not
die of thirst – a practice that in reality is illegal and liable of prosecution in
the U.S. territory.4 He helps the Busquedas to pass through a particularly
exacting section of the desert path and reach a border town where they
can fnd a way to cross (Lang and Lipinski 79, 82). Conversely, minutemen
systematically slash the water jugs (79, 96) and roam the region to violently
persecute migrants.
The Borderlands as Bio-Horrifc Heterotopias

The dynamics and consequences intrinsic to migration and border enforce-
ment represent the most evident thematic pivot of the narrative develop-
ment. At the same time, though, the borderland landscape provides a
pervasive underlying theme, strengthening the idea that “violence on the
U.S.–Mexico border is intrinsically linked to the landscape itself” (Morales
90). The orographic nature of the region seems to be inextricably connected
to danger and inhospitality, suggesting the idea that its inhabitants are just
as unwelcome on both sides of the border infrastructure for one reason or
another. Throughout the narration, each change of point of view and loca-
tion is marked by a caption indicating both place and temperature, stressing
the unbearable heat that characterizes daytime in the Sonoran Desert and
the nighttime temperature changes due to local climate. Such differences
are effectively conveyed by means of contrasting color palettes and lighting
as well. Daytime sequences are often characterized by a warm palette rely-
ing in particular on yellow hues and overexposure rendering the blinding
quality of desert light (e.g., Lang and Lipinski 46–49). Nighttime sequences
are marked by a darker palette composed by blue, grey, and purple in par-
ticular (e.g., 39–41), which contributes to create an eerie, ominous mood
(Bellantoni 190–192). The contrast is evident from the start, as the frst
sequence following the migrants crossing at night under Diego’s guidance
sets the palette that will mark nocturnal settings in the following pages (Lang
and Lipinski 25–29). Purple is, in fact, the main color used in sequences that
describe horrifc situations, whereas cold red hues mark specifc panels in
which danger is approaching – such as when the reader witnesses for the
frst time an encounter between Diego and a werewolf (39). Signifcatively,
the palette is not exclusively used when the horror is from supernatural
sources: grey and purple hues characterize, for example, the early sequence
in which the Busquedas are threatened by an overbearing Don Oso in their
own home (42–45).
The borderlands become an even more dangerous place as Blackwell’s
werewolves roam free in the desertic landscape, literally converting it in
their own feeding ground. The way in which the werewolves are created and
“infect” new bodies reconnects, to some extent, with common metaphors
in discriminatory discourse. In U.S. public discourse, the Latinx migrant
is often depicted within the boundaries of specifc discursive constructions
insisting on the implicit idea that their entrance – especially if by illegal
means – will taint cultural and social order, conventions, and values. The
immigrant has been consistently seen as being a “pollutant agent” (Cisneros
571–572) posing a threat of contamination, as well as being an animal or
part of catastrophic events such as natural disasters.5 The borderland then
becomes a locus of “infection” itself, a heterotopic space where the preserva-
tion of U.S. sovereignty – territorial as well as cultural – is in danger.
At the same time, though, the migrant represents a necessary resource for
a transnational company such as the fctional Blackwell Industries. Whether
consciously intended or not, Feeding Ground refects the transnational con-
text of late capitalism in its biopolitical facets. The implementation of the
North American Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994 fostered and consoli-
dated the systemic dynamic for which Mexican workers fee their impov-
erished regions of origin to be employed in proftable U.S. industries for
very low wages, particularly in the agro-industrial sector. As Smith-Nonini
has highlighted, migrant farm work is exacting, and the workers’ health is
often neglected in favor of productivity. The consequent existence of injured
and dead migrant bodies represents a “by-product of supply and demand
in the new competitive global marketplace,” rendering the migrant body as
disposable “embodied energy” within the productive complex (465–466). In
the economy of Latinx illegal work, the migrant subject is thus emptied of
subjectivity and reduced to bare life.
The similarity between Feeding Ground’s specifc werewolf iteration and
the cryptozoological entity known as the Chupacabras – a blood-thirsty,
reptile looking monster – is evident. Initially appeared in the mid-1990s
in Puerto Rico and quickly reinterpreted in the Mexican border con-
text, the Chupacabras are “an uncanny manifestation of the effects of a
system of exploitation and the life-draining practices” characterizing the
migrant experience in such an economic system (Calvo-Quirós, “Sucking
Vulnerability” 213). Feeding Ground effectively channels the monsteriza-
tion of the Latinx migrant, tackling different facets of timely border-related
issues. Drawing on Latinx monster theory as articulated by William A.
Calvo-Quirós, monstrous colonial encounters manifest themselves in the
consequent creation of monsters that embody moments of crisis given by
socio-economic and political conjunctures (“Libéranos de todo mal” 382).
On the one hand, as Calvos-Quirós underlines, the Latinx subject has been
consistently construed as a social monster that requires forced assimila-
tion, segregation, and deportation to be made invisible and innocuous. On
the other, the increased production of monster tropes and narratives often
corresponds to socio-economic and historical crises, such as moments of
renewed anti-immigrant nativist discourses (Calvo-Quirós 384) as well as
the increase in the militarization of the border infrastructure (Punter 169).
Thus, in the specifc case of borderland monsters, it could be argued that
monsterization refects on the different social actors orbiting around the
boundary. Considering the borderlands specifcally, the perpetuation of
labor-related biopolitics intertwines with the necropolitical character intrin-
sic to border enforcement measures aimed at so-called “prevention through
deterrence.”6
The Latinx monster is often the embodiment of ambiguity and change. The
Latinx subject necessarily faces and undergoes a metamorphosis through
the migration process, embodying a kind of liquid modernity imagined by
Bauman and characterized by social anxieties related to a perceived unsafety
and insecurity. Flaca’s father is himself an ambiguous metaphorical monster:
trying to fnd a way out of his own desperate condition and assumed lack
of choice, as a coyote he takes advantage of desperate acquaintances for his
own proft. His character embodies the ambiguity and the fatality intrinsic
to border-crossing dynamics, condensing the dramatically confictive nature
of illegal immigration. Diego defends his controversial job as a smuggler
by building on the idea that he embodies the “best decision [the migrants]
could’ve made” (Lang and Lipinski 18), suggesting that a local coyote inde-
pendent from any criminal organization represents a safer choice. His dis-
course is refected in his wife’s words, claiming that he gives people “a real
choice” (14) even though – as Don Oso counters – her husband is “selling
a dream” (15) that will lead them to exhaustion and possible death. Ulti-
mately, the illegal migrant’s American Dream has turned into a construction
of U.S. oppression as the only opportunity of salvation from the impov-
erished Mexican context. Albeit partial, Diego’s knowledge of the threat
posed by the werewolves makes him indirectly guilty of connivance as he
systematically avoids warning the migrants.
Furthermore, it can be argued that – if the monstrous body is “pure cul-
ture” (Cohen 4) – the Latinx migrant body is inevitably the locus of ethnic
clash. Mexican and Mexican American heritage is haunted by both the colo-
nial past and the current U.S. neo-imperialist and bio-capitalist assimilation.
The border in particular is a place of inevitable cultural and physical contact
giving rise to hybrid identities and ethnicities. Besides immigration dynamics,
Feeding Ground deals with the topic of mestizaje and its deeply traumatic
colonial roots, drawing a metaphoric connection between the experimen-
tal mutation and the horrors of the colonization process. The comic book
seems to suggest a postcolonial perspective on mestizaje that focuses on
the intrinsic violence of its processes and the imposition of such a “con-
dition.” Agribusiness owner Blackwell is revealed as being a Spanish con-
quistador (Lang and Lipinski 135), whose apparent immortality is granted
by his inherited lycanthropy. Albeit not entirely effective, this diegetic twist
draws on the idea that the Spanish conquest “sucked” the blood out of
the subjugated Native American people as a blood-thirsty monster would.
The colonial monster is such that he “infects” the local population, turning
migrants into mixed-blood hybrid werewolves roaming the borderlands and
appropriating the space as their own feeding ground.
After turning into a werewolf and being rescued by his employees, Flaca
signifcatively stands on Blackwell’s side until he confronts her to provoke
a violent reaction. The conquistador’s fnal purpose is, indeed, to bequeath
the curse of immortality and assure the perpetuation of his legacy. When she
turns against her biological father and kills him, Blackwell turns into a were-
wolf as well and instigates Flaca to fght him. Their confrontation ends with
the girl ripping out Blackwell’s heart – represented using the traditional ico-
nography of the sacred heart – and eating it (Lang and Lipinski 166), thus
inheriting immortality and the duty to ensure progeny as the leader of the
mestizo werewolves’ pack. Flaca embodies the “perfect specimen” of mes-
tizaje – literally “mixed-blood” as well as the metaphorical blend of Native
and colonial heritage – and consequently she is the only character that sur-
vives at the end of the graphic novel. The fact that she kills her own father
and neglects her mother and brother – who were left abandoned alone in
the desert to their own fate – comes as a further critique of the mestizaje/
assimilation process, both in a literal and metaphorical sense. The (neo)
colonial agent – whether historical or contemporary – captures the expecta-
tions and needs of the Latinx subject, leading them to “turn their backs” to
their origins and embrace the reality that is offered to them in an evidently
asymmetrical power relationship.
Posthuman Monstrosity and Border Technologies

Artifcially induced monstrosity on the border represents a trope that has
occasionally appeared in borderland fction. Considering in particular non-
human- and animal-related monstrosity, it is worth mentioning Rudolfo
Anaya’s short story “Devil Deer” (1992), in which the renowned Chicano
author imagines the monstruous effects provoked by an industrial com-
plex on the borderland wildlife the local population relies on to for its own
subsistence. Anaya’s dystopian work anticipates to an extent the disastrous
consequences the NAFTA has brought on the borderland ecology with the
massive advent of the maquiladora-industrial complex. The short story
reminds the reader that monstrosity haunts the borderlands both in super-
natural and artifcial ways: it is provoked by the presence of artifcial tech-
nology, and yet it reconnects to rooted, local, supernatural folklore to which
the Mexican deer mythology belongs.
In Feeding Ground, the aforementioned Chupacabras folklore is directly
mentioned by the characters. When the Busqueda family walks through the
desert, Diego scolds a sickly Flaca for running off, reminding her of the
Chupacabras’ folktale employed to warn people against the dangers intrin-
sic to wandering off the path in the unforgiving desert landscape (Lang and
Lipinski 75). In fact, the frst victim the readers see attacked by the border-
land werewolves is an old man who wandered off under the effects of a heat
stroke and who tried to kill himself while hallucinating (19). Diego fnds his
body butchered, with the chest grotesquely open (38). He smashes the old
man’s head with a rock to make sure the migrant is effectively dead and will
not revive as a monster. The existence of werewolves is then revealed, as a
barely scared Diego dialogs with one he seems to know personally and that
he identifes as a manifestation of the devil (41).
The construction of werewolfery itself as both artifcial and supernatural
represents a peculiar reinterpretation of the werewolf archetype. The belief
that humans can engage in shapeshifting and thus transform into animals –
or creatures blending anthropomorphic and zoomorphic traits to varying
extent – has long formed part of folklore in many different cultures. The
most recurrent description of the phenomenon links it to either curses or an
innate predisposition possibly inherited from one’s own ancestors, for which
monstrousness is thrust upon them (Senn 3). In some cases, metamorphosis
is thought to be voluntary and “achieved through a pact with the devil”
or caused by demonic possession (Frost 7). In fact, the articulation of such
supernatural lore during the Middle Ages in Europe often intertwined with
religious motifs and superstitions, which at times embodied anxieties pro-
voked by the widespread presence of wolves and the manifestation of rabies
in the animals (Woodward 24). Despite an evident decrease in most recent
centuries due to the development of science – and in particular evolution-
ary, medical, and psychoanalytical knowledge – alleged werewolf sightings
have been articulated and reproduced up to the present, at times intertwin-
ing with popular culture narratives reprising the related tropes (Beresford
194–219). Aside from being caused by such supernatural occurrences, trans-
mission of the curse often is believed to happen by means of biting, an ele-
ment reprised in Feeding Ground. The werewolf is usually male despite the
existence of occasional female werewolf narratives; such belief is also at
the base of the diegetic premises of the comic. Blackwell is experimenting
with male migrants because the female body would be destroyed by the
metamorphosis. Nonetheless, Flaca’s genetic profle reveals that her body is
capable to host the mutation.
Feeding Ground reinterprets the tradition of recreating werewolves
through scientifc experimentation. Blackwell Industries’ laboratories have
developed a process to genetically modify humans and turn them into were-
wolves, starting from the genetic material Blackwell himself provided. If the
originator seems to correspond indeed to a more traditional trope – and it is
never clarifed in the comic how exactly werewolfery came to run in Black-
well’s genealogy – the reproduction of it is linked to the artifcial creation of
monstruous hybrids who, in turn, can spread the curse by means of biting
unaware human victims. Upon being deceived and unwittingly submitted to
genetic modifcation, the migrants captured by Blackwell Industries roam
free in the borderlands that become their feeding ground. Their victims
might even appear dead at frst, but they revive as soon as the metamor-
phosis has taken over their bodies and can only be killed by destroying their
head (Lang and Lipinski 57–58). In traditional lore, the werewolf generally
holds superhuman powers and is unable to control his urges when trans-
formed, yielding to animalistic and aberrant behaviors. Most importantly,
the metamorphosis process usually implies no recollection of what one has
done in the wolf form.7 In the realms of canonic folktales, the werewolf falls
between the conscious and unconscious monstruous categories to which
vampires and zombies belong, respectively.
The result of Blackwell’s experiments is an interspecies capable of con-
sciously blending in the human society. Genetics and artifcial exploitation
of the supernatural come into play as Blackwell’s trials reveal that some
humans are more resistant to the mutation and prone to achieve the intended
likeness of Blackwell himself: a werewolf who can control his bestiality, pilot
the transformation, and remain conscious even in his monstruous form. The
subjects of his experiments are not permanently mutated, as they can hide
behind their human form until hunger or fear (one’s own or someone else’s)
trigger the mutation. The resulting werewolves are subjected to a continu-
ous metamorphosis from human to monstruous and vice versa, and it could
be argued that their nonhuman state symbolizes the necessary fuidity and
adaptability migrants need to master in reality. Their mutation might sug-
gest connections to common stereotypes related to Latinx immigrant in the
U.S. public discourse, depicted as violent, beastly, and uncivilized; nonethe-
less, as the comic book unfolds, it is evident that their metamorphosis is, to
an extent, empowering, turning them into predators at last.
Posthuman monsters might be engineered or surgically modifed in a scien-
tifc laboratory, where science powerfully “isolates then modifes the small-
est particles of life” (Powell 77). When it escapes the human control, though,
such scientifcally created monster represents a posthuman entity or “a being
replacing the human, coming after the human, and existing beyond human
capacity” (Schmeink 34), dangerous in its suspension between forms and
threatening the integrity of the human. Feeding Ground defnitely taps into
dystopian refections of the risks and feasibility intrinsic to the biogenetic
and technology-driven structures of contemporary capitalism (Braidotti 64).
As its narrative demonstrates, the borderland context is particularly ftting
as an embodiment of such structures and their manifestations in daily real-
ity. Migration management technologies have been crucial in the process
of increasing dehumanization of migrants on the U.S.–Mexico border, as
well as in the heterotopic space represented by the control exerted by the
Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) agency since 2003. Such tech-
nologies are experimented directly on migrants, and their devices “become
tools of oppression and surveillance, denying people agency and dignity”
(Molnar 22). The migrant body is transformed into a test subject in order to
improve surveillance measures that often are – at least partially – extended
later on to the national territory and its population. The development of
technology implies a reinforcement of existing power asymmetries, both
between countries and aimed at strengthening internal ethnic discrimina-
tion. Immigration-control-related technologies span from biometric profl-
ing to automated decision-making, autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles,
and systematic data collection. In particular, biometric profling includes
DNA testing of migrants at the border, in order to enter their genetic profle
into a national criminal database. Due to technological advancement, the
collection of biometric identifers – such as palm and fngerprints, facial and
voice recognition, iris scans, and hand vein pattern scanning – has progres-
sively become favored over other forms of documentation (Makhlouf 263).
The increased employment of genetic profling and racialized prediction
certainly rings a bell, considering the United States’ eugenic, nativist-driven
past and medicalization of the immigrant body. Medical experimentation
comes into play as well: aside from medical deportation and deliberate forms
of medical neglect, ICE has been accused of allowing unnecessary testing and
surgery on migrants detained in its facilities. In Sept. 2020, a whistleblower
revealed that migrant women detained in a South Georgia center were sys-
tematically receiving hysterectomies and gynecological procedures without
giving their consents. Despite instances of medical abuse in detention facili-
ties having been denounced by undocumented migrants and activist groups
through the years, the evidently dominant power position the agency holds
has made very diffcult to investigate such praxis unless whistleblowers step
up. The U.S. immigration detention system “violates core tenets of medical
ethics” (Ghandakly and Fabi 832), sustaining its ecosystem based on the idea
of “prevention through deterrence” deployed through systematic brutality.
Extrajudiciality is key to create opaque zones in which state accountability
is weak, and thus technological experimentation and abuse of the migrant
body can happen without legal consequences (Molnar 34).
The genetic experimentation at the base of Feeding Ground’s monsters is
particularly interesting and suggestive of the strict relation between immi-
gration technologies and mass genetic profling. Manipulating genetic infor-
mation can both modify human beings to better ft futuristic technological
contexts and “create a new, more viable human species” (Clarke 11). In Feed-
ing Ground, the techno-monster represents a new form of mestizaje that takes
colonial miscegenation to a futuristic level, constituting a new posthuman
species that will overcome the local population. The collusion between the
powerful and overreaching Blackwell Industries and both federal and local
enforcement contributes to shape the border’s bio-horrifc heterotopia as a
grey zone, reproducing dynamics existing in reality. Its horror drifts toward
biopunk topoi, as migrants unwittingly enter the transnational corporation
complex only to be implanted with genetic material, undergoing a forced body
transformation procedure they discover upon their frst uncontrolled turning.
Conclusions
The borderlands represent a locus of persistent asymmetrical power, both
past and present. It is its very nature what turns migrants into social mon-
sters, characters who have lost anything they had and cannot but fnd new
ways to survive their condition. As writer Luis Alberto Urrea describes in the
comic book collection’s foreword, the U.S.–Mexico borderlands are often
marked by an “unforgiving landscape” where everybody is an alien, imbued
with a “Lovecraftian feeling” (4). The border region has become a place
where the horrors of illegal migration manifest, both visibly and invisibly.
The remains and possessions of the hundreds of migrants who die every year
are left behind and scattered across the desert paths,8 a material reminder of
the absurdity intrinsic to the exploitative mechanism of illegal immigration
to the United States. The loss of subjectivity and reduction to bare life are
distinctive of the state of exception9 characterizing border enforcement, a
place where human rights are set aside, and extrajudicial praxis becomes the
norm. Feeding Ground to an extent subverts the role of migrants as power-
less victims of a bio-capitalist system, transforming them into a posthuman
entity that embodies a futuristic, supernatural form of mestizaje, in a way
reclaiming the mestizo condition and denouncing an inhuman border real-
ity that seems impossible to subvert otherwise. The Latinx body becomes
indeed a manifestation of willful monstrosity, embraced as a form of resist-
ance turning into “subjects who will not abide by cultural norms and expec-
tations” (Wilson 12). Against the construction of monsters as means to
normalize the dominant strata of society – which identifes the ethnic other
as unacceptable social monster – Feeding Ground’s werewolves avail them-
selves of their forced transformation and represent, indeed, monsters willing
to reclaim and establish their own place within society.
Notes
1 The mini-series was collected as a graphic novel in 2011. This collection will be
used as the primary text for this essay.
2 It is worth mentioning at least Border Town (Nov. 2018 to Feb. 2019, DC Com-
ics) – of which only four issues were published due to author Eric Esquivel’s
abuse allegations – and Red Border (2020, AWA Studios). The use of horror and
gothic modes contextualized on the U.S.–Mexico border – both materially and
metaphorically – has been exploited as well by Chicanx artists, for example in
comics such as Rafael Navarro’s Sonambulo (1996-ongoing, Ninth Circle Stu-
dios), Rhode Montijo’s Pablo’s Inferno (2000, Abismo), and Javier Hernandez’s
El Muerto (1999-ongoing, Los Comex).
3 The characters’ family name Busqueda could be connected to the fact that the
Spanish word búsqueda means search, thus possibly symbolizing their quest for a
better life across the border.
4 Border Patrol agents systematically vandalize containers of water and other sup-
plies that humanitarian organizations leave in the desert for migrants to survive
their crossing, a practice that can be observed even in a docuseries such as Netf-
lix’s Immigration Nation (2020). The support activists give is liable of prosecution
in many different ways and charged with fnes if intercepted by border enforcers
(for an interesting overview revealing that this is not a practice recently estab-
lished, see for example Maria Lorena Cook, “Humanitarian Aid Is Never a Crime:
Humanitarianism and Illegality in Migrant Advocacy,” Law & Society Review,
Vol. 45, No. 3, 2011, pp. 561–591).
5 On these topics, see for example the extensive seminal work by Otto Santa Ana, in
particular his monograph Brown Tide Rising: Metaphors of Latinos in Contem-
porary American Public Discourse (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002) and
the paper “Like an Animal I Was Treated’: Anti-Immigrant Metaphor in US Public
Discourse,” Discourse & Society, Vol. 10, No. 2, 1999, pp. 191–224.
6 The advent of measures commonly known as “prevention through deterrence”
since the late 1990s – and defnitely strengthened after the 9/11 attacks – has been
thoroughly examined for example by Timothy J. Dunn in his book Blockading
the Border and Human Rights: The El Paso Operation that Remade Immigration
Enforcement (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2010).
7 For a thorough analysis of werewolf lore, see among others the work of already
mentioned scholars such as Frost and Beresford, as well as Charlotte F. Otten’s
edited collection A Lycanthropy Reader: Werewolves in Western Culture (New
York: Syracuse University Press, 1986).
8 The research on the migrants’ remains and personal objects scattered through-
out the desert has been tackled thoroughly by anthropologist Jason De Leon,
who also directs the Undocumented Migration Project (UMP), a long-term mul-
tidisciplinary study of clandestine border crossing. Particularly relevant are his
monograph The Land of Open Graves: Living and Dying on the Migrant Trail
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2015), enriched with photography of
the sites described, as well as the “Undocumented Migration, Use-Wear, and the
Materiality of Habitual Suffering in the Sonoran Desert,” Journal of Material Cul-
ture, Vol. 18, No. 4, 2013, pp. 1–32.
9 Drawing on Giorgio Agamben’s notion of state of exception (Stato di eccezione.
Torino, Bollati Boringhieri, 2003), it can be argued that the border has become
indeed a kenomatic space characterized by a relative vacuum of judicial order,
where extrajudicial practices become the norm, and human rights are system-
atically violated without legal consequences (see Anna Marta Marini, “ICE y los
discursos de legitimación del espacio kenomático en la frontera México – EEUU,”
in Investigaciones sobre terrorismo de estado y estados de excepción, edited by
Lisandro Cañón. Lago Editora, 2021, pp. 383–409).
Works Cited
Anaya, Rudolfo. “Devil Deer.” Arellano, Vol. 1, No. 2, 1992, pp. 10–11.
Bauman, Zygmunt. Liquid Modernity. 2nd ed. Polity, 2012.
Bellantoni, Patti. If It’s Purple, Someone’s Gonna Die: The Power of Color in Visual
Storytelling for Film. Focal Press, 2005.
Beresford, Matthew. The White Devil: The Werewolf in European Culture. Reaktion
Books, 2013.
Braidotti, Rosi. Metamorphoses: Towards a Materialist Theory of Becoming. Polity
Press, 2002.
Calvo-Quirós, William A. “Sucking Vulnerability: Neoliberalism, the Chupacabras,
and the Post Cold-War Years.” The Un/Making of Latin@ Citizenship: Culture,
Politics & Aesthetics, edited by Ellie D. Hernandez and Eliza Rodriguez Gibson.
University of Indiana Press, 2014, pp. 211–234.
___. “Libéranos de todo mal/But Deliver Us from Evil: Latina/O Monsters Theory
and the Outlining of Our Phantasmagoric Landscapes.” The Routledge Compan-
ion to Latina/o Popular Culture, edited by Frederick Luis Aldama. Routledge,
2016, pp. 381–393.
Cisneros, J. David. “Contaminated Communities: The Metaphor of ‘Immigrant as
Pollutant’ in Media Representations of Immigration.” Rhetoric and Public Affairs,
Vol. 11, No. 4, 2008, pp. 569–602.
Clarke, Julie. The Paradox of the Posthuman: Science Fiction/Techno-Horror and
Visual Media. VDM Verlag, 2009.
Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome. “Monster Theory (Seven Theses).” Monster Theory: Reading
Culture, edited by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen. University of Minnesota Press, 1996,
pp. 3–25.
Frost, Brian J. The Essential Guide to Werewolf Literature. Popular Press, 2003.
Ghandakly, Elizabeth C. and Rachel Fabi. “Sterilization in US Immigration and Cus-
toms Enforcement’s (ICE’s) Detention: Ethical Failures and Systemic Injustice.”
America Journal of Public Health, Vol. 111, No. 5, 2021, pp. 832–834.
Lang, Swifty (w) and Michael Lipinski (a/l). Feeding Ground. Archaia Comics, 2011.
Lopez Cruz, Ronald Allan. “Mutations and Metamorphoses: Body Horror Is Biolog-
ical Horror.” Journal of Popular Film and Television, No. 40, 2012, pp. 160–168.
Makhlouf, Medha D. “The Ethics of DNA Testing at the Border.” American Journal
of Law & Medicine, No. 46, 2020, pp. 253–273.
Molnar, Petra. Technological Testing Grounds: Migration Management Experiments
and Refections from the Ground Up. EDRi/The Refugee Law Lab, 2020.
Powell, Anna. “Growing Your Own: Monsters from the Lab and Molecular Ethics in
Posthumanist Film.” The Palgrave Handbook of Posthumanism in Film and Televi-
sion, edited by Michael Hauskeller, Thomas D. Philbeck and Curtis D. Carbonell.
Palgrave, 2015, pp. 77–87.
Punter, David. “Cyborgs, Borders and Stories for Virgins: Mexico and the Gothic.”
The Gothic Condition: Terror, History and the Psyche. University of Wales Press,
2016, pp. 161–178.
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tion. Liverpool University Press, 2016.
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Smith-Nonini, Sandy. “The Illegal and the Dead: Are Mexicans Renewable Energy?”
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Woodward, Ian. The Werewolf Delusion. Paddington Press, 1979.
Part III
Adaptation in Horror
Comic Books
11 Flesh and Blood
Zombies, Vampires, and George
A. Romero’s Transmedia
Expansion of the Dead
Trevor Snyder
In searching for important connections between the world of horror and

the comic book medium, consider that one of modern horror’s most popu-
lar monsters – the zombie – might not exist in its current form if not for
comics. Many of the most enduring monsters have their roots in ancient
folklore and superstitions (the vampire, the werewolf) or classic literature
(Frankenstein’s Monster, Mr. Hyde, the Invisible Man).1 But our modern
concept of the zombie – not the Haitian folklore-inspired, voodoo-trance
victims of flms like 1932’s White Zombie (directed by Victor Halperin) and
1943’s I Walked with a Zombie (directed by Jacques Tourneur), but rather
the fesh-eating living dead that terrorize humanity in flms like 2009’s
Zombieland (directed by Ruben Fleischer), television series like The Walk-
ing Dead (2010–2022), and Max Brooks’ bestselling novel World War Z
(2006)2 – is generally accepted to have been born from the mind of writer/
director George A. Romero. Starting with Romero’s classic 1968 debut flm
Night of the Living Dead and continuing on throughout fve sequels over
the next four decades,3 Romero’s Dead flms set the template nearly all
subsequent zombie fction would adhere to (Hattnher 370–371). Romero’s
vision for the original flm was inspired not only by Richard Matheson’s
1954 vampire novel I Am Legend (Kane 22), concerning a single human
survivor in a world of the undead, but also by the rotting, resurrected,
murderous ghouls that stalked the pages of the comic books he enjoyed
as a child. Years later, late in his flmmaking career, Romero would try
his own hand at the medium that initially infuenced him, partnering with
America’s two largest comic book publishers to author a pair of comic
series set in his cinematic Dead universe. Romero’s work on these two series
serves as an example of the power of comics as a transmedia storytelling
tool, one which allowed the creator to further develop new narrative ideas
and avenues and greatly expand his fctional cinematic franchise in a new
medium unencumbered by cinematic limitations. And Romero’s transmedia
experimentation with these books would even grant him the rare opportu-
nity to merge the zombie genre he created with that of the vampire genre he
also adored, thus allowing him to connect and comment on two of horror’s
most iconic monsters.
DOI: 10.4324/9781003261551-14
132 Trevor Snyder
Romero’s Comic Origins
Growing up in the Bronx during the 1950s, Romero was, like many young
men of his generation, enraptured with the infamous horror comics’ boom
of the time. “I grew up on EC comics . . . the ones that got banned by the
Comics Code” (Romero, “Interview”). The controversial American pub-
lisher Entertaining Comics, better known as EC Comics, is primarily remem-
bered for its line of mature crime, war, science-fction, and horror comics in
the early 1950s. These comics contributed to a national moral panic about
juvenile delinquency in young comic readers, ultimately leading to the crea-
tion of the Comics Code Authority. The lurid, twisted, supernatural tales
found within the pages of The Vault of Horror (Apr./May 1950 to Dec.
1954/Jan. 1955), The Haunt of Fear (May/June 1950 to Nov./Dec. 1954),
and Tales from the Crypt (Oct./Nov. 1950 to Feb./Mar. 1955) – the three
EC anthology titles most synonymous with the horror comic craze – left a
defnite impression on young Romero, who found himself taken by their
mixture of “uninhibited violence . . . bad jokes and puns,” and “grim justice”
(qtd. in Rowe). The formative impact of these stories is easily seen in much
of Romero’s flmmaking. In 1982 he would even direct Creepshow, a gory,
primary-color-soaked homage to the twisted morality plays of EC Comics,
written by his good friend and fellow childhood EC-devotee Stephen King.
It’s not surprising, then, that Romero would eventually desire to bring his
living dead progenies for which he was most known to the illustrated page.
His frst foray into comics came in 2004 with the six-issue DC Com-
ics’ limited series Toe Tags Featuring George A. Romero (Dec. 2004 to
May 2005),4 written by Romero and illustrated by Rodney Ramos and
Tommy Castillo. Set months into the zombie apocalypse, it focuses on Dam-
ien Cross, a young man who, on death’s door after losing his right forearm
in an attack by the living dead, is “saved” by the mad scientist Professor
Hoffman – seemingly a nod to directors and producers Michael Powell and
Emeric Pressburger’s The Tales of Hoffman, Romero’s all-time favorite flm
(Kane 24), released in 1951. Stitched back together, injected with Hoffman’s
experimental “half-life serum,” and outftted with a prosthetic crossbow,
Damien is transformed into a heretofore unseen breed of zombie – undead,
but retaining his memory, intelligence, and a portion of his humanity.
Unsure of his place in this new world, Damien fnds himself embroiled in
the burgeoning confict between a militia of human survivors, including
his former girlfriend Judy, and an army of the dead led by a warlord-esque
zombie known as Attila.
Toe Tags is, unfortunately, not the best showcase for Romero’s talents as a
writer. Perhaps a result of his frst time tackling the comic medium, he seems
slightly out of his depth, weaving a muddled, underdeveloped, and poorly
paced tale. Romero’s creative vision of his Dead universe had been growing
in ambition, best illustrated at the time by his original, unproduced screen-
play for 1985’s Day of the Dead, a sprawling, epic story Romero described
Flesh and Blood 133
as “the Gone with the Wind of zombie flms” (Dee). He was forced to drasti-
cally cut-down and re-work Day into a much more restrained story before
flming in order to secure the budget necessary to ensure he could be guaran-
teed an unrated release (Dee). But the eventually leaked drafts of the original
screenplay lived on and illustrated to fans how large-scale Romero’s vision
of the franchise was growing. Romero, who was also not familiar with the
unique demands of serialized storytelling, appears to struggle with how to
unravel the undeniably dense, complicated Toe Tags narrative over only six
issues. Most scenes are too brief to deliver a true emotional impact, and,
as the story races to its conclusion, a heavy focus on action allows limited
time for characters’ backstories and development, usually the strengths of
Romero’s writing. This is most noticeably glaring with our tormented hero,
Damien, who spends the majority of the story locked in a personality crisis
concerning his new undead existence and whether he even deserved this sec-
ond chance at “life.” This interior struggle does not really resonate with the
reader, however, as Romero shows so little of the pre-zombifed Damien’s
life. In fact, the one signifcant act the living Damien performs – releasing
caged animals at a zoo in the early days of the outbreak so as to give them a
chance at survival – certainly feels like the act of a “good” person.
In addition, while the subversive wit of Romero’s Dead flms led the
flms to be seen as “pop left-wing action cartoons,” often celebrated for
their “sophisticated political allegories of late capitalist America” (Shaviro
7), the political satire of Toe Tags is too distractingly on-the-nose, wor-
thier of dismissive eye-rolling than in-depth analysis. The story’s true vil-
lains are a secret cabal of wealthy, elite American executives hiding out in
a secluded bunker, trying to use the power provided by Hoffman’s half-life
serum to install themselves as the new American government. In a move that
defnitely dates the book, Romero lazily names these characters Ms. Bush,
Mr. Cheney, Mr. Rice, and General Powell and reveals the cigar-chomping
fgurehead to be a particularly callous executive of the recently bankrupt
company “Entron.” While the crux of Hoffman’s research which the story
revolves around – that every human being is born with a genetic code deter-
mining whether they will be “good” or “bad” – may perhaps be purposefully
reminiscent of the questionable “science” in the 1950s B-movies Romero
loved as a child, it’s simply given too much actual narrative weight, allowing
too simplistic an answer as to why Damien retains his humanity and inher-
ent goodness as a zombie while so many others devolve into fesh-hungry
monsters. It’s an odd choice given Romero’s usual aversion to any scientifc
rationales for his zombies – he famously regretted so many viewers tak-
ing the possible explanation of radiation from an exploding space probe in
Night of the Living Dead as the gospel answer for what caused the dead to
resurrect in the frst place and consciously resisted offering any explanations
in his sequels (Kane 66).
And yet, there are certainly elements of Toe Tags that showcase what the
comic medium tantalizingly offered Romero in regards to further exploring
134 Trevor Snyder
and expanding his Dead universe beyond its cinematic incarnations. The
gigantic scenes of human/zombie combat (and even animal/zombie combat)
have a scale Romero the director could only dream of, given the budget-
ary constraints he typically worked under. And while Romero’s flms are
certainly known for “marvelously tasteless sight gags reminiscent of 1950s
comic books” (Shaviro 17), the exaggerated, cartoonish art style of penciler
Castillo and inker Ramos, accentuated by the amusingly garish coloring
of Lee Loughridge, brings a unique visual style to the world, both in its
depictions of over-the-top violence and the overall look of the zombies. The
rotted, monstrous appearances are incredibly evocative of the EC Comics’
ghouls of Romero’s youth and arguably more nightmarish than anything
even the impressive makeup work in Romero’s flms ever accomplished.
It is in the story ideas of Toe Tags, not just the art, however, that one truly
sees Romero take advantage of the transmedia potential of comic books and
their ability to expand both one’s creative vision and a singular media fran-
chise. The term “transmedia storytelling,” frst popularized by Henry Jen-
kins in his 2006 book Convergence Culture, refers to a fctional story-world
unfolding “across multiple media platforms, with each new text making a dis-
tinctive and valuable contribution to the whole” (95–96). The Dead universe
was particularly suited for this sort of cross-platform franchise expansion,
as Jenkins had already pointed to Romero’s cycle of Dead flms as an early
example of multi-work world-making, introducing “new aspects of the world
with each new installment” (114) and putting more energy into evolving the
world and its rules than focusing on a single narrative or group of characters.
Bringing his fctional world into the comic format allowed Romero the
opportunity to further develop and/or experiment with concepts not yet real-
ized in the cinematic entries, in a medium perhaps better suited for these
ideas. For instance, while Damien’s super-heroic, action fgure-like appear-
ance (a striking image tailor-made for the comic page) and intelligence may
feel disconnected from the zombies of the flms, he provides Romero the
chance to continue, and greatly expand, his complex exploration of heroic
“good guy” zombies, a concept previously examined on screen with Bub in
1985’s Day of the Dead and again with Big Daddy in 2005’s Land of the
Dead. Romero pushes this even further with Damien, granting him main-
character status and allowing him to speak with the eloquence of the living,
a characteristic never broached with any of the living dead in the movies.
And while the concept of zombie animals clearly intrigued Romero for some
time – they would later play a major role in his posthumous novel The Living
Dead (2020), completed by Daniel Kraus – concerns about the practicalities
of the necessary special effects work may have kept him from ever realizing
the idea on screen. But Romero and his Toe Tags artists embrace it, deliver-
ing scenes of mayhem involving zombie chimps, rats, and even an elephant.
Would the visual of superhero-zombie Damien riding Mr. Tembo, his undead
elephant “sidekick,” have been “too much” for a movie audience? It’s hard to
say, but there is no doubt it makes for a spectacular comic book splash page.
Flesh and Blood 135
Romero’s Comic Resurrection
Romero’s next exploration into the transmedia opportunities of a Dead-
based comic series could not have come at a better time for the flmmaker.
By 2013, Romero admitted he was exhausted by the mere thought of bring-
ing his zombies back to the big screen. “Once they bleed out of pop culture,
I’ll be able to go back and do them again,” he said. “Gosh, they are all over
the place. The Walking Dead is the number one television series in the States,
World War Z, games, commercials . . . Ugh! It’s too much” (Romero, “The
Walking Dead”). Romero certainly had a point; when he had published Toe
Tags in 2004, the zombie resurgence was only just gaining steam thanks to
flms like director Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later (2002) and writer/director
Edgar Wright’s Shaun of the Dead (2004)5 and popular video game series
such as Resident Evil (1996-present). In the years since, the genre’s popular-
ity had grown exponentially, and the marketplace was fooded with new
zombie movies, novels, video games, television shows, and comic books. It is
easy to see why even the “father of the zombie flm,” as a tribute labeled him
upon his passing in 2017 (Salam), might look out at the crowded landscape
he had wrought and feel overwhelmed.
Still, even if Romero was in no rush to helm a new Dead flm, he did have
an idea for a new zombie tale percolating, one with a brand-new, unex-
pected twist that might, in fact, have been a hard sell to even the most loyal
fans of his previous cinematic Dead entries. And so it seemed perfect tim-
ing when, in 2013, Marvel Comics approached Romero about returning to
comics, once again allowing him the opportunity to utilize the medium to
both grow his vision of the Dead universe and further experiment with its
storytelling possibilities.
George A. Romero’s Empire of the Dead, published by Marvel Com-
ics from January 2014 to August 2015, is a 15-issue mini-series, split into
3 fve-issue “Acts.” It was illustrated by Alex Maleev, Dalibor Talijić, and
Andrea Mutti, each handling one of the three acts. Inside a barricaded New
York City 5 years after the dead frst walked, the surviving residents try
their best to retain a sense of normalcy despite the ever-worsening apoca-
lypse outside their city. The story follows a large cast of characters, notably
Paul Barnum, a good-hearted but cynical entrepreneur who captures and
forces zombies into matches of gladiatorial combat for frenzied crowds, and
Dr. Penny Jones, an idealistic scientist who believes the dead can be reha-
bilitated, domesticated, and allowed to peacefully exist alongside the living.
Her theory is given credence by the existence of Frances Xavier, a former
NYC SWAT offcer turned zombie, who has retained enough of her intel-
ligence and memory to still feel a drive to protect others around her, zombie
and human alike. Xavier forms a special bond with Jo, a young orphan girl
who, like Penny, recognizes in Xavier the potential for the existence of a
new society where the living and dead can not only co-exist, but also truly
care for one another. Also taking a special interest in Penny Jones’s work,
136 Trevor Snyder
and in Penny herself, is Ronald Chandrake, the city’s mysterious mayor, who
harbors a deadly secret – he, his family, and the private security force he has
recruited to patrol the streets are all actually vampires.
On a creative level, the wildly entertaining Empire of the Dead is a vast
improvement over Romero’s work on Toe Tags. This could refect the ben-
efts of trial and error; having gained experience from his last go-around
writing comics, he now better understands the needs of serialized storytell-
ing. It could also be thanks to simply having a larger canvas to work with
this time – the expanded 15-issue length is clearly a better match for Rome-
ro’s pacing, allowing him to craft a sprawling, intricate tale with numerous
characters, subplots, and narrative indulgences. The world-building-focused
storytelling prevalent in modern media, especially in large multimedia fran-
chises, is characterized by “compelling environments that cannot be fully
explored or exhausted within a single work” (Jenkins, Convergence 114).
And while each of Romero’s Dead flms had been successful in primarily
focusing on a small group of survivors, typically in a single location, it’s clear
he was eager to utilize the expansive possibilities of transmedia storytelling
to grow beyond that claustrophobic approach. In the posthumous novel The
Living Dead, which he was working on until his death in 2017, Romero
presents his readers with tales of various, disparate characters spread across
the United States during the zombie outbreak. Though Empire of the Dead
is entirely contained in New York City, one can still feel Romero excitedly
testing out this approach of a fractured, multicharacter narrative, pursuing
the sort of story deviations he could perhaps never get away with in the
limited run-time of a single flm.
This is best exemplifed with the character of Dixie Peach, who arrives
on the scene late in Empire’s frst act as the advance scout for a band of
Southern militants planning to attack and overtake the city (Romero and
Maleev 79–82). While she at frst seems poised to be one of the book’s pri-
mary antagonists, Dixie interacts with neither the main heroes nor the vil-
lains, abandoning her original plans and instead becoming swept up in the
machinations of Runyon, a wealthy mobster attempting to undermine the
political power of Mayor Chandrake. While some readers might therefore
fnd the number of pages devoted to her and the surprisingly earnest rela-
tionship that forms between Dixie and Runyon to be somewhat perplexing,
the open-ended resolution of their story is nevertheless further example of
transmedia storytelling’s aim to hook consumers in and keep them speculat-
ing about the “gaps or excesses in the unfolding of the story” and “potential
plots which cannot be fully told or extra details which hint at more” (Jen-
kins, “Transmedia Storytelling 101”). Whether be it hinting at future chap-
ters or asking readers to imagine their own continuing Dixie and Runyon
adventures, it’s a strategy meant to keep fans engaged beyond their initial
interaction with the text.
On a purely visual level, the comic medium once again allows Romero
to work with fewer limitations than he felt in his cinematic efforts. “There
Flesh and Blood 137
are different kinds of rules,” he explained. “In a comic book . . . I don’t
have to worry about how many extras we can hire, or whether it’s going to
rain on a night when we have to shoot a big action sequence, or whether a
huge storm is going to destroy our entire set . . . I’m only limited by what
I can think up” (Romero, “George”). Empire’s trio of European artists all
bring a slightly more subdued, realistic penciling style to the book than was
seen in Toe Tags but not at the sacrifce of arresting imagery, multiple loca-
tions, and large-scale action. When he and his artists depict intense gladi-
atorial zombie battles in a giant arena full of thousands of screaming fans
(Romero and Maleev 31–33) or show Dixie’s former associates laying siege
to New York, frebombing the city streets from a stolen blimp in an action
sequence incredible in size and scope (Romero and Mutti 80–86), Romero
is taking full advantage of the storytelling freedom afforded by working in
this medium. Meanwhile, utilizing thought bubbles to depict the disjointed
inner-monologs of Xavier allows Romero to offer a peek into zombie psy-
chology in a manner he could never quite replicate onscreen.
Romero also leverages the liberties afforded by the comic medium to
indulge in narrative twists and turns he might otherwise be hesitant to
attempt in a movie, where the fnancial demands of both investors and the
audience would arguably stife large creative risks. For instance, one of
Empire’s most eyebrow-raising moments is a surprising revelation concern-
ing a climactic scene from Romero’s Night of the Living Dead. Penny Jones,
it turns out, is the younger sister of that flm’s heroine, Barbra, who viewers
last saw being pulled from a farmhouse to her awaiting death by a group of
zombies, including her own recently turned brother, Johnny. It’s a particu-
larly grim wrap-up for the story of these two siblings, whose trip to a local
cemetery started the flm. And yet, Empire reveals that perhaps all was not
what it seemed, as Penny explains to Paul that the undead Johnny actually
protected Barbra from the other zombies, carrying her to a nearby barn
and keeping silent watch over his sister until she could be rescued by the
patrolling local posse the next morning (Romero and Maleev 21–24). It is
this event that has instilled in Penny a faith in the living dead’s potential for
redemption. Penny’s story serves as a neat Easter egg for longtime Romero
fans, and a sort of emphatic declaration that this tale does indeed exist in the
same continuity as his flm, cementing Empire as a true transmedia exten-
sion of his cinematic universe.
In an age marked by problematic fan entitlement, when stories are ram-
pant of fans who “resent changes that threaten the integrity of a treas-
ured storyworld” (Ryan) and lead online harassment campaigns and start
petitions calling for re-edits and do-overs if the latest installment of their
beloved franchises does not match their pre-existing expectations, one can-
not help but wonder how a story revelation contradicting the long-accepted,
famous ending of a beloved horror classic would have been received by the
horror fandom if delivered in a new cinematic Romero Dead sequel, an
eagerly anticipated event in the genre. There is arguably less pressure for
138 Trevor Snyder
storytellers working on franchise explorations and extensions within the
comic realm. Though a true transmedia property is not necessarily meant
to have a primary “single source or ur-text where one can turn to gain all
of the information” (Jenkins, “Transmedia Storytelling 101”), much of the
audience may be “picky about the ancillary contents and added materials
that extend a storyworld” (Bourdaa) and choose to place less value on the
perceived canonicity of certain elements, especially those media forms dif-
ferent from the franchise’s original incarnation. Brandon Jerwa, a writer for
the 2009 comic series Battlestar Galactica: Year Zero, a prequel story for
the hit SyFy series Battlestar Galactica (2004–2009), acknowledged that
“most comic tie-ins have a hard time being considered a legitimate part of
the canon” (qtd. in Bourdaa). Romero may have understood that, no matter
how popular or successful it might become, Empire would nevertheless be
looked at by much of the audience as an ultimately inconsequential spin-off
from his cinematic universe as opposed to a new offcial entry in the canon.
While it’s true Romero never felt like a storyteller overly concerned with
the limiting expectations of his audience, it’s reasonable to assume he might
have enjoyed the larger in-universe creative freedom he had when working
in a comic medium.
Romero’s Monster Mash

Nowhere is his experimentation with the freedom offered by the comics
more felt, of course, than in the most controversial aspect of Empire of the
Dead (as well as the most signifcant in terms of expanding his fctional
story-world) – the addition of vampires to Romero’s Dead universe. At
frst glance, this might seem an incongruous leap for Romero to take this
far along into the world he frst created decades ago. By this point in the
series’ six-flm legacy, despite growing stylistic experimentation as seen in
the found-footage approach of Diary of the Dead (2007), the Dead uni-
verse still had fairly set narrative “rules” and had offered no inclination of
additional supernatural trappings. However, momentarily no longer inter-
ested in bringing his zombies to the screen and therefore free of the “more
of the same, please” expectations many horror fans would bring to a new
flm, Romero was instead welcome to play with his own previously self-
consistent setting and open up his fctional world in exciting new ways. And
considering his own stated infuences, the decision to incorporate another
supernatural creature is compatible with his own history. It is not hard to
see why a storyteller raised on the classic Universal Monster movies would
be delighted to try his hand at his own “monster rally” type story, in the
vein of Roy William Neill’s Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943), Erle
C. Kenton’s House of Frankenstein (1944), and House of Dracula (1945).
“That’s one of the things that made me want to write this story,” Romero
explained, “two kinds of dead people, both interested in the same food
source. Us” (“George”).
Flesh and Blood 139
If Romero was eager to challenge his human protagonists by throwing
another monster into the mix, the vampire was a logical choice. Certainly,
undead bloodsuckers featured in his beloved EC Comics – it seems likely
that young Romero, like other children of the time, was captivated by such
now-classic vampire tales as “Midnight Mess” (Tales from the Crypt #35
[Apr./May 1953]) and “The Reluctant Vampire” (The Vault of Horror #20
[Aug./Sept. 1951]). And while tales of vampires may have informed his
youth, he rarely had the opportunity to explore one of horror’s most endur-
ing monsters in the cinematic realm.
Romero’s personal satisfaction with the one vampire flm he did make
during his career might help to further explain why else he was eager to
revisit the monster. Though Romero’s name ultimately, and understand-
ably, become synonymous with zombies – a fact he seemed both tickled
by and begrudgingly resigned to at various points in his life – whenever he
would refer to “my favorite flm of mine” (“Interview”), it was not one of
his six Dead entries but rather 1978’s Martin. That flm’s titular character is
a young man sent to live with his ultra-religious, elderly grand-uncle Tateh
Cuda (Lincoln Maazel) in a borough of Pittsburgh. Martin Mathias (John
Amplas) is shy, awkward, and a murderer; the flm opens with Martin drug-
ging, sexually assaulting, and drinking the blood of a female passenger on
the train he is traveling in. But is he solely a disturbed young man with delu-
sions brought on from a traumatic past, or is he truly – as both he and his
grand-uncle believe – an 87-year-old vampire?
Romero leaves the answer to this question ambiguous and open to the per-
sonal interpretation of each viewer, in turn crafting one of the most unique
vampire flms the genre has ever seen. The flm certainly plays with tradi-
tional vampire imagery – Martin has black and white fashbacks (or delu-
sions) of being chased by torch-wielding villagers, his grand-uncle attempts
to torment him with crucifxes and garlic, and the flm’s bloody denouement
will feel familiar to any viewer of old-school vampire movies such as the
Hammer Dracula flms. But Martin still remains grounded in harsh reality,
eschewing supernatural spectacle in favor of a complex, even tragic char-
acter study. Romero insists his intent was not to subvert the vampire genre
but rather that he was consumed by thoughts of how the classic literary and
cinematic vampires could not possibly exist and thrive in a modern setting.
While he certainly understood and appreciated the purpose of a vampire as
“a character that we created so that we can drive a stake through its heart,
[and] thereby cleanse our own souls” (Romero, “Morning” 52), and saw “all
those supernatural monsters that are part of literary tradition” as “beasts
we’ve created in order to exorcise the monster from within us,” he nonethe-
less saw Martin as an opportunity to break through the expected trappings
those classic tales had made monotonous and to show “we can’t expect the
monster to be predictable” (Romero, “Revealing the Monster” 78–79).
Romero was given a second opportunity to chip away at the predictable
clichés of literary vampires with the villainous bloodsuckers of Empire of
140 Trevor Snyder
the Dead, who casually dismiss old-fashioned myths such as aversion to
sunlight and attempts to hide their supernatural monstrousness behind the
more pedestrian banality of evil that is politics (also allowing Romero to
work in his expected political satire, this time in a more interesting manner
than simply naming generic villains after real-life politicians). When Mayor
Chandrake’s dangerous but impulsive nephew Bill dons a cape, ostensibly
to appear more like the “classical” vampire of lore, it is reminiscent of a
scene in Martin where the main character sarcastically wears a cape of his
own and strikes Bela Lugosi-esque poses to mock his grand-uncle’s own out-
dated conception of the “magic” behind vampires. And if both Martin and
Empire make clear Romero’s desire to subvert expectations and reinvent
the “predictable monsters” that vampires had become, it stands to reason
that he would seek to do the same for zombies, the monster he created but
of whom he had publicly grown somewhat tired. This may help explain
Empire’s most enticing moment of franchise-expanding world-building.
In Empire’s third act, it is revealed that Frances Xavier, Romero’s lat-
est addition to the “heroic zombie” pantheon, who has convinced her fel-
low zombies to aid the human heroes in their battle against the vampires,
has in fact retained her innate humanity because she is something new:
half-vampire, half-zombie (Romero and Mutti 22–24). In the story’s fnal
moments, Romero, who pointedly once said “I don’t have any nostalgia for
the traditional family” (“The George Romero Interview” 63), creates a new
kind of family unit, consisting of Paul, Penny, the orphan girl Jo, and Xavier,
the mixed-breed undead being. Romero often stated that his zombies rep-
resented the emergence of a new society, and this fnal scene is a further
evolution of the undead Damien and the living Judy riding a zombifed Mr.
Tembo off to further adventures together in the fnal moments of Toe Tags
or of the uneasy peace accord reached between Big Daddy’s zombie horde
and the human survivors at the climax of Land of the Dead (2005). And for
Romero, it is also one fnal comment on the intertwined relationship of two
iconic monsters. Once remarking that so many modern zombie flms were
breaking the genre rules he had established to the point that “some people
are really making vampire movies” (Romero, “Interview”), Romero now
took the idea to its natural conclusion, revealing Xavier as a new savior
fgure, meant “to reconcile two contrasting opposite monsters in Romero’s
version of a brave new world” (Williams 51).
If Romero’s most signifcant gift to the horror genre was the creation of
the modern zombie genre, perhaps another may be his expert demonstra-
tion of how to utilize comics as an effective world-building tool for multi-
media realms of the fantastic. The Dead universe is far from being the only
franchise to experiment in the comic medium. Many of the major horror
franchises, including Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Saw, and
The Conjuring, have themselves employed comic book spin-offs and tie-
ins. But Romero’s work on Toe Tags and Empire of the Dead stands out
as a particularly strong example of how these transmedia explorations can
Flesh and Blood 141
greatly extend and enrich the storytelling possibilities of a fctional horror
universe beyond its onscreen incarnations, offering creator and audience
alike the benefts of an ever-expanding, evolving, and unfolding entertain-
ment experience.
Notes
1 Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818); Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case
of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886); and H.G. Wells’ The Invisible Man (1897).
2 The proliferation of the genre is well-illustrated in how each of these properties
have multiple iterations: Zombieland would inspire both a sequel flm, Zombie-
land: Double Tap (2019), and an unsuccessful Amazon TV spin-off pilot (2013);
the novel World War Z was loosely adapted into a blockbuster flm of the same
name in 2013; and The Walking Dead, itself an adaptation of a long-running
Image Comics series (2003–2019), spawned two spin-off television series, Fear the
Walking Dead (2015 to present) and The Walking Dead: World Beyond (2020 to
present), with additional series and cinematic entries already planned.
3 Dawn of the Dead (1978), Day of the Dead (1985), Land of the Dead (2005),
Diary of the Dead (2007), and Survival of the Dead (2009) – Romero’s fve sequels
would drop the “Living Dead” phrase from the original flm’s title and stick to the
“. . . of the Dead” naming convention, after an agreement between Romero and
his Night of the Living Dead co-writer John Russo allowed Russo to use “Living
Dead” for his own alternate continuity sequels, starting in 1985 with Return of
the Living Dead.
4 Toe Tags was an experiment for DC – the frst planned installment of a prospec-
tive series of self-contained miniseries, each to be written by a different popu-
lar horror creator, all released under the “Toe Tags” banner. The actual specifc
title of Romero’s arc is “The Death of Death,” a turn-of-phrase Romero enjoyed
enough to recycle for the name of the flm-within-a-flm in his 2007 found-footage
movie Diary of the Dead and again as the name of the climactic third act in his
posthumously released 2020 novel The Living Dead, co-authored with Daniel
Kraus. However, following the modest sales and muted critical and fan response
to Romero’s entry, plans for future Toe Tags installments were dropped.
5 Shaun of the Dead was co-written by Simon Pegg, who starred in the flm.
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the Movie.” Screenrant, 10 September 2020, www.screenrant.com/george-a-
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Accessed 2 April 2021.
12 An Alien World
A Comic Book Adaptation
of The Willows by Algernon
Blackwood
Yelena Novitskaya
Introduction
Two companions are taking a canoe trip down the Danube. The initially
friendly river becomes rapid and powerful, full of whirlpools and foam-
ing cascades. Sometime after Vienna and well into Hungary, they enter a
swampy land covered by low willow bushes. The scene changes suddenly:
in less than half an hour there is not a single sign of human civilization in
sight. Exhausted by the tempestuous wind, the travelers land their canoe
on a small, sandy island overgrown with willows. They lay on the sand,
happy and peaceful, and think about the next long stretch of their trip to
the Black Sea. After some time, the travelers begin to experience inexplicable
occurrences.
Algernon Blackwood’s The Willows (2019), a graphic novel by Nathan
Carson and Sam Ford,1 is based on Blackwood’s 1907 novella, which H.
P. Lovecraft called “the fnest weird story” he has read (qtd. in Joshi, Intro-
duction to Incredible 10). This classic tale may not have been an easy work
to adapt. Some kinds of stories (e.g., linear realist novels) are more easily
adaptable than others (Hutcheon 15). Written in frst person and containing
much dialog but little action, this approximately 19,600-word novella was
bound to undergo some conspicuous modifcations when reimagined as a
comic book.
Linda Hutcheon describes adaptation as an “acknowledged transposi-
tion” of a familiar work, a creative and interpretive act that can be regarded
as both appropriation and salvaging, an “extended intertextual engage-
ment” with the source (9). The prior text affects the way an adaptation is
perceived: in “an ongoing dialogical process . . . we compare the work we
already know with the one we are experiencing” (21). Whether a story can
retain its characteristics in any semiotic system or it is inseparable from its
original form is a matter of discussion in the theory of adaptation. Vari-
ous elements of the fabula can be transferred to a different medium, but
they may well change in the process of adaptation. Characters, themes, and
settings can transform; pacing can slow down or accelerate; shifts in the
focalization or point of view may occur (10–11). Possible changes may be
DOI: 10.4324/9781003261551-15
144 Yelena Novitskaya
driven by the cultural context, by the individual adapter’s background, by
the target audience, and by a different set of conventions.
Nathan Carson explains in the Afterword that it was essential for the
comic version of Blackwood’s novella “to preserve the atmosphere and
the language of the original” (Carson and Ford 70) but to introduce some
changes to the fabula. The adapters keep the nationalities of their protago-
nists but change their gender, arguing that “depicting two colonial white
male cyphers as marionettes that experience the strangeness” on a Danube
island would seem inadequate for “our modern needs” (Ibid.).
Semiotic and post-structuralist theory sees the text as a pastiche of allu-
sions both hidden and overt. The “inherently double- or multilaminated”
(Hutcheon 6) adaptations may engage more than one specifc source. For
example, flms about Dracula today may be seen as adaptations of other
earlier flms as well as of Bram Stoker’s novel (21). In addition to the text
of the original novella, Algernon Blackwood’s The Willows involves various
verbal and nonverbal works; these other sources often defne the adapters’
narrational strategies.
The nature of evil agents in Blackwood’s novella is never revealed; Car-
son and Ford operate in a different set of conventions and have to show the
story. Sam Ford’s art is often driven by visual associations. These connec-
tions are at times quite explicit; less obvious ones are scattered throughout
the adaptation to be recognized by the reader and imply the island’s malevo-
lent forces as the adapters see them.
Graphic Novel versus Novella

S.T. Joshi remarks that H. P. Lovecraft’s comment, “the lack of anything
concrete is the great asset of the story” (qtd. in The Weird Tale 114), may
fully characterize The Willows: “No one could analyze the subtlety of this
story without paraphrasing the entire narrative” (The Weird Tale 114). This
is equally true for the novella’s adaptation. A summary of the story will
serve to introduce the detailed study.
The two travelers who have landed on a willows-grown Danube island
suddenly feel that some unknown danger lurks behind the beautiful facade.
A growing sense of terror replaces the initial awe the place evokes, but the
source of the menace is unclear. The companions decide to leave as soon as
possible but discover that their canoe is damaged and an oar is gone. Forced
to stay on the island for another day, they experience a growing distress:
there is constant humming that at some point becomes deafening; willow
bushes move to enclose the travelers’ tent; and some unidentifed entities
are threatening them with something that is worse than death, an entire loss
of their selves. It becomes clear that the peril will affict the humans’ minds
rather than their physical bodies. Only a sacrifce can save them.
Each of the four panels in the opening sequence of the comic book (Car-
son and Ford 5) is an increasingly zoomed-in fragment of the map of the
An Alien World 145
Danube shores between Austria and Hungary; the layout effectively serves
to convey the idea of rapid movement and signifcant landscape changes.
A new sequence introduces the protagonists. The two anonymous males of
the novella are replaced in the graphic novel with two young women, the
British Opal and the Swedish Hala.
The Danube impresses the travelers from the start: “It rolled, like some
huge fuid being . . . sleepy at frst, but later developing violent desires”
(Carson and Ford 7). The canoe is fying through the foaming waters.
A stork taking up a large part of the top panel’s upper half symbolizes the
river’s friendliness to the birds and animals. A crooked tree trunk with bare,
twisted branches looks ominous enough to be a harbinger of imminent dan-
ger (Ibid.).
A splash page that follows the previous dynamic, diagonally arranged
panel serves as a visual pause. The narrator recollects how leisurely the river
had been some weeks ago: “only the surface inches were water, while below
there moved . . . a whole army of Undines, passing silently and unseen down
to the sea” (Carson and Ford 8). This imagery is rich with symbolism. The
stream of nude female bodies, fully or partially visible, with long fuid hair
and closed eyes is an allusion to Gustav Klimt’s painting Water Serpents
II (1907), whose allegorical theme allowed him to make lesbian sensuality
acceptable to the public (“Water Serpents”). One of the Vienna Secession
artist’s most popular works is used to indirectly date the narrative, but this
is not its only role. Some of the undines’ faces in this unambiguously erotic
image resemble Opal’s and Hala’s, a hint to the special relations existing
between the characters.2 An ornate female fgure in the bottom part of the
panel is a rendition of Hygieia, a goddess of health in Greek mythology from
Klimt’s University of Vienna Ceiling Paintings (1900–1907) (“University”).
She holds the cup of Lethe in her hand, and the Aesculapian snake winds
around her arm, as in the original work; snakes continue to play a promi-
nent role throughout the comic’s imagery. She stands in front of the living
stream and seals the image as an emblematic depiction of life, love, and
death. The tiny silhouette of the canoe against the huge undines is merely a
shadow.
At this point, the anticipation of an imminent disaster swells. While the
caption describes the Danube as being friendly to the birds and animals that
inhabit its shores (Carson and Ford 9), the image presents a scene that is far
from being idyllic: a ferce raptor holds its prey in its claws, fsh are scattered
in all directions, and a deer looks as if it is being dragged into a water funnel.
Three uncanny foxes in the next panel are drawn against an aerial view of a
multi-tributary river with a bull’s-eye of a city inserted in the thickest of its
branches. The image is reminiscent of a circulatory system, with rivers being
habitually likened to blood vessels. One reviewer sees different symbolism
here but recognizes a visual hint: “That branch, with its central ‘eyespot,’ is
really a neuron! The Danube is a nerve in a vast organism. Vaster than the
Earth?” (Emrys and Pillsworth Part 2).
A new sequence shows the travelers exhausted by the tempestuous wind
dragging their canoe to the sandy beach of a small island. The dog-tired
Hala falls asleep, and Opal leaves to explore their camping site. The waves
crash against the bank, and the furious wind tears the willow bushes. Even-
tually, the river disappears into the willows, which surround it “like a herd
of antediluvian creatures crowding down to drink” (Carson and Ford 13).
Opal’s tiny fgure is juxtaposed with an immense masse of bushes morphing
into trickling fangs, skulls, horns, and empty eye sockets. One seasoned
comic critic recognizes the imagery: “a visual tribute to the much-missed
horror comics of the 1970s . . . full-on cosmic monstrosities descending
upon the world with a fury meant to instill horror” (Seven). Opal becomes
disquieted.
Two ominous episodes follow: a “black thing” foats rapidly past in the
foaming water; frst, the girls think it is a man’s body but it turns out to be
an otter. Then another apparition follows: two panels present a vague fgure
of a man gesticulating and shouting something inaudible (a speech balloon
is flled with scribbles). The man is making the sign of the Cross, either try-
ing to warn the travelers of some danger ahead or out of superstition (Car-
son and Ford 15–16).
At night, Opal starts to feel dread. While the caption suggests that she
is gazing at the “wild waters” and “whispering willows” that stand in the
moonlight “like a vast army surrounding our camp,” the ominous heavens
are the most prominent part of the image (Carson and Ford 19). Despite
the wording, the reader’s attention is drawn to the source of danger: the
sky. Something summons Opal out of her tent; she is sure that she is not
dreaming. At this point in the novella, the narrator sees some vague shapes
close in front of him; the swaying willows “group themselves about these
shapes, forming a series of monstrous outlines that shifted rapidly beneath
the moon” (Blackwood 65). In the comic, minuscule Opal is looking from
the ground up at an immense creature that drifts high above (Carson and
Ford 22). Blackwood describes the shapes:
much larger than human, and indeed . . . not human at all . . . forming
this serpentine line that bent and swayed and twisted spirally with the
contortions of the wind-tossed trees . . . rising up in a living column into
the heavens.
(65)
A splash page depicts Opal, shown from behind, in front of a dense, winding
stream of dozens of nude human bodies. The stream is rising to the moon,
and the bodies, both male and female, are fuid and distorted, many gro-
tesque and ghostly (Carson and Ford 23). Opal realizes that the travelers’
intrusion has activated the powers of the place.
In the novella, the narrator’s mood changes from awe and a need to wor-
ship the strange things to fear and terror. There is no sign of imminent danger,
An Alien World 147
but his nervousness and anxiety continue to mount. Then “a large fgure”
passes swiftly by him. Overpowered by the “magical beauty,” he almost cries
out, but a dreadful discovery stops that cry: the willows have moved nearer
to the tent (Blackwood 68). In the adaptation, a giant creature with large,
slanted, opaque, alien-like black eyes descends to face Opal. The girl experi-
ences a close encounter of the third kind. She, much like the novella narra-
tor, is overwhelmed by the magic of the scene, and a “wild yearning” almost
brings “a cry up into the throat” (Carson and Ford 24). But here, the comic
takes a departure as Ford puts Opal into a survival horror game: someone
passes her and she rushes past a screaming, uneven-toothed and empty-
socketed monster; a gnarly tree; a colossal human-head wyrm; a fanged
skull, etc. The ominous “HAHAHAHAHA” follows her (Carson and Ford
26). The conventional horror code elements prompt the reader to fear, but
the nature of the novella’s horror is different. S.T. Joshi calls Blackwood “the
most wholesome and cheerful horror writer” and maintains that at the core
of his philosophy is his reverence for nature linked with “his mystical sense
of the oneness of all existence” (The Weird Tale 89, 92). Algernon Black-
wood (1869–1951), a prolifc author of multiple weird stories, submerged
himself into Eastern religions and the occult to outweigh his rigid Evangeli-
cal upbringing. He created his own spirituality centered on nature and based
on the belief in the essential “unity of all entity” (Joshi, Introduction to
Incredible 11). Human rational consciousness in this system is but one type
of consciousness, whereas other entirely different forms of consciousness are
everywhere around, parted from it by a thinnest flm (Joshi, The Weird Tale
92). These other forms are not malevolent; they are simply indifferent to
human life. Nature does not take any notice of man, and “whether one feels
horror or awe will depend almost entirely upon the degree to which one is
in tune with cosmic consciousness” (113).
The next panel shows that the adapters infer a different source of dread.
The splash page depicts Opal lying in a fetal position among treble and bass
keys and eighth notes pouring out of a cornucopia-shaped tail of a huge
snake who is stalking two mice hiding in a hole. The caption informs: “The
wind held many notes, rising, falling always beating out some sort of great
elemental tune. The river’s song lay between three notes at most, and some-
how seemed to me, to sound wonderfully well the music of doom” (Carson
and Ford 35). A snake is not mentioned in the text, so why is it here? The
image not only portends an imminent danger for the girls, but it also hints
at the nature of this danger. Panel after panel, Ford draws Opal, who bathed
in the river earlier, wrapped in a sheet, holding the single remaining oar like
the staff of Moses (visual associations these panels produce are too insistent
to be accidental). The prophet’s rod could turn into a snake – here it is wind-
ing in the grass. But why is it oozing musical notes? A bass wind instrument,
a distant ancestor of the tuba, is called the serpent. Jerry Goldsmith used a
serpent in his original score for Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979) to bring “the ter-
ror of the unknown world and the creature” (Brigden).
The long caption on the next splash page explains that the travelers have
arrived at “a spot held by the dwellers in some outer space, a sort of peep-
hole whence they could spy upon the earth, themselves unseen, a point where
the veil between had worn a little thin.” As a result, the trespassers will be
deprived of their lives, “yet by mental, not physical, processes” (Carson and
Ford 38). The visual space is divided into vertical halves; each section is
flled with an upright stream of matter rounded at the top. Beneath the
columns there are almost perfectly axially symmetric “peeping” oculi with
pupils and irises surrounded by diffraction. They may be atmospheric halos:
the adapters introduce Hala noting “Name meaning: Halo. (See also the
optical phenomenon.)” (Carson and Ford 55). They also resemble a Helix
Nebula, known as the Eye of God, a planetary nebula (PN) located in the
constellation Aquarius. “Some outer space” for Carson and Ford seems to
mean the extraterrestrial.
The locket-size profle marks the left column as Opal’s. It is a mass of
empty-eyed, grinning skulls and gaping ghouls; the giant snake that oozed
music a few panels before is also present. This is her understanding of the
events: she invests some “mightily disturbed elements . . . with the horror
of a deliberate and malefc purpose, resentful of our audacious intrusion
into their breeding-place” (Carson and Ford 38). The right half bears Hala’s
portrait. She sees the events as being consequences of “a trespass on some
ancient shrine, some place where the old gods still held sway, where the
emotional forces of former worshippers still clung, and the ancestral por-
tion of her yielded to the old pagan spell” (Ibid.). A dome pieced together of
identical bald and naked male devotees with uplifted arms rests on a mass
of giant scaly tentacles. Still higher is a rotunda with an altar upon which a
sacrifcial victim is lying under a risen knife.
After this visual pause, the narrative continues. Hala tells Opal that they
must keep perfectly still for the unknown but mighty forces not to destroy
them. “Our insignifcance perhaps may save us” (Carson and Ford 39).
“They” (the identity of island dwellers is never revealed) cannot see the
intruders; they only feel human minds. What may happen is worse than
physical death, because death involves no change of character. The girls have
unknowingly camped in a spot “where their region touches ours, where the
veil between has worn thin so that they are aware of our being in their
neighborhood,” Hala explains. “But who are aware?” yells Opal (Carson
and Ford 40). In Blackwood’s novella, the Swede here lowers his voice and
leans forward a little over the fre, with his face changed (Blackwood 80).
In the comic, Hala’s eyes are turned up, toward the sky (she will be shown
looking up again, soon). “It’s the willows, of course,” she answers. “The wil-
lows mask the others, but the others are feeling about for us” (Carson and
Ford 41). It is crucial for the girls not to let their minds betray their fear to
get off in the daylight undiscovered. These “others” must be ignored so that
they may ignore the humans. It is especially important to keep them out of
the minds of the humans at all costs.
An Alien World 149
The girls discuss the incessant noise. Hala thinks that the willows them-
selves are humming, because they have been made symbols of the hostile
forces. She instructs Opal to follow their usual habits and pretend that they
notice nothing. “Above all, don’t think, for what you think happens!” Opal
wants to know what Hala makes of the large hollows that mottle the sand.
In her excitement, Hala cries: “I dare not, simply dare not, put the thought
into words. If you have not guessed I am glad. Don’t try to. They have put it
into my mind; try your hardest to prevent their putting it into yours” (Car-
son and Ford 42). Opal makes herself think about something very mundane,
modern, and practical. It momentarily leaves her “feeling free and utterly,
suicidally unafraid.” She cries and laughs aloud – and cuts herself short, ter-
rifed, covering her mouth with her hands. Hala is now seized by terror she
was trying to resist: “After that, we must go! We can’t stay now” (Carson
and Ford 42–43). Opal objects; to leave in the dark with the fooded river
would be sheer madness. They decide to revive their fre and turn in for the
night. The girls go to collect wood and discuss the weird sounds they heard
earlier and the feeling of something gigantic pressing down upon their tent
as if to crush it.
In graphic storytelling, images reveal acts of perception from an exter-
nal viewpoint. More or less personal or impersonal perspectives can be
employed, “from panoramic views that no person could see to partly shar-
ing subjective vision and to a point-of-view image” (Mikkonen 646). Kai
Mikkonen notes that an image representing some exterior world “also refers
to someone who sees that world,” even if the identity of the focalizer often
remains ambiguous (647). Our understanding of comics depends on what
the relationship between its verbal and visual elements implies. A particular
viewpoint, the distance of this point from the regarded scene, the line of
sight, all these factors may provide context not implied by the wording.
Here, the protagonists’ tiny fgures are presented as if observed by a third
party located high above the ground.
Two-thirds of the next page (Carson and Ford 44) are taken by one panel;
the top tier of two small ones presents the girls who suddenly notice some-
thing inexplicable. Blackwood’s narrator at this point sees the apparition
as through a veil, a little hazily. “It was neither a human fgure nor an ani-
mal . . . it was shaped and sized like a clump of willow bushes, rounded at
the top, and moving all over upon its surface” (Blackwood 84). Carson’s
monster, which rises above the fre and tent, is a gigantic twisting form with
tentacles, suckers, fangs, and talons. “They’ve found us!” yells Hala (Carson
and Ford 44). The colossal creature is chasing two tiny human fgures in the
next two full-width panels (45). Its serpentine body, whose form the story
has portended all along, is topped with a brain-like formation and two blind
eye balls on long stems.
The girls stumble and fall; Hala seizes Opal’s arm, hurting her. The girls
are saved because the mental connection with the hostile entities is inter-
rupted: Hala loses consciousness for a moment or two, and Opal feels acute
pain when Hala seizes her arm; the girls’ minds close to “the others” (Car-
son and Ford 46). They restore their fallen tent and go to sleep. A diffculty
in breathing then wakes Opal up. Hala is not there. The sound of multitu-
dinous soft patterings is again audible outside. Opal dashes out to look for
Hala. The humming – visually presented as dense concentric circles – has
now become deafening, surrounding her. She runs frantically through the
willow bushes calling her friend by name.
In the novella, the episode is very short. The narrator sees his friend who
has already put one foot in the river, throws himself upon him, and drags
him away from the water. He then manages to get the Swede into the tent
and holds him until the ft has passed (Blackwood 86). The corresponding
comic sequence is stretched out across three pages. Three same-size, full-
width panels visually produce a slow-motion effect, while the text inclu-
sions indicate frantic and rapid actions (Carson and Ford 48–50). When
Opal frst sees her friend, Hala is in the river with the water coming up to
her mid-thighs; she is far from Opal, judging by the size of the fgure. Hala
is speaking. The text the adapters use here is taken from an earlier episode
in the novella where it is a part of a philosophical conversation: “. . . vast
purposes . . . that deal directly with the soul, and not indirectly with more
expressions of the soul” (Blackwood 81). In the adaptation, the scene devel-
ops according to operatic conventions when arias interrupt dramatic con-
tinuity. Hala declaims long monologues while going deeper into the river;
Opal runs on and on trying to save her. Hala continues to say things taken
from the earlier episode in the novella about a sacrifcial victim that might
save them. She has decided to sacrifce herself.
The next several panels depict Hala’s salvation. Carson and Ford found
the fnal part of the novella “anticlimactic and a bit of a cop-out” and
decided to add suspense (70). In Blackwood’s text, the episode takes one
small paragraph and just a few moments for the narrator to save his com-
panion (Blackwood 86). The adapters make Hala slowly go into the river
pronouncing lengthy monologs and resort to a deus ex machina to pull her
out of the water: a boatman’s raft, materializing magically out of thin air.
At the end, Opal grabs her friend’s arm; only Hala’s face is above the water
now; she babbles something about “going inside [to] them” and “taking the
way of the water and the wind.” The next panel shows two tiny silhouettes
against a rising immense nautilus-like spiral of unknown matter. Opal is
dragging Hala; again, the emphasis is on the sky. When safely in bed, Hala
says: “I owe you my life. But it’s all over now anyhow. They’ve found a vic-
tim in our place” (Carson and Ford 51).
In the morning, the girls see that the river is falling at last, and the hum-
ming has stopped. They decide to look for the victim and fnd a man’s body
dappled with holes. The girls feel they have to give it a decent burial. They
try to reach the body but tumble and accidentally push it into the river.
When they touched the body, the loud humming rose from its surface; it
“passed with a vast commotion as of winged things in the air about us and
An Alien World 151
disappeared upwards into the sky . . . It was exactly as though we had dis-
turbed some living yet invisible creatures at work” (Carson and Ford 53).
The last page has a tier of two panels at the top. Wide-eyed Opal holds
Hala, who has buried her face in her hands: “I too saw what she had seen.”
A blow-up of Hala’s face half-hidden under her hands follows; tears are
welling up in her eyes; she cries: “Their mark! Their awful mark!” (Carson
and Ford 54). The entire fnal scene is a wrought-up version of the cor-
responding scene of the novella. When Blackwood’s characters mutter or
whisper, Opal and Hala yell, cry, and goggle.
The last sentence of the novella reads:
And when I turned my eyes again . . . to the river . . . the body had been
swept away into mid-stream and was already beyond our reach and
almost out of sight, turning over and over on the waves like an otter.
(Blackwood 88)
A large two-thirds-page-high panel concludes the comic. Opal is kneeling

near Hala, who is bent in half; they are just two small silhouettes on the
sandy coast. A bulky mass – that might have been just clouds if it had not
been for protruding tendrils – circles upwards. On the foreground, a shoul-
der and a part of a hollow-eyed cadaverous human head foat over an otter’s
head whose one white eye is the last thing the reader sees in the bottom right
corner (Carson and Ford 54).
Blackwood versus Lovecraft

Blackwood never discloses who the dwellers of the willows-grown island
are, though various interpretations exist. The Willows can be read as “a
Lacanian battle royale between the forces which Blackwood identifed as
‘human’ and ‘elemental’, but which modern psychoanalysis prefers to name
the Symbolic and the Real” (Blakemore 4). They come “from beyond the
limits of human experience, they . . . are the absolute other” (Gunderson
15). The tale of the two travelers as invaders in a strange and hostile land
can be read “as a manifestation of colonial anxieties”; as an expression of
ecophobia; as “the sudden collapse of the systems of meaning from which
such a thing as ‘a right’ originates” (17). Or, Blackwood’s emblematic aliens
are trees, “not tree monsters, but simply trees” (Conley 427). They are
natural entities originating from a different evolutionary line; the distance
between the two forms of life is so vast that any attempt to interact with
them threatens to expand the characters’ consciousness until they are no
longer human. These entities, however, are “a piece of the great world of
nature” (Joshi, The Weird Tale 114).
For the modern reader, Blackwood’s name and writings are often linked
with H. P. Lovecraft, who called The Willows “almost a model of what a
weird tale ought to be” (qtd. in Joshi, The Weird Tale 114) and admired his
work in general. S.T. Joshi notes that “because of extreme subtlety and lack
of obvious plot-elements in the tales,” it is diffcult to identify specifc exam-
ples of Blackwood’s infuence in Lovecraft’s work but lists some examples:
“The Wendigo” unmistakably infuenced “The Dunwich Horror,” and The
Willows had some impact on “The Colour out of Space” (Introduction to
Incredible 12). A passage from Blackwood’s “The Centaur” is used as an
epigraph for “The Call of Cthulhu,” one of the most well-known of Love-
craft’s creations. Similar in many ways, the two authors, however, differ
profoundly.
Joshi divides the entirety of Blackwood’s writing into three categories:
tales of awe (which prevail), tales of horror, and tales of childhood; the last
two types “can be seen as facets” of the frst type (The Weird Tale 90). The
tales of awe emphasize that people are part of the universe; this oneness with
nature is at the core of Blackwood’s religion of his own making. It admits
that other systems of evolution besides humanity may exist, and humans
occupy a small place in the cosmos, but that place is vital and important
(105). Blackwood seeks the “mystical merging with the cosmos” (93), and
the way to achieve it is through the expansion of mind. In Blackwood’s hor-
ror tales, this concept is reversed. Nature is still indifferent to human life,
“[b]ut this perception is now suddenly a source of terror,” and the expansion
of consciousness is dreaded as a form of obliteration (113–114). This is very
similar to Lovecraft’s philosophy:
All my tales are based on the fundamental premise that common human
laws and interests and emotions have no validity or signifcance in the
vast cosmos-at-large. . . . [W]hen we cross the line to the boundless and
hideous unknown – the shadow-haunted Outside – we must remember
to leave our humanity and terrestrialism at the threshold.
(qtd. in Joshi Introduction to Epicure)
In Blackwood’s universe, however, this same unimportance may provide a

salvation. At one point, the narrator of the novella (this episode is notably
omitted in the adaptation) realizes that he is experiencing a vague distress
that originates from the recognition of his and his companion’s pettiness
before the power of the elements (Blackwood 58). The protagonists’ ano-
nymity, which “made little sense” to the adapters (Carson and Ford 70),
accentuates this lack of importance. Later, the Swede explains to his com-
panion: “Our only chance is to keep perfectly still. Our insignifcance per-
haps may save us” (Blackwood 80).
Carson and Ford are undoubtedly knowledgeable in all things related
to Lovecraft and read Blackwood as if he were Lovecraft. An apparition
“shaped and sized like a clump of willow bushes, rounded at the top, and
moving all over upon its surface” (Blackwood 84) in the adaptation turns
into an immense serpentine horror furnished with tentacles, claws, and
fangs, as if in a visual reference to Lovecraft’s cosmic monsters.
An Alien World 153
The furious wind that blew over the Danube island reminds the adapters
of another wind “which seemed to sweep down in black, frore gusts from
interstellar space” (Lovecraft, “The Colour . . .” 26). And the willows “twirl-
ing their myriad leaves even when there was no wind” (Blackwood 63) of
other boughs that “surely moved, and there was no wind” (Lovecraft, “The
Colour . . .” 11). The huge funnel-shaped hollows look like the monstrous
prints as big as barrelheads from “The Dunwich Horror.”3 The “old gods”
and “the emotional forces of former worshippers” (Carson and Ford 38)
evoke the Great Old Ones, Lovecraft’s alien deities, and the human cults
linked to them.
Why does a short novella paragraph about an encounter in a Hungarian
shop unfold into a sequence of several panels in the graphic novel (Carson
and Ford 10–11)? An offcer the travelers met there warns them against tak-
ing a side channel as they might fnd themselves, when the food subsides,
in the middle of nowhere and could easily starve. The shop owner adds that
“no one lands in that part of the river because it belongs to beings outside
man’s world” (Carson and Ford 10). Because in The Shadow over Inns-
mouth (1931) a station ticket-offce agent and a grocery store boy caution
the narrator against going to the infamous town that is hostile to outsid-
ers. Lovecraft’s famous novella may have worked as a key to The Willows:
the narrator has to spend the night in the place he dreads because the bus
engine got damaged; “the sea-gods daown below,” who plan to conquer or
transform the human world, require sacrifces; and only “a merciful ft of
fainting” saves him from the monsters (“The Shadow . . .”).
Lovecraft’s The Whisperer in Darkness (1930) abounds in such echo sug-
gestions: bizarre bodies foat in fooded rivers; elemental spirits are believed
to dwell among trees; there is a nagging buzz in the air; telepathy is used as
a means of communication. The narrator experiences things so weird he is
not sure whether he is awake or asleep. The monstrous beings that inhabit
the woods of Vermont will harm trespassers. These fends known to rural
people from the ancient folklore are immensely powerful entities coming
from another planet. By analogy, the adapters of The Willows infer that the
weird creatures that become active on the Danube island are of interstellar
origin as well. Ford keeps spilling visual hints, which become increasingly
transparent: the horrible being that nearly destroys the girls looks akin to H.
P. Lovecraft’s extraterrestrials.
Carson and Ford use large portions of the source text and present their
comic as a self-told story. A frst-person original account, however, is “drawn
toward a third person point of view in the adaptation . . . This is due to
the almost unavoidable graphic depiction of protagonists referred to as ‘I’ ”
(Ferstl 62). This duality allowed the adapters to hint to the nature of the
weird island dwellers just by choosing an observer’s spatial point. It also
produced an interesting effect in the fnale of the comic. In the last panel
(Carson and Ford 54), the protagonists are shown from afar; Hala is weep-
ing on the beach and Opal kneeling by her side. Unlike Blackwood’s almost
happy ending (after all, the narrator lives to tell his story), the grim Love-
craftesque ending of the adaptation provides no hope of the frst-person nar-
rative. Blackwood’s characters “usually end where they started; the stories
read like unresolved circles” (Blakemore 3–4). Instead of continuing “their
lives with their anthropocentric worldview intact” (Gunderson 20), Opal
and Hala fnd themselves in a situation where “never was an organic brain
nearer to utter annihilation in the chaos that transcends form and force and
symmetry” (Lovecraft, “The Whisperer . . .” 151).
A dark and ominous bird appears repeatedly in the comic evoking the
Lovecraftian “beating of black wings” (“Supernatural Horror . . .”). But
Blackwood’s cosmicism “lacks . . . the contracting horror of Lovecraft . . .
because Blackwood typically sees the human being as an intimate part of the
cosmos and not some minute excrescence upon it.” “The optimistic weird
tale” (Joshi, The Weird Tale 132), becomes, in this adaptation, just another
tale of the Cthulhu Mythos.
Notes
1 The graphic novel (written by Nathan Carson, artwork by Sam Ford, lettered by
Jason Fischer, and edited by Jason Leivian) was frst published in two installments,
November 2017 and February 2018.
2 Carson and Ford felt that the tale will be “richer” if its characters had “a rela-
tionship, back stories of their own” and names (70). The paperback edition also
includes a prequel – the story of the girls’ acquaintance.
3 Some Lovecraftian-minded readers recognize it as “Lovecraft’s clearest antiphonal
response” (Emrys and Pillsworth) to “The Willows.”
Works Cited
Blackwood, Algernon. “The Willows.” Listener and Other Stories. McAllister Edi-
tions, 2015, pp. 54–88.
Blakemore, Charles N. Hell or High Water: The Horrors of the Lacanian Real in
Algernon Blackwood’s “The Willows.” University of Montana, Master’s Thesis,
1996.
Brigden, Charlie. “The Great Unknown: The Story Behind Jerry Goldsmith’s Score
for ‘Alien’.” RogerEbert.com, 17 May 2017, www.rogerebert.com/features/the-
great-unknown-the-story-behind-jerry-goldsmiths-score-for-alien. Accessed 12
August 2021.
Carson, Nathan (w), Sam Ford (a) and Jason Fischer (l). Algernon Blackwood’s the
Willows. Floating World Comics, 2019.
Conley, G. “The Uncrossable Evolutionary Gulfs of Algernon Blackwood.” Journal
of the Fantastic in the Arts, Vol. 24, No. 3, 2013, pp. 426–445.
Emrys, Ruthanna and Anne M. Pillsworth. “Never Mess with the Trees: Algernon
Blackwood’s ‘The Willows’.” Tor.com, 3 January 2018, www.tor.com/2018/01/03/
never-mess-with-the-trees-algernon-blackwoods-the-willows. Accessed 10 July 2021.
____. “Never Mess with the Trees, Part 2: Nathan Carson and Sam Ford’s ‘The Wil-
lows’.” Tor.com, 10 January 2018, www.tor.com/2018/01/10/never-mess-with-the-
trees-part-2-nathan-carson-and-sam-fords-the-willows. Accessed 10 July 2021.
An Alien World 155
Ferstl, Paul. “Novel-Based Comics.” Comics as a Nexus of Cultures, edited by Mark
Berninger, Jochen Ecke and Gideon Haberkorn. McFarland & Company, 2010,
pp. 60–69.
Gunderson, Marianne. “Other Ethics: Decentering the Human in Weird Horror.”
Women, Gender & Research, Vol. 2, No. 3, 2017, pp. 12–24.
Hutcheon, Linda, with Siobhan O’Flynn. A Theory of Adaptation. 2nd ed. Rout-
ledge, 2013.
Joshi, S. T. “Introduction.” An Epicure in the Terrible: A Centennial Anthology of
Essays in Honor of H. P. Lovecraft, edited by David E. Schultz and S. T. Joshi.
Kindle ed. Hippocampus Press, 2015.
Joshi, S. T. “Introduction.” Incredible Adventures, edited by Algernon Blackwood.
Hippocampus Press, 2004 [1914], pp. 9–13.
____. The Weird Tale: Arthur Machen, Lord Dunsany, Algernon Blackwood, M.R.
James, Ambrose Bierce, H.P. Lovecraft. University of Texas Press, 1990.
Klimt, Gustav. “University of Vienna Ceiling Paintings (Faculty Paintings).” 1900–
1907. GustavKlimt.net, 2020. www.gustavklimt.net/university-of-vienna-ceiling-
paintings. Accessed 8 August 2020.
____. “Water Serpents II (Wasserschlangen II).” gustav-klimt.com, 2020 [1907],
www.gustav-klimt.com/Serpents.jsp. Accessed 8 August 2021.
Lovecraft, Howard P. “Supernatural Horror in Literature.” The H.P. Lovecraft
Archive, www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/essays/shil.aspx. Accessed 23
June 2021.
____. The Colour Out of Space. Kindle ed. Quixotic Books, 2020 [1927].
____. “The Shadow Over Innsmouth.” The H.P. Lovecraft Archive, 1936, www.
hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fction/soi.aspx. Accessed 29 June 2021.
____. “The Whisperer in Darkness.” 1930. The H.P. Lovecraft Archive, www.
hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fction/wid.aspx. Accessed 29 June 2021.
Mikkonen, Kai. “Graphic Narratives as a Challenge to Transmedial Narratology:
The Question of Focalization.” Amerikastudien/American Studies, Vol. 56, No.
4, 2011, pp. 637–652. www.jstor.org/stable/23509433. Accessed 13 June 2021.
Nodelman, Perry. “The Eye and the I: Identifcation and First-Person Narratives in
Picture Books.” Children’s Literature, Vol. 19, No. 1, 1991, pp. 1–30.
Seven, John. “INDIE VIEW: ‘The Willows’ is awesome ’70s horror comics by way of
Lovecraft.” The Beat, 20 November 2019, www.comicsbeat.com/indie-view-the-
willows-is-awesome-70s-horror-comics-by-way-of-lovecraft. Accessed 23 June 2021.
13 Horror Transformed
Tanabe Gou’s Manga
Adaptations of H. P. Lovecraft
Andrew Smith
Adaptation is hard enough when a creator takes a piece from its one medium
to another, such as a novel to flm, but when adaptation crosses cultures and
languages as well, things become more complex. Manga artist Tanabe Gou
has made his career out of such complicated adaptations: his catalog con-
sists almost entirely of converting works of H. P. Lovecraft into a graphic
medium. Gou’s reworkings attempt to adapt nearly 100-year-old American
horror texts steeped in racism, xenophobia, and fear and transform them
into serialized manga for a modern, adult Japanese audience, devoid of all
commentary about said baggage. Rather than simply asking “How does
Lovecraft look in manga?”, it is important to consider Lovecraft’s troubling
legacy and how to deal with adaptations that, whether accidental or inten-
tional, reinforce the original texts rather than take ownership of them.
However, Lovecraft’s legacy no longer hinges upon whether he was racist
or not; his legacy is already safely secured. As Rob Brown notes in “Hybrids
and Hyphenates: H. P. Lovecraft and the Irish” (2014), there is quite a lot of
writing about this issue already accessible: “Lovecraft’s lamentable distaste
for those of a descent other than white Anglo-Saxon is a topic frequently
engaged with by writers, scholars, and bloggers” (15). Lovecraft was a rac-
ist, a misogynist, an anti-Semite, a nationalist, and a xenophobe; the linger-
ing debate among scholars seems to fall mostly under “how virulent” of
one was he. It is perhaps easiest to simply state that Lovecraft’s deeply held
racist, sexist, and xenophobic beliefs cannot be removed from discussions of
him, nor should they. The argument should no longer be whether Lovecraft
“was” anything but instead how that infuenced what he wrote, how read-
ers and critics must respond to what Lovecraft was, and, as his ideas are
continually adapted, how those lingering ideas emerge in these new works.
In consideration of adaptations, there is often amelioration or lessening of
problematic content as the text changes hands and contexts. In Lovecraft’s
case, the question remains as to whether it is possible to lessen the issue
when so much of his beliefs are baked into his creations to their core.
It is important to recognize that Lovecraft’s current global popularity is
perhaps higher than it has ever been, with the extended Mythos creeping
into almost all major mediums: television (Lovecraft Country [2020]), video
DOI: 10.4324/9781003261551-16
Horror Transformed 157
games (Bloodborne [2015]), and board games (Elder Sign [2011-Present]
and Call of Cthulhu [1981–2016]) all draw upon the extended universe
of Lovecraft’s Mythos. But the success of Lovecraft’s works has not often
come with increased scrutiny of his attitudes and beliefs over the course of
his life. Of greater consternation is the fact that much of the larger popu-
larity of his creations such as Cthulhu owe their success to their detach-
ment from the man that created them, divorcing them from conversations
about their creator’s contexts and ideas. In this sense, it can be diffcult to
separate works that are adaptations of Lovecraft and not just Lovecraftian
ideas. One particular wrinkle here is the familiar concept of “Death of the
Author”; if, as Roland Barthes posits, the text takes on an identity separate
from the author, does it matter if Lovecraft is an awful person with abhor-
rent views? The issue, at least in Lovecraft’s case, is that many of his works
are continually tied to his name, constantly bringing the author’s identity
into the context of the work itself through the title, such as HBO’s recent
Lovecraft Country adaptation. But in other cases, such as those of the Call
of Cthulhu RPG, his name is absent. When and how Lovecraft is attached
to his own legacy make “Death of the Author” a little harder to consider
and also widens some of the issues of adaptational fdelity: are the adaptors
aware of Lovecraft’s legacy (both literary and sociopolitical), or are they
only interested in the monsters and horrors he birthed?
In this regard, Lovecraft’s continued legacy outside of his original English
publications is the perpetual popularity of his mythos in Japan. The earli-
est possible traces of Lovecraft in Japan go back to the Post-War period,
and Lovecraft’s works have remained quite popular, spawning countless
manga, anime, literature, and video and tabletop games. While many Japa-
nese mediums have adapted Lovecraft’s mythos, there are few actual manga
adaptations of Lovecraft’s writing that directly adapt his original literature
and translate them into graphic form. Despite his work frst appearing in
translation in the 1940s, the “Lovecraft Boom” really originated from the
popularity of the Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game in Japan, translated in
1986, and never going out of publication since. Even many older texts, such
as Shigeru Mizuki’s 1962 adaptation of “The Dunwich Horror” as “Chitei
no Ashioto,” change names and locations in an attempt to re-contextualize
Lovecraft’s stories in a way that makes it relatable or easily understood
by Japanese readers. Strict attempts at transposing Lovecraft’s literature to
manga have only recently become popular, mostly thanks to a single artist:
Gou Tanabe.
Gou Tanabe has become the pre-eminent Lovecraft manga author, start-
ing with his 2007 adaptation of “The Outsider” (1926) and most recently
his adaptation of “The Call of Cthulhu” (1928) in 2019. Tanabe’s works are
direct adaptations of Lovecraft’s texts, in many places quoting the original
texts verbatim in place of dialogue. Tanabe’s works have recently garnered
global attention for their striking artwork, including three works translated
to English and published by Dark Horse Manga: The Hound and Other
158 Andrew Smith
Stories (2017), which received an Eisner nomination for “Best Adaptation
from Another Medium,” and the two-volume adaptation of At the Moun-
tains of Madness (2019).
However, Tanabe’s works also do not challenge or even engage with
Lovecraft’s legacy. In some ways they even heighten Lovecraft’s problematic
ideologies. Is it a problem if Tanabe adapts Lovecraft but does not engage
with Lovecraft’s legacy directly, particularly for his primarily Japanese audi-
ence? Japan has been and remains a socially conservative and nationalistic
country throughout the twentieth and twenty-frst centuries. Various texts,
such as Sandra Wilson’s excellent Nation and Nationalism in Japan (2002),
emphasize that it is misleading to conceptualize Japanese nationalism like
American or European nationalism, with a longer precedent for nationalist
identity tied to Japan’s long mixture of isolation, ethnic homogeneity, and
supposed “right” to own/control the destiny of Asia itself (6). The length
of Japanese nationalist thought, though, is what makes it most surprising,
having survived and proliferated for most of Japan’s history, with vari-
ous permutations taking hold. The most important takeaway of Japanese
nationalism, much of which is refected in common day-to-day life (Wilson
10), is the idea of Japan as an ethnically homogenous nation under attack; in
many ways, Japanese nationalist thought and Lovecraft’s own philosophies
are perhaps cozier than one might frst assume.
The modern rise of Japanese nationalism is tied to the Showa period
(1926–1989), which proliferated with the extensive cultural and economic
changes Japan experienced in the post-World War II period. The Liberal
Democratic Party (LDP), Japan’s right-wing nationalist party, has controlled
the country since 1955, with only two exceptions in years 1993–1994 and
2009–2012. The LDP courts popularity among younger generations through
galvanizing their resentment toward outsiders into political gain.1 Even as
recently as 2020, Japan’s political stance has been that its brutal coloniza-
tion of Korea and China from 1868 to 1947 were justifed.
Japan has never truly reckoned with the weight of their colonial actions.
The close of the Showa era coincided with growing national apologism to
excuse or minimize Japan’s war crimes and resentment for Japan’s loss. Many
younger Japanese have similarly latched on to Showa apologism as a form
of patriotic identity, and manga dealing with nationalist themes has thrived
in the twenty-frst century. The infamous 2005 best-seller Manga Kenkanryu
(Hating the Korean Wave) by Sharin Yamano expresses unfettered hatred
for Hallyu (Korean Wave), the proliferation of South Korean pop culture,
fashion, and beauty products, as well as containing numerous revisionist
claims about Japan’s war crimes in Korea. Many more globally popular and
seemingly less infammatory works contain similarly nationalistic and racist
attitudes toward outsiders. Author and illustrator Hajime Isayama, whose
Attack on Titan (2009–2021) has been a global success, routinely espouses
nationalist views on his public social media accounts. A key character in
Attack on Titan, Dot Pixis, was modeled after General Yoshifuru Akiyama,
who Isayama stated on his blog that he admired (Isayama). To many of
Isayama’s Japanese and even non-Japanese readers, this statement would
likely seem innocuous, but to those knowledgeable about Japan’s colonial
rule of Korea and China, Akiyama is considered a war criminal and overseer
of genocide. Isayama’s work itself contains confusing imagery borrowing
heavily from the Holocaust, except depicting the “Jews” in this scenario as
antagonists – literal man-eating monsters that needed to be controlled. Ken-
ichi Tachibana’s Terra Formars (2011–2016) features mutant “cockroaches”
on Mars that exhibit blatantly racist, anti-black physical stereotypes. These
are not small titles with niche markets but global blockbusters; Attack on
Titan, for example, has enjoyed partnerships with Marvel comics and has
sold over 100 million copies worldwide.
Manga is a deeply ingrained yet easily overlooked aspect of Japanese life
to non-Japanese, spreading especially quickly during Post-War reconstruc-
tion due to low costs to produce and consume. Unlike American comics,
manga exists in and around daily Japanese life, consumed in ways that seem
more akin to newspaper comic strips or cable television – something that is
always orbiting and always just out of focus. It cannot be overstated how
ubiquitous manga’s presence is in Japanese culture, even among very differ-
ent social sectors, as Maia Tsurumi underscores:
Manga are a major source of entertainment in Japan, read by people

of every age group and class. A 1987 survey found that 69 percent of
Japanese high school students read manga, and in 1974 it was reported
that Japanese white-collar workers spent 15 percent, and blue-collar
workers 28 percent, of their free time reading comics. Manga artists are
prominent fgures in Japan, many becoming household names.
(171)
Similarly, Mary Grigby notes that manga has in recent history constituted
over a third of published material in Japan: “In 1994 2.27 billion manga
books and magazines were published, making up 35% of all material pub-
lished. The manga market in Japan is big, and genres are highly diversifed”
(qtd. in Siuyi Wong 24). Such fgures hold in the present day as well (Loo);
unlike other comic cultures, manga is so vast and widespread that it is more
akin to Western television than it is to Western comics.
Contextually, this means that Tanabe’s audience, at least in Japan, are not
only well read but also well-read in manga over any other form of litera-
ture. In this regard, Tanabe’s may be the most common frst encounter with
Lovecraft’s work that new readers now have. As Linda Hutcheon points out
in A Theory of Adaptation (2012), adapters are not just taking a work from
one medium to another: “The adapted text, therefore, is not something to
be reproduced, but rather something to be interpreted and recreated” (84).
If Tanabe’s position makes him such a leader in Lovecraft fction in Japan,
it is then confusing as to why Tanabe’s adaptations take few attempts at
160 Andrew Smith
interpreting or challenging Lovecraft but instead simply echo him. Tanabe’s
works seem far more interested in trying to visually preserve Lovecraft than
challenge the original corpus.
Tanabe’s interpretation of Lovecraft is less about the prose or even the
inexplicable but about the visual: what the eyes can show and what eyes can
convey – including even the nonhuman. His manga focuses less on prose or
explicit depictions of horror but instead on the eyes of his subjects, generally
focusing on their points of view in the face of cosmic dread. When his ver-
sions of Lovecraft’s monsters appear, they take up the entire page, demand-
ing the viewer look at them, forcing their visual attention to it. The biggest
change, however, and the subtle key to Tanabe’s interpretation, rests in the
eyes of his characters. Tanabe’s visual style relies on stark black and white
contrasts, with heavy, solid black shading obscuring most details other than
character’s faces or immediate surroundings. Numerous panels across his
works are full of frontal views of characters’ faces, having the reader look
at the character dead on as they react to the unspeakable and indescrib-
able horrors before them. Tanabe’s interest in Lovecraft’s horror is that it
is best left to the imagination, instead showing the result of encountering
such horrors on his protagonists’ faces. Despite this ocular focus, Tanabe’s
adaptations make little change textually, particularly regarding Lovecraft’s
enduring yet troubling legacy. Tanabe’s works are almost slavishly “authen-
tic” in their adaptative nature, changing little and questioning nothing,
seemingly happy to visually present Lovecraft alone.
Tanabe’s adaptation of “The Temple” (2014) stands out as perhaps one of
the most interesting, changing the original text not just in temporal setting
to involve Nazi soldiers rather than the original text’s Imperial Germans
from WWI, but also the overall tone. Gone is the pompous, constant nation-
alism from the protagonist Karl Henrich, replaced by scant dialog which
renders the manga nearly wordless over the course of its approximately
50 pages. Both versions recount the fate of a doomed submarine whose
crew, while cleaning dead English soldiers from their bow, discover a small
sculpture in one of the corpse’s hands. Upon taking possession of the item,
the crew begins to believe they are hearing and seeing things, including the
dead soldiers appearing to them in visions and mysterious voices seemingly
demanding the return of the sculpture. As the crew becomes more and more
unhinged, Karl Heinrich, the captain of the vessel, takes matters into his
own hands and kills his crew. As the fnal survivor, Karl begins to believe
he hears something from outside of their derelict submarine and, venturing
into the abyss, is lost, leaving behind only a journal that the reader has been
perusing.
Lovecraft’s original focuses on Karl, a Lieutenant-Commander in the
Imperial German Navy, who is, charitably, a satire of German attitudes. As
a satire, there is not much characterization to Karl; he almost seems tragic in
his fnal moments: “I shall die calmly, like a German, in the black and forgot-
ten depths. . . . So I will carefully don my diving suit and walk boldly up the
steps into that primal shrine” (Lovecraft, “The Temple” 101). Tanabe’s Karl
is almost totally mute. Gone are the long-winded rants about non-Germans;
instead, the story moves away from Karl’s frst-person monologue to a lim-
ited omniscient focus, with no internal monologues or thoughts. The shift
to Nazi soldiers is supposed to do all the work for the reader in inferring
Karl’s supposed superiority complex, but barely speaks of nationality at all
save once: “You’ve forgotten your German pride. Sailors of the fatherland
do not surrender” (Tanabe, “The Temple” 32). Tanabe’s Karl is not neces-
sarily more likeable than Lovecraft’s original, but his stoic demeanor comes
off as even more tragic, as his insistence on fulflling his soldier’s duty dooms
him. It is also worth considering whether cultural contexts are important to
the interpretation; while Nazi soldiers are considered evil in Western media,
Japan’s historical ties to Germany create an ambivalence in tone.
Tanabe’s “The Hound” (2014) is far less daring in veering from the origi-
nal. Lovecraft’s original, much like “The Temple,” is a posthumous record
of the last moments of the protagonist. In “The Hound,” an unnamed young
man suffering from ennui turns to grave robbing with his friend St. John as
a form of entertainment. The pair of grave robbers are not just thrill seek-
ers but aesthetes and collectors: “The predatory excursions on which we
collected our unmentionable treasures were always artistically memorable
events. We were no vulgar ghouls, but worked only under certain condi-
tions of mood, landscape, environment, weather, season, and moonlight”
(Lovecraft, “The Hound” 217). Comparatively, Tanabe’s version establishes
a narrator who distracts himself with the idea that what he and his partner
do is a noble, artistic pursuit; instead, it is simply the only thrill left to two
disillusioned men in their world: “Romance. Adventure. Such commonplace
joys soon grew stale. We found the potency we sought only by increasing
gradually the depth and diabolism of our penetrations. In that hideous
extremity of human outrage, the abhorred practice of grave robbing” (Tan-
abe, “The Hound” 77). Perhaps the most interesting twist of Tanabe’s adap-
tation, intentional or not, is that the protagonist and St. John’s relationship
feels much more romantically joined than the relationship Lovecraft barely
describes. The original text does imply a close bond between the charac-
ters, and Tanabe’s art magnifes this reading as perhaps being an accident
of the process of making subtext into overt image. At numerous points,
St. John instructs the protagonist to get behind him, the two drawn with
body language that would not seem out of place in a Gothic romance novel.
When St. John meets his death, the protagonist cradles his body and cries in
anguish (Tanabe, “The Hound” 112). Lovecraft’s rendition gives little-to-no
immediate emotional responses between the two men, nor does it intimate
that they have any close connection above their grave robbing and ennui;
whether Tanabe meant for his version to refect this deeper connection or
not is unknowable, but it provides an extra, interesting layer to the text that
does not exist in the primary source material. Tanabe’s works tend not to
alter much, and the differences between Lovecraft and Tanabe’s versions of
162 Andrew Smith
the texts mostly stem from the difference in the visual medium, as his slav-
ish work on At the Mountains of Madness makes very little changes at all.
Tanabe’s current longest work in English, his adaptation of At the Moun-
tains of Madness (1936), concerns a failed expedition to the Antarctic by
Dr. William Dyer and his assistant, graduate student Danforth. Uncovering
the mystery of what happened to the previous expedition that went silent,
Danforth and Dyer eventually stumble into a crumbling, forgotten city of
the Elder Things. The story then shifts to a history of this alien race and
their downfall. Dyer then recounts their horrifying narrow escape from the
vile Shoggoth and Danforth’s mental undoing at the sight of some hideous
shadow on a distant mountain.
The most obvious change between the original text and the manga is that
the story is told from a present-tense perspective, following the characters as
they explore the Antarctic rather than from Dyer’s exposition of the already
completed expedition. Tanabe makes little change to the narrative and scope
of the original text other than the shift in perspective, despite his version
being seven times longer than Lovecraft’s. In fact, as compared to the three
shorter works in The Hound and Other Stories, Tanabe’s version of At the
Mountains of Madness is far too slavish to the original. This means that, at
times, it is less subtle and more overt with the racial undertones of the Elder
Things and the Shoggoths than Lovecraft was.
At the Mountains of Madness seems, at frst, to be a horror story of an
expedition gone wrong. It becomes a tragedy about a lost civilization, born
of the author’s own fear of the world he saw around himself. In his intro-
duction to At the Mountains of Madness: The Defnitive Edition, China
Miéville posits this exact reading of the text, linking it to Lovecraft’s fear
of others and his reading of Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West
(1918/1922) (xx). Spengler’s idea is not only that cultures rise and fall in a
cyclical fashion, but also that this fall is undercut by some form of subver-
sion and decay. This is echoed uncomfortably in Mountains as the Old Ones
are undone by their slaves, the Shoggoths. Miéville states:
As the narrator navigates the vast stone corridors, he literally walks

through the architecturalization of Spengler’s cyclical history. In the
bas-reliefs that he and Danforth are able (however improbably) to deci-
pher, we read a fantasticated representation of The Decline of the West.
(xxi)
Tanabe’s adaptation does not attempt to avoid this comparison, instead

devoting more than half of the second volume to the history of the Old
Ones. In Lovecraft’s manuscript, the largest narrative issue is that all horror
and suspense in the previous pages of the novella come to a crashing halt as
he describes in explicit detail the lives of the Old Ones. In Tanabe’s work, it
feels more as if this is the prescient, actual point of the story. If one consid-
ers Miéville’s interpretation, perhaps it indeed is: the death of the Old Ones’
civilization is a warning from Lovecraft to his contemporary white audience
about the coming end of their own grand civilization. For Tanabe, it may be
a similar warning to his Japanese readership.
Both versions of Dyer’s eventual sympathy for the Old Ones are nearly
identical. Lovecraft’s original, written after the events of the excursion,
makes Dyer’s change of heart toward the alien species that slaughtered his
colleagues and friends the result of having had time to digest what had hap-
pened and think about the scope of what occurred from a safe distance.
Tanabe’s version, however, has Dyer reach this conclusion as he fees the
Shoggoth, as if the death of his colleagues is immediately forgiven under the
auspices of seeing himself within the Old Ones. Both versions use Lovecraft’s
original text, linking the Old Ones and white men (specifcally scientists) to
one another, as if the murder of the previous team was an excusable action
under the guise of scientifc merit: “Poor Lake, poor Gedney . . . and poor
Old Ones! Scientists to the last – what had they done that we would not
have done in their place? God, what intelligence and persistence! . . . What-
ever they had been, they were men!” (Lovecraft, At the Mountains . . . 798,
Tanabe vol. 2, 281). Lovecraft never expands on what he means by “men,”
and Tanabe’s version takes no liberties, instead simply quoting Lovecraft’s
original text verbatim while drawing a scene where Dyer stares at the carved
statues of Old Ones in awe.
What change, then, does Tanabe really bring to his interpretations of
Lovecraft? In the end, the biggest takeaway is that his interpretation is
wholly visual: not just in representing Lovecraft’s text on the page, but on
also focusing readers’ attentions on the visual concept of existential hor-
ror. While Mountains does feature the Shoggoth in horrifc detail, Tanabe’s
works do not generally feature the horrors they describe, instead opting for
black pages combined with spreads of character’s horrifed reactions. Tanabe
forces the reader to look at the characters moments before their untimely
demise or madness. The revelation of the Shoggoth is perhaps the ultimate
example of Tanabe’s unique take on Lovecraft: terror over horror, the visual
depiction of a terrible thing on the basis of simply grotesque art. Instead of
laboring to describe the character’s mental anguish, Tanabe shows instead
Danforth and Dyer’s shocked, terrifed eyes (vol 2, 266). He then turns the
lens, letting the audience see a different horror: Tanabe’s frankly impressive
Shoggoth (vol. 2, 274) is more chilling than Lovecraft’s for its massive col-
lection of eyes staring with contempt and intelligence toward the reader.
The Shoggoth is the most interesting overall crux of the issue of Tan-
abe’s adaptation; it is not only the crowning achievement of his version of
Mountains, but also the locus of his failure to challenge Lovecraft and even
reinforces Lovecraft’s views through it. Tanabe’s additions to the text are
minimal overall, but the Shoggoth sequence features something that stands
out in comparison: Danforth and Dyer’s immediate condemnation of the
Shoggoths and their running commentary about the fall of the Old Ones.
The dialogue between the two strikes a far more condemning tone toward
164 Andrew Smith
the slave uprising and their imitation of the Old One’s culture: “We saw this
on the last of the murals . . . the degenerate, imitative fnal carvings of the
slave rebellion” (Tanabe, At the Mountains . . . vol. 2, 243). Lovecraft simi-
larly calls the Shoggoth art degenerate but does not directly tie it to slavery:
“This new and degenerate work was coarse, bold, and wholly lacking in
delicacy of detail” (Lovecraft, At the Mountains . . . 795). The true horror
of the Shoggoth is that it is a lesser being, mimicking the supposedly greater
Old Ones, but the markedly racial aspect comes from the implication that
the Shoggoth, a creature made only to do labor, should not strive to over-
take their masters. In his introduction to the tale, Miéville remarks:
The Shoggoth is a hysterically hallucinated coagulum of the victorious

insurgent masses. It is one of Lovecraft’s most astonishing creations . . .
nothing less than the pulp-artistic pinnacle of class terror. Its advent
provides a magnifcent ending . . . the evolution of his politics . . . into a
vivid expression of the alien and the alienated.
(xxiv)
The Shoggoth, it seems, is a clearly racial creation, an amalgam of Love-

craft’s fears given form as a horrifc monster.
But a far more complex question regarding Tanabe’s adaptation arises:
how, or why, are Lovecraft’s works in Japan so devoid of acknowledgement
of his racism? Is it simply an issue of non-translation, willful ignorance, or
an overt attempt to divorce the concept fully from the author? The answer,
sadly, is likely not easy to discern; aside from Tanabe’s cultural contexts as
a Japanese author writing for a Japanese audience, his English editors and
translators make no attempt to recontextualize Lovecraft either. Tanabe’s
volumes come with no riders about Lovecraft’s personage, speaking only of
him as a glowing example of enduring creativity:
Lovecraft’s sensibility of existential dread is known as ‘cosmic horror’

and has become a major infuence on writers of weird and fantastical
fction. He has become a popular author in translation worldwide and
has achieved cult-like status, with annual conventions devoted to his
legacy.
(338)
Both the pre- and post-texts of Dark Horse’s translation of Tanabe talk of
Lovecraft positively, seeming more to be inclined to lure in casual Western
readers who are unfamiliar with manga than they are to discuss such a con-
troversial author.
Further complicating things is Lovecraft’s popularity in Japan. The earli-
est translations of Lovecraft’s works date to the 1940s, and his ideas, espe-
cially through the Mythos, have remained evergreen in Japanese media.
Aside from previously mentioned manga, the Call of Cthulhu game has
been in print in Japan since 1984 and is the most popular tabletop RPG
in the country, even earning a spotlight on NHK news about its popular-
ity. Fashion brands like COSPA have lines devoted to Lovecraft, which dot
stores in trendy parts of Tokyo. Media franchises such as Nyaruko: Crawl-
ing Chaos [2009–2014] created novels, comics, anime, and a game based on
Lovecraft’s Mythos, which were so popular that, thanks to the anime and
manga boom of the ’10s, saw Lovecraft-inspired creations being translated
for English-speaking audiences. Given all this, it is conceivable that at least
some conversation of his overt racism must have also been translated, but
little evidence of this exists, at least in any fruitful manner.
It is unlikely to believe that Tanabe, who quite clearly has a deep inter-
est in Lovecraft, has never considered any of the author’s wider writings
(poetry, letters) or any of the discussions around him. Maybe Lovecraft’s
troubling legacy of racism, nationalism, and xenophobia is not so easily set-
tled outside of academia, after all. Perhaps that is the true existential horror
of Lovecraft’s legacy; like Tanabe’s version of Danforth, the readers are left
with nothing but to stare and scream as the same debate and the same issues
repeat themselves endlessly across new mediums, new audiences, and new
contexts. Lovecraft’s seductively interesting cosmic horrors have endured in
popularity, in new renditions, and through new voices. Each of these new
voices will require attention and consideration of how they either embrace
or reject Lovecraft’s legacy, and how or why that is important. We, the read-
ers, must open our eyes and look at the horrors head on for all of their
beauty, mystery, and horrifc realities combined.
Note
1 Readers interested in this phenomenon should look into Japan’s Netouyo, the
young right-wing net users who spread hate, historical revisionism, and nation-
alist ideology online; Michael Hoffman’s “Japan’s Future May be Stunted by
its Past” (15 March 2014, www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/03/15/national/
media-national/japans-future-may-be-stunted-by-its-past/) and Rumi Sakamoto’s
“Koreans, Go Home!’ Internet Nationalism in Contemporary Japan as a Digitally
Mediated Subculture’ are great articles to start with but a bit outside the scope of
this chapter.
Works Cited
Brown, Rob. “Hybrids and Hyphenates: H. P. Lovecraft and the Irish.” The Green
Book: Writings on Irish Gothic, Supernatural and Fantastic Literature, No. 3,
2014, pp. 13–33. www.jstor.org/stable/48536038. Accessed 6 September 2021.
Hutcheon, Linda. A Theory of Adaptation. Taylor & Francis Group, 2012. ProQuest
Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucf/detail.action?docID=
1016075. Accessed 6 September 2021.
Isayama, Hajime. “Sorry for Falling Behind with an Update, But I’m Catching Up
Now.” 更新が滞ってすいません！返事します！.” 現在進行中の黒歴史, 4 Octo-
ber 2010, blog.livedoor.jp/isayamahazime/archives/3639547.html.
166 Andrew Smith
Joshi, S. T. “Why Michel Houellebecq Is Wrong About Lovecraft’s Racism.” Love-
craft Annual, No. 12, 2018, pp. 43–50. www.jstor.org/stable/26868554. Accessed
28 April 2021.
Letteney, Timothy. “I Just Called to Say Cthulhu: Xenophobia and Antiquarian-
ism in H.P. Lovecraft’s Mythos.” Academia.edu, www.academia.edu/4144322/I_
Just_Called_to_Say_Cthulhu_Xenophobia_and_Antiquarianism_in_H.P._
Lovecraft_s_Mythos?fbclid=IwAR0audNgMGqyt9pKYzys9xXNksc4y_
dOXJM4zm9OXj0h_ILnQoZeB49c7QU. Accessed 6 September 2021.
Loo, Egan. “Top-Selling Manga in Japan by Volume: 2019 (First Half).” Anime News
Network, 9 September 2019, www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2019-05-29/
top-selling-manga-in-japan-by-volume-2019/.147238. Accessed 28 April 2021.
Lovecraft, H. P. At the Mountains of Madness. H.P. Lovecraft: The Complete Fiction,
edited by S.T. Joshi. Barnes & Noble, 2008 [1931], pp. 723–806.
___. “The Hound.” H.P. Lovecraft: The Complete Fiction, edited by S.T. Joshi.
Barnes & Noble, 2008 [1924], pp. 216–222.
___. “The Temple,” H.P. Lovecraft: The Complete Fiction, edited by S.T. Joshi.
Barnes & Noble, 2008 [1925], pp. 91–101.
Miéville China. “Introduction.” At the Mountains of Madness: The Defnitive Edi-
tion. Modern Library, 2005, pp. xi–xxv.
Tanabe, Gou and H. P. Lovecraft. H.P. Lovecraft’s at the Mountains of Madness Vol.
1, translated by Zack Davisson. Dark Horse Manga, 2019.
___. H.P. Lovecraft’s at the Mountains of Madness Vol. 2, translated by Zack Davis-
son. Dark Horse Manga, 2019.
___. “The Hound.” H.P. Lovecraft’s the Hound and Other Stories, translated by
Zack Davisson. Dark Horse Manga, 2017, pp. 73–136.
___. “The Temple.” H.P. Lovecraft’s the Hound and Other Stories, translated by
Zack Davisson. Dark Horse Manga, 2017, pp. 7–72.
Tsurumi, Maia. “Gender Roles and Girls’ Comics in Japan.” Japan Pop!: Inside the
World of Japanese Popular Culture, edited by Timothy J Craig. M. E. Sharpe,
2000, pp. 171–185.
Wilson, Sandra. Nation and Nationalism in Japan. Routledge Curzon, 2001.
Wong, Wendy Siuyi. “Globalizing Manga: From Japan to Hong Kong and Beyond.”
Mechademia 1: Emerging Worlds of Anime and Manga, edited by Frenchy Lun-
ning. University of Minnesota Press, 2006, pp. 23–45.
14 Mutant Gothic
Marvel’s Mainstreaming of
Horror in Uncanny X-Men
Joseph J. Darowski
There is no denying that the comic book medium has become synonymous
in the popular imagination with the superhero genre – tales of costumed do-
gooders defying tragic origins to maintain a moral status quo. As Douglas
Wolk argues: “if you are going to look honestly at American comic books,
you are going to encounter superheroes. The spandex wall is the public face
of the medium” (89). While the superhero genre’s close ties to comic books
is historically precedented, the medium has room for dozens of other genres,
too. It’s also notable that every other entertainment medium has made room
for the superhero genre, so the seemingly inseparable intertwining of the
comic book medium and the superhero genre is not as tight as it may appear
to casual observers.
Since 2008, the widest audience for the superhero genre has been reached
through the extremely popular Marvel Cinematic Universe in flm and tel-
evision. One aspect of the MCU that many have identifed as key to its
success is the choice to highlight different genres as well as the superhero
genre. Whether it’s superhero and war movie (Captain America: The First
Avenger [2011], Joe Johnston), superhero and fantasy (Thor [2011], Ken-
neth Branagh), superhero and TV sitcom (WandaVision [Disney+, 2021]),
and so on, this genre blending is a way to keep stories feeling simultane-
ously new and fresh but comfortably familiar. This technique was honed in
the comic books long before the MCU became a force in popular culture.
With superhero and war propaganda (e.g. Captain America), superhero and
bildungsroman (e.g., Ms. Marvel [Kamala Khan]), superhero and law pro-
cedural (e.g., She-Hulk), and so on, comic book publishers have long offered
a variety of storytelling styles that ft beneath the wide generic umbrella of
their superhero universes.
Audiences carry expectations for a piece of entertainment based on the
genre to which the product seems to belong. This is a key element of market-
ing and selling entertainment. As Peter Coogan notes, a genre is a “coherent,
value-laden narrative system that has emerged through a process of com-
mercial selection and repetition” into a readily and easily identifable set of
narrative markers (25). Through the consistent presentation of certain types
of stories, a franchise style is established. For example, Batman is known to
DOI: 10.4324/9781003261551-17
168 Joseph J. Darowski
frequently feature elements of the superhero genre as well as the mystery/
detective genre. Green Lantern’s adventures are often superhero stories with
an added element of space opera. Certain characters or franchises develop
narrative types, individualized genre styles, and a specifc expected tone that
is a part of the larger generic superhero universes produced by mainstream
publishers. Audience expectations are set through years of storytelling, mar-
keting, and merchandising.
The X-Men franchise has its own genre style that is very distinct from
other Marvel comic books. It is possible to point to specifc moments where
that identity was formulated. Created by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee, Marvel’s
mutant superheroes frst appeared in Sept. 1963’s The X-Men #1. Unlike
many other superheroes, the X-Men are simply born different from normal
humans and develop extraordinary powers in adolescence. Through dec-
ades of storytelling, the idea of “mutants” who are distinct from everyone
around them has developed into a socially progressive metaphor that dif-
ferentiates the franchise from other superhero offerings. As one of the most
well-established (and frequently published) franchises in comic book his-
tory, the X-Men and their associated titles have developed a familiar favor
that readers seek out. Superhero battles, soap-operatic interactions, social
commentary, and sci-f adventures are all part of the mix readers accept as
an X-Men story.
Uncanny X-Men #159 (July 1982) is a fascinating issue in the history of
the X-Men as it represents an infection point in terms of the genre identity
for the franchise. The appearance of Dracula as the foe introduces gothic
horror into the X-Men’s storytelling tradition, a genre blend that had been
largely absent previously but would be returned to with some frequency
in subsequent years. This single issue represents a broadening of the genre
style of X-Men adventures. While there are other one-and-done stories that
similarly experiment with new genre crossings for X-Men characters, this
example is notable not only because the events of the issue have been revis-
ited in later decades but also because the franchise embraces gothic horror
more frequently afterwards. The genre boundaries of what it means to be an
X-Men comic book are expanded from this point onward.
Horror and Comics

The beginning of the Golden Age of superhero comic books (1938–1954)
was signaled by Superman’s bright costume in Action Comics #1 (June 1938).
Very quickly the elements of the superhero genre became familiar as Super-
man’s success bred imitators from several publishers. The conception of a
costume, improbable powers, and a moral code were quickly codifed. But
comic book publishers were looking for as wide an audience as possible, not
just superhero fans. Stories in other genres, such as romance, sci-f, fantasy,
crime, and horror, were released to varying levels of interest from readers.
At the end of World War II, the superheroes who had celebrated the war
Mutant Gothic 169
effort in various propagandistic cover art and stories waned in popular-
ity, followed by a diminished interest in superheroes in general. Publishers,
naturally, did not stop producing comic books but rather sought out what
genres would rise in popularity at this time.
One of the most successful publishers in the early 1950s was EC Comics.
While the history is complex and multifaceted, a brief version of events that
shaped the comic book industry is as follows. EC Comics relied heavily on
the horror genre in its products, and they sold well. As Sean Howe explains,
1954 became a volatile year for the comic book industry in part due to anxi-
eties about the content of horror comics. Concerns were being voiced – most
famously by Dr. Fredric Wertham in a book titled Seduction of the Innocent
(1954) – that comic books were corrupting the youth of America by present-
ing connections between reading comic books and juvenile delinquency. The
panic was so prevalent that the United States Senate held hearings where
comic book publishers were interrogated about the moral content of their
products, and the testimony was covered on the front page of the New York
Times. As a result of the public backlash against the medium, 15 publish-
ers went out of business that same year (29–31). To appease panicked par-
ents and ward off government censorship, the remaining publishers chose
to form their own self-censorship board called the Comics Code Authority
(CCA). The CCA would provide specifc guidelines about what could and
could not appear in comic books. Each publisher would submit their issues
to the CCA before publication. If it passed inspection, the publishers could
put a CCA Seal of Approval on the cover, evidence that the comic book
would not contain morally corrupting stories.
The frst version of the Comics Code guideline from 1954 specifcally
forbids “Scenes dealing with, or instruments associated with walking dead,
torture, vampires and vampirism, ghouls, cannibalism and werwolfsm”
(Nyberg 167). Under this type of guidance, an X-Men story where they bat-
tle Dracula would have been impossible. However, in 1971 the guidelines
were revised. While still strict, they were somewhat loosened from what had
existed before. In the 1971 guidelines, it now reads:
Scenes dealing with, or instruments associated with walking dead or

torture shall not be used. Vampires, ghouls and werewolves shall be
permitted to be used when handled in the classic tradition such as
Frankenstein, Dracula and other high calibre literary works written by
Edgar Allen Poe, Saki (H.H. Munro), Conan Doyle and other respected
authors whose works are read in schools throughout the world.
(Nyberg 172)
This version of the Code permitted Dracula to enter the Marvel Universe
in the long-running The Tomb of Dracula (Apr. 1972 to Aug. 1979), estab-
lishing the character independently from later meeting and turning Storm
into a vampire. It also allowed demons and supernatural foes to become a
staple threat the X-Men would battle. While not an iconic X-Men foe, Drac-
ula would appear pursuing Storm again in X-Men Annual #6 (Nov. 1982
[Claremont and Sienkewicz]) and later on would appear in the Dec. 1998
Generation X annual (Harris and Coker). Notably, Jubilee, another woman
of color, would be turned into a vampire in a longer, serialized story in 2010
which was pitched as mutants versus vampires (this was shortly after the
Twilight novels had all been bestsellers). In The Curse of the Mutants (Sept.
2010 to Feb. 2011) storyline, the X-Men battle Dracula’s son, Xarus.1
X-Men and Genre

Though only a partial success when it launched in 1963, the X-Men fran-
chise has become a sprawling part of the Marvel Universe. With so many
characters, comic book series, and stories that have been told, what a reader
could expect when picking up an “X-Men” comic book has varied through
the decades. But, with the slow progress from the single series of the 1960s
to dozens of issues a month in the present day, it is possible to identify infec-
tion points where the X-Men franchise broadened its generic identity.
In the earliest issues of The X-Men, precedents were being set for readers.
The X-Men were a team of costumed superheroes who had unique powers;
they battled supervillains. Within the team dynamic there would be some
soap opera elements: who had a crush on whom affected the interpersonal
interactions of the team. Unlike the Fantastic Four, who were functionally
a family who received their powers in the same accident, or the Avengers,
which featured characters who had previously had their origin stories told in
individual adventures coming together to face a looming threat, the X-Men
were a group of characters united by the fact that they had been born dif-
ferent from regular humans. Their powers would manifest around the same
time as adolescence.
The use of the mutant metaphor to address social issues is an iconic part
of X-Men stories. As Michael Chabon puts it: “the X-Men are the most con-
sciously, deliberately, successfully metaphorical of any comic book super-
hero” (Comic Book Superheroes Unmasked). Because of that association,
it is surprising that little social commentary is found in the issues from the
1960s. It is not completely absent, but it is far from being a core element
of the stories. The X-Men #8 (Nov. 1964) sees a crowd attack Beast out
of fear and prejudice when they realize he is a mutant, and issues #14–16
(Nov. 1965 to Jan. 1966) introduce the U.S. government’s mutant-hunting
Sentinels. But there are more frequent examples of the X-Men being treated
as heroes and allies.
Never truly popular, The X-Men reprinted adventures for several years
(#67–93 [Dec. 1970 to Apr. 1975]) until the series relaunched with Giant-
Size X-Men #1 (May 1975). The mutant metaphor became an undeniable,
core element of the franchise. From then on, the X-Men genre has become
Mutant Gothic 171
known as a comic book franchise with two very specifc themes and reso-
nances: frst, it is frmly in the superhero genre; second, the core characters
are mutants, and the inherent mutant metaphor is used to address social
issues and concerns. The core is constant – mutant superheroes with a
socially conscious metaphor – but the franchise is fexible enough to crosso-
ver with other genres of storytelling such as cowboy or samurai stories, sci-f
space operas, dystopian fction, or detective tales.
That genre elasticity has taken decades to develop. When the series
began, the X-Men were frmly embedded in the superhero genre, so much
so that their stories were fairly interchangeable with the other Marvel Sil-
ver Age (1955–1970) titles of the time. There was little that was consist-
ently X-Men-centric to the series, so much so that the core idea of the
X-Men being made up of mutants – characters who were simply born with
powers that made them different from normal humans – seems to have
served to ease creators’ diffculty with imagining new origin stories more
so than adding thematic heft to the series. As Sean Howe notes: “Although
in its early years the X-Men seldom met the standards set by other Lee
and Kirby creations, occasionally it would realize its potential for power-
ful metaphor” (48). Some narrative seeds are introduced that will blos-
som in subsequent decades as the X-Men became well-known as a team
“sworn to protect a world that hates and fears them.” But most issues of the
era are more likely to feature random, little-remembered supervillains like
the Locust (Dr. August Hopper [The X-Men #24 {Sept. 1966}]) or villains
who had appeared in other titles from the period (e.g., Count Nefaria [The
X-Men #22 {July 1966}]; Super-Adaptoid [The X-Men #29 {Feb. 1967}]).
Roy Thomas, the second writer of the series, said: “I actually preferred
doing stories with regular supervillains. I just wasn’t that big into the whole
mutant thing” (DeFalco 23).
Famously, the series was one of the lower-selling titles from Marvel,
and the company chose to publish reprints for years before attempting a
relaunch of the X-Men series in May 1975. After Dave Cockrum and Len
Wein introduced a new team of characters in Giant-Size X-Men #1, Chris
Claremont would take over writing duties for the next 16 years, beginning
with X-Men #94 (Aug. 1975).2 In his collaborations with his artistic sto-
rytellers, Claremont redefned the X-Men’s generic scope in this era. First,
Claremont reintroduced several of the villains from the early X-Men sto-
ries – Magneto, the Sentinels, Juggernaut – but with much more focus on
the themes that become inseparable from X-Men comics. Claremont then
expanded the X-Men into space-opera storylines focusing on the extra-
terrestrial Shi’ar Empire and eventually the cosmic Phoenix Force. After
years engaging in more sci-f-centric stories, Claremont would collaborate
with artist Bill Sienkiewicz to do a single-issue fller story, Uncanny X-Men
#159, which has had a dramatic impact on the X-Men as a whole and
weather-manipulating Storm (Ororo Munroe) in particular. This issue is
one of the frst X-Men comics to explicitly blend their superhero genre with
the gothic horror genre as Dracula targets Storm as a potential vampiric
mistress.
Storm versus Dracula

Storm was created by Len Wein and Dave Cockrum in Giant-Size X-Men #1,
but much of her personality was codifed by the Claremont-penned X-Men
adventures. During that run, Storm became one of the most prominent char-
acters in the franchise. When a de-powered Storm defeated Cyclops in a duel
for team leadership (Uncanny X-Men #201 [Jan. 1986]3), she would become
the frst woman of color to lead one of Marvel’s superhero teams. She would
undergo several transformations, from aloof goddess to mohawked punk
rocker, but one of the most infuential evolutions is seemingly undone at the
end of a single-issue story. In “Night Screams,” Storm begins to be turned
into a vampire by Count Dracula before the intangible Kitty Pryde is able to
break the vampiric thrall Storm had been placed under.
The X-Men had rarely engaged with horror stories up to this point. In
part, that is completely expected due to the Comics Code Authority, which
restricted monsters or supernatural threats. In X-Men #40 (Jan. 1968), the
X-Men appear to battle Frankenstein’s monster, but it is revealed in the end
that this was truly an alien android who had inspired Mary Shelley to write
her tale. The Comics Code Authority would have likely categorized Frank-
enstein as one of the “walking dead” and not allowed the creature to appear
in a comic before the code’s revision in 1971.4
The horror genre has unique elements associated with its stories. As
Xavier Aldana Reyes explains, it refers to “texts or narratives that aim to
generate fear, shock or disgust (or a combination of these), alongside asso-
ciated emotional states such as dread or suspense” (Reyes 7). This makes
horror easy to blend with other genres. Eliciting an emotional response can
be done while still serving the genre markers of superheroes very readily.
Superpowers, costumes, secret identities, and missions can all exist in a story
that is calculated to create a sense of dread or terror.
Uncanny X-Men #159 is a tonal departure from the stories that had
come before, meant to act as a palate cleanser and change of pace for read-
ers of the series. Storm’s battle with Dracula is wrapped up within the same
issue it begins but has reverberated with fans decades later. Claremont says
about this issue: “We were going to have a lot of fun. We’d been doing a
lot of intense stuff, and so it’s a one-issue pause for breath. And who’s
the last adversary you’d expect the X-Men to run into?” (“Storm in . . .”)
Adding to the sense that this is a brief detour for the X-Men is Sienkiewicz
as a fll-in artist, a publishing tactic used to allow a series’ regular artist
to catch up on art for the larger, main storyline that will be the focus of
the title. Claremont recalls that this issue was put on the schedule as they
Mutant Gothic 173
were transitioning between Dave Cockrum and Paul Smith as the regular
artist on the series. “We had to buy ourselves a couple months” and had
Jim Sherman, Bob McLeod, and Bill Sienkiewicz fll in as artists on a few
issues (“Storm in . . .”). Bill Sienkewiecz is known for his experimental art
style, but this story, early on in his Marvel career, adheres much more to
the house style of the time, with exceptions in the cover and a few moodier
panels.
In Uncanny X-Men #159, the X-Men are in New York City so that Kitty
Pryde, the youngest member of the X-Men, can see her parents. Storm is
planning to accompany her to drop her off. The scene cuts to former X-Man
Scott Summers bonding with his brother, Alex and their long-lost father,
Corsair. This is the classic Claremont technique of carrying on a B-storyline
that will be picked up in later issues. Later, Kitty Pryde calls the X-Men and
asks to speak to Storm, but Storm has not arrived back. Kitty says Storm left
hours ago. Storm’s body is shown lying in an alley with a wound in her neck,
and she is rushed to a hospital. Several members of the X-Men come to see
her. Storm is recovering very quickly but cannot even remember her attack;
she leaves the hospital to convalesce. At night, she has what she believes are
dreams about a fgure in the fog coming to her; during the day she feels ill
and rests. Kitty returns to the X-Men and is told about Storm’s attack. When
Kitty sees Storm finch from sunlight and also grimace at her Star of David,
she develops theory about what’s happening.
That night, Dracula comes to Storm again. Kitty phases through the wall
and holds up a cross, but it has no effect because she is Jewish and does
not have faith in the cross. However, when Dracula attacks Kitty, her Star
of David necklace repels him. Storm and Dracula fy out of the window,
and Storm calls out for Kitty not to follow. The X-Men listen to Kitty’s
story and then track Storm. Wolverine follows Storm’s scent to Belvedere
Castle in Central Park. The X-Men are attacked by Dracula and struggle to
overpower him until the demonic-looking Nightcrawler, who is a faithful
Christian, makes a cross to repel Dracula. While Dracula is distracted, Kitty
goes to look for Storm. Storm now has fangs and is in full vampire mode.
Kitty begs Storm to try and fght off Dracula’s hold on her.
Dracula has managed to defeat the other X-Men, and Storm joins him.
But Storm attacks Dracula with a lightning bolt. When he tries to fee, she
uses her weather powers to prevent his escape. Dracula tries to reassert con-
trol over Storm, and her will wavers before she can again resist his infuence.
Dracula is awed by her willpower. He says she is one of the only women
he has ever met worthy to be his queen, but to try and force his will on her
would deny her the respect she has earned, so he will no longer try to enslave
her to his will. He releases his hold on her, and Storm returns to the X-Men
and thanks Kitty for inspiring her to fght off Dracula’s thrall.
In an interview about this issue, Claremont laughingly acknowledged that
Dracula’s logic was deeply misogynistic and felt like an explanation from
the 1980s. In an attempt to elevate Storm, the narrative minimizes the worth
and individuality of every other woman Dracula has encountered. After a
pause, though, Claremont said that it works, because Dracula would have
very outdated views no matter when he was written (“Storm in . . .”).
The story is replete with elements of gothic horror: fog-laden nights, a
vampire foe, and even a crumbling castle. But there is one aspect of the
superhero genre that undercuts some of the horror genre’s strengths. The
horror genre relies on the threat of transformation or death. The superhero
genre famously resists permanent change to its characters. Umberto Eco, in
analyzing Superman, said:
he must be an archetype, the totality of certain collective aspirations,

and therefore he must necessarily become immobilized in an emblematic
and fxed nature which renders him easily recognizable . . . but since he
is marketed in the sphere of a “romantic” production for a public that
consumes “romances” he must be subjected to a development which is
typical, as we have seen, of novelistic characters.
(149)
Thus, Superman and other mainstream superheroes must be both static

American myths and dynamic characters in a narrative. Eco contends that
in an effort to serve this need for statics and dynamism, comic books exist in
a world with closed causal chains where A leads to B which leads to C which
leads back to A (155). In essence, comic book stories present an illusion of
change, only for the stories to reset to the familiar status quo. Horror relies
on the threat of a permanent change of nature; the popular superhero genre
ensures a return to the familiar. Thus, for readers familiar with the X-Men
and the rhythms of Marvel storytelling, Storm’s transformation was known
to be temporary.
Of course, with such a vast publishing history, readers can point to
counter-examples. Beast (Hank McCoy) began the X-Men series appear-
ing as a human with disproportionately large hands and feet. During those
reprint years, a story was published in Amazing Adventures Vol. 2 #11
(March 1972) which saw Beast, witnessing thieves about to enter the sci-
ence lab where he worked but wanting to maintain his secret identity, drink
an experimental formula that causes him to sprout gray fur all over body
(Conway and Sutton). Though the fur changes color to black (Amazing
Adventures Vol. 2 #15 [Nov. 1972]) and then to blue in later years (Aveng-
ers Annual #6 [Nov. 1976]), this body transformation is retained for the
character for decades before a subsequent additional mutation changes his
appearance to a more cat-like (New X-Men #114 [May 2001]) and then
more simian-like one (All-New X-Men #5 [Jan. 2013]). Similarly, Angel
(Warrren Worthington III) of the original X-Men undergoes a transforma-
tion that makes his skin blue and gives him metallic wings (X-Factor #24
[Jan. 1988]). Though this change endures for many years, it is eventually
undone to return Angel to his original status, thus supporting Eco’s point.
Mutant Gothic 175
Long-Term Impact
While this story is contained in a single issue, the X-Men franchise began to
embrace gothic horror much more frequently from this point forward. Of
course, that is not the singular purpose of the story. Claremont explained
that including magic was one reason to choose this story in the frst place:
The idea behind the Dracula issue is that basically nobody would see it
coming. Yes, it was silly; yes, it was way off the beaten path. But then
and now, the foundational principle of the series, of the concept was
‘anything goes.’ Just because they’re a superhero team and a superhero
book doesn’t mean they can’t wander into areas of magic.
(“Storm in . . .”)
Adding additional context to the story, Claremont wanted to ensure that while
this was a one-off single-issue story, it still was rooted in character and added
to the audience’s appreciation of those characters. Claremont explained:
It’s all very well for Vlad to bite Storm and turn her, but that might very
well be the most dangerous thing he’s ever done because there’s no way
she’s playing second fddle to anyone. . . . In any relationship, would any
of these characters accept being subordinate?
In this issue, the clear answer for Storm is no, she would not.
Additionally, there is an interesting theme to be played with in pitting
Storm against Dracula. Claremont wrote Storm as “the embodiment of all
the forces that allow Earth to sustain life,” while Dracula is “the personi-
fcation of life through death” (“Storm in . . .”). This contrast provides a
thematic throughline for the narrative and also serves to add more character
depth to Storm. Claremont’s writing is deliberate in providing additional
revelations about established characters to deepen the characters’ complex-
ity. Dracula represents death, for obvious reasons, while Storm is emblem-
atic of life. This is not only through her roles as a weather goddess but
also in how she chooses to live her life. Claremont was explicit in giving
instructions to his artistic collaborators that her living space must be flled
with plant-life for which she cared. The character was rooted in the idea of
Mother Nature, an antithesis to Dracula.
After this story appears, the X-Men engage with supernatural horror much
more frequently. The two most obvious examples are Illyana Rasputin’s trans-
formation into Magik after spending time being raised by demons in Limbo
(Uncanny X-Men #160 [Aug. 1982]) and the massive crossover Inferno (Dec.
1988 to Apr. 1989),5 which saw demons invading the Marvel Universe at the
behest of a cloned version of the once-dead Jean Grey, who was resurrected
at that point – again, changes are not permanent in superhero comics, even
deaths. There were superheroes who were closely associated with the super-
natural before the X-Men battled Dracula such as Dr. Strange and Ghost
Rider (Johnny Blaze). But Uncanny X-Men #159 seems to bring the super-
natural horror into the X-Men’s genre identity in a way that has never left.
While Storm survives Dracula’s attack in this issue, the idea of a vampiric
Storm has remained an object of fascination for other comic book creators.
Generally referred to as Bloodstorm, a version of Storm that lost her fght to
Dracula has been introduced in alternate realities or timelines many times
since Claremont left the series. In 1998, the character Havok (Alex Sum-
mers) gets thrown into an alternate timeline in a series called Mutant X (#1–
32 [Oct. 1998-June 2001]). There, instead of the X-Men, there are a team
of mutants called The Six who are led by Bloodstorm. In the early 2000s, a
future version of the Marvel universe sees Heralds being plucked from vari-
ous timelines in the mini-series Paradise X (#0–12 [Apr. 2002 to Aug. 2003],
Paradise X: Heralds #1–3 [Dec. 2001 to Feb. 2002]). Bloodstorm is one of
the key Heralds who can save the multiverse. Another dimension-hopping
Bloodstorm was used in X-Men: Blue (#10–36 [Oct. 2017-Nov. 2018]).
While the main Marvel timeline resists permanent changes to characters, the
introduction of alternate timelines allows for explorations of transformed
versions of characters. Claremont appeared bemused by the alternate time-
line versions of Bloodstorm, saying:
I guess the advantage of a multiverse is you can do anything to any char-

acter. I guess we were just playing it at the time from the perspective that
there’s just one Marvel universe. And as with anything else, we wanted
to be able to take characters up to a point, keep the readers in suspense,
and miraculously save the day. . . . There are an infnite number of ques-
tions, I guess that alternate worlds provide an infnite opportunity to
indulge them. The challenge is trying to do so with the core story and
the core characters in ways that will have a lasting impact on the read-
ership rather than “This is just a ‘What if. . . ?’ It doesn’t really matter”
(“Storm in . . .”).
Conclusion
While Uncanny X-Men #159 is a fller issue, designed to give the readers
a change of pace and the creative team a chance to prepare the next major
storyline, its impact on the series is signifcant. The use of the gothic horror
genre expanded the storyverse of the X-Men, and supernatural horror has
become a staple element of the franchise. Additionally, the hint of a vampire
version of Storm that appeared in a single issue in 1982 has been picked
up by several creators at various times in subsequent decades. With almost
10,000 of issues of X-Men comics having been produced by Marvel, many
of them become literally fller issues that come and go with little impact.
With Claremont and Sienkewiecz’s inclusion of a new genre and the hints of
a character transformation, this issue can be properly identifed as an infec-
tion point for the X-Men franchise.
Mutant Gothic 177
Notes
1 Curse of the Mutants ran through X-Men Vol. 3 #1–6 (Sept. 2010 to Feb. 2011) and
#11 (July 2011), Namor: The First Mutant #1–4 (Oct. 2010-Jan. 2011), X-Men:
Curse of the Mutants – Blade #1 (Oct. 2010), X-Men: Curse of the Mutants –
Storm and Gambit #1 (Oct. 2010), X-Men: Curse of the Mutants – Smoke and
Blood #1 (Nov. 2010), X-Men: Curse of the Mutants – X-Men vs. Vampires #1–2
(Nov. to Dec. 2010), and Deadpool Vol. 4 #30–31 (Feb. to Mar. 2011).
2 Chris Claremont wrote X-Men #94-Uncanny X-Men #279 (Aug. 1975 to Aug.
1991). During this time he also wrote Wolverine Vol. 1 #1–4 (Sept. to Dec. 1982),
New Mutants #1–54 (Mar. 1983 to Aug. 1987), Kitty Pryde and Wolverine #1–6
(Nov. 1984 to Apr. 1985), Excalibur #1–34 (Oct. 1988 to Feb. 1991), Wolver-
ine Vol. 2 #1–10 (Nov. 1988 to Aug. 1989), and X-Men Vol. 2 #1–3 (Oct. to
Dec. 1991). There were various fll-in writers for issues over the course of these
runs. Claremont wrote numerous other titles during this period as well. He would
return to the X-Men universe several times in the subsequent years.
3 The X-Men was retitled Uncanny X-Men beginning with issue #142 (Feb. 1981),
though it continued with the same issue numbering and storylines.
4 Frankenstein’s monster entered Marvel continuity after the CCA revision, begin-
ning in The Monster of Frankenstein #1 (Jan. 1973).
5 Inferno ran through X-Terminators #1–4 (Oct. 1988 to Jan. 1989), Uncanny
X-Men #239–243 (Dec. 1988 to Apr. 1989), Avengers #298–300 (Dec. 1988 to
Feb. 1989), Power Pack #42–44 (Dec. 1988 to Mar. 1989), X-Factor #36–39 (Jan.
to Apr 1989), New Mutants #71–73 (Jan. to Mar. 1989), Amazing Spider-Man
#311–313 (Jan. to Mar. 1989), Spectacular Spider-Man #146–148 (Jan. to Mar.
1989), Daredevil #262–264 (Jan. to Mar. 1989), Fantastic Four #322–324 (Jan.
to Mar. 1989), Web of Spider-Man #47–48 (Feb. to Mar. 1989), Excalibur #6–7
(Mar. to Apr. 1989), and The Mutant Misadventures of Cloak and Dagger #4
(Apr. 1989).
Works Cited
Claremont, Chris (w), Bill Sienkiewicz (p), Bob Wiacek (i), Glynis Wein (c) and Tom
Orzechowski (l). “Blood Feud,” X-Men Annual #6 (November 1982). Marvel
Comics, 1982.
Conway, Gerry (w), Tom Sutton (p), Syd Shores (i) and Sam Rosen (l). “The Beast!”
Amazing Adventures Volume 2 #11 (March 1972). Marvel Comics, 1972.
Coogan, Peter. Superhero: The Secret Origin of a Genre. MonkeyBrain Books, 2006.
DeFalco, Tom. Comics Creators on the X-Men. Titan Books, 2006.
Eco, Umberto. “The Myth of Superman.” Arguing Comics: Literary Masters on a
Popular Medium, edited by Jeet Herr and Kent Worcester, translated by Natalie
Chilton, 1972. University Press of Mississippi, 2004 [1962], pp. 146–164.
Harris, Joseph (w), Tomm Coker (p), Troy Hubbs (i), Felix Serrano (c) and Comicraft
(l). “Children of the Night,” Generation X Annual 1998. Marvel Comics, 1998.
Howe, Sean. Marvel Comics: The Untold Story. HarperCollins, 2012.
Lee, Stan (w), Jack Kirby (p), Paul Reinman (i) and Sam Rosen (l). “X-Men.” The
X-Men #1 (September 1963). Marvel Comics, 1963.
Nyberg, Amy Kiste. Seal of Approval: The History of the Comics Code. University
Reyes, Xavier Aldana. “Introduction: What, Why and When Is Horror Fiction?” Hor-
ror: A Literary History, edited by Xavier Aldana Reyes. The British Library, 2016.
“Storm in Uncanny X-Men #159 (comic 1982) WITH SPECIAL GUEST Chris
Claremont.” The Protagonist Podcast, 31 May 2021.
Thomas, Roy (w), Don Heck (p), George Tuska (i) and Artie Simek (l). “The Mark of
the Monster.” X-Men #40 (January 1968). Marvel Comics, 1968.
Wolk, Douglas. Reading Comics: How Graphic Novels Work and What They Mean.
Da Capo Press, 2008.
15 Franken-Castle
Monster Hunters, Monstrous
Masculinities, and the Punisher
John Darowski
Marvel Comics’ Punisher has always been a monster. A hallmark of the

horror genre, monsters transgress social order and hierarchies, typically
through violence; in doing so, they upset established categorizations. As Jef-
frey Jerome Cohen describes in “Monster Culture (Seven Theses)” (1996):
“The monster is the harbinger of category crisis” (6). Debuting in The Amaz-
ing Spider-Man #129 (cover date Feb. 1974), Frank Castle (born Francis
Castiglione) is a Vietnam War veteran1 who, after seeing his family killed for
witnessing a mob hit, wages a one-man war on crime. The Punisher relies on
his military training and weapon arsenal in his crusade to kill as many crimi-
nals as possible. His willingness to utilize murder, torture, and other violent
means to achieve his perceived righteous ends defes the superhero/super-
villain dichotomy codifed throughout the Golden (1938–1954) and Silver
(1955–1970) Ages of superhero comic books. The Bronze Age (1971–1985)
introduced more complexity and nuance into the genre and complicated
the strict hero/villain dichotomy by introducing a character-type that fell
between the two: the anti-hero or, as Punisher creator Gerry Conway pre-
fers, the anti-villain (Collard). Anti-heroes disturb superhero categorization
because they do not align with traditional heroic ethics but their monstrous
actions could still be considered to have a pro-social beneft.2
The subtext of Punisher as monster is made the text in Rick Remender’s
run on Punisher (Mar. 2009 to May 2011) with various artists.3 During
the Franken-Castle arc, the titular protagonist is dismembered and reas-
sembled as an adaptation of Frankenstein’s monster, a marked blend of the
superhero and horror genres. This new look for the character is referred
to as Franken-Castle on the covers, including retitling the series Franken-
Castle for issues #17–21 (Aug. to Nov. 2010). The Punisher then defends
the Monster Metropolis beneath New York City from genocide at the hands
of the traditional monster hunter Robert Hellsgaard. The Franken-Castle
arc in issues #11–16 by Remender and artists Tony Moore (#11–14 [Jan.-
Apr. 2010], #16 [June 2010]), Dan Brereton (#14 [Apr. 2010]) and Roland
Boschi (#15 [May 2010]) examines a cultural shift in the perception of mon-
strosity from a visual index to a moral one, in this case based around the
performance of masculinity.
DOI: 10.4324/9781003261551-18
180 John Darowski
Monsters, Monster Hunters, and Masculinity
The Punisher was created by writer Gerry Conway, designed by John Romita
Sr., and drawn by penciler Ross Andru. Conway stated in Comics Interview
#75 (1989): “I was fascinated by the Don Pendleton Executioner character,
which was fairly popular at the time, and I wanted to do something that was
inspired by that, although not to my mind a copy of it.” (8). The Executioner
series of novels follows Mack Bolan who, after a crime-driven family trag-
edy, uses the military skills he learned in Vietnam to wage war on the Mafa.
Organized crime, vigilantism, and Vietnam War veterans with what would
now be identifed as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) all proved to be
popular themes in media in the era, whether separately or combined.4 These
elements were distilled by Conway and Andru, but the lasting success of the
character came as a surprise. Conway later explained: “The Punisher was
originally conceived as a secondary, one-issue, throw-away character. . . .
But readers really responded to him” (Collard). Of the many reasons why
the Punisher resonated with readers following his frst appearance, three to
be considered are: the evolution of the monster into the monster hunter;
his embodiment of a new type of monster; and his performance of stoic
masculinity.
The Punisher’s initial appearance in 1974 came at a cultural moment
when the monster archetype was being re-evaluated. Following the failures
in Vietnam, the Watergate scandal, and rising crime rates, social trust in tra-
ditional institutions was at an all-time low. This was refected in the popular
culture of horror through the twin movements of reforming the monster as a
monster hunter and moving away from a visual index of monstrosity toward
an examination of the social conditions which create monstrous behavior. In
The Monster Hunter in Modern Popular Culture (2008), Heather L. Duda
argues that the monster hunter in horror fction had been both a protector
and mirror of the hegemonic status quo – traditionally white, male, upper-
class, and educated. But the celebration of difference and otherness by the
1960s’ countercultural movement gave monsters a voice and transformed
them into sympathetic fgures capable of love, a humanizing emotion. Being
able to feel love then leads to guilt and regret, creating a desire for redemp-
tion which results in a duty to protect (27, 42). The skepticism toward social
institutions in the 1970s was mirrored by a mounting wariness of fctive
institutions, such as the traditional monster hunter. Popular culture then
looked to non-traditional heroes and outsider fgures to reclaim control and
reestablish order. It was thus a natural progression for the monster to evolve
into a protector of humanity as a postmodern monster hunter.
With heroes coming from outside of society, new monsters had to come
from within. Instead of a visual index of grotesque features to mark a
monster as an outsider, focus shifted to the social conditions which cre-
ated the deviant minds of criminals and serial killers. Some viewed the ero-
sion of American values and increasing secularization as creating the social
Franken-Castle 181
conditions for rising crime rates. This move takes the responsibility for evil
away from the individual while also making the threat of monsters less able
to be contained. Inversely, it makes the individual more responsible to pro-
tect and redeem society.
The Punisher reinforces the concept of social conditions creating new
monsters while subverting the idea of the monster-as-monster hunter. The
monster-as-monster hunter is built on the a priori assumption that mon-
sters are evil and motivated to destroy society but can be redeemed by love.
Frank Castle was a husband and father who lost the capacity for love, and
its related trait mercy, when his family was killed. Castle turned into an anti-
hero, the Punisher, because of the social conditions which allowed crime to
thrive. While the monster-as-monster hunter moves toward humanity, the
anti-hero-as-monster hunter moves away from it, becoming more violent,
isolated, and rigid in their personal moral code. As Conway describes the
Punisher: “Black and white, that’s his costume, that’s his attitude, that’s his
point of view on life” (6–7).
The Punisher shades further into this gray area of the anti-hero monster
through his embrace of the abject, which Julia Kristeva defnes in The Power
of Horror (1980) as: “what disturbs identity, system, order. What does not
respect border, positions, rules. The inbetween, the ambiguous, the com-
posite.” The ultimate expression of abjection is a corpse, which Kristeva
describes as “death infecting life” (4). Already an anti-social loner with a
penchant for horrifc violence that punctures the bodily boundary of inside/
outside, Castle also wears a large, stylized skull emblazoned on his chest.5
The Punisher is a walking memento mori, a grim reaper whose greatest
weapon is fear.
Despite the horror he was meant to evoke, the Punisher embodied a deter-
mination and confdence that many viewed as lacking in 1970s, partly a
result of the emasculation of the American male. The distrust in national
institutions, the submission to foreign powers by détente or due to the oil
embargo by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC),
and the rapidly rising crime rate engendered a sense in the average citizen
that they were not in control of their destiny; what President Jimmy Carter
described on 15 July 1979 as “a crisis of confdence.” As Matthew J. Costello
explains in Secret Identity Crisis (2009): “Without a common language of
progress and virtue, only individualism remained as an American value to be
asserted” (228). This individualism is visually expressed through the body.
And the body that best represented courage and self-reliance was one that
was strong and aggressive from manual labor – a hard body. As the United
States had been shifting from blue-collar labor to white-collar industry fol-
lowing World War II, images of this type of hard body had to be mediated
from the past (Jeffords 24–25, 63). Notably, American popular culture had
turned to the character of the Western cowboy for decades.
The cowboy is one of the foundational myths of American national char-
acter. John Shelton Lawrence and Robert Jewett describe his (for they were
182 John Darowski
always male) mythopoeic narrative in The Myth of the American Superhero
(2002):
A community in a harmonious paradise is threatened by evil; normal

institutions fail to contend with this threat; a selfess superhero emerges
to renounce temptations and carry out the redemptive task; aided by
fate, his decisive victory restores the community to its paradisiacal con-
dition; the superhero then recedes into obscurity
(6).
Said restoration is always accomplished through violence. Jane Tompkins

describes the Western as: “secular, materialist, and antifeminist; it focuses on
confict in the public space, is obsessed with death, and worships the phallus”
(22). For a person to qualify for this redemptive role, they had to perform a
certain type of masculinity. They needed a muscular body to show discipline
and hard work; they must be well-versed in the language of violence; and
they must be stoic, because emotion shows a lack of self-control. Silence
is the best way to repress emotions and interiority, as well as limit social
relationships (Tompkins 66). Remender’s Punisher expresses this by speak-
ing in terse phrases rather than full sentences. This is only outdone by the
subsequent series, Punisher Vol. 9 (#1–16 [Oct. 2011-Nov. 2012]) by writer
Greg Rucka and various artists, primary Marco Chechetto, where Castle is
a mostly silent fgure.
The prescriptive universe of the cowboy myth was easily translatable to
the context of the 1970s: the national community felt threatened by chaos
which normal institutions failed to contain; in some instances, the institu-
tions were the threat. A lone savior, embodying the same masculine traits
as the cowboy coupled with a dose of Seventies’ cynicism, would rescue
the community. Redemptive violence was transposed to this contemporary
context, whether it be a rogue cop like Clint Eastwood’s Harry Callahan
(Dirty Harry [1971], Don Siegel),6 a vigilante such as Charles Bronson’s
Paul Kersey (Death Wish [1974], Michael Winner), or a Vietnam veteran
like Sylvester Stallone’s John Rambo (First Blood [1982], Ted Kocheff).
With neither Christian virtue nor secular progressivism as shared commu-
nity value, “manhood can prove itself only through risking death” (Tomp-
kins 33). This brand of masculinity can also be read as a backlash to the
second-wave feminism of the 1970s.
A Brief History of the Punisher

The Punisher’s popularity after his debut led to return appearances in The
Amazing Spider-Man, and he soon began showing up in other titles as a
counterpoint to the traditional superheroes, becoming part of the tapestry of
the Marvel Comics’ shared universe.7 His popularity soared during the Dark
Age (1986–2000) of superhero comics, which embraced moral relativism
Franken-Castle 183
and a grim-and-gritty aesthetic. The success of the Punisher’s frst solo mini-
series (The Punisher Vol. 1 #1–5 [Jan. to May 1986]) led to not one but
three concurrent ongoing series: The Punisher Vol. 2 (#1–104 [July 1987 to
July 1995]); Punisher War Journal (#1–80 [Nov. 1988 to July 1995]); and
Punisher War Zone (#1–41 [Mar. 1992 to July 1995]); as well as numerous
mini-series and specials. However, as Jonathan Rutherford notes: “the bor-
derline between legitimate violence employed by the state and male violence
that threatens social stability is quickly crossed” (31). While redemptive vio-
lence may have been a cultural necessity in the 1970s and 1980s, it came to
be viewed as frst problematic and then socially destructive and even toxic
as the monoculture fragmented into a culture war in the 1990s following
the end of the Cold War. This coincided with the collapse of the comic book
speculator bubble, resulting in Marvel Comics drastically cutting their titles
in the late 1990s as it faced bankruptcy. The Punisher went from three titles
to one (The Punisher Vol. 3 #1–18 [Nov. 1995 to Apr. 1997]) to none.
This led to the frst attempt to transform the Punisher into a literal monster-
as-monster hunter. Marvel Knights’ The Punisher Vol. 4 (#1–4 [Nov. 1998
to Feb. 1999]), by writers Christopher Golden and Tom Sniegoski with art-
ist Bernie Wrightson, sees Castle commit suicide only to be resurrected as an
avenging angel in the war between heaven and hell. It is a war he has been a
part of all along, as it is retroactively revealed that Frank’s family was killed
by demons, not mobsters, and all his subsequent murders had been empow-
ering the demons (1–12). However, even pencils by horror comic book leg-
end Wrightson failed to interest readers. Duda posits that for a monster to
become a monster hunter, they need not only the capacity to feel love but
also a community of like-minded individuals to help them overcome their
isolation and alienation; without this, they may slip back into their mon-
strous ways (59). The Punisher lacks such support at this time, and, after
one more mini-series (Wolverine/Punisher: Revelation #1–4 [June to Sept.
1999]), reverts back to his previous modus operandi.
In “The Myth of Superman” (1962), Umberto Eco argues that superhero
stories move in a cyclical progression (A→B→C→A) rather than a linear one
(A→B→C→D, etc.) (155); the hero always returns to their mythic gestalt.
In writer Garth Ennis and artist Steve Dillon’s The Punisher Vol. 5 #1 (Apr.
2000), titled “Welcome Back, Frank,” the Punisher announces this return to
form after being cast out of heaven for disobeying the angels’ commands by
throwing a mobster off the Empire State Building (20–22). The Punisher’s
increasingly brutal tactics soon saw him graduate from Marvel Knights (The
Punisher Vol. 5 #1–12 [Apr. 2000 to Mar. 2001]; The Punisher Vol. 6 #1–37
[Aug. 2001 to Feb. 2004]) to the mature reader Marvel MAX imprint with
The Punisher Vol. 7 (#1–65 [Mar. 2004 to Feb. 2009]). This allowed for
more intense depictions of violence while also effectively removing the Pun-
isher from the shared Marvel Universe.
Concurrent with MAX’s The Punisher Vol. 7, Castle returned to Marvel
continuity during the event Civil War (#1–7 [July 2006 to Jan. 2007]), which
184 John Darowski
pitted Iron Man against Captain America over the Superhuman Registration
Act, and subsequent Punisher War Journal Vol. 2 (#1–26 [Jan. 2007 to Feb.
2009]). But this was a very different context than his debut in the 1970s
or his popularity in the 1990s. While the United States again felt imperiled
by chaos, the threat of terrorism following Sept. 11, 2001 as well as the
2007 housing crisis and resulting fnancial recession was vague and hard
to comprehend compared to the clear-cut external threats of the Cold War.
Excessive violence was no longer redemptive, as illustrated by the conclu-
sion of Civil War when Captain America surrenders, declaring: “We’re not
fghting for the people anymore, Falcon . . . Look at us. We’re just fghting.”
(Millar and McNiven 26). Castle’s war on crime came to be viewed less
as justifed vengeance and instead as the result of a damaged psyche and a
representation of toxic masculinity. The Punisher was more of an outlier in
the Marvel Universe than ever before; but outside the boundaries is where
monsters dwell.
Franken-Castle
When Rick Remender began his run on Punisher Vol. 8, it came with a spe-
cifc directive:
When I took over the book and it was just me working with my then
editor Axel Alonso, I had a mandate. It had to be very different from the
Punisher series for Marvel’s MAX imprint. My book had to be a real
core MU [Marvel Universe] style book. It couldn’t just be more of Frank
killing mafa guys.
(Richards, “Remender Refects . . .”)
Remender accomplished this by having the Punisher face atypical foes like
supervillains and supernatural threats before transforming into Franken-
Castle. The inciting incident in Punisher Vol. 8 #1 is Castle’s attempted
assassination of Norman Osborn (Remender and Opeña 2–4), the former
Spider-Man’s foe Green Goblin and now head of national security after stop-
ping an alien invasion.8 As part of the Dark Reign storyline (Dec. 2008 to
Dec. 2009), the Punisher works with a hacker, Henry, to dismantle Osborn’s
criminal empire, which is being run by the supernaturally-powered the
Hood (Parker Robbins). As retribution, in Dark Reign: The List – Punisher
#1 (Dec. 2009), Osborn sends in Wolverine’s son Daken, who dismembers
the Punisher (Remender and Romita 29–30). The parts are then rescued
by sewer-dwelling monsters in order to build a new defender, referred to
hereafter as Franken-Castle, against Robert Hellsgaard and his Hunter of
Monster Special Forces.
Franken-Castle is an adaptation of Frankenstein’s monster on a visual
level only, meant to evoke horror but lacking similar characterization and
Franken-Castle 185
themes. However, the image of the monster has become separated from
Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel and has achieved what flm theorist Andre Bazín
describes as: “an autonomous existence of which the original works are no
longer anything more than an accidental and almost superfuous manifesta-
tion” (53). Adaptation theorist Thomas Leitch argues that this is because
visuals have the power to show what the written word can only present
indirectly and that the appeal of Frankenstein is in the iconic rather than the
psychological (97, 207). However, iconization is a two-edged sword when
it comes to horror. An image has the immediacy to evoke revulsion and dis-
gust by making the audience want to avert their gaze while simultaneously
be frozen in shock. But repetition of the image breeds familiarity, losing the
horrifc effect.
Frankenstein is one of the most adapted texts and has been refracted
through all media, rendering the monster immediately recognizable. In
Adapting Frankenstein (2018), Dennis R. Cutchins and Dennis R. Perry
describe the heteroglossia of all these adaptations as the Frankenstein Net-
work, while each individual’s personal experience with select texts is the
Frankenstein Complex (6). This Complex results in what Linda Hutcheon
describes as a “palimpsestuous” experience in A Theory of Adaptation
(2006); one adaptation becomes an intertextual layer through which all pre-
vious versions of that text are also remembered (6). Thus, the visual lexicon
of Franken-Castle is inspired by the make-up designed by Jack Pierce for
Boris Karloff in James Whale’s 1931 Frankenstein flm, which is an accu-
mulation of previous visual interpretations of the monster back to Richard
Brinsely Peake’s 1823 stage production Presumption; or, The Fate of Frank-
enstein, which adapts Mary Shelley’s novel. All these texts exist simultane-
ously in yet autonomously from Franken-Castle, and the reader need only
have experience with a few texts to understand the reference.
The creation scene is one of the most adapted aspects of Frankenstein.
Though Mary Shelley’s novel only spends three paragraphs on it (35–36;
Vol. 1 Ch. IV), it has become a visual centerpiece since its earliest stage
adaptations. Remender and artist Tony Moore invert this by illustrating the
scene from Franken-Castle’s point of view. The page begins with black pan-
els overlaid by speech bubbles until his eyes open, then attacking his would-
be saviors until the Punisher sees his new abject form in a mirror (Punisher
Vol. 8 #11 14–17). Susan Tyler Hitchcock describes the visual characteristics
commonly associated with Frankenstein’s monster as: “green skin, stitched
scars, fat skull edged with black hair, big shoulders, oversize hands, thick-
soled feet, and bolts attached to the neck or temples” (9). Switch the green
skin for gray and add some tubes and metal plating, and it is easy to imagine
how Franken-Castle appears.
Yet, because the image is familiar, Franken-Castle is not innately hor-
rifying. When Werewolf by Night (Jack Russell) declares “This here is an
actual monster” (Remender and Moore, Punisher Vol. 8 #11 14), he is not
186 John Darowski
referring to Franken-Castle’s appearance – which would have indicted him-
self and his fellow members of the Legion of Monsters – but the Punisher’s
vicious character. However, while the Punisher had to be coldly calculat-
ing and methodical because he could be injured, Franken-Castle’s undead
body is repairable, allowing him to fght with more brute force. There is a
trade-off, though; Franken-Castle must regularly take medicine or his mind
will degrade. He is not the man he used to be and will have to change his
tactics – that is, if Franken-Castle is willing to join the fght.
Franken-Castle initially refuses the call to action to defend Monster
Metropolis. The city’s situation echoes the American monomyth: a harmo-
nious community threatened by evil in need of a savior. But it subverts the
traditional monster narrative as the citizens of the community look mon-
strous but are innocent. Franken-Castle does not recognize this until he sees
that these monsters are capable of love. Remender explains:
Then in ‘Punisher’ #12 we saw a moloid stumble into his [Franken-

Castle’s] cave and offer him a candy bar. That simple moment of kind-
ness when Frank was at his lowest would do a lot because it wasn’t
somebody going out of their way or putting on some pageantry to win
him over. It was a genuine act of kindness from a kid and it woke some-
thing up in Frank.
(Richards, “Remender Hunts . . .”)
That simple act sparks empathy in Franken-Castle and serves as a reminder

that there is a corollary to his mission to punish the wicked: protect the
innocent. When the moloid kid is killed in front of him by Hellgaard’s forces
(Remender and Moore, Punisher Vol. 8 #12 30–31), he knows who needs
to be punished.
Robert Hellsgaard is a foil for Franken-Castle. Remender explains: “The
idea for Hellsgaard is that he’s a mirror refection of Frank, and ultimately
it puts him in a precarious situation and forces him to look at some of the
inherent hypocrisies in his war on crime” (Richards, “Remender Hunts . . .”).
Unlike Franken-Castle, Hellsgaard appearance is horrifying: a foating head
in green liquid contained within a giant steampunk armor. As revealed in
Punisher Vol. 8 #14, Hellsgaard is a traditional monster hunter from 1898
Germany. When he discovers that his family and fellow villagers have been
turned into werewolves, he kills them all. He then joins Ulysses Bloodstone9
in a quest to destroy all monsters, designing the armor as well as a portal
to Limbo where they can trap their foes. Instead, Dracula traps Hellsgaard
in Limbo for 70 years, until he is rescued by Yamato Takahashi in 1978.
Yamato views Hellsgaard as a messianic father of the monster hunting sci-
ence they need to defeat the kaiju attacking Japan. But once the kaiju were
conquered, they continued their crusade, becoming more fanatic in their
visual defnition of monstrosity. This reinforces a supposed patriarchal
Franken-Castle 187
hegemony wherein anything that looks different becomes othered: “They
hunted morlocks and mutants and eventually made their way to simply
killing disfgured people” (Remender and Brereton 26). But society’s values
had changed throughout the twentieth century, and it is Hellsgaard’s morals
that have become monstrous, refected in his decaying visage. The Hunter
of Monster Special Forces now seeks the Bloodstone, held by the Legion
of Monsters, to restore Hellgaard’s human form; but it cannot restore his
humanity.
What Hellsgaard fails to recognize is that his type of hegemonic mascu-
linity is impossible for any one person to perform, and surrounding him-
self with like-minded soldiers does not help. Masculinity has fragmented
and requires a community for a holistic performance. Such a community
is found in the Legion of Monsters: the scientifc Dr. Michael Morbius, the
Living Vampire; the philosophical Living Mummy (N’Kantu); the silent
yet mystical Man-Thing (Ted Sallis); the hard-bodied Werewolf by Night;
and the father Manphibian – who sees his children killed by Hellsgaard
(Remender and Moore, Punisher Vol. 8 #12 4).10 It is as a community of
monster hunters that they are able to keep each other from falling back on
their worse impulses, even Franken-Castle. And it is together that they are
able to defeat Hellsgaard, trapping him in Limbo without his armor, and
reclaim the Bloodstone.
As per Eco, the Punisher must return to his mythic gestalt of warring
on criminals. After the Bloodstone fully heals Castle back to his human
form, he returns to New York to begin his crusade again. But that does not
mean he has forgotten the lessons he learned from being Franken-Castle. In
Punisher: In the Blood (#1–5 [Jan. to May 2011]) by Remender and artists
Roland Boschi and Michele Bertilorenzi, Castle learns that hacker Henry is
the son of his disfgured foe Jigsaw (William Russo). The Punisher fghts not
only to defeat Jigsaw but also to rescue Henry from his father’s infuence
because Henry is an innocent. Even Castle’s subsequent terse rejection of
Henry’s continued help, saving the young man from a violent lifestyle, is an
act of empathy and mercy.
“I’ve fought Frankenstein – and you, sir, are no Frankenstein,” states
Ulysses Bloodstone’s daughter Elsa as she fghts to reclaim the Bloodstone
from the Punisher (Remender and Brereton, Franken-Castle #21 (Nov.
2010).11 And she is correct. Franken-Castle only visually adapts Franken-
stein, but this does not deny his monstrosity. Nor is it the last time the Pun-
isher would be transformed; in a possible future, Frank Castle will become
the Cosmic Ghost Rider.12 The Punisher transgresses categorical distinctions
as a chaotic agent of order, both seeking to stabilize society by eliminating
criminals and acting as a destabilizing force due to his excessively violent
methods. He patrols the border between good and evil, but, as has become
the case with many monsters, which side of the border he belongs to is open
to interpretation.
188 John Darowski
Notes
1 Superheroes exist in an eternal present, with most origins and subsequent adven-
tures happening within a sliding time scale of 5 to 10 years in the past. This
means that when stories are tied to historical events, their continuity is retroac-
tively edited, or “retconned,” to ft the time scale. Thus, Frank Castle’s military
service was regularly updated from Vietnam to the Gulf War and other Middle
East conficts. In History of the Marvel Universe #2 (Oct. 2019), this has been
changed to the fctional southeast Asian Sin-Cong Confict: “To accommodate
for the passage of time, some Marvel Universe references of character involve-
ment in the Vietnam War have been retroactively reftted to be the Sin-Cong
Confict; the Vietnam War remains a world event that took place from 1955–
1977 in the Marvel Universe as well as it did in reality. Therefore due to the
retroactive continuity, some in-story presentations of Marvel characters in the
Vietnam War should be considered depictions of the Sin-Cong Confict” (Waid
and Rodríguez 43).
2 Comic book writer Kurt Busiek defnes the conventions of the superhero genre
as superpowers, costume, code name, secret identity, heroic ongoing mission,
and superhero milieu. He adds: “If a character has three of those six, he or she
is probably a superhero” (133). The Punisher does not meet this criteria even
though he has a costume and codename and exists in a superhero milieu because,
though his mission may beneft society, his methods should not be considered as
being heroic.
3 Rick Remender began his tenure on the Punisher by co-writing Punisher War
Journal Vol. 2 #19–25 (July 2008 to Jan. 2009) with writer Matt Fraction and
artist Howard Chaykin. Remender began solo writing duties on Punisher Vol.
8 with artist Jerome Opeña (#1–5 [Mar. to July 2009]), Tan Eng Huat (#6–10
[Aug. to Dec. 2009]), Jason Pearson (Punisher Annual #1 [Nov. 2009]), John
Romita Jr. (Dark Reign: The List – Punisher #1 [Dec. 2009]), Tony Moore (#11–
14 [Jan. to Apr. 2010], #16 [June 2010]), and Roland Boschi (#15 [May 2010]).
Artists on Fraken-Castle included Roland Boschi (#17 [Aug. 2010]), Jefté Palo
(#18 [Aug. 2010]), and Tony Moore (#19–20 [Sept. to Nov. 2010]; these issues
crossed over with Dark Wolverine #89–90 [Sept. to Oct. 2010] by writers Dan-
iel Way and Marjorie Liu and pencilers Stephen Segovia and Paco Diaz), and
Dan Bereton (#21 [Nov. 2010]). Remender completed his run with the fve-part
mini-series Punisher: In the Blood with artists Roland Boschi (#1–2 [Jan. to Feb.
2011], #4–5 [Apr. to May 2011]) and Michele Bertilorenzi (#3 [Mar. 2011]).
4 Mario Puzo’s The Godfather (1969) and its 1972 flm adaptation and sequels
by Francis Ford Coppola glamorized organized crime and the Mafa. Death
Wish, about vigilante violence, is often pointed to as an inspiration for the
Punisher. Though the book by Brian Garfeld was published in 1972, the story
did not become popular until Michael Winner’s flm adaptation was released
in July 1974, several months after the Punisher’s frst appearance. First Blood
(1972) by David Morrell introduced the character of John Rambo and explored
his violent PTSD after Vietnam. Again, it did not become popular until after its
1982 flm adaptation by Ted Kocheff. In Marvel Comics in the 1970s (2011),
Pierre Comtois points to The Destroyer book series (1971 to present), created
by Warren Murphey and Richard Sapir, as a likely inspiration (157). However,
though the level of violence may be similar, protagonist Remo Williams’ turn
from framed cop to government assassin bears little resemblance to the Punisher.
5 Gerry Conway had sketched the Punisher to include a small skull logo on one
side of the chest. Marvel art director John Romita Sr. is responsible for enlarging
the skull to the full-torso look (Sacks 126).
Franken-Castle 189
6 Before playing Dirty Harry, Clint Eastwood rose to fame as the Man with No
Name in Sergio Leone’s spaghetti western trilogy: A Fistful of Dollars (1964), A
Few Dollars More (1965), and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966).
7 The Punisher next appeared in The Amazing Spider-Man #135 (Aug. 1974),
followed by Giant-Size Spider-Man #4 (Apr. 1975); The Amazing Spider-Man
#161–162 (Oct. to Nov. 1976), #174–175 (Nov. to Dec. 1977), #201–202
(Feb. to Mar. 1980); The Amazing Spider-Man Annual #15 (Oct. 1981); and
Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man #78–79 (May to June 1983). He also
appeared in Marvel Preview #2 (Aug. 1975), Captain America #241 (Jan. 1980),
and Daredevil #181–184 (Apr. to July 1982).
8 The Secret Invasion event (Jan. 2008 to Jan. 2009) revealed that the shape-
shifting extraterrestrial Skrulls had been infltrating Earth for years by taking the
place of various superheroes and villains in preparation to invade in earnest and
make the planet their new homeworld. The main story was told in the mini-series
Secret Invasion #1–8 (June 2008 to Jan. 2009) by writer Brian Michael Bendis
and penciler Leinil Francis Yu, but also ran through several Marvel titles. The
invasion ended when Norman Osborn assassinated the Skrull queen.
9 Ulysses Bloodstone was created by writer John Warner and penciler Mike Vos-
burg. He frst appeared in Marvel Presents #1 (Oct, 1975).
10 Dr. Michael Morbius frst appeared in The Amazing Spider-Man #101 (Oct.
1971) by writer Roy Thomas and penciler Gil Kane. Despite the Comics Code –
the industry-wide self-censoring guide to content adopted in 1954 – being revised
earlier in 1971 to allow vampires, ghouls, and werewolves, Morbius became
a living vampire due to a scientifc process gone wrong. The Living Mummy
frst appeared in Supernatural Thrillers #5 (Aug. 1973) by writer Steve Gerber
and penciler Rich Buckler. Man-Thing was created by writers Roy Thomas and
Gerry Conway and artist Gray Morrow in Savage Tales #1 (May 1971). Suffer-
ing from a family curse of lycanthropy, Jack Russell became the Werewolf by
Night in Marvel Spotlight #2 (Feb. 1972) by writers Roy Thomas, Jean Thomas,
and Gerry Conway and artist Mike Ploog. The extraterrestrial Manphibian was
created by writers Mike Wolfman and Tony Isabella and penciler Dave Cockrum
in Legion of Monsters #1 (Sept. 1975).
11 Frankenstein’s monster is part of the Marvel Universe, frst appearing in The
Monster of Frankenstein #1 (Jan. 1973), written by Gary Friedrich and penciled
by Mike Ploog.
12 The Cosmic Ghost Rider frst appeared in Thanos Vol. 2 #13 (Jan. 2018), written
by Donny Cates and penciled by Geoff Shaw.
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Part IV
Horror Comic Books and

Philosophy
16 Dylan Dog’s Nightmares
The Unheimlich Experience
of the Doppelgänger in Dylan
Dog’s World
Marco Favaro
Dylan Dog, widely known as “l’Indagatore dell’Incubo” (“Nightmare Inves-

tigator”), made his debut in October 1986 with “L’Alba dei Morti Viventi”
(“Dawn of the Living Dead”), a tribute to George A. Romero’s flm Dawn
of the Dead (1978). Dylan Dog #2, “Jack lo Squartatore” (“Jack the Rip-
per”), was published the following month. Created by Tiziano Sclavi, Dylan
is a private detective who lives and works in London. His job is to investi-
gate the paranormal, the horror in all its manifestations. Actor Rupert Ever-
ett inspired Tiziano Sclavi and the illustrator Claudio Villa for the look of
their character.1 All the elements that characterised a Dylan Dog’s comic are
already present in the frst two issues: the unmistakable look (jeans, black
jacket, and red shirt); his assistant Groucho; the old, broken Beetle (license
plate: DYD 666); the small galleon model, always unfnished; and, of course,
the young woman that Dylan will successfully seduce during the story. How-
ever different Dylan Dog’s adventures may be, the reader will always fnd
these familiar elements. Dylan Dog, still published today, has not changed.
A typical and recurring aspect in Dylan Dog is the dreamlike dimension of
his stories. His work as a Nightmare Investigator already suggests a direct con-
nection with the dreamworld. Dylan Dog’s adventures are “suspended in time”:
they seem like a dream in which Dylan suddenly fnds himself, without remem-
bering how it began. It is not unusual for the character to wake up in a strange
world, like in a distant future (Sclavi et al. “L’ultimo Uomo sulla Terra” [“The
Last Man on Earth”]), on a ship in the middle of the infnite ocean (Recchioni
et al.), or in London completely asleep, surrounded by an eternal night (La Neve
et al.). Like a dream, Dylan’s London is populated by strange creatures: ghosts,
goblins, vampires, zombies, and witches (see Figure 16.5). However, thanks to
this dreamlike atmosphere, these creatures are not just a horrifc expression of
a supernatural and inhuman power but can be seen as being symbols of the
human psyche, masks behind which the subconscious hides, and Jungian shad-
ows that conceal the most terrible aspects of the human being.
These monsters are not “Others”; they are not inhuman creatures that
break into the human world. Instead, they already hide among us – they
are us. The monster is our double, our Doppelgänger, the part of us we
refuse and reject. The encounter with the monster is then not just scary or
terrifying, but unheimlich, uncanny, as Sigmund Freud describes the word:
DOI: 10.4324/9781003261551-20
196 Marco Favaro
un-heimisch, not-familiar (3), but at the same time un-heimlich, not-secret,
also well-known (6–9). Dylan Dog’s monsters are not simply strange and
evil creatures. On the contrary, they have something familiar (un-heimlich
indeed), which is repressed because it scares us. Maybe this is the reason
why often, while investigating a new case, Dylan experiences a déjà vu – a
tingling of his “ffth and a half sense,” as he calls it. The unheimlich in Dylan
Dog’s stories will be analysed by considering, with the help of Freud and
Jung’s concepts, the monstrous creatures that inhabit Dylan’s world as Dop-
pelgänger, mirrored images of the human being.
Nightmares
In London, at Craven Road no. 7, the sign on the door says: “Dylan Dog.
L’Indagatore dell’Incubo.” Inside the apartment, Dylan adds a piece to his
model galleon, while his assistant Groucho is strangely quiet and does not
annoy him with terrible jokes – like: “why ‘separated’ is written all together
and ‘all together’ is written separated?” (Ruju and Dall’Agnol 33).2 Sud-
denly, a scream breaks the silence: “Uaaarg!” It is only the doorbell, which
announces a new client. This is the way a new Dylan Dog adventure usually
starts, a new nightmare. The client asks Dylan to solve a mystery: perhaps a
series of murders (Sclavi and Casertano); maybe the appearance of a ghost
(Ruju and Bigliardo); or a corpse that comes back to life (Sclavi and Stano,
“L’Alba dei Morti Viventi”). Dylan must investigate an inexplicable horror
to which he must fnd an answer.
Dylan is not just a monster slayer. He frequently fghts against witches,
vampires, and various horrendous creatures, but his job is primarily to inves-
tigate: he must understand and fnd a meaning for the nightmare in which he
fnds himself. The word “nightmare,” “incubo,” which defnes Dylan’s feld
of actions, does not just indicate something frightful and monstrous, but its
connection with the dream world must be considered (see Figure 16.1). An
incŭbus is a monstrous creature, a demon who lies on the sleeper. In English,
the word “nightmare” has the same root: a “mare” is a malicious entity that
sits on people’s chests while they sleep. Like in a dream, the strange creatures
whom Dylan meets during his adventures are not just supernatural horrors
but also symbols and manifestations of the human’s psyche. They are not
“inhuman” monsters, but rather monstrous masks behind which the most
dreadful aspects of the human being are hidden.
The enigma’s solution is never granted. Sometimes, Dylan faces an authen-
tic monster; sometimes he fnds out that the horror was not supernatural but
rather human, all too human. Like in a dream, in Dylan’s world, things are not
what they look like: the monster can be something familiar, while a friendly
face can hide a terrible and unacceptable truth. Dylan’s task is to go beyond the
appearance, however frightening and terrifying it is, to fnd out what it hides.
The story does not always start with a screaming doorbell. Although the
narrative structure generally remains unchanged (which allows us to con-
sider a limited sample of works as being “representative” of all of them), it
Dylan Dog’s Nightmares 197
Figure 16.1 Dylan faces the personifcation of nightmare. The character of Dylan
Dog has been created by Tiziano Sclavi.
Source: Art by Piero Dall’Agnol. © Sergio Bonelli Editore.
is not uncommon for Dylan to fnd himself, just like in a dream, in a world
suddenly “gone mad.” In “L’Ultimo Uomo sulla Terra” (“The Last Man on
Earth”), Dylan wakes up in a deserted London, a dystopic future in which a
common cold exterminated humanity (Sclavi et al.). In “Il Settimo Girone”
(“The Seventh Circle of Hell”), he is trapped together with four other char-
acters in a temporal fragment, where everything around them is repeated in
a loop, without interruption (Barbato and Roi). In these cases, the dreamlike
element and the link with the dream – always present, it should be empha-
sised – are even more evident than in other stories (see Figure 16.2).
One of the most emblematic examples is “Notte senza Fine” (“Endless
Night”), where the Nightmare Investigator suddenly awakes in an entirely
198 Marco Favaro
Figure 16.2 Nightmares are bulletproof! The character of Dylan Dog has been cre-
ated by Tiziano Sclavi.
sleeping London where all the dreams of Londoners come to life. The only
insomniacs are Dylan and a dangerous murderer, who kills because he can-
not sleep: “I’m not evil. It’s just that I can’t sleep” (La Neve et al. 5). How-
ever, the killer is not responsible for the “Sleeping Beauty” curse upon the
city. In fact, it will be discovered that it is Dylan himself who has uninten-
tionally plunged all of London into a deep sleep. The dreams which escape
people’s minds are the most diverse: faceless angels, crazy clowns, talking
pizzas. To solve the mystery, Dylan must deal with the symbols of his psyche
by facing, for example, all the (numerous) women from his past, who can
be seen as a representation of his Anima, a term that Jung uses to describe
the unconscious feminine side of a man. In the end, he must plunge into the
darkness, which suddenly becomes liquid: “it’s liquid, like water . . . a river
of dark water!” (La Neve et al. 87). Only by diving into the deep of this river,
a symbolic representation of the unconscious – “Water is the commonest
symbol for the unconscious” (Jung 34) – can Dylan solve the case.
Shadows
Not all Dylan’s stories are as crazy and almost surrealistic as “Notte senza
Fine,” but this connection with the dream world never abandons the
Dylandogian world. Like a dream, or like a mythological tale, the characters
and the creatures that populate Dylan’s London can be easily seen as being
archetypes of the collective unconscious. Groucho, Dylan’s assistant and
Groucho Marx’s carbon copy, has many characteristics of the trickster (see
Figure 16.3). The numerous girls with whom Dylan falls in love from time
to time (and who are all in front of him in the long dream of “Notte senza
Fine”) can be read as being representatives of the archetype of the Anima.
It is not possible to go into the details of all potential archetypal interpreta-
tions of the numerous characters of Dylan Dog, so the focus will be on the
role of Dylan himself and on the monsters that appear in his adventures.
Joseph L. Henderson highlights a “crucial link between the archaic or
primitive myths and the symbols produced by the unconscious” (109). The
Figure 16.3 Dylan Dog and his loyal assistant Groucho. The character of Dylan Dog
has been created by Tiziano Sclavi.
Source: Art by Angelo Stano. © Sergio Bonelli Editore.
200 Marco Favaro
battle between hero and monster is one of the most recurrent mythological
symbols. In the encounter-confrontation between Dylan and the monster, be
it a vampire, a demon, or a “common” murderer, the same symbolic battle is
found. “Usually, in mythology, the hero wins his battle against the monster”
(Henderson 120). However, in the mythological tale, as well as in Dylan Dog
adventures, it is not about defeating and killing the monster – as was already
stated, Dylan is not a monster slayer – but rather it is about understanding
the monster, thus discovering the disturbing similarity between monster and
hero. Henderson continues:
The hero . . . must realize that the shadow exists and that he can draw
strength from it. He must come to terms with its destructive powers if
he is to become suffciently terrible to overcome the dragon, i.e., before
the ego can triumph, it must master and assimilate the shadow.
(120–121)
To defeat the monster, a symbolic representation of the shadow, the hero

must become a shadow himself; or, more precisely, he must become aware
that the monster is a manifestation of his shadow and that defeating him
means assimilating him, accepting his own dark side.
The two contenders only seem to be opposed, but actually they are a
refection of each other. Angelo Brelich in Gli Eroi Greci (The Greek Heroes
[1958]) states:
The fght between the hero and his opponent is not a fght between
two characters with different, or even opposite, natures, qualities or
ranks. On the contrary, it is a fght between two heroes, who have the
same “good,” “bad,” “positive” and “negative” qualities, who are both
“superhuman” and “monstrous.”
(Brelich 218)
Brelich clarifes that the monster – the “other” par excellence – is not just
“evil” as it appears at a frst and superfcial reading, but it is a more complex
fgure (216–221). In the dream world of Dylan’s London, the monstrous
creatures in it are not only “the Other,” the inhuman that the hero must
defeat, but rather symbols and archetypes of the human, aspects of human
personality, which are repressed and rejected to the point of appearing as
external monsters. “Through dreams one becomes acquainted with aspects
of one’s own personality that for various reasons one has preferred not to
look at too closely. This is what Jung called ‘the realization of the shadow’ ”
(Von Franz 168). Dylan is the Hero. The monsters he faces are the mani-
festations of the shadow: of Dylan’s shadow, but especially in Dylan Dog’s
horror comics, we can deal with our “dark side,” the shadow of man and
society (see Figure 16.4).
Figure 16.4 A familiar scene: Dylan is fghting a zombie. The character of Dylan
Source: Art by Angelo Stano. © Sergio Bonelli Editore.
“The meeting with oneself is, at frst, the meeting with one’s own shadow”
(37), writes Jung in The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (1969).
The shadow is a repressed and rejected part of the personality, which
appears as a “monster,” something to cast out. For this reason, Jung writes
that “the meeting with ourselves belongs to the most unpleasant things that
can be avoided as long as we can project everything negative into the envi-
ronment” (36), explaining why a part of us appears as something external
and monstrous. However, the shadow is not horrifc alone. The qualities,
which are repressed and – for this reason – take shape outside, are not nec-
essarily negative – just like, as Brelich highlights, the monster is not neces-
sarily evil. “Just as the ego contains unfavourable and destructive attitudes,
so the shadow has good qualities – normal instincts and creative impulses”
(Henderson 118).
202 Marco Favaro
The story “La Casa dei Fantasmi” (“The Haunted House”) is emblematic:
in a mansion infested with ghosts, the monsters are actually the victims of
Walt, the sadistic, murderous houseowner. To stop him, Dylan is helped by
Walt himself, by the ghost – the shadow – of the good part of Walt’s per-
sonality: “Maybe, one of the victims of Walt’s madness was himself . . . his
human, rational side. . . . And that side comes back as a ghost to stop him
before he could kill again” (Ruju and Bigliardo 97). The fact that the mon-
strum is not necessarily the evil creature is evident for Dylan, who never pays
attention to appearances and prejudice; even in front of the most horrifc
beings, he tries to understand them rather than condemning them. In “Dal
Profondo” (“From the Deep”), he feels sorry for the sad creature from the
sewer. He even tries to help Janet, the homicidal maniac for whom he took
the case (even if she tries several times to kill him!): “Janet! No! W-We are
friends . . . you are even my client!” (Sclavi and Roi 87). Another example is
“Il Tunnel dell’Orrore” (“The Tunnel of Terror”) in which Dylan accepts a
case from Clint Callaghan, a young boy, who, after committing an unjusti-
fed massacre, barricaded himself in his hometown’s tunnel of terror with
a young girl as a hostage. While the Army has orders to kill Clint on sight,
Dylan tries to save both him and the hostage by investigating the reasons
behind Clint’s terrible actions, which Clint himself does not know. He will
discover that the killer is also a victim of Dottor Hicks (Sclavi et al.), an old
acquaintance of Dylan and a recurring villain in Dylan Dog’s adventures.
The shadow, however frightening, can also be positive, at least in part.
In “Il Ritorno del Mostro” (“The Return of the Monster”), the gigantic
Damien seems a classic monster: incredibly strong, impervious to pain,
crazy, and ready to kill. He was found guilty of slaughter years before
Dylan meets him and imprisoned in Harlech’s criminal asylum. However,
he was innocent: the actual slayer was Leonora Steele, considered to be
the sole survivor. Leonora repressed the traumatic memory of killing her
whole family, and she even hires Dylan to protect her against Damien when
he escaped. Finally, in the end, Leonora remembers what happens: “That
night, sixteen years ago, I killed them all, except Damien. . . . Damien was
good, he couldn’t hurt a fy” (Sclavi and Piccatto 93–94). The reason behind
the massacre is the love between Leonora and Damien, a love that Leon-
ora’s parents cannot accept because of Damien’s mental illness. For this
reason, Leonora killed them all. In a last attempt to save Leonora’s secret,
Damien sacrifces himself in vain. The following Von Franz’s quote per-
fectly describes Damien as a shadow:
Whether the shadow becomes our friend or enemy depends largely upon
ourselves. . . . The shadow becomes hostile only when he is ignored
or misunderstood. Sometimes, though not often, an individual feels
impelled to live out the worse side of his nature and to repress his better
side. In such cases the shadow appears as a positive fgure in his dreams.
(173)
Figure 16.5 Dylan talks with his trusted friend, Inspector Bloch, while a witch fies
above their heads. The character of Dylan Dog has been created by
Tiziano Sclavi.
204 Marco Favaro
Damien, who “could not hurt a fy” (93), ends up being a violent killer
because he was rejected and misunderstood by Leonora’s family. If he had
been accepted, the love between Leonora and Daniel would not have caused
the birth of two monsters. In “Il Ritorno del Mostro,” the roles of mon-
ster and victim are confused and uncertain. Damien turns into a monster
because everyone believes him to be such, while Leonora, the real murder-
ess, represses the memory of her actions and considers herself the victim. In
the end, Damien is killed, and Leonora chooses to die with him. The “mon-
sters” are defeated, but it is a bitter and provisory victory. The shadow can-
not be erased. Even if it is “killed,” it remains a part of the personality – even
if they are asleep, the demons continue to live and can always awaken. It is
precisely in the attempt to defeat and exile it that the shadow is strengthened
until it takes physical shape and looks like a Doppelgänger.
Doppelgänger
The rejection of one’s shadow can be such that it begins to be perceived as
a separate entity, “the Other.” When that happens, the shadow becomes a
double. Dostoevsky cleverly describes the experience of the double in one
of his frst novels, titled Двойник (Dvojnik – The Double [1846]). The main
character, Golijadkin, is hunted by his Doppelgänger: he hates him; he fghts
and rejects him; and yet he keeps following him and looking for him. In the
beginning, he even embraces his dvojnik with sincere affection. He opens up
to him and sees him as a brother. The double is hated and loved in the same
way a brother can be hated and loved; we hate and love the double as we
hate and love ourselves. Enrico Guglielmetti writes about this topic by par-
tially quoting Derrida: “the ‘double, the twin’ is my enemy; but my enemy is
my brother: ‘The friend and the enemy merge in the brother.’ After all, ‘the
enemy is oneself, I am my own enemy.’ ” (148) (see Figure 16.6).
The Doppelgänger is the double who “walks” with me (Gänger: the one
who is going); he is our “travelling companion” (Alessandrini 39), a shadow
that follows us. However, even if it appears different – “other” – the Dop-
pelgänger is like us; it shows us aspects of ourselves that we reject. “Exter-
nal or internal, the Double is always an aggregate of emotions that have
remained frozen in their undeveloped state, and as such hidden within dis-
torted features” (Alessandrini, 17). “Frozen emotions” are deep emotional
states, which are repressed and rejected because they scare. In this way, the
double is seen not only as being “other,” different, but also as the same.
Marco Alessandrini states:
The external Double, even if identical to oneself, is Other. Moreover,

like our deep and internal emotions, the external Double – even if it is
the most evident reference of ourselves, the clearest matrix and the face
identical to us – remains at the same time outside of ourselves.
(52)
Figure 16.6 Dylan meets his Doppelgänger! The character of Dylan Dog has been
created by Tiziano Sclavi.
Source: Art by Luigi Piccatto. © Sergio Bonelli Editore.
The shadow, which cannot be erased, is rejected outside and receives a physi-
cal body. Paradoxically, it is by refusing the shadow that the Doppelgänger is
created: this “dark side” of our personality takes shape and becomes “other”
because it is rejected. That explains the strange relationship of attraction
and repulsion and of distance and closeness: the double is me, but it is a part
of me that I refuse, from which I want to detach myself and escape.
Even the most horrible creatures faced by Dylan can be revealed as dou-
ble of ordinary human beings, the personifcation of their shadows. To be a
double does not mean necessarily a physical resemblance.
Symbol of universal dualism and expression of the eternal values of

life, the “double” is interpreted as the liberation of the Evil hidden in
the depths of man and things. It appears as a monster, golem, vampire,
206 Marco Favaro
werewolf, android etc., whereas it is a phenomenon that concerns the
human.
(Spina 253)
The monster is then not the Other, but it is the same as the human. It does
not come from the outside, but it is born inside, a Jungian shadow.
In fction, the Doppelgänger is the hero’s shadow, his “dark side.” Dylan
Dog often faces enemies who are mirror copies of himself, like his homony-
mous in “Il Monastero” (“The Monastery” [Chiaverotti and Freghieri]) or
the dangerous assassin in “La Sfda” (“The Challenge” [Chiaverotti et al.]).
However, the most emblematic relationship of this dualism is undoubt-
edly that with Xabaras. “Xabaras is an anagram of Abraxas, one of Devil’s
names,” explains Dylan to his client in “L’Alba dei Morti Viventi” (Sclavi
and Stano 24). Is Xabaras the Devil, the Evil incarnate? There is already an
ambiguity: in fact, the name Abraxas indicates, according to Jung, not the
devil but a divinity superior to the God-Devil dichotomy, which unites the
two principles of Good and Evil:
This is a God you knew nothing about because mankind forgot him.
We call him by his name ABRAXAS. He is even more indefnite than
God and the devil. To distinguish him from God, we call God HELlOS
or sun . . . Abraxas stands above the sun and above the devil. He is
improbable probability, which takes unreal effect. If the Pleroma had an
essence, Abraxas would be its manifestation. . . . From the sun he draws
the summum bonum; from the devil the infnum malum; but from
Abraxas LIFE, altogether indefnite, the mother of good and evil. . . .
What the Sun God speaks is life, what the devil speaks is death. But
Abraxas speaks that hallowed and accursed word that is at once life
and death. Abraxas produces truth and lying, good and evil, light and
darkness, in the same word and in the same act. Therefore, Abraxas is
terrible.
(The Red Book 349–350)
Abraxas is not just “evil,” exactly like the shadow is not simply negative.
Abraxas’ ambiguity lies in the fact that it is “beyond good and evil,” as
Nietzsche would write.3 Abraxas cannot be interpreted with the usual and
reassuring good–evil dichotomy. Like Jungian Abraxas, Xabaras possesses
the power of life and death: he has discovered the secret of immortality and
uses the secret of life and death to bring corpses back to life. However, his
ambiguity is even more evident in his relationship with Dylan. Xabaras is
not only Dylan’s Doppelgänger but also his father, as revealed in “La Storia
di Dylan Dog” (“The Story of Dylan Dog” [Sclavi and Stano]). More pre-
cisely, he is the shadow of Dylan’s father, the dark side who took over. The
archetype of the double overlaps in Xabaras with that of the fairy tales’
father-ogre. Xabaras is both father and monster, his own shadow, God and
Devil, life and death (see Figure 16.7).
Using a Freudian concept, the relationship between Dylan and Xabaras
and, more generally, the relationship with the double can be described as
unheimlich, usually translated as uncanny. Freud uses the fgure of the Dop-
pelgänger as an example for his analysis of the word (17–19): he described
this psychological disturbance as being caused by what is strange, alien,
un-heimisch (not-familiar [3]), but at the same time, it is also known, close,
un-heimlich (not-secret [6–9]). Dina De Rentiis writes about it by referring
to Jentsch that “unheimlich is a narrowing of what is evident with its oppo-
site. It leads simultaneously and equivalently to the necessity and possibility
of an application (to a de-confguration) of a way of thinking applied in an
obvious way” (100). The familiar and its opposite coincide and create an
aporia that is unsolvable. It is the same aporia that characterises the rela-
tionship with the Jungian shadow: “Freud calls the double the Uncanny. . . .
He writes that “unheimlich was once heimisch, familiar”. . . . Even Jung . . .
talked about negative and repressed elements, which he called Shadow,
which is similar to an actual double (Alessandrini 65–66) (see Figure 16.7).
Figure 16.7 Xabaras, between good and evil, life and death. The character of Dylan
Source: Art by Tiziano Sclavi. © Sergio Bonelli Editore.
208 Marco Favaro
The ambiguous and paradoxical relationship with the double, with the
shadow, highlights the ambiguous and paradoxical relationship with one-
self, what disturbs me – what I want to remain different, other – is part of
what I am, of what is close to me, familiar. If my hatred and contempt for a
part of me generates the double, this cannot prevent me from refecting on
it, recognising it as equal to me and, consequently, feeling affection and even
love for it. This paradox reaches its extreme in the relationship between
Dylan and Xabaras: Dylan’s archenemy, the monster, is also his father; he is
the other, but he is also the same. Xabaras himself is not only the Devil but
also God. He is not only death, but also life.
Xabaras is the most complex example in Dylan Dog’s narrative, but he
is not the only one. The numerous, more or less monstrous creatures often
play the Doppelgänger’s role, sometimes of Dylan, but not of his alone.
In “Memorie dall’ Invisibile” (“Memories from the Invisible World”), for
example, the monstrum,4 the invisible man, is the double of the journalist
Coldwater, one of the story’s numerous killers of prostitutes.
Oh brother . . . my brother, I fnally found you . . . it’s me, do you not

recognize me? . . . Mom always mistook me for you . . . she will cry,
poor little mother, for your death, even if you become a monster . . . (a
monster . . . Just like me . . .)
(Scalvi and Casertano 93)
are the invisible man’s last words and thoughts while he kills his brother,
before dying with him. “Memorie dall’Invisibile” is a complex game of mir-
rors and exchange of roles in which a monstrum is shadow and double of
another monster.
Many examples have been considered: the two lovers Leonora and Dam-
ien, victims and executioners at once; Dylan and Xabaras, hero and vil-
lain, father and son; the invisible man and the serial killer, the supernatural
monstrum and the real one, freaks and brothers. In Dylan Dog’s world, the
monsters are never just manifestations of the evil, of the “other,” of the inhu-
mane. Behind them, there is always something different and disturbingly
familiar, frightening, and horrible precisely because it is common and close
to us. The human is hidden behind them.
Just Human
The fght against the Doppelgänger is a lost battle. The more the double is
rejected, the stronger it becomes. Defeating the double means accepting it:
the shadow, the emotional states I wanted to reject, become once again part
of me. “The shadow is a living part of the personality and therefore wants
to live with it in some form. It cannot be argued out of existence or ration-
alized into harmlessness” (Jung, “The Archetypes . . .,” 36). The double is
the external representation of the internal shadow: defeating it does not
mean erasing it but instead becoming it. The only alternative is an endless
struggle against it without a possibility of escape: one cannot escape from
oneself.
Behind the frightening monster’s mask, the human reveals itself. The
“monster” is only a way to conceal and exorcise the “evil” that lurks in man
and society, terrible and frightening because it is “banal” and ordinary. One
example is the dramatic story of “Johnny Freak”5 in which the “other” –
the “freak” – is the victim of his “very normal” family of wealthy bour-
geois.6 Johnny is an unwanted child whose natural father ran away. Both
the mother and her new husband hate Johnny: “Johnny was not ours!. . . .
Martha was pregnant when we married, pregnant by the usual rascal who
never showed up again. . . . Nobody wanted the boy . . . we hated him . . .”
(Sclavi et al. 81). The father is horrifying, the perfect representative of the
“banality of evil”; he is careful not to use profanity (“rascal”) while describ-
ing the horror that he, his wife, and their favourite son have committed
against Johnny. The couple rages against their “different” son – Johnny is
hearing impaired – forcing him to live like an animal and keeping him alive
only to be able to use him as an “organ bank” to save his sadistic brother
Dougal, the “normal,” favourite son, who is affected by a rare disease that
erodes his internal organs.
Once again, the “freak” is just a mask behind which the real horror hides,
human and “banal.” The monster, seen as the evil that endangers the human
order, resembles the sacrifcial victim of the primitive rituals. The sacrif-
cial victim’s role was to die in order to banish the “evil” from society: “in
destroying the surrogate victim, men believe that they are ridding them-
selves of some present ill” (Girard 86). The monster’s role is to embody the
“evil” so that, by its death, such evil can symbolically be banished. How-
ever, it is a lie, an illusion – an aspect that is clear in Dylan Dog. Seeing the
monstrous double as an alien being, “it is to be duped by their appearance
instead of recognizing the human being who lurks behind the monstrous
form” (Girard 267).7 The evil killed with the monster was only a simula-
crum of real evil, an evil that does not affict man and society, but rather
that it is born in them. The end of “Johnny Freak” is dramatic: Johnny is
dying after being hit by a bullet. Aware of his imminent fate, he chooses to
donate his heart to his evil brother in a gesture of extreme altruism (Sclavi
et al. 90–95).
Human society is “civil” and “peaceful” only on the surface, but it hides
violence and anger in its depth. “You must cancel the illusion of ‘civiliza-
tion’ . . . Civilization is only a mask . . . We are part of the animal king-
dom . . . The Law of the Jungle applies to us as well” (Medda and Freghieri,
“La Legge della Giungla” [“The Law of the Jungle”] 55). With these words,
Professor Emerick describes the human “civilization” in the story entitled,
precisely, “La Legge della Giungla.” During this adventure and in the sequel,
with the Hobbesian title “Homo Homini Lupus,”8 men and women, includ-
ing Dylan himself, are seduced by Professor Emerick to free their shadows,
210 Marco Favaro
their most violent nature, repressed behind the “social mask” (Medda and
Freghieri). There are no monsters in this story, only human beings.
It frequently happens in Dylan Dog that the human beings are the “real”
monsters: not only “common” assassins like “Memorie dall’Invisibile,” but
also racists (“Il Settimo Girone”), bigots and corrupt politicians (“Caccia
alle Streghe” [“Witch Hunt”{Sclavi and Dall’Agnol}]), wealthy exploiters
(“Lavori Forzati” [“Forced Labour”{Di Gregorio and Di Vincenzo}]), or
hypocritical conformists (“Feste di Sangue” [“Bloody Holydays”{Chiaverotti
and Rinaldi}]). The most recurrent and frightening monster in Dylan Dog’s
narrative is precisely the “normality” which hides, behind the pacifc and
respectable façade, the horror. In this regard, it is relevant what Guido Fer-
raro and Isabella Brugo write about the monster, which “is not other, does
not come from afar, is not different; on the contrary, it surprises us, it shocks
us, exactly because it is here, close, familiar, like us” (149).
This dynamic is explicit in “La Peste” (“The Plague”). In this story,
London seems afficted by an unknown and peculiar virus which physi-
cally transforms the infected people in many different ways: a pop singer
swells and fies away; a porn movie producer turns into a rat; a racist
wealthy woman shrinks; and an old and cynical man turns into an ogre.
However, it is not a mysterious virus responsible for such metamorphosis.
A strange young woman who is walking around the city transforms with
her sight everyone who looks her in the eyes: she is the personifcation of
The Truth.
How do you call her? “Absolute parameter,” or something like that.

By the way, it’s something that you can’t handle. . . . She is The Truth,
Mr Dog. . . . The Truth . . . little known and even less appreciated.
She is diffcult to be found in your world. The human species reacts
always melodramatically when it encounters her. . . . Some people can’t
handle her, and they simply go crazy . . . the others become what they
really are . . . arrogant buffoons . . . monsters disguised as men . . . but
also extraordinary people, hidden among the common ones . . . and
there is who, coherent with himself, remains what he is . . . like you,
congratulations.
(Barbato and Roi, “La Peste” 159–162)
The Truth disrupts London like a plague, which reveals the true nature of
men. Those who encounter her become their own shadow: a young bride,
interested only in her husband’s wealth, becomes a praying mantis, while a
man with a double life is transformed into a creature with two heads, four
arms, and four legs. However, the shadow can also be positive: a woman
who courageously fghts the mobbing in her offce becomes a luminous fg-
ure; a generous boy grows in stature, while a childish policewoman becomes
a child again.
Dylan faces The Truth, but he does not undergo a metamorphosis. He
remains “coherent with himself.” He neither hypocritically hides his shadow,
nor rejects it, but instead he tries to understand it. That is the great Dylan
Dog’s lesson: Dylan shows us the horror of mediocrity and “normality”
from which hypocrisy takes shape in the monstrous Doppelgänger. The only
way to avoid it is to reject this hypocritical normality, not to reject one’s
shadow but rather to try to understand it, thus being able to understand
oneself better. Remaining coherent with oneself, then, is the only way to
“win” over the shadows and to “look within and survive,” as Dylan does:
“I passed my test with The Truth. I looked at myself, and I survived. Never-
theless, I know that some questions are still without an answer . . .” (Barbato
and Roi, “La Peste” 166).
Notes
1 Tiziano Sclavi: “I studied the project together with Claudio Villa for months. The
last detail we defned was Dylan's face. I didn't like the frst sketches. Then I saw
Rupert Everett in “Another Country” and it seemed to me that it might be the
right starting point” (“Così Parlò Tiziano Sclavi” [“Thus Spoke Tiziano Sclavi”]).
2 All translations from Italian into English are mine.
3 “Beyond Good and Evil” is the title of a book by Friedrich Nietzsche: “Beyond
Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future.”
4 The word monster comes from the Latin “monstrum,” which signifes not neces-
sarily something negative. The “monstrum” is a wonder, a prodigious creature,
frightening and fearsome because it is inhuman, but it is not necessarily evil.
5 Another example is the sequel “Il Cuore di Johnny,” [“Johnny’s Heart”] # 127.
6 It is similar to what happens in “La Casa dei Fantasmi,” # 211.
7 Girard uses actually the French word le frère [the brother] instead of “human
being.”
8 Homo homini lupus is a Latin proverb that means “A man is a wolf to another
man.” Hobbes uses this proverb to describe what he believed to be the tendency of
men to act deceptively and violently toward other men.
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Edizioni scientifche Ma.Gi., 2003.
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Bonelli Editore, July 2003.
___. “La Peste.” Speciale Dylan Dog #19. Bonelli Editore, October 2005.
Brelich Angelo. Gli Eroi Greci. Un Problema Storico-Religioso. Adelphi, 2010
[1958].
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#87. Bonelli Editore, December 1993.
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Dog #10. Bonelli Editore, October 1996.
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Sfda,” Dylan Dog #96. Bonelli Editore, September 1994.
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Di Gregorio, Giovanni (w) and Maurizio Di Vincenzo (a). “Lavori Forzati,” Dylan
Dog #288. Bonelli Editore, August 2010.
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#199. Bonelli Editore, April 2003.
___. “La Legge della Giungla,” Dylan Dog #198. Bonelli Editore, March 2003.
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#211. Bonelli Editore, April 2004.
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#213. Bonelli Editore, June 2004.
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edited by Carl Gustav Jung. Anchor Press, 1988, pp. 158–229.
17 Messages of Death
Haunted Media in “Kaine:
Endorphins – Between Life and
Death”
Ingrid Butler
With its mediations on the role of technology, celebrity culture, and the
fuid nature of identity fltered through a visual kei1-themed murder mys-
tery, “Kaine: Endorphins – Between Life and Death”2 (1996) by Kaori Yuki
is certainly unusual. It is a relatively short manga (Japanese comic) that
tells the convoluted story of a shy and gentle man convinced that he is Shi-
nogu Saito, twin brother of the deeply tormented visual kei rockstar Kaine,
who was the vocalist for the band Endorphins. Left amnesiac from the car
crash that killed Kaine, Shinogu is promptly coerced by Kaine’s manager
Oda into taking on his twin’s identity. Shinogu, uneasy with this arrange-
ment and troubled by his own inability to remember what transpired before
the car crash, decides to investigate the mystery behind Kaine’s untimely
death, becoming entangled in a complex web of corporate plots and eerie
hauntings. Helped along by Kaine’s mercurial best friend and fellow band-
mate, Die,3 Shinogu gradually becomes aware of rumors that listening to
the band’s CDs has been implicated in a string of teen suicides, which turn
out to be true.
Oda, who is obsessed with destroying as many of these CDs as possible,
plots to kill both Shinogu and Die onstage during a concert to suppress
this information and protect the reputation of the music company. How-
ever, the sight and sound of explosives’ detonating cause Shinogu’s repressed
memories to resurface: he comes to the realization that he is actually Kaine
himself, driven by self-loathing and a horrifc past to attempt to shed his
own identity by trying to take on that of his twin, who had always been
a source of envy and pain for him. Even though Kaine changed his mind
about murdering his twin at the last moment, the pair had ended up in a car
accident which left Kaine comatose and the real Shinogu dead – later mis-
taken for Kaine himself. After confessing that he is his own murderer, Kaine
fatally shoots himself in the head on stage in front of Die and his fans. The
fnal scene is an unsettling blend of wish fulfllment and purgatory: Kaine
somehow regains consciousness in the same hospital as the beginning of the
narrative, attended to by Die. There, Kaine once again denies his own past,
chalking them up as a nightmare. Die agrees with this, even as he laments
DOI: 10.4324/9781003261551-21
Messages of Death 215
to himself that he has never been able to escape Kaine’s perceived control
over him.
“Kaine” is an example of horror in shōjo manga (adolescent girls’
comics). Despite covering a range of literary genres, shōjo manga can
be understood, in a sense, as its own genre with reoccurring “narrative
themes, aesthetic style, and techniques of representation” (Prough 94).
For instance, both “Shinogu”/Kaine and Die are recognizable as examples
of the visual shōjo convention of the bishōnen, the “beautifully androgy-
nous man” (95). Shōjo manga is often conceptualized as being concerned
with interpersonal relationships, as compared to shōnen manga (adoles-
cent boys’ comics), whose narratives are thought to be oriented around
action (94). As Hiromi Tsuchiya Dollase has written, shōjo horror manga
has been often been dismissed “as a vulgar subgenre of shōjo manga”
(59). Shōjo horror manga presents a stark contrast to the “fowers, rib-
bons, and cute imagery” commonly associated with shōjo manga, instead
being suffused “with blood, death, and ghosts” (59). It gives voice to the
“jealousy, anger, fear, and frustration” of its characters, whereas shōjo
manga might choose to center its “characters’ sensitive inner feelings of
melancholy, love, solitude, and joy” (59). Dollase argues that shōjo hor-
ror manga performs the cultural work of simultaneously allowing ado-
lescent girls to perceive their own “[v]ivid desires and raw emotions,”
while it also examines some of the cultural anxieties underpinning shōjo
manga (60).4
While “Kaine” is frmly entrenched within the shōjo horror manga sub-
genre with its focus on the destructive, consuming side of love and ado-
ration, it is also just as concerned with the questions of technology and
its relationship to the human. The theme of the technological as a source
of fear, unease, and danger runs through Yuki’s work, from the complex
machines of The Cain Saga (1991–1994) and Neji (2001) that defy the natu-
ral order of life and death to the malevolent technologies of Angel Sanctuary
(1994–2000), where wires complicate and vex the physical boundaries of
the humanoid body, video games steal human energy to free an evil angel,
and whose horrifc “God” fgure is a towering mass of computer-like parts,
and to the roving satellites of Grand Guignol Orchestra (2009–2010) that
bear silent witness to its ruined, post-apocalyptic world of marionette-esque
zombies. Through the subversion of cultural associations with haunted
technology, with human-programmed coding at the heart of its seemingly
supernatural murder mystery, the narrative of “Kaine” reveals a deeply anx-
ious preoccupation with media technology’s potential to destabilize human
agency and thus challenge the anthropocentric perspective. This tension
between the human and technology then becomes a point of departure to
examine the crux of the narrative’s confict: pervasive anxiety about the
disruptive relationship of recording technology with the human experience
of temporality and mortality.
216 Ingrid Butler
“These Girls Who Felt Exactly as Kaine Did”5
The association of the supernatural with technology can be dated back to
the early Victorian era (Sconce 6). As John Durham Peters observes, “the
nineteenth century saw unprecedented transformations in the conditions of
human contact, along the two axes in particular: transmission and record-
ing” (138). Jeffery Sconce traces the cultural association of electronic media
with “an animated sentience” (6), a complex, historically bound cultural
notion that “depends in large part how the public imagination of a given
moment considers these fows of electricity, consciousness, and information
to be homologous, interchangeable, and transmutable” (8). The invention of
the telegraph around 1837, in the frst instance of this association, quickly
led to the cultural phenomenon of Spiritualism and the “spiritual telegraph”
through which mediums were believed to be able to communicate with
the dead (24). Of this time period, James Kneale writes that “[t]echnology
shades into spiritualism, science into the occult, until it seems pointless try-
ing to separate them,” noting that one of the most well-known inventors
of electronic media, Alexander Graham Bell, and his assistant participated
in what we might today describe as occult practices, such as being medi-
ums and taking part in seances (93). Numerous scholars have documented
how horror media has explored anxieties about the technological. Ewan
Kirkland, for instance, documents the way that Japanese survival horror
video games have appropriated cultural associations of photography and
broadcasting technology with the supernatural (123), while how the horror
flm Ringu (1998, Hideo Nakata) and its American remake The Ring (2002,
Gore Verbinski) explore the cultural anxieties about the supernatural and
media technology was the subject of an edited volume, The Scary Screen:
Media Anxiety in The Ring (Lacefeld 2).
The anxiety over media technology lurks in the background of “Kaine,”
only periodically surfacing in reference to the mysterious string of suicides
linked to listening to the Endorphins’ CDs. Kaine’s disembodied voice seeps
through the narrative: in one striking and early instance, his intradiegetic
narration of the torturous cycle of death and rebirth that he undergoes every
morning is visually overlaid over the discovery of one girl who has killed
herself after listening to his music (Yuki, “Kaine” 20). This almost immedi-
ate juxtaposition between the textual representation of Kaine’s voice and
the dead teenagers in the opening pages of the manga suggests a causal effect
but does not make this connection explicit until much later when “Shinogu”
discusses with Die the potential ramifcations of his “gloomy world of
thoughts” on an audience unaware of its deadly effects (40). Much like the
unfortunate listeners in Junji Ito’s short manga “Used Record” (1990) who
are inspired/driven to acts of possessive violence after listening to the titular
haunted record, the teen girls of “Kaine” kill themselves in horrifc replica-
tions of Kaine’s own suicide attempts: Yoko cuts her wrists in the bath, a
plot point that anticipates the revelation of Kaine’s similar suicide attempt
later in the narrative, while Mariko leaps to her death, recalling Kaine’s
destruction of his balcony supports in the hopes that he would drunkenly
fall to his own death (Yuki, “Kaine” 20, 62, 72–73).
The suicides, in short, appear to be a supranational rendition of the
Werther effect, so named after the immensely popular 1774 novel The Sor-
rows of Young Werther by Goethe, which was banned in several European
countries after publication for fear that it was inspiring suicides in its young
readers (Ferudi 47). The Werther effect is a term for the “phenomenon”
of media believed to be suicidogenic (Krysinska and Lester 100). In this
sense, the haunted CDs appear to, at frst, function as a point of departure
for larger conversations about art, the human condition, and the responsi-
bilities of the artist, overlaid with anxieties about media technology within
a consumerist society. In a metatextual sense, the narrative might even be
commenting on its own story of on-screen suicides marketed to adolescent
girls and morbidly pondering its own culpability in the lives of its readers.
Despite the unease that the haunted media introduces to the narrative, the
focus is largely on the human characters and how they conceptualize and
react to the threat of this seemingly supernatural rendition of the Werther
effect. Kaine’s manager, Oda, seeks to withdraw the CDs already in circula-
tion, not from any sense of personal responsibility but rather to hide her
own culpability in their manufacture. “Shinogu” himself likens the music
to “an evil virus” (Yuki, “Kaine” 40), a wording that both draws on how
suicide is often discussed in terms of contagion and also hints at a deeper
fear of the CDs’ sentience – after all, viruses defy the binary of living/dead;
as Marc H.V. van Regenmortel and Brian W. J. Mah write, viruses “are non-
living infectious entities that can be said, at best, to lead a kind of borrowed
life” (8). Daniel Dinello remarks that viruses in speculative fction “function
not only to refect that threat [of human illness and death] but to serve as
potent symbols of technophobia. Monumentally fearsome in its anti-human
attacks, the virus – like technology – horrifes with its insidious invasive-
ness, parasitism, and control” (271–272). Electronic viruses pose a threat
to the concept of human autonomy, as in the novel Snow Crash (1992) by
Neal Stephenson, whose pervasive and powerful “electro-pathogen” speaks
to cultural fears around “the penetration of technology into our lives and
its invisible consequences – humans regressed to automata that robotically
obey technology’s imperatives,” with the unsettling implication that “there
is a primitive level of the mind where free will, rationality, and consciousness
do not exist” (Dinello 269–270).
This fearful possibility, once raised, is immediately dismissed by Die.
Returning to the human as the center (and driving force) of the narrative,
Die regards the strange effects of the music as indicative of Kaine’s abil-
ity to imbue the songs with “a magic” through “the force” and “sadness”
of his singing (44). Even as Die claims ownership over the songs that are
causing the girls to kills themselves – “will you continue to sing my songs?”
he asks “Shinogu” in a feeting moment of tenderness (43) – he is largely
218 Ingrid Butler
unconcerned about the suicides. At most, he conceptualizes the suicides as a
perverse confrmation of Kaine’s anguish, as experienced by the girls through
the affective powers of the media, the “girls who felt exactly as Kaine did
when they listened to his music,” as Die remarks near the end of the narra-
tive (106). In “death,” Kaine haunts the world, scattered and fractured into a
doppelgänger, a shared memory, a cultural icon, a disembodied voice on the
page. He is the lynchpin of the narrative, defning all the characters despite
his absence – his fans, his band, his twin, and, in a wry metatextual com-
ment, even the title of the collection his story is in.
The true nature of the killer CDs challenges the bedrock assumptions of
the narrative: at the heart of the haunted media in “Kaine” is the centering
of the human and its power to infuence others beyond the grave – albeit
for considerably worse. As Sconce writes, “electronic media has always
indulged the fantasy of discorporation and the hope that the human soul,
consciousness, or subject could exist independently of his or her material
frame” (202). The real killer of these girls, however, is a secret coding within
the media itself, intended to induce maximum pleasure in the listener but
then causing them to kill themselves afterwards. Isolation underpins the
mechanics of the CDs in “Kaine”: its listeners withdraw from society as
the unlucky Mariko does, cocooned in her temporary bliss, earbuds in, and
singing along to the music (Yuki, “Kaine” 55). The promise of human con-
nection through the “spiritual telegraph,” as Sconce has written, never mani-
fests. No longer is the human the crux of the narrative, reaching beyond the
grave with a message of death, but now instead merely an object for techni-
cal coding to act upon biological coding (the production of endorphins) in
the grey space between human and technology. The fulflling psychological
and even spiritual act of listening to music has become reduced to its bio-
logical processes, stripped of the magic that Die so fondly reminisces on and
replaced with alienation.
This interaction between the biological and technological was designed to
foster dependency to “function like a drug” (Yuki, “Kaine” 79). As Die puts
it uncharitably in a moment of anger at this discovery, the band’s success
was not due to their “ingenious” music but rather this dependency; the dead
girls were “junkies” (79). This reveal has been hinted at from the very begin-
ning with the name of the band – the Endorphins. This rupture between the
human and the technological, with the human at the mercy of an inscrutable
technology that can be neither guilty nor innocent of the deaths it causes,
becomes a way to examine the pervasive anxiety over the confict between
recording technology and its relationship with the human experiences of
temporality and mortality.
Disrupted Time: Disembodied Lives and Deaths

The questions of human agency play into a larger discussion of the disrup-
tive role of recording technology and the human experience of temporality
and mortality. The narrative of “Kaine” begins not at the middle but at
the very end of Kaine’s life. The band is held together by only a contract.
Kaine himself is preceded by his own reputation as a careless, unapologetic
womanizer who has ruined the lives of his friends, namely Die’s, out of a
homoerotic longing for him.6 All the characters are obsessed with recreating
a past that is already past: Oda’s conspiracy to simply hide Kaine’s appar-
ent death by replacing him with the man she believes to be his twin, all to
prolong the commercial success of the band; Die’s endless recollections on
Kaine and their tumultuous friendship; and “Shinogu”’s half-remembrances
of his twin and doleful asides on the topic. “That is past, Die,” Kaine thinks
to himself, for example, when Die rhapsodizes about being the “best musi-
cian” with Kaine as his vocalist (Yuki, “Kaine” 44). Even the key to uncov-
ering the heart of the mystery behind Kaine’s death and thus moving the
narrative forward, the password to Kaine’s computer with offcial company
fles revealing the true mechanics behind the CDs, is kept on a guitar pick.
It functions as a symbol of the past, referencing both “The Sound of the
Damned,” an unrecorded song that Kaine and Die created together before
the car crash and Kaine’s suicide attempt where he mailed “an old guitar
pick and a bloody knife” to Die (62). The past thus uncovers the past, bound
to itself in a hideous spiral of revelations.
This preoccupation with the past points to the crux of the narrative –
Kaine’s continual attempts to escape his painful past. The narrative begins
with the disastrous aftereffects of his plan to usurp his twin’s identity,
which has left him comatose and his twin dead. But even this fnal attempt
to evade his own past backfres: upon awakening as “Shinogu,” Kaine is
forced into his own identity again by Oda, forced to rediscover himself, his
reputation, his own voice, and his own darkness. The nod to the Lacanian
theory of recognition and identity formation at the beginning of the narra-
tive, when Kaine awakens to the sight of himself in a mirror with a blank
face, misrecognizing himself as a blank doll for Oda to remake in Kaine’s
commercial image, anticipates the larger questions of personal identity
that the narrative will grapple with: how deep does an individual’s identity
run? Is it defned in psychological terms, such as memories, or in biologi-
cal ones, such as physical characteristics and fngerprints? Is it something
entirely immutable or fuid? Even here, the uncanny qualities of the sto-
ryline merge with the technological. As Peters notes, “electronic media both
supplants and transforms the nineteenth-century culture of doppelgangers
by duplicating and distributing indicia of human presence” (141). The most
prominent of the doppelgangers that haunt the narrative is Kaine’s own
omnipresent, recorded, and disembodied voice, possibly even that on the
CDs themselves, endlessly speculating on the nature of cyclical pain and
deaths that lead only to despair and rebirth.
This insertion of the technological into what is primarily a narrative about
identity and mortality (or lack thereof) points to the narrative’s anxieties
over the disruptive nature of recording technology. As Friedrich Kittler puts
220 Ingrid Butler
it, “what phonographs and cinemagraphs . . . were able to store was time:
time as a mixture of audio fragments in the acoustic realm” (3). An inher-
ent tension thus emerges between the human and recording technology:
“Recording technology,” Simon Schaffer remarks in Mechanical Marvels:
Clockwork Dreams, “doesn’t just capture sound, it also tries to bring it back
to life.” And that fracture, that disembodiment is ultimately at the heart of
the confict within “Kaine”: Kaine is prisoner to a manufactured image that
he can never escape, a ceaselessly replicating sound that will outlast him
long after his death(s) – this push and pull between the (recorded) painful
past and the character who does not want it. The fundamental horror of
“Kaine” is, as Peters observes on the relationship between recording tech-
nology and the human, that “our bodies know fatigue and fnitude, but our
effgies, once recorded, can circulate through media systems indefnitely”
(141). The past, once captured by technology, can never be outrun.
This tension between inescapable nature of the recorded past and the
technological, fttingly, is repeated by the circular ending of the short story.
Mirroring the opening, Kaine awakens once again in a hospital setting, hav-
ing somehow survived his onstage suicide. After relaying the events of the
narrative to Die, he refuses the past once again, accepting Die’s explana-
tion that “it was only a nightmare” (Yuki, “Kaine” 106). However, it is not
just Kaine who is bound to the past. The concluding image is one of bleak
co-dependency: even as Die confesses that he “could never hate” Kaine, as
Kaine has him “wrapped around his fnger,” the visuals suggest the opposite,
with Kaine’s long red hair wrapped around Die’s fnger. It is what comic
theorist Scott McCloud might describe as an “additive combination” of pic-
tures and words, “where the words amplify or elaborate on an image or
vice versa” (154). Neither can move on from the past, both still tormented
by the past in all its fractured forms: the image of Kaine that still is circu-
lating in the media; his voice in the killer CDs still at large; and Die’s nos-
talgia for how Kaine used to be. Kaine is both dead and alive – and also is
neither, as the ending hints, trapped somewhere “between life and death”
(Yuki, “Kaine” 104) displayed on the collection’s cover in a body bag that
curiously resembles a vulva, a half picked-clean skeleton, and half cracked
porcelain doll. In a fnal gesture, the technological even imposes itself onto
the very structure of the narrative, with the cyclical story arc harkening back
to the beginning even as it ends, echoing the physical circle of the CD itself,
inviting a (re)reading, again.
Haunted media in “Kaine” ultimately functions as a means to expose the
layers of tensions within the narrative between the promise of media tech-
nology to preserve fragments of the past and the human experience of tem-
porality. Indelibly embedded within the consumerist society that unwittingly
created it to kill, the deadly media technology of “Kaine” is both a site of
existential horror and a symptom of much larger problems within society;
after all, the CDs only proliferate and circulate on the black market, because
there is an audience for them. The narrative offers no resolution to this
tension, but only a hideous vision of a past and present that continually blur
together, bound together in a tangle of repression and obsession – a tempo-
rality with no future. If there can be no future, as the narrative suggests, this
is because the past still remains hopelessly fractured, unable to be resolved.
Notes
1 Visual kei refers to a type of stylized Japanese rock music and performance that
takes inspiration from glam metal and hard rock; the term originated in the 1990s.
Early examples of the genre include Dead End, Buck Tick, X Japan, and L’arc en
ciel (Oliver Seibt 250).
2 As of time of writing (May/June 2021), there is no offcial English-language transla-
tion of the manga available. Therefore, I am relying on the German-language trans-
lation published by Carlsen Comics. All translation errors here are, as always, mine.
3 Here, the German-language translation allows for an added level of narrative
playfulness that would be diffcult in English. While likely a reference to the Eng-
lish verb “die,” as in to die, in German, “die” is a defnite article for both feminine
and multiple nouns. Thus, Die is subtly indicating his own multiplicity, keeping
in theme with Kaine/Shinogu’s own double nature. In English, Die would also
conjure the image of dice, again tying back into themes of multiplicity.
4 One expression of these cultural fears is the terrifying mother, whose earliest
appearance in shōjo horror manga may be “Mama ga kowai” (1965) by Kazuo
Umezu (Dollase 61–62). It fnds a twofold expression in “Kaine”: frst in the title
character’s sexually abusive mother who haunts the edges of the text, and second,
in the narrative’s antagonist, his scheming and controlling manager Oda.
5 Yuki, “Kaine” 106.
6 Die recounts a particularly lurid memory of returning home to fnd Kaine hav-
ing had sex with Mari, Die’s girlfriend at the time, in Die’s bed. When Kaine asks
why he would have done something like that, Die tells him, “Perhaps because you
like me [romantically]” (Yuki, “Kaine” 43). Despite Die’s insistence that it was a
“joke” (43), it is a strangely poignant and revealing moment in a narrative satu-
rated with repression.
Works Cited
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Dollase, Hiromi Tsuchiya. “‘Shōjo Spirits’ in Horror Manga.” U.S.-Japan Women’s
Journal, No. 38, 2010, pp. 59–80.
Furedi, Frank. “The Media’s First Moral Panic.” History Today, Vol. 65, No. 11,
November 2005, pp. 46–48.
Ito, Junji. “Used Record.” Shiver, translated by Jocelyne Allen, touch-up art and let-
tering by James Dashiell, Viz Media, 2017.
Kirkland, Ewan. “Resident Evil’s Typewriter: Survival Horror and Its Remediations.”
Game Studies, Vol. 4, No. 2, 2009, pp. 115–126.
Kittler, Friedrich. Gramophone, Film, Typewriter, translated by Geoffrey Winthrop-
Young and Michael Wutz. Stanford University Press, 1999.
Kneale, James. “Monstrous and Haunted Media: H. P. Lovecraft and Early Twentieth-
Century Communications Technology.” Historical Geography, Vol. 38, 2010,
pp. 90–106.
222 Ingrid Butler
Krysinska, Karolina and David Lester. “Comment on the Werther Effect.” Crisis, Vol.
27, No. 2, 2006, pp. 100.
Lacan, Jacques. “The Mirror Stage as Formative of the I Function as Revealed in
Psychoanalytic Experience.” Ecrits: The First Complete Edition in English, trans-
lated by Bruce Fink, Héloïse Fink and Russell Grigg. W.W. Norton & Company,
2006, pp. 75–81.
Lacefeld, Kristin. “Introduction.” The Scary Screen: Media Anxiety in The Ring,
edited by Kristin Lacefeld. Ashgate, 2010, pp. 1–25.
McCloud, Scott. Understanding Comics. HarperCollins, 1994.
Peters, John Durham. Speaking into the Air: A History of the Idea of Communica-
tion. University of Chicago Press, 1999.
Prough, Jennifer. “Shōjo Manga in Japan and Abroad.” Manga: An Anthology of
Global and Cultural Perspectives, edited by Toni Johnson-Woods. Continuum,
2010, pp. 72–80.
Schaffer, Simon. Mechanical Marvels: Clockwork Dreams, directed by Nic Stacy. Furnace/
BBC/TVF International, 2013. www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAg66jrvpHA&ab_
channel=Spark. Accessed 28 August 2021.
Sconce, Jeffery. Haunted Media: Electronic Presence from Telegraphy to Television.
Duke University, 2000.
Seibt, Oliver. “Asagi’s Voice: Learning How to Desire with Japanese Visual Kei.”
Vocal Music and Contemporary Identities: Unlimited Voices in East Asia and the
West, edited by Christian Utz and Frederick Lau. Routledge, 2013, pp. 248–266.
van Regenmortel, Marc H.V. and Mah, Brian W. J. “Emerging Issues in Virus Tax-
onomy.” Emerging Infectious Diseases, Vol. 10, No. 1, January 2004, pp. 8–13.
Yuki, Kaori. “Kaine: Endorphines – Zwischen Leben und Tod” (Kaine: Endorphins –
Between Life and Death). Kaine: Endorphines – Zwischen Leben und Tod, trans-
lated by Katrin Mätje. Carlsen Comics, 2005, pp. 4–108.
18 Heterotopia and Horror at
Show’s End
Christina M. Knopf
On 9 July 1932, the New York Times proclaimed that Tod Browning’s flm
Freaks “is not a picture to be easily forgotten. The reason, of course, is the
underlying sense of horror, the love of the macabre that flls the circus side-
shows in the frst place” (L.N. 0). Though Freaks was a box-offce fop, it
solidifed the place of the circus, the sideshow, and the carnival within the
horror genre. From MGM’s silent flm The Unknown (Tod Browning, 1927)
to the streaming series Twisted Carnival (Gene Hamil, 2021), artists have
manifested our paradoxical fears of the Other and of alienation through
fearsome freaks, horrible harlequins, and deadly derring-dos. One contri-
bution to the circus horror genre is the fve-issue comic series Show’s End,
released in 2019 from Mad Cave Studios. Written by Anthony Cleveland
with art by Jef Sadzinski, colors by Julian Gonzalez, and letters by Justin
Birch, the story is described by the publisher as
Equal parts brutal and beautiful, Show’s End takes place in Georgia
during the 1920s and follows Loralye, a 12-year-old runaway seeking
refuge with a traveling group of freak show performers. At frst, she
isn’t welcomed for being too “ordinary.” But what her newfound fam-
ily doesn’t know, is that Loralye is hiding a secret more freakish than
anyone could ever imagine!
(Mad Cave)
While the outcasts struggle to survive in a world that shuns them, they face
domestic abuse, mob violence, poverty, and death, as well as the dark magic
and monsters commanded by the greedy Captain Corley in the Great Corley
Circus: A Phantasmagoric Menagerie to Behold.
The troupe includes, among others, several little people – including one
self-fashioned after Edgar Allan Poe’s “Hop-Frog” (1849)1 –, a fortune
teller, conjoined twins, a tattooed lady, a girl with microcephaly, a fre-
eating clown, a human blockhead, a bearded woman, a strong man, a “pig”
boy, a giant, and Loralye, who performs as a sword walker on a bladed
staircase. According to the troupe’s leader, Daxton, “Everyone here has
something that doesn’t sit right with the rest of the world” (Cleveland et al.
DOI: 10.4324/9781003261551-22
224 Christina M. Knopf
“Part Two” [Sept. 2019] 17). The fortune teller, Madam Vadoma, adds to
this, observing that the little band of misfts “all have a reason for being
here. Some are here for the spotlight. Others for the safety” and some “to
escape and forget” (Cleveland et al. “Part Two” 8). As noted by reviewer
Johnny Hughes, it is a story that feels at home alongside HBO’s Carnivàle
(2003–2005) and FX’s American Horror Story (AHS): Freak Show (2014–
2015). In the narrative tradition established by Freaks, the performers live
in a dialectical tension with the normal world in which they do not belong
but on which they depend for the means to survive. They abide by a strict
moral code of their own, and “If you break one of their codes or laws, you
get punished in front of the whole carnival. That’s freak justice” (Cleveland
et al. “Part Three” [Oct. 2019] 4). The group views itself as a family, and
the show operates as a commune in which each person must contribute for
the good of all.
The circus, or carnival, offers a vision that is both liberating and debili-
tating. It presents the possibility of being able to transgress conventional
social, physical, and mental limits. But, particularly when fashioned as a
circus of horror, it is coupled with warnings about the danger of such trans-
gressions. As Helen Stoddart observes, there is “a well-worn connection
in the popular imagination between circuses and the Gothic” (118). Such
connections abound in comics, which have a long history of weaving their
own moralistic tales of marvel, suspense, and terror with carnivalesque phe-
nomena. As Grant Morrison wrote, Superman’s “cape, showman-like boots,
belt, and skintight spandex were all derived from circus outfts and helped
to emphasize the performative, even freak-show-esque, aspect of Super-
man’s adventures” (14). Meanwhile, the outlawry and uncanniness of circus
troupes readily leant themselves as the fends, freaks, and fantastic beasts of
horror comics.2 Show’s End exemplifes how “freakery” is both reactionary,
marking difference as abnormal, and revolutionary, empowering difference
as extraordinary, further demonstrating how circus horror simultaneously
vilifes and valorizes the Other.
The Greatest Heterotopia on Earth

In comics’ darker tales, such as Show’s End, the circus provides a spectacu-
lar atmosphere in which Gothic fantasy unfolds. Helen Stoddart writes:
The cross-fertilization between the two, Gothic and circus, furnishes

these texts with a series of key fgures – transforming bodies, crazy
mirrors, mesmerizing ring-masters, con men, vampires, murderers and
magicians – which act out thrilling possibilities for reimagining the lim-
its of the human body and mind while also confrming . . . anxieties
about the trouble with things you cannot see. Gothic as a genre has
always invested in intense spectacle whilst coupling this with warnings
Heterotopia and Horror at Show’s End 225
about magic, dissimulation and the untrustworthiness of ocular percep-
tion, or even supernatural infuence, which shadow such pleasures.
(132)
Thus, the heterotopia, a space of illusion and an illusory space, becomes a

useful means of critique as an analytics of difference that draws attention to
networks and representations of social relations and social power.
The circus exemplifes what Michel Foucault termed the heterotopia,
defned as
places that are designed into the very institution of society, which are
sorts of actually realized utopias in which the real emplacements, all
the other real emplacements that can be found within the culture are, at
the same time, represented, contested, and reversed, sorts of places that
are outside all places, although they are actually localizable.
(Aesthetics 178)
They are “countersites,” equivocally oppositional to the mainstream – places

of difference found within, but apart from, society (Saldanha 2081). They
are “places of Otherness” which unsettle or offer an alternative representa-
tion of spatial and social relations (Hetherington 8). Among the examples
of heterotopic spaces provided by Foucault were the festival and the cem-
etery – the combined elements of which are arguably found in sinister cir-
cuses, creepy carnivals, and frightening freakshows as an interface between
horror and humor, the macabre and the merry, the aberrant and the average.
Heterotopias are disturbing. As Ann Davies describes, they “contain dif-
ferent levels of reality that coexist (and perhaps come into confict with each
other): they suggest realities beyond themselves” (396). And, as Kevin Heth-
erington argues, heterotopias are as much textual or discursive sites as geo-
graphical ones because Foucault was interested in the heterotopic character
of language and how symbols could defy and unsettle the expected rules
and conventions of discourse. Thus, Foucault’s principles of heterotopia can
be applied as an analytical framework to consider a site and its relation-
ship with sociocultural conditions of contemporary society. Foucault’s six
principles of heterotopia – crisis and deviation, emplacement and displace-
ment, juxtaposition, time, opening and closing, and illusion and compensa-
tion – provide a useful framework for discussing the discursive and diegetic
spaces created in Show’s End.3 The analysis considers and complicates how
the circus of horror in Show’s End represents power dynamics of normalcy
and monstrosity, recognizing that multiple critics have argued that such fc-
tions as Freaks,4 Carnivàle,5 AHS: Freak Show,6 and others7 have offered
the trappings of unlimited pluralism, but that their “freaktopian” messages
are ultimately troubled by the very structural inequities that engendered the
American freak show from its inception.
Crisis and Deviation
Foucault’s frst principle classifes heterotopia into two universal categories:
heterotopias of crisis and of deviation. The former is a reserved space for
individuals in times of social, cultural, or political crises. The latter is a space
for people whose behavior is deviant in relation to the expected, accepted, or
dominant norms (Foucault, “Of Other Spaces” 4–5). The setting for Show’s
End is Georgia, USA, in 1928, arguably a place of social and economic
crisis. While much of the United States was enjoying the windfall of a manu-
facturing boom in the 1920s (prior to the 1929 stock market crash that
started the Great Depression), Georgia suffered from falling cotton prices,
agricultural devastation of the boll weevil, and a multi-year draught. Con-
ditions were especially harsh for Blacks who also had to contend with Jim
Crow segregation and the sharecropping system (Zainaldin). The bleak (or
fringe) economic existence for rural Georgians is prominent in the comic’s
pages. Show’s End #1 (Aug. 2019) opens on the scene of a small farmhouse
with a patched roof. It sits on a fat brown landscape dotted with broken
fencing and dead trees (Cleveland et al. “Part One” 1). The lack of vegeta-
tion and resources remains in the visual environment throughout the series,
creating a sharp contrast to the popular image of the “roaring 20s” and to
the sensory extravagances so often associated with the circus and the “the
greatest show on Earth.”
The traveling carnival serves as two coexisting, even codependent, sites
of deviance. The frst encompasses the circus troupe itself – the performers
and carnies whose physical or emotional characteristics mark them as Other.
Because of disability, race, physical abnormality, unusual mental state, or
extra-ordinary ability, the circus folk are deviant in relation to the accepted
norm. This heterotopia of deviance is found, effectively, within the perfor-
mance ring of the circus. Another heterotopia of deviance is subsequently con-
structed in the audience stands of the circus. The townspeople who come to
watch the show perpetuate, in some ways, Foucault’s notion of deviant leisure
in their quest for sensation.8 This type of deviance is prominently on display
in issue #3 when the audience takes delight in paying for rotten apples and
the opportunity to pelt them at Pavel the Pig Boy, whom they caught pick
pocketing. When the apples have run out, and Pavel is bloodied, bruised, and
battered, the locals walk away noting “Good lord, that was fun though!”
(Cleveland et al.“Part Three” 16), emphasizing their own deviant desires from
civilized, lawful norms. Consequently, the carnival of Show’s End presents a
heterotopia of deviance that offers performers and audience-goers alike an
experience that allows them respite from the harsh realities of day-to-day life.
Emplacement and Displacement

The second principle of heterotopia suggests that each heterotopia has a pre-
cise and well-defned function within society and that the same heterotopia
can have a duality of function depending on the synchrony of the culture in
which it is located. In other words, the heterotopia provides both distance
and connection (Foucault, “Of Other Spaces” 5–6). This notion of heteroto-
pia as a threshold is inherent in a traveling circus such as that of Show’s End.
The shows travel at night, thus seeming to disappear from one town just in
time to reappear in another. Needing space for the tents and wagons, they sit
in open felds on the outskirts of the towns they visit, and they create their
own little communities of canvas and cages with ticketed gates. The frivolity
of circus – and all the immorality and criminality it is believed to contain –
is thus both distanced from and accessible to the normal communities who
want to partake in the subversiveness of play it offers.9
The heterotopia of emplacement/displacement is visually represented in
Show’s End #1 when Loralye frst discovers the circus. She is a fugitive from
her abusive father and the farmers from whom she steals food to survive
when she sees the lights from the carnival, enchantingly nestled in a valley
below. She runs down the hill and easily into the carnival. Her introduction
to the circus is also the reader’s introduction, and the opening frames are
flled with childhood delights: jugglers, acrobats, balloons, rides, caramel
apples, and dazzling lights (Cleveland et al. “Part One” 3–4). This world of
wonders is set into a not-too-distant valley for Loralye and into the pages
of the comic for her adult readers, marking the circus of Show’s End as a
separated but accessible space for play and escape.
Juxtaposition
The third principle of heterotopias suggests that they have the power to
juxtapose in a single space several spaces that are otherwise, in themselves,
incompatible, creating a kind of microcosm of reality (Foucault, “Of Other
Spaces” 6). This is the very nature of the carnival or circus. As Yoram Car-
meli observes,
Taking place according to seasons and holidays, the fair event placed
the community in a whole cosmic cycle. Constituent categories of the
“human” and the “social” were symbolically ritualized by the presence
of the freaks, as well as by their isolation and exclusion.
(“Circus Play” 158)
The heterotopia of juxtaposition is where the circus shifts from fun to

frightening. This particular juxtaposition is captured in the circus icon of
the clown, which is a grotesque of orderly society and the embodied col-
lision of the horror and comedy genres, enacting an innocent violence.10
The clown, notes William J. Free, “rebels against the limitations of his real-
ity” with actions that yield disproportionate results (219). Thus, violence
becomes comical as the familiar is transformed into something dangerous,
and danger is transformed into an illusion (Richards 70).
With characters including bored townspeople, skilled performers, psy-
chics, lunatics, aliens, ghosts, gods, monsters, corpses, and more, Show’s End
juxtaposes normate and freak, animal and human, morality and frivolity,
extraordinary and ordinary, feminine and masculine, good and evil, life and
death, natural and supernatural, and wealth and poverty. It is within these
juxtapositions – particularly of freak and norm – that so many Gothic circus
fctions lose their critical edge. The juxtapositions have the potential to pre-
sent the circus as an alternative space – indeed, even as an anarchic space –
yet, the American carnival is a space of hegemony. In contrast to Mikhail
Bakhtin’s perception of the European carnival as a transitional space in
which regular conventions are suspended or overturned, Philip McGowan
argues that the American Carnival-esque is a consolidation and reifcation
of identity, race, social position, and class, which celebrates repression rather
than expression.
As Stevi Costa argues, the very “presence of freak shows and sideshows
trouble the utopian reading of the circus” because “freaks onstage are physi-
cally and visually separated from the normate masses that comprise audi-
ences” (72). This is one way that Show’s End distinguishes itself from other
dark carnivals. With its story focused on Loralye – who is herself an embod-
ied juxtaposition of human and god, child and monster, innocent and blood-
thirsty, moral and criminal – it does not exploit the visual distinctiveness of
its “freaks.” One catches only glimpses of the facial injury or deformity that
the fre eater hides behind clown makeup (e.g., Cleveland et al. “Part One”
7; Cleveland et al. “Part Two” 79–10). Readers are introduced to the acro-
batic ability and sweet personality of the show’s “pinhead” at the same time
they see her unusual visage (Cleveland et al. “Part One” 5). Giants, fat per-
sons, and bearded ladies can be spotted, mostly in silhouette, in the crowds,
marking that they exist, they are there, but not as exhibits at which we stare.
Likewise, the audiences are seen mostly as shadowy fgures in the bleachers
or as partial forms within crowds. Though the freaks and the normates are
diegetically separated from each other, they are not visually presented differ-
ently to the readers. Indeed, because readers get to know only the freaks at a
personal level, as individuals and as members of the show’s family, they are
more human, more identifable, than the normates who are usually engaged
in violence. Show’s End further differentiates itself from other circus horror
in that it concludes with the troupe choosing a new path for itself, one that
is neither assimilation to hegemonic norms nor a continuation of the larger
society’s expectations for “freaks” as bizarre or violent. They stay together
as a band of outsiders but do not perform for society as “freaks.” As the nar-
ration explains, the “carnival was gone,” but its “family remained whole”
(Cleveland et al. “Part Five” [Dec. 2019] 20). In so doing, Show’s End offers
a third place, an alternative to both the culture and the counterculture, and
thus opens up possibilities for readers in juxtaposition of what is and what
might be.
Time
The fourth principle argues that heterotopias begin to function fully when
individuals fnd themselves in a break with, or slice of, time (Foucault “Of
Other Spaces” 6). Again, such a space is at the heart of the circus or, at least,
at the heart of circus fction. Part of the allure of the circus is that it exists
outside the usual social order: its transience offers a contrast to, and reas-
surance of, one’s home; its rootlessness and particular moral code provide
an imagined relief from, and promised security of, civilized behaviors and
laws. Integral to its uniqueness is its air of timeless nostalgia, a sense that
circus performances are “the same, never-changing [outside] of history and
change, out of social time” (Carmeli, “Invention of Circus” 218). Show’s
End takes place in a very specifc time: late 1928. It was a time when trave-
ling sideshows were still viable, but they tended to appear predominantly
in more rural, “backwoods” areas where hospitals and asylums had not yet
penetrated to quarantine those with physical and psychological anomalies
(Bogdan 66). This particular slice of time permits “freaks” and provincial
normates to interact in the carnival setting. As a slice of time in the seg-
regated south, it also encourages a particular reading of the armed mobs
of White locals, led by a badge-wearing sheriff, chasing down the racially
diverse group of freaks (Cleveland et al. “Part One” 15–18). This chronol-
ogy transcends time, allowing readers in 2019 to relate the story to their
contemporary reality of police violence against people with Black skin and
militarized borders opposing people with Brown skin. This timelessness is
suggested in two promises made by the story: “The show always goes on”
(Cleveland et al. “Part Two” 11), and the end of one act is “only the warm
up for next act” (ibid. #5).
Opening and Closing

The ffth principle of heterotopia presupposes a system of opening and
closing that makes heterotopia both isolated and accessible. It pertains to
the initiation of people into the Other space through particular systems,
permissions, or rituals (Foucault, “Of Other Spaces” 7). When Loralye
frst arrives at the circus, she is shunned because she appears normal. The
psychic Madam Vadoma senses that there is indeed something different
about her, so Loralye is allowed to stay (Cleveland et al. “Part One” 8)
but is given diffcult and dirty jobs as her rite of passage or initiation –
specifcally, she has to clean up after the two-headed donkey who has
two mouths and two stomachs, and thus produces twice as much waste
(Cleveland et al. “Part One” 10). After Loralye transforms into a hulking,
deadly monster, she is again shunned by the troupe who wants to keep
peace with the normates on whose business they depend. It is not until
she demonstrates commitment to the show as a family, and expresses her
own isolation from the normal world, that she is again allowed to join the
show, though she must pass another initiation by developing her own act
(Cleveland et al. “Part Two” 18). When Daxton later betrays the troupe,
selling the bodies of their dead to museums, he is banished – left to fend
for himself in the normate world, suffering with the knowledge that he
once had a family who would no longer accept him. He is, to borrow Fou-
cault’s term, de-valorized.
For the locals attending the carnival, their rite of passage is paying the
ticket price. For the readers watching from outside the diegetic world, they
enter by opening the book, by sharing in the feelings of difference or aliena-
tion, or by sympathizing with their suffering. For both the audience in the
stands and the reading audience, their place in the carnival’s heterotopia is
false. Foucault notes that there are some openings that appear to be simple
“but that generally hide curious exclusions. Everyone can enter into the
heterotopic sites, but in fact that is only an illusion – we think we enter
where we are, by the very fact that we enter, excluded” (Foucault, “Of Other
Spaces” 7–8). The audience enters the carnival space, but they are never
allowed behind the curtains or into the living quarters of the performers;
they are at the carnival, but not in it. For them, the carnival experience is
contrived, never authentic.
Illusion and Compensation

The last principle of heterotopia is that they create illusions that expose
the real spaces of human existence and thereby create a place of differ-
ence, a place that is Other (Foucault, “Of Other Spaces” 8). They bring the
binaries between real and surreal into focus and thus take a real site and
make it more intense, usually by emphasizing a deviant aspect that could not
be so highlighted in normal public spaces. The heterotopia of illusion and
compensation embody or espouse an alternate, even utopic, mode of social
structure. Most circus horror offers us a combination of our fears, forcing
us to look at things we usually try to avoid. The plausible and implausible,
real and fantastic, collide to present an alternate view of ourselves and our
world.
We are confronted by the unknown. Sometimes, this is simply in the form
of the freak, who promoters of the past would claim “were examples of pre-
viously undiscovered types of human” (Bogdan 6). Show’s End brings this
forth in Captain Corley’s phantasmagoric circus, created through a devilish
bargain with Lovecraftian Old Gods to harness real magic, because Corley
reasoned, “To me, the stage was the quintessential allegory for life and the
beyond.” And,
If the stage represented how we perceive this life, then the curtain was
the barrier that kept all the knowledge and secrets hidden from us,
the audience. . . . Magick, however, allows you to sneak on stage, peer
through the curtain, and witness how our very own reality is molded.
(Cleveland et al. “Part Four” [Nov. 2019] 5)
Loralye, too, confronts the unknown – that within herself, as she comes
to terms with her monstrous abilities – just as her readers may be com-
pelled to look within themselves as her story unfolds. We are confronted by
our own mortality. As Peta Tait observes, the death-defying feats of trapeze
artists induce “psychic fears of maimed if not fatally injured bodies” (loc.
589), and contortion performances “could make the body seem bizarre with
positions that induced fascination and fear” (loc. 596). The physical dif-
ferences of the sideshow performers may make audiences uncomfortable
because their deformities or impairments symbolize the uncertainty of life
and represent a state of the fesh that is closer to death (Larsen and Haller
169–170). In horror movies, this confrontation with death may come in
the form of murderous clowns (Killer Klowns from Outer Space, Stephen
Chiodo, 1988), a satanic ringmaster (The Devil’s Carnival, Darren Lynn
Bousman, 2012), or encounters with our disembodied spirit (Carnival of
Souls, Herk Harvey, 1962). A state of living death is offered in Show’s End.
Not only are the performances death-defying, with the “freaks” breathing
fre, controlling electricity, swallowing swords, and walking on blade edges,
but they are also forced to continue performing even after their deaths.
Madam Vadoma, reveals, “When one of us dies, they must be buried in a
special place far away from . . . norms. For our group, it’s [the cemetery plot
called] ‘Show’s End’ ” (Cleveland et al. “Part Two” 11). Later, it is revealed
that this particular burial place is, in fact, a contact point for the sale of the
freaks’ bodies for display in museums (Cleveland et al. “Part Four” 13–17),
so that even in death they continue to make money for the show and to
perform as “freaks.”
At the end, the circus of horrors often offers up a revenge fantasy that
forces us to confront our immorality and prejudices – and their conse-
quences. The people we once laughed at now stalk us as killer clowns; those
we denigrated as subhuman mutilate us into their ranks; the animals we
once abused turn on us as ferocious beasts. In July 2019, right around the
premier of Show’s End, circus tigers in Italy mauled their trainer to death
(Hignett). A few months earlier, a circus tiger in Ukraine attacked his trainer
during a show, apparently from the stress of captivity (Vega). When the
story of Show’s End begins, Loralye is in her monstrous form, caged in the
basement of her parents’ home, being sold by her father to Captain Corley’s
circus of the damned (Cleveland et al. “Part One” 1–2). At the series’ cli-
max, Loralye, again in monstrous form, tears Corley in two in front of the
audience of captured souls. Her actions are prompted by the Old God with
whom Corley bargained, “The souls of the audience [Corley] pledged to
me . . . They will witness [his] magnum opus . . . And they want what every
audience craves . . . The fall of the villain!” (Cleveland et al. “Part Five” 18).
Corley received “freak justice” – a punishment that beft the crime – and
readers were reminded of the possibility of karmic retribution for their own
misdeeds.
The Show’s End

A moral code of all-for-one and one-for-all inclusiveness is often found in cir-
cus fction, but Show’s End makes no such declarations of utopic pluralism.
Instead, as demonstrated here through contextualization within Foucault’s
heterotopology, Show’s End demarcates and embraces difference as distinct.
It allows for imperfections that are unique in the heterotopia of deviation
and of valor. It demonstrates the cathartic potential of circus horror creat-
ing heterotopia in a society otherwise dominated by White, masculine, abled
hegemony. As a critical perspective, Foucault’s heterotopia also points to a
fatal faw in this space of difference. Circus horror is unsettling and ambigu-
ous; its heterotopia is both reactionary, marking difference as deviance, and
revolutionary, exposing inequities and compensating for the harshness of
reality. Thus, the implications of carnivalesque violence are unclear. It fre-
quently presents members of a traditionally disempowered minority fnding
the strength to disempower a member of the dominant majority. This leaves
audiences with the troubling question as to whether the victims got what
they deserved, or if society’s fear of freaks was justifed all along.
Notes
1 “Hop-Frog” is a short horror story of revenge and spectacle in which a cruel
king enslaves two dwarfs, Hop-Frog and Tripetta, for entertainment. When he
mistreats Tripetta, Hop-Frog tricks the monarch and his ministers into playing a
game in which they are tarred and burned to death.
2 See William Schoell’s, Horror Comics: Fiends, Freaks and Fantastic Creatures,
1940s-1980s (Jefferson: McFarland &Company, Inc., 2014).
3 For an example of this approach, see Noor-ul-Ain Sajjad and Ayesha Perveen.
“Private Heterotopia and the Public Space: An Incongruity Explored Through
Orhan Pamuk’s My Name is Red,” SAGE Open, January–March 2019, pp. 1–8.
4 See Martin F. Norden and Madeleine A. Cahill’s, “Violence, Women, and Dis-
ability in Tod Browning’s Freaks and The Devil Doll,” Journal of Popular Film
and Television, Vol. 26, No. 2, 1998, pp. 86–94; and Robin Larsen and Beth A.
Haller’s, “Public Reception of Real Disability: The Case of Freaks,” Journal of
Popular Film and Television, Vol. 29, No. 4, 2002, pp. 164–172.
5 See Rubén Peinado-Abarrio’s, “Of Monsters and Men: Masculinities in HBO’s
Carnivàle,” Oceánide, Vol. 9, No 4, http://oceanide.netne.net/articulos/art9-4.
pdf; and Helena Bacon’s “They’re Just People, That’s All: American Carnival, the
Freakish Body and the Ecological Self in Daniel Knauf’s Carnivàle,” Otherness:
Essays and Studies, Vol. 6, No. 1, 2018, pp. 193–220.
6 See Norman Osborn’s “American Horror Story: Freak Show (FX, 2014–15),”
The Irish Journal of Gothic and Horror Studies, Vol. 14, 2015, pp. 157–160; and
Stevi Costa’s “American Horror Story: Capital, Counterculture, and the Freak,”
European Journal of American Culture, Vol. 38, No. 1, 2019, pp. 71–82.
7 See Devi Nirmala Muthia Sayekti’s, “Menjadi Bintang Atau Binatang: Analisis
Wacana ‘Othering’ dalam Film ‘The Greatest Showman’,” Sabda, Vol. 13, No. 2,
2018, pp. 100–109.
8 Deviant leisure suggests activity, often sensation-seeking behavior, which goes
against the prevailing moral norms of society (see D.J. Williams’, “Deviant Lei-
sure: Rethinking ‘The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly’,” Leisure Sciences: An Inter-
disciplinary Journal, Vol. 31, No. 2, 2010, pp. 207–213.).
9 See Yoram Carmeli’s, “Circus Play, Circus Talk and the Nostalgia for a Total
Order,” Journal of Popular Culture, Vol. 35, No. 3, pp. 157–164.
10 See William J. Free’s, “Fellini’s ‘I Clowns’ and the Grotesque,” Journal of Modern
Literature, Vol. 3, No. 3, 1973, pp. 214–227; and Ruth Richards’, “Transgressive
Clowns: Between Horror and Humor,” Comedy Studies, Vol. 11, No. 1, 2020,
pp. 62–73.
Works Cited
Bakhtin, Mikhail. Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, translated by Caryl Emerson.
University of Minnesota, 1984.
Bogdan, Robert. Freak Show. Kindle ed. University of Chicago Press, 1988.
Carmeli, Yoram. “Circus Play, Circus Talk and the Nostalgia for a Total Order.”
Journal of Popular Culture, Vol. 35, No. 3, 2001, pp. 157–164.
___. “The Invention of Circus and Bourgeois Hegemony: A Glance at British Circus
Books.” Journal of Popular Culture, Vol. 29, No. 1, 1995, pp. 213–221.
Cleveland, Anthony (w), Jef Sadzinski (p/i), Julian Gonzalez (c) and Justin Birch (l).
Show’s End, #1, “Part 1 of 5.” Mad Cave Studios, 2019.
___. Show’s End, #2, “Part 2 of 5,” Mad Cave Studios, 2019.
Costa, Stevi. “American Horror Story: Capital, Counterculture, and the Freak.”
European Journal of American Culture, Vol. 38, No. 1, 2019, pp. 71–82.
Davies, Ann. “Guillermo del Toro’s Cronos: The Vampire as Embodied Heteroto-
pia.” Quarterly Review of Film and Video, Vol. 25, No. 5, 2008, pp. 395–403.
Foucault, Michel. Aesthetics, Method and Epistemology, edited by James D. Faubion.
Allen Lane, 1998, pp. 175–185.
___. “Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias.” Architecture/Mouvement/Con-
tinité, translated by Jay Miskowiec, October 1984, http://web.mit.edu/allanmc/
www/foucault1.pdf. Accessed 10 April 2021.
Free, William J. “Fellini’s ‘I Clowns’ and the Grotesque.” Journal of Modern Litera-
ture, Vol. 3, No. 3, 1973, pp. 214–227.
Hetherington, Kevin. The Badlands of Modernity: Heterotopia and Social Ordering.
Routledge, 1997.
Hignett, Katherine.“Circus Tigers Turn on Trainer, Maul Him to Death Despite Fran-
tic Attempts to Intervene.” Newsweek, 5 July 2019, www.newsweek.com/tiger-
death-circus-tamer-killed-italy-wild-animals-animal-rights-1447700. Accessed 11
April 2021.
Hughes, Johnny. “The Machine.” “Advance Review: Show’s End #1 (of 5).” Comic
Crusaders, Summer 2019, www.comiccrusaders.com/advance-review-shows-end-
1-of-5/. Accessed 6 April 2021.
L.N. “The Circus Side Show.” New York Times, 9 July 1932, p. 0.
Larsen, Robin and Beth A. Haller. “Public Reception of Real Disability: The Case of
Freaks.” Journal of Popular Film and Television, Vol. 29, No. 4, 2002, pp. 164–172.
Mad Cave. “Show’s End #1.” Mad Cave Studios, 2019, https://madcavestudios.com/
product/shows-end-1/. Accessed 6 April 2021.
McGowan, Philip. American Carnival: Seeing and Reading American Culture.
Greenwood Press, 2001.
Morrison, Grant. Supergods: What Masked Vigilantes, Miraculous Mutants, and a
Sun God from Smallville Can Teach Us About Being Human. Kindle ed. Spiegel &
Grau, 2012.
Richards, Ruth. “Transgressive Clowns: Between Horror and Humor.” Comedy
Studies, Vol. 11, No. 1, 2020, pp. 62–73.
Saldanha, Arun. “Heterotopia and Structuralism.” Environment and Planning, Vol.
40, 2008, pp. 2080–2096.
Stoddart, Helen. “Horror, Circus and Orientalism.” Empire and the Gothic: The
Politics of Genre, edited by Andrew Smith and William Hughes. Palgrave Macmil-
lan, 2003, pp. 118–135.
Tait, Peta. Circus Bodies: Cultural Identity in Aerial Performance. Kindle ed. Rout-
ledge, 2005.
Vega, Sharon. “Another Distressed Circus Lion Attacks Trainer during Show.” One
Green Planet, 9 April 2019, www.onegreenplanet.org/animalsandnature/another-
distressed-circus-lion-attacks-trainer-during-show/. Accessed 11 April 2021.
Zainaldin, Jamil S. “Great Depression.” New Georgia Encyclopedia, 2007/2020,
www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/great-depression.
Accessed 10 April 2021.
19 The Hell Economics of
Zombillénium
Annick Pellegrin
Arthur de Pins’s Zombillénium is a Franco-Belgian comic series created

on Adobe Illustrator 9.0 (but frst published in traditional paper format,
although digitised versions are also available) that presents zombies as
workers at the mercy of vampires and demons. It is set in an eponymous
theme park found in the north of France where all types of undead creatures
work for the demon Behemoth on an abusive lock-in contract. From the
beginning, the series has been an openly critical extended metaphor of the
power relations between employers and employees: it depicts the big bosses
of different industries as demons who are part of the large group Acheon/
Acheron (both forms are found in the body of work) and who ruthlessly
exploit their undead employees. De Pins has explained that with each vol-
ume, he takes the metaphor further by showing that each evil boss has an
even worse one higher up (“Retour . . .” 5). There is no lack of criticism of
the dehumanising working conditions and the social stratifcation that capi-
talism relies on in order to perpetuate itself in the series.
While the frst three albums (2010–2013; henceforth “earlier albums”)
familiarised readers with the situation of the employees (de Pins, “Écoutez
Arthur de Pins . . .”), with the animated flm adaptation (2017) and the
subsequent three albums (2018 to present; henceforth “later albums”),
employee unrest, uprisings, and revolts are becoming more common, and
the series appears to be working up to a great fnal battle (de Pins, “Zom-
billénium the origins” 50). However, a real revolution – of any kind – so far
has not been possible in the universe created by de Pins.
According to Mark Fisher in Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?
(2009), capitalist realism is the acceptance that, despite all our discontents,
there is no alternative to capitalism:
Capitalist realism as I understand it cannot be confned to art or to

the quasi-propagandistic way in which advertising functions. It is more
like a pervasive atmosphere, conditioning not only the production of
culture but also the regulation of work and education, and acting as a
kind of invisible barrier constraining thought and action. . . . Over the
past thirty years, capitalist realism has successfully installed a “business
DOI: 10.4324/9781003261551-23
236 Annick Pellegrin
ontology” in which it is simply obvious that everything in society,
including healthcare and education, should be run as a business.
(16–17, emphasis in the original)
Fisher’s observation as to the pervasiveness of “simply obvious” capitalism

rings particularly true with regards to Zombillénium considering the fact
that, even beyond their own death, Zombillénium employees cannot escape
having to work to make profts for greedy demons – although they realisti-
cally do not have any physical need to earn a living. For Fisher, “Capitalist
realism can only be threatened if it is shown to be in some way inconsistent
or untenable; if, that is to say, capitalism’s ostensible ‘realism’ turns out to
be nothing of the sort” (16).
Despite the failure, so far, of the attempts at a revolution in Zombillé-
nium, and the dependence of the œuvre itself on capitalist exploitation, this
chapter seeks to assess the extent to which the revolts that are depicted in
de Pins’s œuvre crack capitalist realism as described by Fisher. In order to
do so, in addition to Fisher’s work, I rely on Wendy Brown’s “Resisting
Left Melancholy” (1999) and Luke Goode and Michael Godhe’s “Beyond
Capitalist Realism” (2017). Brown explains that “left melancholy is [Walter]
Benjamin’s unambivalent epithet for the revolutionary hack who is, fnally,
more attached to a particular analysis or ideal – even to the failure of that
ideal – than to seizing possibilities for radical change in the present” (20).
She further explains that:
If the contemporary Left often clings to formations and formulations

of another epoch, one in which the notion of unifed movements, social
totalities, and class-based politics appeared to be viable categories of
political and theoretical analysis, this means that it literally renders
itself a conservative force in history – one that not only misreads the
present but installs traditionalism in the very heart of its praxis, in the
place where commitment to risk and upheaval belongs.
(25)
At the end, she argues that as a result of the combination of left traditional-
ism and “a loss of faith in the egalitarian vision so fundamental to the social-
ist challenge to the capitalist mode of production” the Left cannot offer “a
compelling alternative to the existing order of things. But perhaps even more
troubling, it is a Left that has become more attached to its impossibility than
to its potential fruitfulness.” (26) While she thus paints a picture similar to
the one presented by Fisher when he describes Capitalist Realism, Brown
advocates resisting this melancholy and “throwing [it] off” (26), seeking a
complete transformation of society instead of remaining attached to tradi-
tionalist views.
Basing themselves on Brown’s and Fisher’s work among many others,
Goode and Godhe argue that even with dystopian narratives, it is possible
The Hell Economics of Zombillénium 237
to fnd a way out of left melancholy and capitalist realism in two ways. First,
“the appeal of [such works] lies not least in the way they use futurescapes
to hyperbolize our current societal trajectories and sharpen our focus on a
catastrophic ‘future-to-be-averted’ ” (119). Second, regarding more recent
dystopian works, they point out that they “run against the grain of hopeless-
ness, featuring narratives of resistance and overcoming, offering beacons of
hope against intensely bleak backdrops” (119). As a result, such narratives
“can provoke us to think in different temporalities . . .; they can fex our
imaginative muscles; and, signifcantly, they can move us” (119).
Before delving further into the situation of the Zombillénium employees,
I provide a short presentation of the universe created by de Pins in the next
section. I then go on to consider the various revolts and uprisings in the park
and assess whether they are able to crack capitalist realism.
The World of Zombillénium

Zombillénium started when Frédéric Niffe, the then editor-in-chief of the
Franco-Belgian comics’ weekly magazine Spirou (published by Dupuis),
asked de Pins to create the cover art for the 2008 Halloween issue of Spirou,
although de Pins was essentially known for his work in cute and humor-
istic adult comics at the time (“Zombillénium: au commencement” 9; de
Pins, “Arthur de Pins” 91; de Pins, “Du jambon à l’os” 30). Following the
submission of the artwork, Niffe invited de Pins to develop the characters
from the cover to create a series (de Pins, “Du jambon à l’os” 30; de Pins,
“Vous êtes . . .” 17; de Pins “Zombillénium: diablement attractif” 30). As a
result, the frst installment was serialised in Spirou starting in February 2009
(de Pins “Zombillénium : Gretchen 1.”) and then published by Dupuis as
an album, Gretchen, in 2010. After two more albums that I include in the
earlier albums – Ressources humaines [Human Resources] was released in
2011 and awarded a prize at the Angoulême comics’ festival the following
year (Le Saux); and Control freaks (2013) – a music video for the song
“Nameless World” by the band Skip the Use, featuring characters from
Zombillénium, was released in 2013 (de Pins et al.). This video was in fact a
pilot for the Zombillénium animated flm adaptation that followed in 2017
and that was directed by de Pins and Alexis Ducord (Guarnido and de Pins
10; de Pins, “Pas tous à la fois !” 21). A further two albums were released
after the animated flm, marking the start of what I term the later albums:
La Fille de l’air [Royal Witchcraft] (2018) and Vendredi noir [Black Friday]
(2021). The earlier original French-language albums have been translated
to Dutch/Flemish; the frst four albums have been translated to English and
Spanish; all fve existing albums have been translated to German and Italian;
and the flm is available in English and Spanish in addition to the original
French.1 The series is now offcially nearing its end. In 2021, a forthcoming
sixth and fnal volume was announced, with a prepublication due to start
in Spirou in autumn 2021 (de Pins, “Le Scénario” 50). At the latest revision
of this chapter, however, it had been announced as starting in June 2022 (de
Pins, “Ultime sabbat” 50). De Pins has mentioned contemplating the pos-
sibility of a spin-off (presumably in bande dessinée form), a television series
and collaborations with comic authors from different countries, but it does
not appear that all of these projects are frm yet (de Pins, “Zombillénium the
origins” 50; de Pins, “Vous êtes . . .” 17; de Pins, “La tension . . .” 18).
Regarding the transmedial nature of the body of work constituting the
Zombillénium universe, de Pins has expressed the wish to ensure that eve-
rything come together to form “un tout cohérent” [a coherent entity] (“Le
Monstrueux . . .” 6). He has also explained the order in which each work
is located on the narrative timeline: the spin-off that he is contemplating,
the opening credits to the flm, the pilot music video, the flm and, fnally,
the existing albums (de Pins and Ducord, “bande dessinée” 22; “Clip” 84;
de Pins, “ZOMBILLÉNIUM, du flm . . .” 24; de Pins, “Zombillénium the
origins” 50). In order to ensure that everything come together as a whole, de
Pins considered the possibility of an album 0 for some time (“Vous êtes . . .”
17; “Le Monstrueux . . .” 6), but it appears that he has now chosen to
include the content planned for this volume – providing readers with the
missing links between the flm and the frst album – in the fnal album that
he is preparing (“Zombillénium the origins” 50). Any comment on my part
pertaining to an album 0, the content of the fnal volume, and potential spin-
offs, however, can only be an educated guess at best for now. For this reason,
this chapter will focus on fully released material from the Zombillénium
universe as a whole, including the flm and the music video, although I may
refer to future plans.
Aurélien’s Burnout
The opening sequence of the frst album, Gretchen, sets the tone regarding
workers’ discontent as it shows the mummy Aton attempting to hitchhike his
way back to Cairo after escaping from the park (3–6). However, the frst seri-
ous expression of discontent at the state of affairs in the series that readers
see comes from Aurélien Zahner. While the Zombillénium CEO Francis von
Bloodt and Sirius (the skeleton) convince Aton to get into Francis’s car and
go back to the park, a distraught (but still human) Aurélien is shown enter-
ing a bar and attempting an armed robbery. Although the witch, Gretchen
Webb, convinces him not to go ahead with this hold up attempt, by the end
of this sequence, Aurélien is hit by Francis’s car (with Sirius and Aton in it)
as he is leaving the bar and dies. Over the course of this album, Aurélien is
then changed into a vampire/werewolf/demon, signs a lock-in work contract
with the devil Behemoth and becomes the face of the theme park Zombillé-
nium. Traumatised by his death and his ensuing rushed hire as a permanent
employee, not to mention the physical changes he is experiencing, Aurélien
is in denial about his new status until he fnds out the next morning that “[il]
quitter[a] ce monde en [se] consumant sur place” [[his] earthly body will
be consumed by fames] (Gretchen 23), in the literal sense, if he is late for
work. Other stringent working conditions are also mentioned to Aurélien
soon after he signs his contract, when he is still overwhelmed by the nature
and the speed of what is happening to him. Indeed, Aton explains to him:
“Prime de fn d’année, RTT, 35 heures, tickets restau, retraite à 60

ans . . . tout ça, tu t’asseois dessus, ce sont des revendications de mor-
tels, plus les tiennes. – Enfn c’est ce que dit la direction – ici tu vas
apprendre à vivre jour et nuit ton rôle de monstre.” [Year-end bonuses,
40-hour work weeks, comp time, retirement at 65 . . . you can forget
all about the workplace privileges of mortals. At least that’s what the
board of directors says. Here, you’ll learn to live as the monster you are
day and night.]
(Gretchen 17)2
Despite the fact that these workers have essentially no rights, they have
several different workers’ unions, and the ones whose names appear are:
Intersyndicale des Zombies (henceforth IZ), Solideathnosc, CZT, The Work-
ing Dead, and Zombie Union (Control freaks 31).3
Although a week later Aurélien has settled into his new condition and
basks in his newfound animal masculinity (Gretchen 36), by the third
album, Control freaks, he starts suffering from “le blues post mortem” [post
mortem blues] (8). Unable to “[se] faire à l’idée [qu’il est] immortel” [get
used to the idea that [he is] immortal], Aurélien thinks that “C’est absurde,
tout ça, Francis ! Absurde ! Il doit bien y avoir un moyen de mourir pour
de bon.” [This whole thing’s absurd, there’s gotta be some way to die for
good!] (Control freaks 8). His frustration mounting, Aurélien has a melt-
down that leads him to destroy some of the park instalments and almost
hurt visitors. In the heat of the moment, he vents his anger at the fact that
he was “embauché contre [son] plein gré” [hired against [his] will] while he
is in his gigantic demon form (Control freaks 23). This is when Gretchen,
who is also Behemoth’s daughter, reveals that she accidentally hired Aurélien
when she looked at him for too long at the bar where he was attempting
a hold up because she found him attractive. While Gretchen is able to turn
Aurélien around with her confession, other Zombillénium employees are
still wound up and seek to cause bodily harm to visitors. After Aurélien
and Gretchen are able to save the visitors riding the rollercoaster, Gretchen
states, in tears, “J’en ai marre de tout ça” [I’m sick and tired of all this], to
which Aurélien replies “Alors qu’est-ce qu’on attend pour faire péter le sys-
tème, petite sorcière?” [so, what do you say we blow this all up, little witch?]
(Control freaks 28). This is the frst time that main characters speak of not
only bringing change but effectively dismantling the Zombillénium system
of exploitation altogether as well.
While Aurélien and Gretchen are having their own personal crises, the park
is also experiencing a crisis. In the frst two albums, the CEO was Francis, a
paternalistic vampire (de Pins, “Mon dad” 11). By the time Aurélien has his
meltdown in the third installment, another vampire – Bohémond Jaggar de
Rochambeau – has already been sent by Behemoth, under the pretence of
assisting Francis as a consultant. All the park employees are aware that Jag-
gar and his far more ruthless approach to running a business are bad news
(Control freaks 8–9). De Pins explains: “véritable caricature du consultant,
Jaggar fait tout pour que l’entreprise soit rentable, au mépris des salariés”
[a veritable caricature of the consultant, Jaggar does everything to make the
company proftable, at the expense of employees] (de Pins, “Soif d’âmes”
16). Jaggar starts implementing new methods, with Behemoth’s blessing,
such as authorising employees to kill visitors and giving them an incentive
to do so: “Tout humain mordu dans l’enceinte du parc sera immédiatement
embauché et prendra la place de la créature qui l’a mordu./Cette dernière se
verra promue à un poste supérieur.” [All humans bitten on the park grounds
will immediately be hired and will take the place of the creature that bit
it./The latter will then be promoted to a higher position.] (Control freaks
30). This leads a number of employees to try and harm park visitors as
Sirius – the IZ union representative – explains that members of the Zombie
Union are in favour of harming visitors, while the other unions are protest-
ing the new management’s decisions (Control freaks 31). While Aurélien
and Gretchen, alongside their unionised friends who are not part of the
Zombie Union, take industrial action, protect humans, and try to drive the
theme park to the ground by causing losses, their attempts end up backfr-
ing. Readers get a clearer idea of Jaggar’s and Behemoth’s brutal capitalist
tactics as the consequences faced by agitators come to light following Fran-
cis’s resignation. Not only are employees typically forced or tricked into a
contract immediately after their deaths without being given time to read
the fne print and not only are employees encouraged to kill in order to get
ahead in this system, but any grave professional misconduct also results in
employees being reduced to utter and undisguised slavery in hell, known as
level −9 and located under the park. This gives the expression “being fred”
a very literal meaning as Aton goes up in fames when he tears up his own
contract. In addition, with the introduction of daily production goals, so to
speak, zombies are under intense pressure to make the park proftable: “à
compter d’aujourd’hui, pour chaque journée en dessous de la barre des 10
000 visiteurs, c’est un zombie au hasard qui rejoint le niveau −9 !” [From
this point forward, every day the park brings in fewer than 10,000 visitors,
a random zombie will be sent to level −9!] (Control freaks 45–46). There
is therefore no escaping the torment of having to work in order to churn
out profts. Aurélien’s frst revolt is quashed, and Jaggar tightens the screws
on existing employees while using brutal recruitment tactics that increase
profts for the park.
It is noteworthy, however, that as undead creatures the zombies have no
real material needs that justify the running of Zombillénium: none of the
supposed rewards or compensations is of any use to them. The only real
reward, so to speak, is the avoidance of a much more crude and painful
exploitation on level −9. However, the difference is minimal insofar as it
is a system where employment does not even have a veneer of choice, and
contracts are for eternity. Thus, failure to fulfll one’s duty may lead to utter
slavery, but, in reality, the Zombillénium employees are always already
slaves.
Hector’s Revolt
While Aurélien’s burnout leads to his frst revolt alongside other park
employees, this is not the frst revolt at Zombillénium. In the flm adapta-
tion, which is set prior to the albums although it was created later, Aurélien
is noticeably absent and is replaced by Hector Saxe, a seemingly second-
grade, misshapen monster who (in many ways, but not all) closely resembles
Aurélien. The animated flm also brings in the new character Lucie, a young
schoolgirl whom Gretchen takes under her wing, almost like a daughter. De
Pins explained that in the animated adaptation, Hector replaced Aurélien
because, as a prisoner of the park, Aurélien should have at least attempted
to escape (“En attendant . . .” 93) and because Aurélien generally did not
seem to have any goals (de Pins and Ducord, “Zombies à . . .” 30). However,
while Hector appears to revolt, in reality he does the opposite, fully embrac-
ing capitalist values.
Even prior to his death, Hector is shown to be so absorbed by his work
that he is unable to pay much attention to his daughter, Lucie. In the opening
sequence, he is shown dropping Lucie off at boarding school, too focused
on his work to hold a conversation with her. It is made quite clear that as
a work safety inspector, he draws sadistic pleasure from having the power
to punish workplaces and fnding a reason to do so, especially if it hurts
workers. Such is his commitment to enforcing rules and harsh capitalism
that when Lucie enquires about the existence of monsters, all he has to say
is “j’espère qu’ils travaillent comme tout le monde et qu’ils payent leurs
impôts” [I certainly hope they pay their taxes like the rest of us].4 Similarly,
he initially goes to Zombillénium because he does not want Lucie to visit
it, and he is therefore looking for a reason to shut it down. It is his drive to
fnd fault with the park that leads him to his death and ensuing hire as he
ventures down to level −9, which is not shown on the blueprints and that he
interprets as an “atelier clandestin” [sweatshop]. While the message Hector
is writing on his smart phone indicates that he is hoping this fnding will
earn him a promotion, Francis bites Hector off-screen in order to prevent
the information from being leaked out to the public. Like Aurélien, Hector
is also bitten by Blaise, the werewolf, which turns him into an initially uni-
dentifable creature (he is later revealed to be a demon). When he wakes up,
Hector is informed that he is a Zombillénium employee.
Hector’s situation is slightly different from that of Aurélien inasmuch as,
in the flm, employees are strictly forbidden from leaving the park premises
while Aurélien continues to live in his own apartment, among humans.
While it is true that, unlike Aurélien, Hector resists this rule and tries to
escape in order to see his daughter, in the end, Hector embraces Zombillé-
nium and the way it is organised, perhaps far more so than Aurélien does, at
least early on. As the park is losing money because it is not considered scary
enough, and the only popular attraction is the one run by vampires due to
their perceived gothic charm, Behemoth is contemplating closing it down.
Hearing this news, Hector takes it upon himself to save the park by doing
his utmost to improve the attractions and make them scarier. When Steven,
the seductive vampire, persuades investors to make him the CEO of the
company instead of Francis, the park reopens under the name Vampirama,
with only vampires on the grounds; all the other monsters are relegated to
level −9 as slaves. It is out of concern for his daughter Lucie, who is being
held at the park, that Hector climbs back up to the surface and rises against
the vampires, followed by his enslaved friends. However, the class struggles
that are staged in this uprising do not seem to even begin to scratch at the
capitalist system in place at the park itself. Indeed, Steven’s vampires are
defeated, and Francis – who is also a vampire – is reinstated, but the park
still continues running for all monsters, in the ways that are played out in
the albums. Moreover, as is made quite clear in the flm, while Francis may
be more paternalistic and includes all monsters, Zombillénium is still owned
by Behemoth, and the work conditions are still what they are in the frst
albums. In plain terms, Francis may be a more benevolent boss, but he is
still helping Behemoth make money off the workers’ backs (de Pins, “Soif
d’âmes” 16). As such, Hector only succeeds in protecting the business. It is
also telling that Hector comes into his own during this fnal battle: he con-
tinues to evolve throughout the flm, and, at the end of the battle, he is fully
formed as a gigantic and not-so misshapen demon.
Lucie/Charlotte versus Gretchen, So Far

In the flm adaptation and in the later albums we come to fnd out that,
aside from being a very clear criticism of capitalism, “Zombillénium raconte
l’histoire d’une flle qui se rebelle contre son père” [Zombillénium tells the
story of a girl who rebels against her father] (de Pins, “Les Zombies . . .” 50).
Gretchen is Behemoth’s daughter, and she is forced to do her father’s work
while her mother is being held as a slave in hell (Vendredi noir 7; Control
freaks 4–5). Lucie, who comes back as a grown woman and a major antago-
nist to Gretchen in the later albums under the name of Charlotte Hawkins,
has her own “daddy issues.” The fght between Gretchen and Charlotte takes
place against a backdrop of even worse working conditions at Zombillé-
nium, with the physical abuse and control of zombies. Not only is the latest
zombie attraction, Shoot the Zombie, an open invitation to park visitors to
throw objects at zombies (most of whom resist the temptation of striking
back despite company incentives to do so), but zombies are also restricted to
the attractions to which they have been assigned under the threat of going
up in fames if they try to cross lines delimiting the said attractions (La Fille
de l’air 28–34).
Perhaps as a way to explain the many points in common between Aurélien
and Hector, de Pins makes them both appear as victims of Gretchen’s manip-
ulations. Charlotte seems to have come seeking a personal revenge as she
accuses Gretchen of utilising men/demons to free her own mother (Vendredi
noir 24). It is true that the points in common between three of the Zombillé-
nium male demons are striking: both Hector and Aurélien were recruited by
Gretchen, and they turned into demons with whom she was romantically
involved. When she talks to her mother about Aurélien, she asserts that he is
a little silly but the right man for the job (Control freaks 5). Charlotte sus-
pects that after failing in her attempt to use Hector and Aurélien, Gretchen
is perhaps starting to consider using the attraction that Astaroth, a younger
demon, feels towards her to her own advantage (Vendredi noir 24). If Char-
lotte is incorrect in her assessment of the situation, as Gretchen asserts, it is
nonetheless a very convincing one, even more so as Gretchen herself explic-
itly states that: “j’ai embauché Aurélien pour qu’il devienne président de
Zombillénium à la place de l’actuel, qui est mon père.” [I recruited Aurelian
[sic] with the idea that he’d take over Zombillenium in lieu of the current
CEO, who happens to be my dad] (La Fille de l’air 24; Royal Witchcraft 22).
To understand how Gretchen’s plan might work, one needs to know
that there is a strict social stratifcation at Zombillénium: the big bosses
are demons; higher management staff are vampires; and zombies and other
monsters constitute the working class (de Pins, “Duel . . .” 14). The animated
flm makes this stratifcation even more explicit in the underground accom-
modation provided: not only are the employees given rooms that look like
prison cells, but, in addition, each level corresponds to a type of monster,
while level −9 is where those who have been fred work as slaves (de Pins
and Ducord, “De la bande dessinée . . .” 22–23; “Les Personnages” 52). As
the tickets purchased by park visitors are in fact exit tickets – the souls of
the visitors belong to Behemoth for the duration of their visit – and “seuls
les démons peuvent posséder les âmes” [only demons can possess souls]
(Control freaks 48; La Fille de l’air 24; Royal Witchcraft 22), Gretchen and
some of her unionised friends (outside the Zombie Union) plan to transfer
the ownership of the souls to Aurélien so that he may free them in order
to bring the whole system down (La Fille de l’air 24–25). By the time this
transfer of ownership has come into effect, however, Aurélien is possessed
and under the control of Charlotte (La Fille de l’air 40), who is a more pow-
erful witch than Gretchen. As a result, the transfer of ownership is pointless,
given that Charlotte sides with Jaggar. As Gretchen sadly comes to realise,
“On a juste remplacé le patron par un autre” [All we did was replace one
boss with another] (La Fille de l’air 49; Royal Witchcraft 47). What is more,
Aurélien, while still possessed by Charlotte, joins the table of the Acheon
demons alongside Behemoth (entertainment sector) and none other than
Hector, who now goes by the name of Abaddon (real estate sector) (La Fille
de l’air 50).5
The frst round of battle between Gretchen and Lucie/Charlotte is there-
fore a complete failure on the part of Gretchen and her friends, and increas-
ingly ruthless capitalist methods continue to be employed as the revolted
employees fail to think outside the Zombillénium framework of stratifca-
tion and exploitation. The battle continues in Vendredi noir, but it is not
until the close of the album that Gretchen is able to snatch away the voodoo
doll through which Charlotte/Lucie was able to control Aurélien. De Pins
has already announced that the next and last album will feature a witches’
race (de Pins, “Zombillénium the origins” 50), but it is currently not possible
to do more than speculate on the content of a work not yet available.
The Premise of Zombillénium

The fact that Zombillénium is a social satire is by no means a secret. In
fact, it is often part of the opening statement of interviews or press articles,
before other aspects of the work are considered. In the words of the flm
producer Henri Magalon, Zombillénium is about “La vie d’une entreprise
vue à travers un prisme décalé, une comédie sociale” [the life of an enter-
prise seen through a shifted prism, a social comedy] (16). Thus, it depends
greatly on the persistence of such a structure to be able to comment on or
criticise it; the ruthless methods of the corporate world constitute the raw
material for the content of the series.
Moreover, it is telling that de Pins explains the seemingly never-ending
social and power stratifcation of Zombillénium and Acheon by establishing
a parallel with the world of publishing:
“L’idée, c’est de faire comprendre qu’il y a toujours quelque chose au-

dessus. Prenez les maisons d’édition de bande dessinée. En remontant
d’un cran, on réalise qu’il existe [sic] en fait qu’une poignée de très
grands groupes changeant régulièrement de mains” [the idea is to make
[readers] understand that there is always something above. Look at
bande dessinée publishers. If you go up one level, you realise that there
really exists just a handful of very big groups regularly changing hands].
(de Pins, “Ma sorcière . . .” 38–39)
Zombillénium itself is published by a mainstream Franco-Belgian publisher

that is part of a rather large group, and it would be considered one of the
current Dupuis bestsellers (de Pins, “Soif d’âmes” 18). It is also enjoying rel-
ative success insofar as one of the attractions at the theme park Parc Spirou
is Zombillénium tower (involving a 90-metre drop at 140 km/h) (“Attrac-
tions à sensation”), it continues to be translated to a number of languages,
there has been an animated flm adaptation, and there are talks of possible
spin-offs once the series comes to a close.
The premise of these potential spin-offs itself is telling as de Pins has men-
tioned the possibility of collaborating with authors from other countries to
tell stories of other Zombillénium parks (de Pins, “Vous êtes . . .” 17), as
well as telling the story of Francis’s Freak Show prior to the founding of
Zombillénium. De Pins’s future plans, therefore, seem to involve providing
readers with a clear closed end but to then continue exploring the Zom-
billénium universe prior to that (de Pins, “Zombillénium the origins” 50; de
Pins, “Zombillénium fash back !” 50) and/or telling new stories with similar
premises but in a different geographical setting. Therefore, it appears that
the world of Zombillénium is inextricably tied to the existence of a situation
of exploitation of workers and that it is not feasible to imagine Francis and
his crew outside of a class confict.
This last commentary remains, of course, something of a speculation until
the last album – and possibly new spin-off works – becomes available, but
the œuvre itself is embedded in a capitalist system of production, and for all
its criticism of the system within the fctional universe, so far it is unable to
imagine a world outside capitalism. However, this is not to say that readers
must fall in a helpless left melancholy. If we go by what Brown, and Goode
and Godhe point out in their respective works, de Pins’s running metaphor
pointing to the extreme situation of worker exploitation and the diffculties
the workers face extricating themselves from nothing less than slavery can
also move readers to realise how pervasive capitalism is, question whether it
is really “simply obvious,” and take the full measure of how radical a rein-
vention of society needs to be in order to bring about real change.
Notes
1 The English translations are published both by Europe Comics, “a 13-partner
pan-European alliance, supported by the European Commission and held together
by the desire to spread the European graphic novel heritage around the world”
(“About us”) and NBM. Unless otherwise stated, the translations provided in this
chapter are from the Europe Comics editions.
2 While the translation might not be literal here, it is culturally accurate.
3 The English language translations confate the Intersyndicale des Zombies with
the Zombie Union. As all the unions other than the Zombie Union stand together
while the Zombie Union has different views (as will be explained later), I only use
the names of the unions as they appear in the French language original works.
4 A more literal translation, however, would be “I certainly hope they work and pay
their taxes like the rest of us.”
5 As a sidenote, it is worth noting that Astaroth, for his part, seems to have always
enjoyed being a demon, and, having grown up a fair amount by the fourth vol-
ume, he mentions that he would like to work at the Hell Stock Exchange (La Fille
de l’air 37).
Works Cited
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août 2020, izneo ed., p. 17.
___. “Zombillénium: diablement attractif.” Interview by Thierry Lemaire. Zoo, no
27, September-October 2010, p. 30, zoo-bd.typepad.com/zoo-le-mag/magazines/
ZOO-27-HD.pdf. Accessed 3 February 2014.
___. “ZOMBILLÉNIUM, du flm à la BD.” Interview. Spirou, no 4149, 18 Octo-
ber 2017, p. 24.
___. “Zombillénium fash back !” Interview. Spirou, no 4264, 1er jan. 2020, izneo ed.,
p. 50.
___. “Zombillénium: Gretchen 1.” Spirou, no 3698, 25 fév. 2009, pp. 45–49.
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___. Zombillénium. Vol. 1: Gretchen. izneo ed. Dupuis, 2010.
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2017, pp. 9–12.
Index
Abjection 1, 4, 37, 39, 70, 78, 81, Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, The (flm)
83–85, 105, 108, 111, 181 13–14
Action Comics (comic book series) Cannibalism 39–41,169
89–90, 168 Capitalism 23, 27–30, 119, 123,
Adaptation 86–87n2, 141n2, 143–144, 235–236, 241–242, 245
147, 150, 152–154, 156–164, 179, Capitalist 27–29, 32, 81, 120, 125, 133,
184–185, 188n4, 235, 237, 241–242, 235–237, 240–242, 245
244 Captain America Comics (comic book
AfterShock Comics 66 series) 25
Agamben, Giorgio 126n9 Carnivàle (TV series) 224–225
Amazing Adventures (comic book Carroll, Emily 105, 114
series) 174 Carson, Nathan 143–144
Amazing Man Comics (comic book Castle, Frank (see Punisher)
series) 90 Chabon, Michael 170
Amazing Mystery Funnies (comic book Chupacabra 119, 122
series) 90 “Cinderella” (fairy tale) 109
Amazing Spider-Man, The (comic book Circus 30, 223–232
series) 179, 182 City of Sorrows (comic book series)
Attack on Titan (manga) 158–159 35–36, 39, 41–42, 44–47
Claremont, Chris 170–171–176
Bakhtin, Mikhail 228 Cleveland, Anthony 223
Bare life 119, 125 Cockrum, Dave 171–173
Barthes, Roland 157 Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome 179
Battlestar Galactica: Year Zero (comic Cold War 9–10, 19, 183–184
book series) 138 Colonialism 116, 120–121, 125, 144,
Bazín, André 185 151, 158–159
Beast (character) 170, 174 Comics Code Authority 50, 60n1, 132,
“Belle et la Bête, La” (fairy tale) 110 169, 172
Bennett, Marguerite 65–69, 71–75 Constantine, John (comic book
Binder, Otto 10, 12, 14–15 character) 40
Blackwood, Algernon 144, 146–154 Conway, Gerry 25–26, 174, 179–180,
“Bluebeard” (fairy tale) 106–107, 109 188n5
Body horror 65, 67–68, 75, 78–79, Cosmic horror 164–165
84–86 Creed, Barbara 68, 81
Border Patrol 116–118, 126n4 Creepy (comic magazine) 50–53, 59
Boschi, Roland 179, 187
Brereton, Dan 179, 187 Dark Horse Comics 50, 157, 164
Bronze Age 179 Dasgupta, Shamik 35, 37, 39–42,
Browning, Tod 93, 223 44–47
Index 249
Day of the Dead (flm) 132, 134 Ghost Rider (character) 187
DC Comics 5, 40, 132 Ghosts 9, 36–37, 44–45, 81–89,
de Pins, Arthur 235, 237–238, 241–245 195–196, 202, 215, 228
Demonic possession 122 Gothic 13, 65–67, 70–72, 75, 90–91,
Detective Comics (comic book series) 96, 112, 114, 125n2, 161, 168, 172,
89 174, 175, 224, 228, 242
Devil 52, 93, 122, 206, 208, 238 Gou, Tanabe 156–157
Díaz Castrillo, Jordi 53–54 Green Goblin (character) 184
Doppelgänger 195–196, 204–208, 211, Grimm, Brothers 106
218
Dr. Strange 175 Haunt of Fear, The (comic book series)
Dracula (character) 35, 73, 168–170, 9–10, 15–16, 19–20n1, 95, 132
172–176 Haunted media 217–218, 220
Dracula (flm) 93, 138–139 Heterotopia 118, 125, 224–227,
Dracula (novel) 72, 75, 144 229–230, 232
Dylan Dog (comic book series) 195–211 Howe, Sean 169, 171
Hutcheon, Linda 143–144, 159,
EC Comics 9, 15, 95, 102n7, 132, 134, 185
139, 169
Eco, Umberto 174, 183 Ingels, Graham 16–17, 19
Eerie (comic magazine) 89, 91, 93, 95, InSEXts (comic book series)
101 65–76n3–4
Empire of the Dead (comic book series) Itō, Junji 68, 78, 87n2, 216
135–136, 138, 140
Ero-guro 83 Jack the Ripper 51–59
Eugenics 124 Jerwa, Brandon 138
Joshi, S. T. 143–144, 147, 151–152,
Fairy tales 106, 109–113, 206 154
Fascism 51–52 Jung, Carl Gustav 195–196, 198,
Feeding Ground (comic book mini- 200–201, 206–209
series) 116, 119–124 Jungle Comics (comic book series) 89
Feldstein, Al 10–11, 16–17
Fisher, Mark 235 Kaine: Endorphins – Between Life and
Folklore 72, 81, 122, 131, 153 Death (manga) 214–221n4
Ford, Sam 143–144 Kirby, Jack 168, 171
Foucault, Michel 225–227, 229–230 Klimt, Gustav 145
Franco, Francisco 52 Kolkata 35–37, 39–42, 44–47
Franken-Castle (comic book series) 179, Korean War 9, 11
181, 183–187 Krishna 39, 41
Frankenstein (character) 90–91, 95, Krigstein, Bernard 10, 12–14
102n2, 172, 185, 187 Kristantina, Ariela 66, 68–69, 71–75
Free will 217 Kristeva, Julia 69, 83–84, 105, 181
Freaks 208, 224, 227–229, 232
Freaks (flm) 223–225 Land of the Dead (flm) 134, 140
Freud, Sigmund 11, 196, 207 Lang, Swifty 116
Latinx 116, 119–121, 123, 125
Gaines, Max 10–11 Le Fanu, Joseph Sheridan 65–67, 70
Gaines, William 11, 15–17 Lee, Stan 27, 168
Generation X (comic book series) 170 Lesbianism 65–67, 70, 145
Gerber, Steve 22–24, 26–32 Lipinski, Michael 116–123
Giant-Size Man-Thing (comic book Lovecraft Country (TV series) 156–157
series) 29–30 Lovecraft, H. P. 50, 125, 143–144,
Goethe, Johan Wolfgang von 217 151–154n3, 156–165, 230
250 Index
Mad Cave Studios 223 Remender, Rick 179, 184–188n3
Male violence 83, 86, 183 Renée, Lily 91, 93, 95–102n8, 102n10
Man-Thing (comic book series) 22–32, Ringu (flm) 81, 216
187, 189n10 Romero, George 131–141n3, 141n4
Martin (flm) 139 Romita, Sr., John 180, 188n5
Marvel Cinematic Universe 167 Rucka, Greg 182
Marvel Comics 5, 22, 135, 159, 179, Rufus (comic magazine) 50
182–183
Masculinity 179–180, 182, 184, 187, Sadzinski, Jef 223
239 Savage Tales (comic book series) 22, 25
Matheson, Richard 131 Schotter, Gus 90
McCarthy, Joseph 10, 12, 14–15, 19 Seduction of the Innocent (book) 10,
Mexican border 119 169
Miéville, China 162, 164 Segura, Antonio 51, 55–57, 59–60
Migrants 116–120, 122–126n4, Severin, Marie 12, 19
126n8 Shelley, Mary 172
Misogyny 11, 71, 74, 78, 82–84, 86, Shōjo manga 78
156, 173 Shock SuspenStories (comic book
Monster hunter 179–181, 183 series) 10–11, 15–16, 20n1
Monthly Halloween (horror magazine) Shoggoth 162–164
78, 80 Showa period 158
Morbius, the Living Vampire Show’s End (comic book series)
(character) 187, 189n10 223–232
Mutation 117, 121–123, 174 Sienkewiecz, Bill 173, 176
Silver Age 171
Native American 27–28, 121 Speech Bubble Entertainment 35, 40
Naxal movement 35, 45 Spicy Mystery Stories (comic book
New Left 23–25, 27 series) 89
New X-Men (comic book series) 174 State of exception 125–126n9
Night of the Living Dead (flm) 131, Stoker, Bram 44, 70, 144
133, 137 Storm (character) 169–176
Superhero 32, 35, 47n2, 68, 89–90,
Old Dark House, The (flm) 93 102n5, 134, 167–172, 174–175, 179,
Ortíz, José 51, 55 182–183, 188n2
Superstition 122, 131, 146
Perrault, Charles 106
Planet Comics (comic book series) Tales from the Crypt (comic book
96–97 series) 9, 15–16, 20n1, 139
Poe, Edgar Allan 169, 223 Temporality 215, 218, 220–221
Prize Comics (comic book series) Thrilling Comics (comic book series) 89
90–91, 101–102n2 Through the Woods (comic book series)
Pryde, Kitty (character) 172–173 105–106, 113–114
PTSD 180, 188n4 Toe Tags (comic book series) 132–137,
Punisher, The (character) 179–189n9 140, 141n4
Punisher, The (comic book series) Tomie (manga) 78–87
179–188n2, 182n4 Transmedia 131, 134–138, 140, 238
Tree monsters 151
Racism 11, 17, 28, 156, 158, 164–165,
210 Uncanny 91, 108, 119, 145, 196, 207,
Rangers Comics (comic book series) 90, 219
93–96, 99, 101 Uncanny X-Men (comic book series)
“Red Riding Hood” (fairy tale) 106 168, 171–173, 175–176
Red Scare 3, 9–11 Uzumaki (manga) 84
Index 251
Vampire 65–67, 69–72, 74, 90, 109, Werewolf by Night (character) 185,
131, 139–140, 169–170, 172–174, 187, 189n10, 206, 238, 241
176, 187, 189n10, 200, 205, 238, Wertham, Fredric 10–11, 13–15, 17,
240, 242 19, 168
Vagina dentata 73 Wessler, Carl 10, 16–17
Vampirella (comic book series) 52 Weygand, Armand 90, 93–94
Vampus (comic magazine) 50 Wicked stepmother 109–111, 113
Vault of Horror, The (comic books Wien, Len 171–172
series) 9, 15, 20n1, 95, 132, 139 Witches 95–97, 102n7, 110, 238–239,
Victorian era 65–68, 70–72, 216 243
Vietnam War 23–24, 26, 179–180, World War II 24–26, 32, 52, 158, 168,
188n1 181
VIZ Media 80–81
Voodoo 10, 131, 244 X-Files, The (TV show) 40
X-Men (comic book series) 168–176
Walking Dead, The (TV series) 131,
135 Yuki, Kaori 214, 216–220
Warren Publishing 50, 60n1
Watergate 23–24, 180 Zombies 19, 35, 41, 50, 85, 90, 95,
Weird Comics (comic book series) 101n1, 105, 123, 131–137, 139–140,
89–91, 101 195, 215, 235, 239–243, 245n3
Werewolf 9, 50, 59, 71–72, 93–94, 96, Zombieland (flm) 131
105, 116–123, 125, 127n7, 131, 169, Zombillénium (comic book series)
186 235–245

Critical Approaches To Horror Comic Books Red Ink in The Gutter

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Critical Approaches To Horror Comic Books Red Ink in The Gutter

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‘This collection on horror comics does the essential work of bridging the

John Darowski is a PhD candidate in Comparative Humanities at the

Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns (PhD) works at the Universidad de Buenos

Batman and the Multiplicity of Identity

Contexts of Violence in Comics

Representing Acts of Violence in Comics

Performativity, Cultural Construction, and the Graphic Narrative

Immigrants and Comics

Superheroes and Excess

Critical Approaches to Horror Comic Books

For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.

Edited by John Darowski and Fernando

2 From Caligari to Wertham: When EC’s Horror

3 “Men Have Sentenced This Fen to Death”:

4 The Horrors Haunting the City of Joy: Analyzing

5 Spanish Creepy: Historical Amnesia in “Las mil

6 “A Sight to Dream of, Not to Tell!”: Orality and

7 Gendered Violence and the Abject Body in Junji

8 Lily Renée’s The Werewolf Hunter and the Secret

9 The Wolf Only Needs to Find You Once: Food,

10 Borderland Werewolves: The Horrifc Representation

11 Flesh and Blood: Zombies, Vampires, and George A.

12 An Alien World: A Comic Book Adaptation of

13 Horror Transformed: Tanabe Gou’s Manga

14 Mutant Gothic: Marvel’s Mainstreaming of

16 Dylan Dog’s Nightmares: The Unheimlich

17 Messages of Death: Haunted Media in “Kaine:

18 Heterotopia and Horror at Show’s End 223

19 The Hell Economics of Zombillénium 235

4.1 The terrifying image of the Mahabhairavi 38

Ingrid Butler is a second-year Master of Library and Information Science

Horror is a universal genre. Every culture throughout history has had a

Horror Comic Books in a

“You, Murderer”: McCarthyism as Expressionistic

the canvases of CALIGARI abounded in complexes of jagged, sharp-

Likewise, Severin’s palette often matched the movie’s recurrent dyes by

Revealingly, if Prof. Galby/Dr. Caligari shared obvious traits with Sen.

“The Prude”: EC’s Final Revenge

In the context of EC’s history of condemning McCarthyite attitudes, the

As a result of the hysterical, injudicious, and unfounded charges leveled

Given this prologue, an antipathy toward the anti-comics campaign was

When the Machine Is Not God: Living the Revolution

No More Super Soldiers: Man-Thing’s Anti-War Politics

The Marshland That Sustains His Life: The Anti-Capitalism

The Nexus of All Realities: The Ecology of Man-Thing’s

As Roberts explains, “in Western culture, plants ossify into a kind of

The Plant-God Who Will Save Us All

Outlining the Shape of Horror in City of Sorrows

Figure 4.1 The terrifying image of the Mahabhairavi.

Horrors Lying behind the Supernatural

Figure 4.2 Niyogi reveals the skinned corpse of Basab Roy.

Beyond the Horrors of City of Sorrows

Zombies; werewolves; witches with long, curved noses; vampires with

Terrorism, Amnesia, and the Spanish 1980s

Postmodern Repetition in “Las mil caras de Jack

dismembered bodies of women excites him. Furthermore, the woman who

Different from the ever shrinking and therefore “imperceptibly short”

Race and Gender in Horror

[Carmilla’s] body, therefore, in accordance with the ancient practice,

Reading the superbody is in many ways an attempt to understand a

In InSEXts, Lady’s body is the site of increasingly unstable changes, but

That lesbianism is a form of nonprocreative sexuality would render it

The werewolf’s moment of change highlights the contrast between the