Conversation with Rodney Barnes about “Killadelphia”

For my “Monsters, Race, and Comics” class I’m teaching the first two volumes of Rodney Barnes and Jason Shawn Alexander’s Killadelphia. Recently, I spoke with Barnes about the series. We talked about the ways that the gothic works as both a “politically conservative” for and as a revolutionary form, the role that history plays within the series, the ways that the powerful weaponize fear to maintain power, what hinders us from achieving our true identity, and much more. While I’ve been excited to teach Killadelphia since I constructed the syllabus and written about it here on my blog, my conversation with Barnes opened up various lines of inquiry that I am excited about pursuing with students this semester. Below, you will find my conversation with Barnes as well as the questions I constructed for our discussion.

Questions:

1. Robert Martin writes that “[t]he gothic . . . is most often a politically conservative form that gives expression to the anxieties of a class threatened with violent dissolution. On the other hand, the gothic can allow for the voice of the…