The myth and legacy surrounding gargoyles, those ‘Nightmares in the Sky’ as the king of horror, Stephen King, affectionately calls them, is colourful and varied in art history and religious studies (4). Who knew decorative waterspouts could be so fascinating? Yes, those snarling stone creatures who devour countless pedestrians with their terrifying gazes are actually glorified (although some might argue ghastly) drains. Looking back, the series was an early, watered-down introduction to the Gothic and horror, but over twenty years later I still find myself gazing up at these fantastical stone beasts perched high above me on towering skyscrapers in Manhattan, cathedrals and churches, universities, town halls and stately homes throughout the United States and Western Europe. Without going into further detail, the series was far from rainbows and sunshine with its monstrous protagonists and antiheroes, dark undertones and tendency for melodrama. Now free and allowed to resume their evening activities, it’s only a matter of time before the clan adopts the unofficial role as the city’s newest, secret night-time protectors.
The curse is finally broken when billionaire, and sometimes-antagonist, David Xanatos relocates the castle and its petrified monstrosities to modern-day Manhattan. Those who survived were cursed to sleep in their stone forms until their castle rose high above the clouds. The premise of the story is pretty simple: a thousand years ago in tenth-century Scotland a clan of gargoyles were betrayed and nearly wiped out by the humans they were sworn to protect. The series revolved around a clan of nocturnal creatures wrongly called gargoyles-more on that later-who transform into stone at sunrise and reawaken each night with sunset. Gargoyles was a natural choice in the Schraner household. A child of the 80s and 90s, I often fangirled over shows that featured a team of unusual heroes who fought the forces of evil, like ThunderCats (1985-9), SilverHawks (1986) and X-Men: The Animated Series (1992-97).
I was ten or eleven and parked in front of my television in Southern California hooked on a new animated series called Gargoyles (1994-97). I must warn you, however, the beginning of this tale does not involve me standing beneath the grandiose flying buttresses of Notre Dame de Paris and experiencing some epiphany about monsters and our ongoing fascination with the Other, the grotesque and horror. The truth is less sophisticated than that, and slightly more embarrassing …
I can clearly remember when I first became interested in gargoyles.
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