Book Review: Horror Comics and Religion: Essays Framing the Monstrous and the Divine

reviewed by Philip Smith 

Horror Comics and Religion: Essays Framing the Monstrous and the Divine, edited by Brandon R. Grafius and John W. Morehead, McFarland and Company, 2025. 275 pages. $49.95. https://mcfarlandbooks.com/product/horror-comics-and-religion/

Horror Comics and Religion is divided into four sections: ‘The Classics,’ ‘To Hell and Back,’ ‘Beyond Marvel and DC,’ and ‘Breaking the Frames.’ The section divisions seem somewhat arbitrary; the section titled 'Beyond Marvel and DC', for example, does not include the chapter on Monstress (2015-), which is published by Image. The section 'Breaking the Frames' could, in the sense of challenging norms, reasonably house any of the chapters in the volume.

The introductory chapter lays out the terrain primarily in formal terms; horror leverages our emotions through implication; comics use a different language from film because the creator cannot control the speed at which a consumer accesses an image; and comics cannot directly replicate the glimpse of a source of horror as we find in film. In the first chapter, Wetmore argues that EC's horror comics include forms of ironic justice which parallel Christian morality, but meted out by reanimated corpses rather than a Christian God. The forms of punishment are, inevitably, violent, such that the reader is invited to revel in body horror even as justice is done. The second chapter concerns the problem of representing the holy, monstrosity, and the rhetoric of religious justice through the superhero the Spectre. The character, Dean argues, 'is an American answer to criminal evil that is less interested in origins or grand schemes as it is in punishment for moral transgressions being met with the individual creativity of an avenging, nigh-omnipotent angel-cop' (50). The third chapter uses Walter Benjamin's Capitalism and Religion (1921) as a lens to examine From Hell (1989). The argument is persuasive, but Greenaway tends to assume a degree of familiarity with the primary text, making the argument hard to follow at times. McGuire and Possami's chapter, concerns the depiction of exorcisms in comics. Chireau draws upon a range of (in many cases previously unexplored) texts and links mid-twentieth century comics to coeval media. The chapter persuasively demonstrate that the depiction of Voodoo in Golden Age horror comics embodied contemporary anti-Black racism.

In the second section, Holdsworth uses a framework of Biblical and Christian writings concerning parent-child relationships to argue that Gaiman's depiction of (fallen) angels in The Sandman (1999-2015) series suggests a Creator who is 'too powerful to be a healthy human father and too fallible to be a divine one' (121). Gaiman's Lucifer, she asserts, is 'a twisted Peter Pan figure - an eternally abused child with no way to grow up' (122). In the seventh chapter, Foster uses a Christian reading of René Girard's mimetic theory to interpret Ghost Rider: The War for Heaven (2019). FitzGerald approaches Monstress through Eduardo Viveros de Castro's concept of 'multinatiralism'; an understanding of animality as connected to and in dialogue with humanity, Taussig's concept of 'subjecthood', Kristeva's abject theory, and some Foucault. The ultimate conclusion is that Monstress blurs distinctions between self/other, human/animal, and mortal/divine, although the path to this conclusion is, at times, hard to follow and would have benefitted from more signposting. (The four pages of footnotes which follow further suggest that the argument needed tightening).

In the third section, Akagi analyses the blurring of distinctions between life and death in the manga series Another (2009), which he contrasts with passages from Revelations. Cowan argues that Junji Ito's horror manga express a logic which aligns with a religious world-view. Mukhopadhyay's essay on the (mis)representation of tantrik in popular culture is a useful introduction to the actual practice of tantra and the ways in which popular portrayals represent a misunderstanding. The discussion of City of Sorrows (2014-2018) as a counter to such discourse, comes a little late in the chapter but is nonetheless illuminating.

In the final section, Cooper analyses Angle's The Devil is a Handsome Man (2018-2019) in terms of the abject, in particular body horror related to the eyes. Meletiadis writes on Jeff Lemire's Gideon Falls (2018-2020) through the idea of the ineffable as expressed through Manichaeism, Gnosticism, and Lovecraftian cosmic horror (although he asserts of the chapter 'there is no overall argument here' (233)). Anderson reads the Biblical references in Emily Carroll's His Face All Red and My Friend Janna (2014), arguing that Carroll destabilizes Christian imagery (Cain and Abel, the Resurrection and so on) and spiritualism as an uncanny warning against upsetting the conventional order.

Overall, I found the book to vary in quality; Chireau's chapter on Voodoo ('a horror conceived by whiteness' (90)) is specific in its scope and well-argued. Anderson’s chapter is similarly illuminating. Other chapters are weaker; FitzGerald's chapter on Monstress and Meletiadis' chapter on Gideon Falls are needlessly fawning of their subjects employing phrasing such as 'quintessentially, irresistibly, deliciously uncanny' (143) and 'a virtuoso performance' (231). Such overblown praise, I would argue, adds little information, gives up any pretense of scholarly objectivity, and asserts overtly what might otherwise be suggested through the argument. McGuire and Possami's chapter seeks out trends in the depiction of exorcisms in comics, seeks to find a consistent message between works from a diverse range of sociocultural contexts and genres (horror, superhero, science fiction, the 1970s, the early twenty-first century, America, France, and Japan). The conclusion that 'in the comic book narratives, the supernatural exorcism is more often successful if conducted by a [sic] exorcist with individual charismatic power' (83) risks collapsing the differences between these linguistically, culturally, and historically discrete works.

The volume largely cleaves to the orthodoxy that horror comics are inherently subversive (e.g. 'EC comics subversively critiqued middle-class morality' (20)). At points, however, authors show some tendency to challenge this idea; Wetmore notes that justice in EC comics is generally retributive; a violent reinforcement, rather than critique of, mid-twentieth-century white American Christian morality. Elsewhere in the volume, Chireau argues that while EC and those who followed offered 'subversive treatments of religious bigotry and racial prejudice' (98) they nonetheless depicted 'the threat of religious contagion [...] and the impacts of racial transgression on ethnically compromised white Americans' (99).

The greatest weakness of the volume is the apparent lack of editorial polish manifest in typographical errors such as 'Of course, the is true...' (48), 'people have since that time have become...' (80), and 'non-vegetarian food, especially fish and meet' (206). There are also several difficult to parse sentences such as 'These techniques, while extending to the presentation of several characters, appear most extensively in the portrayal of Misaki and Sakakibara and may be considered according to these two characters to illustrate.' (162). These errors do not wholly invalidate the often insightful and original arguments, but they are distracting and suggest too light an editorial hand. They also weaken the authority of the volume; the lack of care which gives rise to typographical issues may suggest similar weaknesses in scholarship. Indeed, Cowan's assertion that Junji Ito's works are 'less well-known in the West' (177) jarred with my own experience in Angoulême in 2023, when I witnessed hundreds of Western comics fans queueing in the cold for hours so they could see Ito at work.

Philip Smith is the author of Reading Art Spiegelman (Routledge 2015), Shakespeare in Singapore (Routledge 2020), and co-author of Printing Terror: American Horror Comics as Cold War Commentary and Critique (Manchester UP, 2021). He has served as co-director of the Shakespeare Behind Bars program at The Correctional Facility at Fox Hill, Nassau, Bahamas, fight choreographer for the Shakespeare in Paradise festival, and an executive board member for the Comics Studies Society. He is Chair of Liberal Arts and Professor of English at Savannah College of Art and Design. He is editor in chief of Literature Compass.

Graphic Novel Review: Who Killed Nessie?

 Review by Daniel Peretti, Memorial University.

Paul Cornell and Rachel Smith. Who Killed Nessie? Avery Hill Publishing, 2025. https://averyhillpublishing.bigcartel.com/product/who-killed-nessie-by-paul-cornell-rachael-smith-preorder

             The early study of folklore (in the nineteenth century) focused heavily on collecting traditions and classifying them into various genres, and further on developing indexes of those genres, which included narratives such as legends, myths, and folktales. A century of this scholarship followed in the footsteps of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, whose works on legends (German Legends, 1816/1981) and myths (Teutonic Mythology, 1835/1966) are not quite as well known as their fairy tales. The differences between these genres have never been settled to the satisfaction of all the scholars who work in the field, but they have attained a general currency outside academic work. Among the various narratives we can find stories of creatures such as elves and other hidden folk in Scandinavia, fairies in the British Isles, mine, forest and household spirits in Germany, and other assorted goblins. As ethnographic inquiry took root in the new world, Asia, and Africa, creatures such as Bigfoot, the Yeti, and the various Yokai became common knowledge. The stories of these beings, once documented from local folklore, entered popular tradition in a range of discourse that encompasses television, cinema, and literature—including comic books. The generic terms employed by folklorists to mean very different types of stories began to function, in popular culture, more or less identically, connoting a traditional origin and a sort of nebulous history that only vaguely attaches them to specific cultures, and only then at national levels. What has formed over the end of the twentieth century and the opening decades of the twenty-first is a pantheon of creatures, often now called cryptids, that are generally accepted to be part of human heritage, and appropriated by creators into Euro-American fiction. Think of the Vertigo series Fables (Willingham et al. 2002-2015) or the Shrek (d. Adamson and Jenson, 2001) animated films. 

Fig. 1. The Beast of Bodmin Moor explains the global distribution of the cryptids to Lindsay during the first night of the convention.

 

            So it is not surprising to find a story in which the Loch Ness Monster exists alongside the Wendigo, or the Cyclops talking to Bigfoot, or a jackalope next to Baba Yaga. A wyvern consorting with Slender Man seems slightly incongruous, but there they stand in the pages of Paul Cornell and Rachael Smith’s Who Killed Nessie? a crowdfunded graphic novel on Zoop acquired by British publisher Avery Hill for print publication. The story might be best described as a cozy mystery, with a limited—though large—cast of characters (see Fig. 1). The book is relatively short at just under 100 pages of story material, with a pared-down art style and simply rendered colors that fit a middle-grade aesthetic, despite telling an adult story.

Fig. 2. Lindsay Brockle arrives at the 

Wisconsin hotel to begin her new job.

            Who Killed Nessie? is set during a cryptid convention at an isolated motel on a lake in northern Wisconsin (see Fig. 2). Lindsay Grockle—the human protagonist—arrives at the hotel as a new employee, only to be left alone to tend to the convention attendees because the other employees do not want to handle the strangeness of it all. At first Lindsay thinks that the convention-goers are wearing costumes, but soon she learns that the people staying at the hotel for the weekend are in fact the cryptids themselves. She learns the truth of the matter when the Beast of Bodmin Moor (a figure of English legend) intrudes upon her sleep to get her to solve the murder of the Loch Ness Monster. Lindsay at first thinks she is dreaming, but her acceptance of the existence of the cryptids takes only a couple of pages. Initially, she insists she can’t help, but a Hippodrake convinces her of their need, so she takes the case. From there, the story follows the structure of the mystery, with suspect interviews, red herrings, and several twists.

            Some liberties have been taken with the cryptids. For example, the Beast of Bodmin Moor is, by all accounts, black—thought to be an escaped panther or puma; in Who Killed Nessie? it takes the form of a tannish, shape-shifting cat with a bushy, striped tail—perhaps a British Shorthair. The Hippodrake, which appears in the comic as a serpentine horse with horns and an ectoplasmic mane, does not seem to be a genuine cryptid at all, but rather a type of dinosaur. But that’s the folklorist in me searching for authenticity where it isn’t necessary. The popular tradition is inclusive, not exclusive. It can include characters from the Wizard of Oz as well as Tengu from Japanese folklore. The story plays loosely with recorded tradition. The Cyclops, for example, claims to be part of the story of Jason and the Golden Fleece, so readers are left to wonder if Cornell accidentally conflated the Argonautica with the Odyssey, or simply wanted the reference in the story for a joke: Jason got fleeced.

            A lot of the mythology is played for comedy. The unicorn slut-shames other females. The minotaur confesses to eating the sacrifices in the labyrinth, but only because there were no vegetarian options. Lindsay uses a squeaky toy to bribe Cerberus so she can get into the underworld. Much of the humor is also sexual in nature, which is what makes this an adult comic despite the absence of graphic depictions of violence or sex.           

Fig. 3. Despite their common lot in life, the cryptids don’t all get along. The Yeti is frustrated with the fairies for many things, including eating Yeti-flavored potato chips. 

 

 

             

There are rules to this world—for example, upon death, the monsters vanish and reappear in their homeland. Though Nessie dies in Wisconsin, her body washes up on the shore of Loch Ness in Scotland. There’s backstory, too, about how the convention started in the first place. Human encroachment caused the cryptids to seek help. Fairies (see Fig. 3) employed magic to keep the creatures hidden, but the creatures had to sign a contract in order to be made “mythological” or “legendary,” ostensibly so that human beings will “respect [them] again” (53) According to one fairy, the creatures go out of their way to be noticed, creating what she calls parasocial relationships with humanity.

            The creators develop a system for how the cryptids’ existences work, allowing Lindsay to explore suspects who reveal that system in bits and pieces along the way. The system incorporates many academic terms that have diffused into popular culture. There’s a mummy with no recollection of his living identity; he calls himself an archetype, caught up in the fairy spell, which effectively makes him immortal. He tells her that the cryptids that might be real animals can be killed, but “the more archetypal creatures” will come back to life (64).

            Cornell also incorporates an awareness of the processes of folklore. The Jersey Devil, from the east coast of the United States, keeps changing form and complains about its conditions: “You just try livin’ without a proper legend of your own,” it says, “with everyone thinking you’re somethin’ different!” (45). Variation of this sort results from the fluidity of oral tradition, since there is no canonized version of any story.

            Myth, fairy tale, and legend converge in a popular tradition that postulates a fictive world in which all of them are real. Cornell and Smith use this trope, which has become more and more common across media, perhaps an inevitable outgrowth of popularized academic work such as Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949). Most likely, Cornell and Smith are using literary renditions of these characters, but despite the presence of a literary or cinematic tradition, Who Killed Nessie? demonstrates that the stories of these popular characters, like the folklore from which they arise, will keep changing.

 

Bibliography

Campbell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Princeton University Press, 1949.

Grimm, Jacob, and Wilhelm Grimm. The German Legends of the Brothers Grimm. 4 volumes. Translated and edited by Donald Ward. 1981.

Grimm, Jacob. Teutonic Mythology. 2 volumes. Trans. James Stallybrass. Dover Publications, 1966.

Willingham, Bill, and others. Fables. DC Comics, 2002-2015.