Professor Pyg is a Bigger Monster Than Solomon Grundy

WARNING: The following article contains major spoilers for the story "The Devil You Know" in Cursed Comics Cavalcade #1, by Dave Wielgosz, Christian Duce and Romulo Fajardo Jr., on sale now.

There's no two ways about it: Solomon Grundy is terrifying. He's a massive, shambling undead creature who takes his name from a super creepy 19th Century nursery rhyme. First introduced as a Green Lantern villain in 1944, Grundy has since encountered a huge swath of DC's superhero pantheon. From Batman to Swamp Thing, there aren't too many costumed defenders he hasn't tussled with. Possessing limited mental faculties and a horribly short memory, one would think the hulking juggernaut wouldn't even be capable of processing fear. But in the tale "The Devil You Know," in the spooktacular horror anthology Cursed Comics Cavalcade #1, we learn even the scariest villains are afraid of something.

Batman's rogues gallery has no shortage of characters influenced by the horror genre. Villains like Solomon Grundy, Man-Bat, and Scarecrow operate so well in the various tropes of horror, they can often feel like dark diversions in what are traditionally seen as superhero and crime stories in the pages of books like Batman and Detective Comics. While these aforementioned characters still hold tightly to a scrap of humanity for readers to connect to, something which makes them seem less monstrous, there is one terrifying villain who makes our skin crawl more than anyone else. As it turns out, Solomon Grundy feels the same way.

That character is Professor Pyg, the pig-masked, maniacal surgeon with a proclivity for lobotomizing victims and grafting grotesque masks to their faces. Pyg might be the most terrifying villain in, not just Batman titles, but in comics altogether. The guy is basically Hannibal Lecter on steroids and is a reminder that not all superhero comics are for kids. Unlike flagship villains such as the Joker and Two-Face, you won't see a lot of six year old kids sporting Professor Pyg costumes this Halloween (unless they have parents with sick senses of humor).

Originally created by legendary comic scribe Grant Morrison and art virtuoso Andy Kubert, Pyg first appeared (rather appropriately) in Batman #666. The villain was designed to be, as Morrison described it, "one of the weirdest, most insane characters that's ever been in Batman." Well, good job, Grant. Mission Accomplished.

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Now, for all his murderous impulses, Solomon Grundy is, for better or worse, the comic book analogue to Frankenstein's monster. He's a hulking beast of a man who does often glom on to humans who see Grundy as more of a lost soul with a good heart rather than a threat. There is a bitter sweet irony in this view of the character, considering the terrible things he's done in his decades-long history in comics.

In "The Devil You Know," we get a wonderful look into this facet of Grundy's personality in an exchange which feels very much like a meta-narrative on old school horror stories being eclipsed by the genre's more modern and darker trappings. It's as if the Universal Monster films from the '40s got jumped in a dark alley by the New French Extremity movement of the aughts (Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein wouldn't stand a change against a film like Martyrs in a battle of purely horrifying merits).

"The Devil You Know" begins with Robin trying to stop a delirious Grundy from wreaking havoc in the streets of Gotham. Grundy, who is frantically searching for a trio of girls he refers to as his "family," is subdued and explains (in his own way) he's in search of young runaways who have been taken by a "devil man." Robin quickly deduces the devil in question is in fact Professor Pyg thanks to a not so subtle clue (one of Pyg's ears, which Solomon managed to grab). Grundy eventually confronts his fear of the "devil man" and rescues the young women, who have befriended him.

While the story ends on a somewhat happy note, the fact remains that Professor Pyg, a man who does not possess super strength or any other fantastical ability, scares one of the biggest bruisers in comics through sheer derangement. Sinister means often burn down traditional monster aesthetics in horror. What a character does carries far much more weight than how a character looks. Sure, Jason Voorhees looks terrifying with his wide stature and bloody machete, but there is something far more visceral about an intelligent human being who revels in conducting unspeakable acts of violence, leaving victims only wishing they were dead. Solomon Grundy learned the hard way that just because he's the biggest fish in the sea doesn't mean he's the most dangerous.

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