Zombies, Werewolves, and a Creature
For the twenty-fifth day of Halloeterodeen (sorry this is being posted late) I am returning to classic monster tropes. Zombies have been so popular for so long and have appeared in so many variations by now that it is almost pointless to choose a single film as an exemplar, but Night of the Living Dead is arguably the film that began the current zombie craze. While Girl Genius doesn't have zombies per se, it does have revenants, which resemble an early concept of zombies as mind controlled slaves, and the shambler form of revenant somewhat resembles the zombies in Night of the Living Dead, minus the rotting flesh. If we broaden the concept of zombie to include something that should be dead but refuses to die and is very, very hard to finally kill, then Andronicus Valois, as we see him in the story, can be said to qualify for the role.
The werewolf is a very old monster, indeed. A being that can change from a man into some kind of beast seems to be featured in the folklore of almost every culture around the world. The Werewolf of London was the first feature-length werewolf film. Girl Genius does have werewolves; they are even referred to as lycanthropic in the comic. All the werewolves we have seen in the story have been members of Martellus von Blitzengaard's Knights of the Hunt. There is much that is still mysterious about these beings (Are they men that become wolves? Wolves that become men?) but one thing we do know is that they can transform from a normal-looking human form to an anthromorphic wolf-man shape.
The only two Knights we know by name are Tybalt (top image above) and Norville (bottom image). At one point, Norville's transformation hints that the Knights are also capable of assuming a fully wolf-like form.
One of the most famous and popular full-body makeup effects in the history of horror films is that of the the Gill-man in the film Creature from the Black Lagoon. The Deepdwellers are a race of fully aquatic humanoids in Girl Genius. These beings don't resemble the Gill-man to any great extent in general; but Trogulus, an exchange student in Londinium, said to be a young specimen, bears a much closer resemblance to the iconic Creature.
I'll review a few more classic monsters in the next horrific installment of the Thirty-one Days of Halloeterodeen!
