Sometimes I wonder about the female adversaries that exist in some Girls Underground stories – the wicked stepmothers, nasty witches, evil queens… were they once themselves the girl on the quest, only to stay too long down there in the dark and become something for other girls to fear?

We can actually see this process happen in the continuation of one of the bloodier GU stories, Hellraiser. The Comics Alliance blog reports that a new graphic novel series based on the original story and movie has provided the ultimate twist:

Last year BOOM! Studios launched a new Hellraiser series by Clive Barker that marked the influential horror writer’s return to his most famous creation after decades away. Co-written with Christopher Monfette and drawn by Leonardo Manco, the book’s first arc was a hit with fans of the storied franchise, concluding with original Hellraiser heroine Kristy Cotton replacing the iconic Pinhead character as the demonic Cenobites’ head of human soul-harvesting.

This makes sense to me, after years and years of reading these stories, and living my own strange version. The otherworld is not always a gentle place, and the Girl is always changed by her time there, after all.

(Other examples of Girl Becomes Adversary can be found in the movies In Dreams, Candyman, Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, and Gretel & Hansel, and in the book The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There.)