As monsters in popular media have evolved and grown more complex, so have those who take on the job of stalking and staking them. This book examines the evolution of the contemporary monster hunter from Bram Stoker’s Abraham Van Helsing to today’s non-traditional monster hunters such as Blade, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Watchmen. Critically surveying a diverse range of books, films, television shows, and graphic novels, this study reveals how the monster hunter began as a white, upper-class, educated male and became everything from a vampire to a teenage girl with supernatural powers. Now often resembling the monsters they’ve vowed to conquer, modern characters occupy a gray area where the battle is often with their own inner natures as much as with the “evil” they fight.

Heather L. Duda is the Dean, College of Arts & Sciences at the University of Rio Grande in Rio Grande, Ohio. She lives in Louisville, Ohio.

Heather L. Duda

Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 192
Bibliographic Info: notes, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2008
pISBN: 978-0-7864-3406-0
eISBN: 978-0-7864-5187-6
Imprint: McFarland

Preface      1

1. A History of the Monster Hunter      7
2. Humanity and the Contemporary Vampire      37
3. Vigilantism and the Graphic Novel’s Monster Hunters      67
4. The Advent of the Female Monster Hunter      101
5. Monster Hunters for the New Millennium      142

Conclusion      166
Chapter Notes      171
Works Cited      175
Index      181

• Winner, Rondo Hatton Award
• “New perspective…highly recommended”—Midwest Book Review
• “An admirable job”—Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts
• “Recommend[ed]”—The Borgo Post