Updating Frankenstein For The Age of Black Lives Matter

A sinewy, grayish, vaguely human thing sits on the ice cap somewhere in the Arctic, before plunging into the water below. That's when a very unfortunate whaling vessel arrives and harpoons a whale, setting the thing on a rampage. It won't take long for readers put the pieces together: The creature is the Monster — as in Frankenstein's monster — and his encounter with the whaling ship sets him on a mission to destroy, pitting him against the humanity that rejected him centuries ago.

That's the premise of Destroyer, a new six-issue, limited-series comic by the author Victor LaValle, which hit comic book stands earlier this month. (He also has a new novel out this month , called The Changeling.)

LaValle has long married matters of race to the fantastical. The same is true here in Destroyer: The last living member of the Frankenstein line in the modern day happens to be a woman named Josephine Baker, a brilliant African-American scientist overwrought with grief after her 12-year-old son is killed by a police officer. But Baker, like her notorious forebear, has the means to bring the dead back to life, and she unknowingly puts her family's legacies — her resurrected son and her ancestor's rage-filled abomination — on a collision course.

I talked with Victor LaValle to talk about why