To ‘all the monster girls’: violence and non-normativity in Noelle Stevenson’s Nimona

ABSTRACT

Situated in a world that incorporates well-known tropes from medieval romances, as well as fantasy and science fiction elements, Noelle Stevenson’s Nimona (2015) attempts to establish ‘monster’ as an ambiguous non-normative category and a pretext for interrogating common definitions of what makes one human. In this article, I am interested in examining the manner in which the ambiguous nature of the title character – a combination of human-animal, vulnerable-immortal, girl-monster – helps unveil the questionable nature of pre-established definitions of good and evil, as well as the connection between violence and the construction of social roles such as ‘hero’ and ‘monster’. I also argue that the comic productively positions monstrosity at the intersection of violence, cuteness and queerness, and thus manages to unveil not only the subversive potential of a specific kind of cuteness, but also a usable alternative to the aesthetics of the heroic body.

KEYWORDS:

• Monster
• femininity
• violence
• non-normativity
• gothic

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The nefarious purposes of the Institution become more transparent when Ballister Blackheart, helped by Nimona, discovers that, in one of its high-tech research facilities, it is attempting to harness the powers of jaderoot, a ‘very rare, very poisonous’ plant that could endanger the whole population (2015, 41).

2. Other sources of Nimona’s violence are her impulsivity and impatience. In one instance, instead of waiting for Blackheart to put in a code to open a door, she just smashes it, while in another instance, when she gets frustrated, she destroys his kitchen (2015, 121). Her impatience, as well as her reading of violence as a game, seem to be part of the fact that Nimona is a child and she kills with the kind of gusto that comes from the lack of a fixed moral filter and in the absence of empathy that could make her understand the pain that, for instance, a soldier’s death would have upon his family. In a country where the Institution takes away people’s children in order to train them in battle, thus creating generations of orphans (Blackheart and Goldenloin among them), Nimona’s violence against ‘goons’, as she calls them with satisfaction, is even more problematic. However, she is only shown killing at the very beginning of the narrative – when she has not yet learned restraint from Blackheart – and near the end, when her actions are prompted by forces outside of her control. The audience is thus invited to read her violence as circumstantial; however, her strength and versatility remain important components of the character.

3. I am referring here to comics such as In Real Life, Lumberjanes, Monstress, Papergirls, Wayward, Saga, Sweet Tooth, The Wicked + The Divine, The Nameless City and Wolf. This list is by no means exhaustive.

4. Nimona’s origin story adds to our reading of her use of violence and general anger. She initially tells Ballister Blackheart a false story where her powers are attributable to magic alone: as a six-year old in a village besieged by raiders from the north, Nimona takes a walk through the woods one day and saves an old witch who gives her the gift of shapeshifting, but first turns her into a dragon, something that makes the community fear her and cast her out. This story of exclusion from the community fits most definitions of the other or the monster. However, near the end (2015, 226), as the second version of her origin story is introduced to us, we find out that she was captured as a child, tortured and examined by scientists in an attempt to harness her power. Her violence is thus traceable to post-traumatic stress, and her disdain for the rules to her resentment at having been othered and punished for having a body that was less stable than what was expected of it. This theory is supported by Blackheart, who refuses to assign the appellative ‘monster’ to her even after the final rampage, when Nimona loses control of her more violent impulses, embodied in a fierce and vengeful dragon.

5. Barbara Creed’s (2007) psychoanalytic revision of the Freudian model focuses on grotesque representations of the threatening female body, particularly procreating women (or women of procreating age) in cinema. Her examination also includes brief references to teenage girls after menstruation.

6. As Alexa Wright (2013, 4) demonstrates, ‘although monsters and monstrosities act to symbolize or “realize” monstrousness, what is truly monstrous is that which stands outside the processes of representation or articulation’.

7. I believe her non-conformism is confused because she smashes and destroys, she says, in order to fight the rules given to her by her father-figure, Ballister Blackheart, but when asked why she does it, she invokes the rules that give villains free rein to kill and destroy.

8. Both the language used to frame Nimona’s otherness and the manner in which she is represented contain signifiers of queerness; these references work well to construct an additional layer of reading of the concept of monstrosity.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Unitatea Executiva pentru Finantarea Invatamantului Superior, a Cercetarii, Dezvoltarii si Inovarii [PN-II-RU-TE 2014-4-0609].

Notes on contributors

Mihaela Precup

Mihaela Precup is an Associate Professor in the American Studies Program at the University of Bucharest. Her research focuses on North American graphic memoirs, memory, trauma, and autobiography studies. She is currently working on a monograph titled Picturing the Father: Memory, Representation, and Fatherhood in Autobiographical Comics (under contract with Palgrave Macmillan).