While there are monsters who are simply that and nothing more, who are truly evil and alien, there are so many more that inspired me to think and feel. The 1976 remake of King Kong, with Jeff Bridges, might not be very good (hey, I was nine, cut me some slack), but when Kong died at the end, it broke my heart. Even as an adult, when I watch the 1933 original, it touches me.

The Tomb of Dracula, the finest of the Marvel horror comics, gave us a Lord of Vampires who was terrifyingly evil, and yet astonishingly human and sympathetic as written by Marv Wolfman and drawn by Gene Colan. His behavior was monstrous, and yet readers could not help but feel for him.

As my literary interests grew, I found myself gravitating toward such portrayals of monstrosity again and again. I read Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein at last, and finally realized something that I had known in my heart for years by that time — the monster was the hero. The monster was the protagonist. Though the story might be structured otherwise, the language and characterization made it an inescapable truth.

This epiphany opened up a whole new way for me to see these stories. Godzilla, of course, was widely misunderstood. Magneto might be the X-Men’s greatest nemesis, and his methods wrong, but he believed in his cause — believed he was doing the right thing for his people.

In college, I wrote more than one paper dissecting my favorite film, Blade Runner, examining the Frankenstein-like moral structure of Ridley Scott’s masterpiece. When it came time to write a term paper on Moby-Dick, there could be no other choice for me than to write an essay titled “In Favor of the Whale.” Though the novel is structured to make Ahab the protagonist, everything about Melville’s language tells us that the opposite is true.