For the mythological figure see Blood Clot Boy

Blood Clot Boy

Blood Clot Boy is a figure in the mythologies of several Native American tribes, including the Cree, Blackfoot, Pawnee, and Arapaho. He is depicted as being born from a clot of blood....

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"The Blood-Clot Boy" is a 6-page comic

Comics

Comics denotes a hybrid medium having verbal side of its vocabulary tightly tied to its visual side in order to convey narrative or information only, the latter in case of non-fiction comics, seeking synergy by using both visual and verbal side in...

 by Al Columbia

Al Columbia

Al Columbia is an American cartoonist, illustrator, writer, photographer, musician, and filmmaker.-Big Numbers controversy:At the age of 19 Columbia was hired to work as an assistant to Bill Sienkiewicz on Alan Moore's Big Numbers series...

. It was published in the sixteenth issue (April/May 1997) of Zero Zero

Zero Zero (comic)

Zero Zero is an alternative comics anthology that was published by Fantagraphics Books from 1995 to 2000. It was notable among comics anthologies for the number of serialized works that appeared in its pages, including Richard Sala's "The Chuckling Whatsit", Dave Cooper's "Crumple", Mack White's...

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Synopsis

The wealthy Count and Countess Borovsky give their lovely conjoined twin daughters' hand in marriage, along with their home and fortune, to a visitor who claims to be a distant family relative. Although he offers assurances that he will care for the Count and Countess in their old age, their new son-in-law soon begins to neglect them, and taunts and abuses them with the willing participation of his bride(s). Left to forage for food, the Count secretly observes his son-in-law slaughtering a yak, and steals a large clot of blood from the animal's butchered remains. When he puts the clot into a pot of boiling water to make soup

Soup

Soup is a generally warm food that is made by combining ingredients such as meat and vegetables with stock, juice, water, or another liquid. Hot soups are additionally characterized by boiling solid ingredients in liquids in a pot until the flavors are extracted, forming a broth.Traditionally,...

 it magically turns into a small boy, who grows to the size of a normal eight-year-old in a single night. After hearing of his "parent"'s plight, the Blood-clot boy kills the son-in-law and the twin daughters. Having restored the Count and Countess to their place, he sets out to wander and see the world.

Heading to the nearest town, he finds it is under the control of the goblin

Goblin

A goblin is a legendary evil or mischievous illiterate creature, a grotesquely evil or evil-like phantom.They are attributed with various abilities, temperaments and appearances depending on the story and country of origin. In some cases, goblins have been classified as constantly annoying little...

-like "Brownshirts", who fly their "peccant, yet strangely attractive banner" in the center of the town. The Blood-clot boy fights the Brownshirts using his (unspecified) magical powers and kills all but one of them, who he leaves tied up as an object for public ridicule. Moving on, while a lake he is swallowed by the Windsucker, a giant aquatic beast that disguises itself as an unremarkable rock. Inside the beast's stomach he finds other people who have been swallowed like him. With their help he kills the Windsucker by burrowing through its brain

Brain

The brain is the center of the nervous system in all vertebrate and most invertebrate animals—only a few primitive invertebrates such as sponges, jellyfish, sea squirts and starfishes do not have one. It is located in the head, usually close to primary sensory apparatus such as vision, hearing,...

. After this escape he determines that "this is my business in the world! To kill off all the bad things!"

Next the Blood-clot boy encounters a witch who asks him to wrestle with her. Seeing that the ground where she proposes to wrestle is covered with hidden blades that she would use to kill him, he forces her onto the blades himself, and they cut her body in half. Finally he comes to "the blackest place on earth: the home of the Man-eater." Outside the house, the Blood-clot boy meets a young girl and tells her to perform a ritual that will revive him if he should die in his encounter with the Man-eater, who is revealed to be an apple-cheeked, kindly-looking old man. The Man-eater kills and devours the Blood-clot boy and the girl revives him; this repeats many times before the Blood-clot boy finally defeats his nemesis. He and the girl end up living happily together and having many adventures.

Analysis & criticism

"The Blood-Clot Boy" was the second of Columbia's stories to appear in Zero Zero. It has a two-color scheme similar to that of its predecessor "I Was Killing When Killing Wasn't Cool

I Was Killing When Killing Wasn't Cool

"I Was Killing When Killing Wasn't Cool" is an 8-page comic by Al Columbia. It was published in the fourth issue of Zero Zero...

". While that story was nearly wordless, "The Blood-Clot Boy" features an arch, loquacious narrator

Narrator

A narrator is, within any story , the fictional or non-fictional, personal or impersonal entity who tells the story to the audience. When the narrator is also a character within the story, he or she is sometimes known as the viewpoint character. The narrator is one of three entities responsible for...

 whose words appear in text captions interspersed among the drawn panels, a format Columbia would continue to use in later works such as "Amnesia" and The Pogostick. Paul Gravett

Paul Gravett

Paul Gravett is a London-based journalist, curator, writer and broadcaster who has worked in comics publishing and promotion for over 20 years....

 wrote that Columbia "narrates this [tale] in jaunty storybook fashion in densely typeset captions and hand-lettered balloons, like some nasty Struwelpeter [sic]-style primer to terrify children into good behaviour."

"The Blood-Clot Boy" is loosely based on the stories about a character of the same name

Blood Clot Boy

Blood Clot Boy is a figure in the mythologies of several Native American tribes, including the Cree, Blackfoot, Pawnee, and Arapaho. He is depicted as being born from a clot of blood....

 in Native American

Native Americans in the United States

Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continental United States, parts of Alaska, and the island state of Hawaii. They are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as...

 folklore

Folklore

Folklore consists of legends, music, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs, fairy tales and customs that are the traditions of a culture, subculture, or group. It is also the set of practices through which those expressive genres are shared. The study of folklore is sometimes called...

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