Minotaurs, monsters and who gets treated like a person

Minotaurs, monsters and who gets treated like a person There is a minotaur in Grimm Universe #1 whom Hades calls through his authority over the Underworld and its monsters. He addresses the creature as bound by his word. The scene makes the relationship pretty clear: the god commands, and the monster belongs within the reach of that command. Ferdinand in Absolute Wonder Woman gives us a very different place to start with a bull-headed person. Diana finds him protecting Petra, an injured siren. He has lived in the maze and is trying to keep someone else safe inside it. Before we start talking about what a minotaur traditionally represents, the book has already shown him doing something compassionate. Diana doesn't simply assume he is innocent because he looks sympathetic, either. She uses Nemesis to test him. The lasso doesn't punish him, and she accepts what that tells her. The creature someone might expect her to fight becomes somebody she stands beside. That isn't a claim that Grimm never gives monsters personalities or that every creature in Absolute is secretly friendly. Both would be ridiculous conclusions from these scenes. The useful comparison is what the introduction asks us to notice. Grimm's scene is demonstrating Hades's supernatural authority. Ferdinand's introduction makes us look at the life of someone who could have been reduced to part of the maze's scenery. Petra matters to that difference. Ferdinand's care for her gives us evidence about him before Diana has sorted out everything else. His relationship with another vulnerable person tells us more than his shape does. And Absolute follows through by letting Diana's response change the direction of the encounter. Learning who he is affects what she does next. She isn't there to finish a checklist of mythological creatures she has defeated. These books are full of familiar categories: gods, monsters, hunters, witches. The interesting part is where a character stops fitting the quick assumption that comes with one of those words. A minotaur can illustrate the reach of a god's command, or he can be the person keeping somebody alive in a terrible place. The head and horns don't settle it for us.