“Monstress was more a desire than an idea,” Marjorie Liu writes in the postscript to her newest work. “An impulse that came over me, something I’d think about in the shower, or when I was driving and listening to Janet Jackson on the radio. I had this image in my head of a battered girl standing alone, absolutely furious, and behind her a battlefield that stretched for miles. Nothing was there. No story. Just that girl.”
That furious and battered girl is Maika, the hero of the compelling, lavishly illustrated new comic from Liu and her illustrator/collaborator, Sana Takeda. Liu’s vision has expanded since that initial spark of desire, and what she and Takeda have created in Monstress features some of the best of what comic books can offer: a world of magic and fantasy–where the ghosts of dead gods roam and airships rule the skies–but also a world that feels textured and alive, with a social structure and a history that constantly intrudes and informs the present.
Slavery, conflict, and simmering ethnic tensions form the backdrop to our story. One war has just ended, while another is building like a thunderhead on the horizon. Other factions wait to reveal themselves, but in this first issue we are introduced to the Arcanics, a “barbarian” race that has mixed human and monster blood, and the Cumaea, a fully human group of sadistic nuns dedicated to both science and magic who use the Arcanics for slaves–and something much more disturbing.
It’s in this context that we first meet Maika, naked, fettered in gold chains, the tail of a riding crop pressed against her chin, being sold to the highest bidder. She is coveted by the Cumaea because while she is an Arcanic, she appears in all other respects to be human. But everything from the steely look in her eye, to the stump from her amputated left arm, to the mysterious brand on her chest, tell us she is a survivor.
A series of flashbacks fill us in on Maika’s back story; she is a veteran of the war between the Arcanics and the Federation, living out in the wild with her friend Tuya while plotting revenge on the Cumaea who betrayed her mother. But Maika also hides a secret: a powerful monster dwells inside of her, one whose power she fears but needs to unleash in order to survive, a monster that the Cumaea wish to control for themselves.
Women with monsters lurking under their skin isn’t a new story. We’ve seen it told more recently in movies like Teeth and Jennifer’s Body. In these stories the monsters are linked to a female sexuality that turns the tables on men, making them the victims. Monstress doesn’t concern itself with that. It’s a matriarchal world that we are being introduced to, men and their concerns don’t rate at all, yet it’s still a place of brutality and exploitation. By doing away with the obvious binary of male/female, Liu is able to pull off the nimble feat of both grappling with gender politics while also transcending it, allowing for a more nuanced approach that doesn’t get in the way of the story is she trying to tell.
Sana Takeda’s art is sumptuous, absolutely nailing the blend of epic fantasy and horror this particular comic demands. Takeda’s previous work at Marvel, while excellent, had the glossy sheen of what we have come to expect from the mainstream publishers. The art of Monstress feels like a more accurate representation of her aesthetic, unshackled from super hero expectations. Inspirations include Final Fantasy, the work of Hayao Miyazaki, and the ghosts and demons of Japanese art, all filtered into a traditional Western comic book sensibility. Panels that depict everything from the home of a rich merchant, to the tent of an outcast wanderer, to the vivisection room at the Cumaea compound, are all done in vivid detail, with muted tones and just the right amount color to brighten even the smallest panels, giving the world of Monstress the lived-in feel of old leather.
“My grandparents experienced the devastation of war firsthand in China,” Liu says, further illuminating the human inspiration behind her work. “In their stories, surviving was more horrifying than dying. Surviving required a desire to live more powerful than any bomb or army, a summoning of superhuman resilience to keep going, day after day.”
At its heart, that is what Monstress is about, survival. The brutal world Liu and Takeda depict has no sympathy for the weak. Death is often a better choice than the horrific fates that await the survivors, whether to live out their lives as human chattel, or to satisfy the dark appetites of the Cumaea. However, it’s the borderland between our better selves and the dark half that will do anything to survive that drives the narrative, giving it an edge as sharp as a razor. It’s a question everyone has asked themselves, would you unleash the monster within just to survive?
Monstress is available now on your favorite reader at Image Comics or at your local comic shop.
