Horror fans and mythology buffs rejoice: issue #1 of Grimmcore Studio’s The Return of Camazotz, written by Rafael Flores Jr. and illustrated by Azrael Aguiar, is stunning, unsettling, and—like the Mayan bat god of death that haunts the protagonists—impossible to put down.
Camazotz is the first published series from Flores, a Chicano comic book writer and librarian from Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas. If issue #1 is any indication, it will be far from his last.
Twins Vincent and Victor are visiting their mother’s grave in Oaxaca, Mexico. Vincent has come for closure: despite their rough childhood spent in multiple foster homes, the twins have since grown into relatively stable adults. Victor, however, still resents their mother for leaving them in Texas before mysteriously killing herself in Oaxaca—unlike Vincent, he is not ready to forgive. The twins’ polar attitudes towards death and letting go hint towards deeper, more sinister forces at work in Camazotz. When a sneak visit to a Mayan pyramid goes awry, the brothers awaken an ancient, bloodthirsty deity that hunts them down. Spoiler alert: Victor survives, but the nightmare is only just beginning.
There’s a primordial energy at work in Camazotz. By the time Vincent finds himself at the center of a ritual sacrifice, I find myself rooting for his thorough integration into the gory, chaotic world of death and deities rather than a safe return to normalcy (if that is even an option in Flores’ storytelling plans).
There’s a primordial energy at work in Camazotz.
The concept of “Camazotz” itself is no stranger in our popular culture today; it’s a sinister planet in Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time, a batlike titan in the Godzilla monsterverse, a playable character in the online game SMITE, and Batman himself. Flores and Aguiar’s comic, however, fully leans into the bat god’s pre-contact origins from Mesoamerican mythos.
The earliest written record of Camazotz, or “death bat” in K’iche’ language, is found in the Popol Vuh. Described as an anthropomorphized bat god of death, night, and sacrifice, Camazotz is involved in the beheading of one of the Maya Hero Twins, the gruesome ball game of the gods of Xibalba, and even the start of mankind practicing ritual sacrifice in exchange for fire. Pre-recorded histories trace Camazotz even further back in time, as the now-extinct giant vampire bats inspired worship from the Zapotec people circa 100 A.D. in, incidentally, Oaxaca.
Sound familiar?
The source materials for Camazotz are rich in horror, grounded in forces beyond human control. Flores and Aguiar deftly capture these elements in a mutual symbiosis of visual and verbal storytelling.
The color schemes shift dramatically with each narrative beat. Aguiar’s linework is especially superb in red, which just so happens in scenes where Flores incorporates bat motifs, if not the outright presence of the death bat itself. The incorporation of untranslated Nahuatl is a lure for wild reader predictions in itself (looking at you, “nurse” Etzli).
Aguiar’s linework is especially superb in red, which just so happens in scenes where Flores incorporates bat motifs, if not the outright presence of the death bat itself.
The graphic ritual sacrifice at the end of issue #1 promises more than just the rebirth of the ancient bat god into Vincent’s present-day body. Camazotz is an invitation to dive deeper into creation myths and belief systems that interrogate our modern assumptions about life and death.
For non-indigenous readers like me, it’s also a chance to unpack Mayan myths not as ancillary elements in a game or a book, but as a universe of its own. But perhaps most importantly, the perennial retellings of the horrifying death bat speak to the power of mythology to capture the human imagination, Spanish conquest and centuries of brutal colonization in the Americas notwithstanding. For what Flores and Aguiar manage to accomplish in a mere 28 pages, issue #2 can’t come soon enough.
Amazing review for an amazing book!
Great stuff!!!