Some months ago I penned a piece for the National Catholic Register on the phenomenon of “The Abortion Story” in Catholic literary circles. It’s a “rite of passage for young Christian writers”, I declared. Most if not all of us have written such a thing at one time or another. Most of them are completely unoriginal and unsuccessful.

I cannot yet say if Matthew Lickona’s attempt will be successful, but it certainly can lay claim to originality. Alphonse: Untimely Ripp’d, the first in a five-issue comic miniseries, is quite unlike any abortion story I have ever seen. It is intriguing, it is darkly ingenious, it is deeply disturbing, it is horrific. At her blog, Eve Tushnet drew on the cheery, popular comic strip “Umbert the Unborn” to dub Alphonse “UMBERT THE UNHEIMLICH”. The gesture toward the uncanny and (as she goes on later to say) to Shelley’s Frankenstein is not unwarranted. The words of that famous monster resonate horribly here: “My heart was fashioned to be susceptible of love and sympathy, and when wrenched by misery to vice and hatred, it did not endure the violence of the change without torture such as you cannot even imagine.” Alphonse is about souls in torment, and the little “monster” at its center embodies that torment.

For more information I refer you to Lickona’s website, and to his own description of the work:

mon·ster (mŏn’stər) n.
1. An animal, a plant, or other organism having structural defects or deformities.
2. A fetus or an infant that is grotesquely abnormal and usually not viable.
– The American Heritage® Medical Dictionary

Alphonse is the story of eight lives that intersect because of an attempted abortion. Why “attempted?” Because while there are no angels or demons on either side, there is definitely a monster in the middle: Alphonse. Rendered “grotesquely abnormal” by his unwitting mother’s use of controlled substances, he is both sentient and freakishly coordinated. He is also deeply wounded, twisted by fear and rage after the attempt on his life, and bent on revenge.

But violence begets violence. Alphonse is pursued even as he is pursuing, and haunted by the claim that there may be another way…

Al Cover

Some may find the intensity of the work very troubling. It is certainly not appropriate reading fare for children. At the same time, with its very grotesqueness, it may draw in a wider popular audience, beyond mainstream prolifers.

In any case, I urge interested readers to buy a copy so that Lickona can afford to publish the next issue!