Monstres, Vol. 3: Heartbreaker

This volume is surprisingly rapey and frankly unpleasant for what is normally a lightweight comedy comic. The second story features a character, Drowny, who murders her friend to end her suffering during her violent gang rape.

The main story's character, Alexandra, accepts or is drawn to abusive men and ultimately is imprisoned and inevitability raped. When she later takes revenge on her abusers she kills another woman rather than the guilty men.

In both of these cases the sexual violence could be important narrative points told with sensitivity and anchoring the character arcs but in both cases it feels that this is a passing incident amongst many.

Drowny's story is relatively straight-forward narrative of someone who becomes a monster through poor treatment and rejection of her attempt to return to a moral life. At the end she does take control of her own life and responsibility for her own violence but in the context of accepting a side and a place in the war that rages around her.

Alexandra is already a killer and a monster before the story starts; she's ruthless and the story is unremittingly dark. She's an intriguing protagonist but she leaves the story unreconciled and unfulfilled. Worse still she takes out her rage at the world on another woman rather than the abusive men that ring her world.

Both stories writhe with unexamined feminist concerns and both feel like stories about women written by men and perhaps both would work better with male characters.