Rawhead Rex

Hm. That word fairly accurately represents my thoughts as I was reading Rawhead Rex by Clive Barker. This graphic novel certainly takes the word "graphic" to the maximum- what followed in the events of Rawhead Rex were bloody, gory, and ultimately just gross. Barker spares no details, in both content and visuals when it comes to characterizing the main subject for which the novel is named. There's slight humor in the appearance alone of Rawhead, but beyond that, the novel is pure carnography, a very applicable term I found when trying to search for a word that might encapsulate the sheer amount of gore within.

Even for a graphic novel about an ancient and terrifying monster, something described as entirely unhuman and behaves entirely unhuman, I was honestly more disgusted by the "human" qualities the creature possessed. The book includes urination and masturbation, the latter of which I found very unnecessary, and rather explicitly talks about Rawhead's desire or past inclination for raping women. Given the graphic qualities in all other facets of the novel, I fully expected to be given an explicit scene in which Rawhead does assault a woman in this way. Thankfully (and I say that with as much sincerity as possible) Barker does not include this type of scene, though honestly the results of the novel are not much better.

We're given an incredibly powerful monster who is older than pretty much everything else on Earth. He's been subdued for centuries, trapped and waiting, and has motivations of being seen as a god. Yet his weakness (because of course there has to be one, since everything has something) is... a Venus statue? Or rather, more specifically, a menstruating, birth-giving woman. The choice for this to be the weakness, at its core value, is odd. As Tim points out in his own blog post, this almost just doesn't make sense. Tim explains it as being a never-ending food source for Rawhead, because of the ability to give birth, and I have to agree. There is a slight spin that's nice, given that a fertile woman is given power instead of being seen as a weakness (to our side at least), but I feel it just creates another narrative in which horror equates "female = scary and bad". 

It's a common trope within horror- I've seen multiple discussions on especially the film Jennifer's Body. Men were horrified at the film at an unprecedented rate, despite enjoying other films that might be deemed as similar, because the attacker or "monster" was a woman- and beyond that, a woman who attacked others with her own sex. We see the same narrative paralleled in Rawhead, as he describes brutally assaulting women and being the one in power. He's a power trip gone extremely ancient and deadly. 

The narrative itself I wouldn't describe as having been scary to me, though it certainly hit "horrific." Or gorrific. Whichever you prefer.

To continue my tally even though the answer is obvious, would I feel safe (even though I'm not sure I would consider Rawhead as a "main character"- however the other male characters in the book certainly have an interesting way of dealing with things when they have families anyway)?

No.

That's it, that's all the explanation needed.