Demon Within Me

I’m grateful that in the past couple of weeks, sharing my affinity for monster and horror stories with people has led to more stories to consume about monsters.

A chance conversation at work led me to the world of Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda. I will be a bit embarrassed for a while about how I was asleep the past few years as the world of graphic novels has evolved and created so many interesting voices.

Monstress follows Maika on her journey to find out exactly what the heck happened to her. She lives in this world where humans co-exist with half-breeds that are mixed with witches and immortals.

There’s something brewing inside of Maika that crazy people want to get their hands on, but she doesn’t even know what it is because of the origin of her curse is lost inside of her memories.

I’m always reminded of what Tara said in True Blood. “There’s a demon inside of me and I don’t know how to get it out.” Whether a real non-corporeal spirit that hungers for human flesh as it swims around inside of your veins or a metaphor for obstacles each of us has to work through, demons exist and they are part of life’s journey.

I almost stopped Monstress before I began, but I have soldiered through. I’ve avoided huge swatches of science fiction because stories that involve physical abuse mingled with slavery have always made me uncomfortable, but I’m realizing that it all depends on the delivery of the creator.

If the creator is some asshole that’s lived as a shut-in for two decades, then yes, they may create characters that they enjoy to see suffer. Darker elements exist within the world of Monstress, but they aren’t exploited, rather the protagonist and her friends overcome the horrible things that they have suffered through and just keep trucking.

The concentration isn’t an exploitative look at the pain that they have endured at the hands of captors and douche bag political environments that exploit people for all they can and don’t take care of them. The concentration is on the journey and the characters that overcome all of the fuckery thrown at them.

These are strong female characters and I’m completely behind this. Maika has layers to her and just when you think you’ve figured her out and she’s getting soft, she’ll tell you to screw off and there’s work to be done.

I geek hard for Game of Thrones and simply whispering the word “quest” near me can get me going on a rant. This story has those elements. Maika has something ancient inside of her and both she and the ancient one don’t have all the pieces. Once they piece together, something tells me Maika with her demon will be able to kill all of the things and take some shit over.