Books & Comics
INTERVIEW: Sitting Down with Abigail Waldron, Author of “Queer Screams”
August was a very exciting month for Horror Press’s Abigail Waldron because her book finally hit the shelves after years of research, writing, and peer review! I got a sneak peek of Abigail’s book, Queer Screams: A History of LGBTQ+ Survival Through the Lens of American Horror Cinema, and got to talk to her upon the book’s release.
Horror Press: Tell me a little bit about your book and the research that you did.
Abigail Waldron: I started working on the book back in 2018. It was part of my Master’s thesis, but I started expanding it to be a full manuscript after some encouragement from my advisors. It focuses on the relationship between social attitudes toward queer people throughout the 20th century, and queer representations in horror films in their corresponding eras and decades. I’ve always thought that horror films were mirrors – reflections of what we fear most in society at a certain time – and for a lot of America during the rise of cinema, it was the fear of the queer. For example, the connection between the dozens of vampire films in the 1980s and the AIDS crisis. You have blood, contagion, and sexuality. Vampires seduce regardless of gender, so they’re very queer-coded. We can understand queer horror better if we know the history of the American queer experience. While there have always been negative portrayals of queer people in horror, a lot of positives can be found in the genre, and better yet reclaimed. Once we think critically about these films, we as queer people can find moments of catharsis.
HP: How did you originally get into horror?
AW: Good parenting! Although my parents were cautious when I was a kid, I was always into the creepy and the weird, and they were very open to that. My sister and I watched scary movies, even the rated R ones, which my parents allowed. They explained some things or asked us to cover our ears, but overall they were very open about it. Blockbuster trips always consisted of a new release and a horror movie. I also was both excited and terrified by horror. I was extremely afraid of the dark, and I always imagined the little girl from The Ring in the corner of my room. I had to sleep with a nightlight, yet I was always interested in horror. These little things just added up, and in grad school, I knew I wanted to do something I was passionate about. And I knew I was passionate about film, horror, and queer history, so I combined all those into one, so very much of myself is in this book. It wouldn’t be possible if I weren’t a horror-obsessed queer kid.
HP: Why do you think queer people are so drawn to horror?
AW: Historically, horror cinema focuses on the outcasts of society: the weirdos, the misfits. As a queer person, I’ve always felt like a misfit or an other, and I know many other queer people have felt like that. We have been categorized as others and weirdos for centuries, so in that respect we can find ourselves in the horror among the misunderstood monsters, the oppressed final girls that get their revenge at the end, and the queer-coded anti-heroes like Carrie. Yes, she kills a lot of people, but she was bullied. As someone who was bullied as a kid, especially for my sexuality (I didn’t even know I was queer at the time and was called a dyke), I loved those stories. No, I wouldn’t murder people, but it feels nice to see this oppressed queer-coded person have their revenge. It’s pretty cathartic to see these oppressed people victorious on screen. I think queer people are drawn to horror because 1. They see themselves, and 2. They see themselves victorious a lot of the time. When you look at universal horror, you remember the monsters, and they’re very queer-coded.
HP: What’s your favorite horror movie?
AW: So I used to say Jaws. I used to watch it every year on the 4th of July. It’s sort of my patriotism, if you will. The one gripe I have with Jaws is that while it does pass the Bechdel Test, it’s hetero, white, and male-centric. While I return to Jaws every 4th of July, I find myself more in the mood to watch Rosemary’s Baby, The Blair Witch Project, and Freaks. Those are the ones that I’ve been gravitating towards lately. I wouldn’t say I have a favorite horror film, but those are definitely at the top.
HP: When I was reading your excerpt, I was struck by what you said about viewers perceiving fictional characters the way they do real people. Can you talk to me a little about that?
AW: Many people still have yet to meet an openly queer or trans person, whether they know it or not. Many of these people haven’t met a queer person because maybe they’re not the most friendly to come out to, or people are afraid to say anything around them. So for them, the only exposure they get to queer people is on screen. These people can take in the negative representations of queer people and grow to harbor discriminatory beliefs, or they’re even emboldened in their discriminatory beliefs. For example, in the documentary Disclosure, there’s a trans woman who came out to a coworker, and the coworker immediately responded, “Oh, like Buffalo Bill.” Buffalo Bill was an extremely problematic antagonist in Silence of the Lambs, and these portrayals are evocative, and so many people saw that movie, so they assume this is what a trans person is. This is what media tells them trans people are: violent and confused. These portrayals stick with people and paint trans people as mentally ill, unstable, and violent, and the fact is trans people have faced violence for decades. The issue is not trans people being violent, it’s violence towards trans people because of the equation of violence with being transgender. Look at the bathroom bills, and all these legislative battles, and abuse and stereotypes, and a lot of it stems from portrayals like Buffalo Bill. It’s sad because I love that movie, and so do so many other people. It’s unfortunate because for many people, it could be their only interaction with what they see as a trans person.
HP: Your book is incredibly relevant right now with all of the anti-trans legislature that is trying to be passed.
AW: I used the study from Haley E. Solomon and Beth Kurtz-Costes, where they looked at audiences who watched evocative portrayals of trans narratives or imageries of violence. The study showed that audiences take in these images, especially if it’s their only interaction with a trans person. It causes a lot of damage to both transgender and cisgender people because it’s effectively brainwashing these people. I know, for example, Angela Baker from Sleepaway Camp has a narrative in later movies that allows her to be reclaimed – she targets bigots and racists – but I don’t think anyone is going to reclaim Buffalo Bill.
HP: As much as I love that movie, I don’t think we want him.
HP: Do you have a favorite genre of horror films?
AW: I keep going back to bad movies. Is bad horror a genre? I was going through my Letterboxd, thinking, “You know what, I would love to watch some 80s trash”. So I went through the lowest-rated horror movies from the 80s because they’re just fun, and you can watch them with people who don’t even like horror. You can laugh at them, they facilitate conversation, and they’re usually a treat visually with practical effects or even really shitty CGI. So I think trash horror is my favorite subgenre.
HP: When we critique horror films, it can make other fans see us as killjoys, but we still love those movies. What can you say to that?
AW: I think I’m biased because I’m a historian. For me, critique is fun. I love diving into something. It gives you an opportunity for introspection. Because you think, “Why do I like this piece of media? What does this tell me about myself? What does that tell me about the world?” For me, that’s fun, asking those questions. While watching a film for pure enjoyment is an experience, when we critique – at least for me – I feel more connected to the world around me and the history of the world around me. Yeah, we can be killjoys, but if that’s the way you feel, don’t read critique – watch the movies and enjoy them because that’s great too. Once I was done with the book, I realized I could just watch movies and not have to keep an ear out for any gay slurs or keep my eye out for queer signifiers. Now I can just watch them. For me, at least as a historian, critique is fun. I don’t know if that makes me a killjoy or not, but it definitely makes me lame.
HP: In your book, you mention Transgender History by Susan Stryker. What did you think of that book, and do you have any other queer book recommendations?
AW: That was a great resource because within queer studies for the past 50 years, there’s been a focus on discussions of drag and queer sexuality but not gender. So I liked that book for its historical analysis of trans experiences in certain time periods. The other book I would recommend is Men, Women, and Chainsaws. Carol J. Clover, the author, basically states that final girls, in their essence, are very nonbinary. They go against the mold of cookie-cutter female protagonists during that time. For example, Nancy from A Nightmare on Elm Street is very much a girl next door and very sweet, but because she’s a final girl, she’s not focused on having sex. She spurns her boyfriend’s advances all the time. She’s concerned with her friends and this man who haunts her dreams. She has no time for sex. Carol J. Clover dives into the idea of the final girl transcending the binary in that she is very androgynous in her actions. They’re not passive, which goes against the traditional gender idea of women as passive and emotional. And that’s not the case for final girls: they’re going to fuck you up! I think eventually, the term final girl is going to become an umbrella term. Jesse from A Nightmare on Elm Street II is a final boy who became a scream queen. That’s what they called him back in the day, and Mark Patton, the actor, has taken on that label as a symbol of pride in being the final boy, and being an inspiration for many gay kids. I think many queer people can see themselves as the final girl because she is so androgynous and breaks these traditional roles.
The other texts I would look into are The Celluloid Closet by Vito Russo, which was a huge resource for me in writing this book, and Monsters in the Closet by Harry M. Benshoff. The Celluloid Closet isn’t as focused on horror, but Russo does discuss some horror movies. Monsters in the Closet dives into the history of horror movies.
The roots of horror are very queer because a lot of those vaudeville actors, who dressed in drag, and performed gender-bending on stage, went into horror. Case and point, James Whale, the director of Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein, and his friend Ernest Thesiger, who was in Bride of Frankenstein, both originally came from vaudeville. Vaudeville is incredibly queer, so you have these queer roots of horror. Unfortunately, when the Hays Code kicked in, the party was over for a while, but until it did, there was a lot of that vaudeville influence.
HP: That’s an interesting connection, and certainly when I think of vaudeville, I think of camp.
AW: Right, it’s very campy. The Bride of Frankenstein is very campy, and it’s supposed to be! It’s an ode to that vaudeville mentality, and they were able to slip it in before the Hays Code. The Bride of Frankenstein was kind of the last hurrah.
HP: Can you tell me a little more about the Hays Code and how it affected the history of queer horror cinema?
AW: Before the Hays Code, the world of Vaudeville and theater was incredibly queer and seeped its way into motion pictures of this time. Because of the gender-bending that they were putting on screen, it scared the establishment and conservative audiences who detested “perversion” and saw it as a threat to traditional American values. The Hays Code, which was the production code, was established in March of 1930 by Will H. Hays and demanded that “all films should not imply that low forms of sex relationship are the accepted or common thing.” They thought that if you show these things on screen that kids would think it was normal, which it should have been. When the code talks about “low forms of sex relationships,” it implied adultery, premarital sex, and explicitly said “sexual perversion” was to be forbidden. The Catholic church was brought in to help set these guidelines for film. It insinuated that homosexuality was sin, and it was a big issue to be monitored closely. As people will see in my book, there’s an extensive list of 1930s queer-coded horror movies, but once you get into the 40s, 50s, and even 60s, there aren’t many. Because of the Hays Code, writers and artists in film had to get more creative. They had to figure out ways to display queers on screen without being explicit. Luckily for us, we were very crafty, and were able to sneak in a bunch of stuff. Vito Russo called it gay sensibility. If you had gay sensibility, you’d be able to spot these ques.
HP: Do you think that has continued into current times?
AW: To an extent. I think it’s definitely gotten way more open. I think of the movie They/Them; regardless of what you think of the film, it’s a huge step considering that in the mid-2000s, films were still pretty coded, or gay was used as a slur. But to have a movie like They/Them exist from a major studio is huge. I think some television shows and movies still skirt around queerness, and they don’t say it outright. We saw that in our faces in Stranger Things. It was extremely coded, and I just wanted them to say it. I get it: the show is set in the 80s, and Will’s character was probably scared, but if you’re telling these stories, and you want to make queer viewers, especially young queer fans, comfortable, just say it!
HP: Can you tell me a little about what queer representation looks like in movies today?
AW: Horror scholarship, while it’s fabulous, and I can’t thank Harry Benshoff enough for writing Monsters in the Closet, that was in 1997. So we have all this other scholarship from the past two decades. It’s moving towards, how I phrase it, revenge through representation. Movies are reacting to the Trump era. You have films like the Fear Street trilogy, and The Perfection. In these movies, you have openly queer protagonists battling homophobes, pedophiles, racists, and sexists. They’re fighting all these groups that were emboldened and fueled by the far right and the Trump administration. The horror genre these days is very angry. It has a very fuck you attitude that I’m very pleased about.
Queer Screams is available now on McFarland Books and Amazon.
You’re reading this article on the Internet. Which means you’ve been on the Internet at least once in the past five years. Which means you know that Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling is an unrepentant, festering transphobe. What started as potentially out-of-context liked tweets has become an extremely in-context catastrophe. The situation escalated into a more and more sinister string of anti-trans screeds and monetary donations to anti-trans causes.
The Harry Potter Revival and Its Challenges
This has unfortunately coincided with the return of all things Harry Potter. Because, whatever the woman’s strengths are as a novel writer, they did not transfer over into the Fantastic Beasts screenplays. Thus, Warner Bros. has bailed on that franchise and is busy resurrecting the original novels for a prestige series. One that couldn’t possibly last the seven seasons (or reportedly 10 years), it would need to tell the story fully.
Avoiding Support for Rowling’s Causes
And, listen. I’m a millennial who grew up on the Potter books and, to a slightly lesser extent, the movies. I get how important they are to a lot of us. They’re an inextricable part of our cultural DNA. It’s OK to feel that way, and it’s even OK to re-engage with those texts. You probably already own them, or know a friend who does. Cracking one open and even enjoying it isn’t a bad thing, and it isn’t putting money in Rowling’s pocket. Money that she would almost certainly give to some organization run by bigots even more heinous than herself.
But you know what would put money in her pocket? Watching that godforsaken HBO show, for one thing. Buying those new illustrated editions, for another. Or listening to those full-cast audiobooks that Michelle Gomez had to issue a statement semi-apologizing for joining.
5 Harry Potter Alternatives for Guilt-Free Reading
It’ll become increasingly difficult to resist the temptation to check out some new cultural artifact strip-mining the Harry Potter canon. However, the moral imperative to protect and affirm our trans siblings is much more important than that temptation. To that end, I have compiled a list. Here are five books/series to scratch that Potter itch without the accompanying Rowling guilt. They’re not ranked by quality, but by how many ways they feel like a suitable replacement for the series. Find the full reading list at the end of the article!
#5 The Sunbearer Duology by Aiden Thomas (2020)
These two novels by trans author Aiden Thomas are only lowest on the list because of their vibe. They draw just as much inspiration from The Hunger Games as they do Percy Jackson & The Olympians. But Percy Jackson was always a readalike for Harry Potter, no matter how much Rick Riordan protests. So there is still a good amount of Potter DNA entwined with this queer adventure duology inspired by Mexican mythology.
These books follow teenage semidioses (for those not familiar with Spanish, “demigods”) participating in a high-stakes competition. High-stakes as in the loser gets sacrificed to the god Sol. It’s got tried-and-true young adult themes of questioning authority, coming of age, and finding love both giddy and marvelously inconvenient.
#4 The Bartimaeus Sequence by Jonathan Stroud (2003-2006)
This trilogy is probably my personal favorite fantasy series that I read as a kid. The story is told from the perspectives of multiple characters, but primarily the sarcastic djinni Bartimaeus. He imbues the trilogy with a sense of fun, even though it covers dark topics including terrorism, propaganda, and authoritarianism. It’s a text about the seduction and danger of politics and power, and it wields those themes extraordinarily well. Like all the best books for youngsters, it doesn’t talk down to them, but it’s not a grim slog either.
However, because of the story being told from the perspective of an ancient demon, it doesn’t necessarily have Potter vibes. That said, it does follow a young boy’s magical education and the hard lessons he learns as he matures. Stroud also builds the foundation of his magical world from real folklore, just like Rowling.
#3 Wizard’s Hall by Jane Yolen (1991)
Wizard’s Hall is in fact such a readalike for Harry Potter that many fans accused Rowling of ripping it off. Jane Yolen and I both disagree with those accusations (Rowling was much more interested in ripping off Tolkien). However, the similarities between the texts should feel like a warm bath to recovering Potter fans.
We’re talking a young man attending a school for wizards. We’re talking said schooling existing in the shadow of a dark sorcerer’s reign of terror. We’re talking school administrators expecting students to battle evils far outside their power. Yolen also provides a compelling and warmly domestic magic system, where names—particularly the names of plants—hold untold power.
#2 The Simon Snow Series by Rainbow Rowell (2015-2021)
Now, this series was literally designed to be a Harry Potter readalike. Simon Snow was born as the Drarry-style fanfiction written by the lead character of Rowell’s 2015 novel Fangirl. However, the three Simon Snow novels are not necessarily meant to be the exact fanfiction written by the character. That said, the first installment does follow the burgeoning love between two antagonistic male students at a magic school. Rowell knows what her readers want.
Does she know how to deliver it, though? Yes and no. Frankly, I wouldn’t recommend this trilogy to fans of romance-forward stories, because I think that angle is weirdly underserved. However, Simon Snow presents a lovely world that does more than just sand the serial numbers off of Hogwarts. Rowell has invented her own linguistics-based magic system, and it is fabulous. It is an unfettered delight to get to go on adventures in this world. The fact that these adventures are viewed through the lens of off-model Potter characters makes it all the better. It’s a perfect nicotine patch for those hooked on Rowling.
#1 Pendragon by D. J. MacHale (2002-2009)
The 10 Pendragon novels have fewer superficial connections to Harry Potter than Simon Snow or Wizard’s Hall. There’s no school of magic, for one thing. Nor is there a “dragons and folklore” vibe in the background. However, this young adult sci-fi fantasy epic is undeniably going to serve Potter fans well. I mean, come on. It follows a young man living a seemingly normal life who learns that he is part of a secret world. The stories mature as the character does, as the stakes get higher and higher. And he has two friends, one male, one female, who help him on his quest. It’ll get the job done, trust me.
This franchise is also the one that switches up its own vibe the most, to its benefit. You see, Bobby Pendragon’s a Traveler, one of the rare few with the power to access other worlds and times. This allows MacHale to present Bobby with an astonishingly wide variety of settings. He draws inspiration from everything. From Tarzan to Tron, from Waterworld to Dune, from George R. R. Martin to Al Capone, Pendragon’s got it all.
Runners-Up: Heir Apparent by Vivian Vande Velde (2002), Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine (2004), Spell Bound by F. T. Lukens (2023), The Montague Siblings Series by Mackenzi Lee (2017-2021), Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas (2020)
Other Runners-Up That Are Sci-Fi, So They Were Never Seriously Considered, Even Though They’re Great: The Supernaturalist by Eoin Colfer (2004), The Gone Series by Michael Grant (2008-2013), The Darkness Outside Us by Eliot Schrefer (2021)
Full Reading List
The Sunbearer Duology by Aiden Thomas
The Sunbearer Trials (2022)
Celestial Monsters (2024)
The Bartimaeus Sequence by Jonathan Stroud
The Amulet of Samarkand (2003)
The Golem’s Eye (2004)
Ptolemy’s Gate (2005)
The Ring of Solomon (2010) – an inessential, but charming, prequel
Wizard’s Hall by Jane Yolen (1991)
The Simon Snow Series by Rainbow Rowell
Carry On (2015)
Wayward Son (2019)
Any Way the Wind Blows (2021)
Pendragon by D. J. MacHale
The Merchant of Death (2001)
The Lost City of Faar (2001)
The Never War (2002)
The Reality Bug (2002)
Black Water (2003)
The Rivers of Zadaa (2005)
The Quillan Games (2006)
The Pilgrims of Rayne (2007)
Raven Rise (2008)
The Soldiers of Halla (2009)
Congrats! If you’re reading this, you’re likely one of the people who saw Superman recently. And that is its own reward. You may have even contributed to its blockbuster opening weekend that raked in $122 million in sales. You’re also, like me, probably itching for the next project in James Gunn’s burgeoning cinematic DC Universe. I imagine this isn’t an article you were expecting to pop up here on Horror Press, but stick with me!
There is still a large slate of DC projects on the horizon, ranging from another season of the wildly popular animated series Creature Commandos, to an even more hotly anticipated Clayface film. Directed by James Watkins and penned by Mike Flanagan, James Gunn himself has said that 2026’s Clayface is going to be a rated-R body horror film so impressive that it would blow his work on Slither out of the water.
So, in the spirit of Clayface getting a horror villain glow up, I’d like to discuss other characters that deserve the horror treatment from DC. Because, with a catalogue rich in characters that can be just as frightening as they are colorful, there’s too much genre film potential here to ignore.
Parasite: A Life Stealing Monster Could Call Back to James Gunn’s Slither
As soon as my friend and I left our screening of Superman, a conversation about what villains we’d like to see in the sequel sprang up. Would we get a regular from Supe’s roster, like Braniac or Zod? Or a deep cut like Silver Banshee or Atomic Skull?
There is one potential antagonist I consider the creepiest of his villains: Parasite. A Superman rogue known for his ability to drain the life and powers out of any living being, most will remember him from Superman: The Animated Series. Or, if you’re like my friend, his particularly freaky portrayal by Adam Baldwin in Young Justice.
It was the talk of Parasite that reminded me of the villain in Gunn’s most iconic horror film, Slither. Michael Rooker’s role as Grant Grant, a leech of an abusive husband whose exposure to alien worms turns him into a much more literal leech, was perfectly nasty inside and out. So why not give Parasite that kind of makeover, and give us the most sadistic version of the character yet?
All I ask is for a rude, “Richard Brake in 31”-type to play him, and some Lifeforce style horror where he sucks the energy out of people until they’re withered husks. Combine that with gruesome full-body makeup to replicate his iconic chemical burned purple skin, and you’ve got gold.
Kryb: The Perfect Green Lantern Villain to Spread Fear Across the Cosmos
I have to give Geoff Johns his credit. The Lantern Corps mega-arc that he weaved into his Green Lantern run throughout the late 2000s was pure genius. I suspect with the upcoming Lanterns series on HBO, we’ll probably be meeting quite a few of his iconic characters from those comics. Atrocitus of the Red Lanterns, Larfleeze of the Orange, Saint Walker of the Blue, they’re all on the table.
But one Lantern Corps has fallen far out of the spotlight. That’s their tried-and-true nemeses: the original “Lanterns but a different color”, The Sinestro Corps. These Yellow Lanterns are supposed to be all about fear, but most writers and artists have lost sight of actually making them terrifying. If the upcoming HBO show Lanterns really does end up evoking the vibes of True Detective as its showrunners have teased, I think they should lean into that inspiration.
The one member that deserves a live action horror portrayal more than any other in this vein is Kryb. An alien witch who steals the children of her victims and keeps them in an organic cage growing out of her back, she feeds off their fear and cries for help. It doesn’t hurt that she already looks like a nightmare creature Javier Botet would portray.
Personally, I would love a massive, grotesque animatronic for Kryb blended with CGI (ala Smile 2’s Entity). She’s a fun route to take when it comes to striking fear in the hearts of Green Lanterns—and the audience.
Scarecrow: I’m Begging For Someone To Please Make Him Frightening Again
I know, I know, obvious pick. “The guy who has fear powers could be scary? How’d you come up with that one?”. But if you’re a Batman comics fan, you know that since around the time of Scott Snyder’s industry defining run on Batman, Scarecrow has been mostly relegated to a bit player on Gotham’s stage. This regrettably happens even in the storylines that should focus on him. I would even argue that his fear gas has become more iconic than he is, but it’s time to change that.
I point towards the platonic ideal of Scarecrows as a way to get him back on track: Jeffrey Combs in season 4 of Batman: The Animated Series. What I wouldn’t give to see Combs voice the character again as he terrorizes Arkham Asylum’s patients and tortures them with their worst fears. Especially with the decayed “hanged man” look that DCAU visionary Bruce Timm penned him in during season 4!
Whether it’s an animated film or a live action, a creative like Scott Derrickson is my pick to handle the character. I want to see a dark director’s vision as Dr. Johnathan Crane drives his “patients” completely mad and makes their nightmares feel real.
Etrigan the Demon: Jack Kirby’s Horror Fantasy Creation Needs an A24 Slant
If you know me in real life, I want to thank you now for letting me rave about how much I love Jack Kirby all the time. Of all his creations, one is so Kirby-esque and so perfect for an overhaul that I knew he had to be on this list from the jump: Etrigan, AKA The Demon.
Etrigan is usually an antihero in the vein of Venom, bound to his unwilling human host Jason Blood. But his stories could be taken in any number of directions, including ones before he was trapped in Blood by Merlin. (Yes, the wizard Merlin, that one.) Obviously, the direction that appeals to me most is making this hulking demon genuinely scary.
Now, a yellow demon that tends to rhyme when he speaks… I admit, on face value, it’s a hard sell. But this is the genre of Wishmaster, people, it’s the genre of Phantasm and Demon Knight! Reviewed that last one by the way, read it here.
There is a long legacy of somewhat silly horror villains who still manage to be thoroughly entertaining and even intimidating. What I would love to see is some bleak fantasy horror set dressing to accompany Etrigan; heavy inspirations from The Green Knight and The VVitch seem like a wise angle to take. It would be great to see Etrigan become a looming force that haunts its enemies as they try and find a way out, only to see death coming closer and closer.
Killer Croc: A Gotham Legend Is a Candyman-esque Villain in Waiting
In the modern vernacular, Killer Croc is a jobber. Which is a shame, because there is a lot of potential for his story that gets squandered when he’s just here to punch and be punched. While his rare mutation gave him all the powers that could have made him a hero, it also gave him the monstrous appearance of a crocodile-human hybrid. He is a character damned from birth. And ultimately, he’s a reflection of Gotham’s social inequity that condemns its citizens’ lives to the gutter.
Outcast and scorned, he became a fixture of Gotham, a boogeyman living in the sewers, and a name everyone in the city fears. In a meta-context, Croc has bounced around from series to series, mainly serving as a big man for any member of the Bat Family to knock down. And that’s fine, I guess, but he could be so much better.
My favorite Killer Croc story comes from J.H. Williams legendary (and criminally cut short) Batwoman run. In it, Croc becomes a minion of Medusa, who uses her mythological magic to make him grow larger and more monstrous the more he’s feared. A horror film with an emphasis on Croc becoming a Candyman-esque legend in Gotham over the years is what I’d like to see. Watching him grow in power as an urban legend over the years, and focusing on the kind of people who would worship and feed him new victims. The chance to actually dissect Killer Croc and make him a complicated monster screams of high potential to bring people to theaters.
Anton Arcane: A Rotten Re-Animator for All Seasons
One of the biggest casualties of the former DC Cinematic Universe’s mismanagement was the superhero horror show Swamp Thing. Due to disagreements between DC and Warner Media, and a snafu involving a promised $40 million tax rebate for shooting in North Carolina, the show was soft cancelled before it was even out of production. It was then hard cancelled a day before its second episode premiered.
Numerous fans called to save the series, but none of the requests to #SaveTheSwampThing were successful. Still, they proved there is still a serious desire to see a horror-oriented Swamp Thing property, if not on streaming than on the big screen.
As much as I love the fully practical work-up they did with actor Kevin Durand for his character Jason Woodrue, there’s one villain I really need to see in live action: Anton Arcane. Whereas Swamp Thing is a “monster” with more humanity than he can sometimes handle, Arcane is the opposite. A human monster with a knack for necromancy, consumed with a desire for corrupting power and immortality. Arcane has persisted as Swamp Thing’s archnemesis for decades for a reason.
Played in the vein of Herbert West, Arcane could be an iconic horror villain in his own right. That doesn’t even account for his Un-Men, undead flesh golems that would feel right at home in Carpenter’s The Thing. The creepy, deformed, and mismatched servants of Arcane provide plenty of opportunities for us to watch undead monstrosities do his dirty work.
Professor Pyg: A Batman Slasher with His Own Iconic Minions
Matt Reeve’s The Batman really set the standard for The Riddler going forward: less demented gameshow host, more John Doe from Seven. Speculation on sequels has shown that there’s a strong desire to see Batman’s more horror themed villains. Enter Professor Pyg.
If you played the videogame Batman: Arkham Knight, you already know him. A scientist of dubious academic standing, this surgeon has permanently fallen to madness. Wearing a chubby cheeked pig mask in and out of his experiments, he was a mainstay of Grant Morrison’s seminal run on Batman and Robin in 2009. Greasy, gag-inducing, and all around off-putting with his scalpels and saws, Pyg is basically already a slasher villain.
But it’s those experiments which serve the most obvious reason as to why we need to see him. He’s best known for creating the Dollotrons, something the game toned down: in the comics, he captures men and women alike and grafts babydoll-esque flesh masks onto their faces to turn them into bubble-headed and brainwashed psychotics.
The Penguin miniseries on HBO was a fun character study of an incredibly messed up character with Oz Cobb. It proved introspection on how these rogues get made can be captivating. But beyond the partially stable villains, I would love to see more of the parts of Gotham that are deeper in the shadows than ever, following the Riddler’s attack. That means showing us the monsters like Pyg that wash up out of the outer darkness when it was flooded. The ones who are too far gone for any sort of normal life.
Animal Man: The Body Horror Superhero We’ve Been Waiting For
My final proposal here is probably the most likely one we’ll get with James Gunn’s new DCU. Knowing the comic book characters Gunn is a fan of, I would not be surprised at all if we got an Animal Man show or movie at some point. He even commented in a recent interview with Seth Meyers that whoever he casts to play Animal Man has to be downright great.
If and when we do get the right actor, we’ll likely get something I and a lot of other horror comics fans have been clamoring for: a true, live action body horror superhero. I am of course talking about an adaptation of the New 52 miniseries, Animal Man: The Hunt. This loose requel to Animal Man, a series made famous by Grant Morrison back in the late 80s and early 90s, was arguably the best project to come out of the New 52 rebrand.
It was chock full of incredible and sometimes revolting art by comics luminary Travel Foreman, who painstakingly penned each panel in his unmistakable (and very bloody) style. The series made for an incredibly interesting dive into the mythos of where the titular hero gets his powers from, courtesy of modern comics legend Jeff Lemire.
When it comes down to who does it, I’d love Alex Garland to take a crack at adapting The Hunt. His work in Annihilation more than proves he can do justice to the trippy narrative. Whether its dealing with eldritch abominations from The Rot, the dimension of flesh and blood that is The Red, or the bone-snapping, gut-rending transformations Animal Man has to go through as he fights to save the life of his daughter Maxine, I trust him to deliver.
Or am I really just waiting and hoping for another moment like the bear scene from Annihilation? If I was, could you blame me?
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