[urgeok]

I was musing this morning about how we never see new monsters, just variations on the same ones over and over again.

The Devil
Vampires
Man Made Monsters (Frankenstein)
Shapeshifters (Wolfman)
Nature Gone Wild (Godzilla)

then i though - there is a new one that has emerged in the last 30 years .. The Serial Killer (Man)

I know they exist in real life ...
but there are very few - and compared to their fictional counterparts in print and film ... pretty uninteresting. lonely cowardly losers. Kill 2 or 3 people tops.

I dont want to downplay any senseless death of an innocent by a predator - no matter how pathetic that predator is .

I'm just making a comparrison to the typical real life serial murderer .. and those of which we find in novels, films. and TV series.

If you are into genre escapism you've probably been exposed to dozens if nut hundreds of examples of books or films where there are elaborate plots by clever genius mastermind serial killers - and special divisions in law enforcement dedicated to stopping them - like it's an every day occurance.

i know this seems like an obvious point i'm making but the more i thought about it - the more a bigger truth - or idea - started to emerge. It began to occur to me that pop culture has made the 'serial killer' the new classical monster for our times. One people will buy into more readily too because of the 'based on reality' approach.
(despite the super human strength/intelligence the killers posses ... their crazy ass motives - the immaculate timing for the series of events that must take place for the story to work or be interesting)

I dunno - maybe its a non point ... but i can see a new mythos developing around this ...

anyone else see what i'm getting at ?