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Column:
Devolution the Column
Fourth Entry
By Matt Yocum
Published: 2007-05-29
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Today a little boy was kidnapped by a
sadistic stalker. Recently,
a crazed Korean student gunned down over thirty students at Virginia
Tech. A number of weeks ago, someone killed a man, dismembering his
body with police finding pieces of him lying along a road in
California.
I made the first one up. The last two are real.
Someone commented to me once that no redeeming thing can come from horror, that horror writers need to be accountable for what they write. They said that horror writers must have pure evil in them to be able to write what they write.
I don’t believe that. I don’t believe it because what I see in the real world can be far worse than anything I’ve ever written. Whether it’s the horrific bombings in Iraq as I see Sunni Muslims fighting Shia fighting Sunnis fighting Americans. Or whether it’s a single lonely, angry, Korean student who planned out a horrific series of murders, methodically gunning down 32 people before escaping justice by a bullet through his head. Describing many more terrible, horrific acts that won’t be recounted here, the news holds terrors far worse than what I’ve read in a horror book.
But is there anything redeeming in horror? Let me recount one horror story: a man journeys along a road when a group of thugs jump him. They pound him half to death, steal everything he has, and leave him for dead on the side of the road. He bakes in the sun as he lies helpless on the side of the road. Blistered and bleeding, some of his people pass by, look at his state, and keep going. They have no intention of helping the man, especially when they have far more pressing business of their own.
The man is near death when a stranger stops, a foreigner whose people do not like the people of the beaten man. He sees the helpless state of the bloodied man, picks him up, and carries him to help.
You can read this story in the New Testament, and it was told by Jesus. It’s a tale of horrific violence against a man and horrific neglect by his own people. It’s best known as the parable of the Good Samaritan.
I believe the best horror stories, like this one from the New Testament, tell a story of a journey, of evil overcome by good. The great ones show triumph over the awful things we face. We are scared by the horrors we see on the news, but out there are people doing good, people willing to pick others up, clean them, feed them, care for them.
Are horror writers contributing to the evils in society? Perhaps some are. But writers and storytellers cannot shy away, as Jesus did not in his tale, from the fact that evil exists in the world. But there can be a better way.
Devolution recognizes evil. It’s a tale of the fantastic and of the horrific. The story is a journey through grief and pain. Awful things will happen. But on the other side of this are people willing to do what’s right and make something better in the world. On the other side you’ll find horror’s antithesis — hope.
Thanks for reading, and feel free to comment at
DevolutionComic@gmail.com.
To read more on how Devolution is put together, go to www.MattYocumComics.com where you’ll find a
weekly column on the making of the comic.
—CCdC—
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