In 1487, Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger wrote the Malleus
Maleficarum, the premiere manual for exposing, capturing, prosecuting, and
burning witches used by every right-thinking European magistrate of the late
middle ages. Cartoonist Mike Rosen has adapted this warm and uplifting tome
which fueled a wave of witch-hunting that lasted for nearly two centuries and
cost nearly 60,000 people (mostly women) their lives.
The adaptation's tongue-in-cheek tone exposes a kind of paranoid thinking
which exists to this day in some circles and answeres all of those nagging
eternal questions; Do witches kill newborn babies for use in their rituals? Can
they turn men into beasts? Can they steal mens’ penises, collecting them
in great numbers, to hide in, say, a bird’s nest up in a tree, where they
then move around like squiggly phallic snakes and eat corn and oats? Finally,
most importantly, do witches have sexual relations with devils? How do they have
sexual relations with devils? And could we hear some more about these sexual
relations with devils? Nothing makes for a fun read like torture, murder,
infanticide, and disembodied penises! Always fun and educational.