comic series follows brilliant scientist who channels dr. frankenstein after police kill her son

Author Victor LaValle’s Destroyer is a new six-issue limited comic book series that follows a brilliant Black scientist, Josephine Baker, who is grief-stricken after her 12-year-old son is killed by the police. Baker also happens to be the last living descendent of Dr. Frankenstein. In an interview with NPR, LaValle explained that his interest in writing his own Frankenstein had more to do with its creator Mary Shelley than the mad doctor himself.

Not long after the sudden death of Mary and Percy Shelley’s infant child, the two, with Lord Byron, went on their historic summer trip to Geneva, Mary conceptualized the idea for Frankenstein. “I wanted to explore that kind of grief, that desire — forget Victor Frankenstein’s desire but what I read as Mary Shelley’s desire — to bring back who you love and to wish for that power not simply out of hubris, but to see the one you love back again,” LaValle told NPR.

Destroyer #1 is out now.