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Happy Hammyween, folks!

October 31st is that one time of the year where absolutely spooky sh-t haunts you for the rest of the evening night and at best, it's where all the halloween-themed waifus come crawling about. Oh, and there's candy to get even more pumped about, I'm talking the king-sized chocolate bars like Milky Way (Mars) or between them Crunch bar and the beloved Butterfinger from Nestle. Yeah... I have no clue why I'm trying to be all optimistic 'bout that time for horrors.

Lately, Halloween just didn't feel the same but somehow we get anticipated when it comes to only the best and frightening stuff crawling from our favorite indie video game updates or perhaps the upcoming horror films around this month that are likely to knock your socks off, and Terrifier 3, alongside watching the other two, proven to not be the first choice for Horror Movie enthusiast beginners. I learned that the hard way. Though don't get me wrong, Halloween waifus are still a must if you're a man of taste and culture.

But that's not what we're here to talk about, I'm actually referring to my latest candidates in this duo proposal. A good friend of mine recommended me only the most traumatizing comics to find that'll knock my block off and to my honest opinion, only found few bits that'll haunt me but at the same time, intrigued me from the plot. This comic originated from the underappreciated studios of DC Vertigo and upon further reading, I can say from one thing or two that both manage to count, which to get on with the spooky events coming about, we'll he looking into the embodiment of Enfant Terrible, Derica Mueller, and a toxic simp in the form of a misogynistic serial killer, Artus Greenhand.

What's the Work?[]

Clean Room is the 2015 horror/mystery short-lived comic book series written by Gail Simone and part of the DC Vertigo lineup (best known for one of my only-read entries, Sweet Tooth).

The story follows incredibly graphic-kind of horrors, as well as supernatural demons and entities hauling from space or other dimensions, something like that. A young journalist named Chloe Pierce recently lost her husband to suicide and wishes to get to the bottom of his sudden passing, turning her leads on investigating the self-help guide and former novel author, Astrid Mueller, who eventually introduces Chloe to the dark wonders of the number of demons going about possessing others, making twists and bloodshed to their amusement, but more importantly, the latter and her organization's purpose to put a stop to demon-kind through ruthless and psychological means. One of these instances involving the titular Clean Room.

Who are They? What Have They Done?[]

Derica Mueller[]

Derica plans on a human bridge

This first vision of her twisted plans for humanity's torment perfectly exemplifies how she is beyond Enfant Terrible.

Chloe: Why?
Derica: "Why"? Why, what?
Chloe: Why do you hate us so bad? You killed that guard for no reason. Not reason at all. You gained nothing by it. We were already afraid of you.
Derica: Why? You ask me why? Because the cow goes moo, Chloe. It's because the cow goes moo.
~ Practically a much unsubtle Damien Thorn.

She is the newborn leader of the Demons and the infant niece of Astrid Mueller, as well as the illegitimate daughter of her aunt's brother, Peter Mueller.

Derica's origins stem from an demonic ritual led by Marcus Webber who sought to birth the leader of the demons incarnating in the babies, which Peter Mueller, her father, was a willing participant unaware of the circumstances. From the moment she was born, Derica was stated to have bitten off the breasts of her own mother and laid down in the meantime to make preparations on humanity's spiral to chaos and insanity. Becoming the leading head of her demonic brethren and their schemes of further tormenting humanity, Derica sets up spies to infiltrate the building of the Mueller Organization, led by her aunt Astrid Mueller, whom she was eager to kill in the future.

At some point, Derica had a thing for psychologically tormenting her victims and soldiers in wartime by sending them visions of her other demonic compadres and their deceased loved ones, which she implies she had her brethren go after and kill. The torment was so bad that countless of her victims were transported to mental asylums and wards. Her favorite among them was Chloe Pierce, a journalist, who lost both her husband, Phillip, from suicide and their offspring while she was pregnant, constantly sending her visions of her dead husband as a zombie on some occasions for no other reason than to just mess with her, leading her to suspect Astrid and company being the result of Phillip's suicide and discovering the Clean Room as part of Derica's plans. It wasn't until her father, Peter, tried to assassinate Astrid and her men discovered the existence of Derica and her demonic inheritance.

First introduced on supervision in the Clean Room, Derica shows her true demonic nature to a shocked Chloe and proceeds to have a guard shoot himself with no bullets, simply using her psychokinetic abilities to finish the job. Afterwards, Derica fleshes out one of her insane ideals of tormenting humanity, which she envisioned a bridge made out of humans who were grotesquely stitched and attached to said bridge for demons to walk on them and as she quoted, with "shoes with nails on the soles". When questioned by a distraught Chloe for her actions, Derica only responds that her reason for hating humans is because they are "cattle" and that [cows go moo]. She then sadistically reveals being the one sending her visions of her husband just to add insult to injury, even going as far as to revive the guard's corpse to impersonate Phillip until Astrid neutralized her.

Locked in complete isolation in the catacombs, Derica wakes up and begins explaining her biggest plot that would spiral humanity out of control; first being to cut off all power and the internet to cause distress, only to bring it back to air only one channel and no other means of online communications, with the followed-up rest being the utmost depraved she had in mind. She would have caused a series of dozens to hundreds of bus crashes around the world, most of them being school buses full of children, which would result in countless casualties. Then she would telekinetically drag planes down onto populated cities and towns from Minsk to Motown. The next would see a number of people, mostly women and children, suffering from attacks that sees them cough out blood and drop dead. Then the final step was to have the US President declare marital law and shoot his own wife on television broadcast for everyone to see, instead of showing herself and the other demons about this madness, she'd rather allow all of humanity to think it's their own doing and cause further insanity that would result in becoming their own undoing.

Her plan eventually commences as a number of her demonic spies began slaughtering members and patients who were connected with Astrid Mueller, both the building and in other mental asylums, such as Dr. Suichi and Terry, then Anika - a crippled friend of Astrid's - was almost victimized until Capone, one of Astrid's subordinates, rescued her in such short notice after realizing the situation. Once deaths began escalating from four more to several likely to follow, Derica is then picked up by Webber and directed him to where the Clean Room was located, now fully hellbent on killing her aunt and her loved ones in numerous ways she could think of. Once there, she had Webber viciously kill a guard on duty before they engage in a fight with Capone.

Soon as Webber was killed and Derica makes it into the Clean Room, little did she know it was a trap all formulated by Astrid a few moments back, having Dr. Hagen blow up her kindred's invisible mothership and city altogether. Angered at the result, Chloe, Astrid, and the other began reciting biblical exorcism to have Derica reaped for good and it was only for a good amount of time for Spark, the "exorcised" demon, to finalize her downfall, thus putting an end to her insane, twisted machinations.

Artus Greenhand[]

Artus kills women

Definitely wouldn't get a haircut from this sick-minded incel. He has bad taste in fashion.

Artus: I'm not crazy. I know what you think. I knew I'd never have the real Astrid Mueller. I'm not worthy. But I could make a damn fine knockoff. It was thirsty work, I'll tell you. Funny, too, because when a woman wins a makeover on a game show, she gets all excited. Some people got no sense of gratitude.
Killian: He's enjoying this. He's enjoying this.
Artus: So? A smile is contagious. I try to smile at the every person I meet. Even dirty critters like you.
~ Certainly goes beyond the typical simp/incel behavior, just makes his creepiness all the worthwhile disturbing.

He is a misogynistic serial killer who is a huge fan of Astrid Mueller and wishes to meet her in person, all so he could have her for his own twisted desires. As well as a conspirator to Derica's plot to drive humanity in chaos and insanity.

Artus seemingly lived a normal life but showed early signs of psychopathic behavior at some point. Later on, Artus read much about Astrid Mueller and her works, severely becoming obsessed with her and wants nothing more than to have her at his expense. Knowing he is "unworthy", he goes onto creating the "perfect replicate" of Astrid through kidnapping numerous women, from shaving their hair off, tortured them with electric clippers to attach the wig onto, and goes onto killing them afterwards if the procedure failed, later disposing their corpses in secret. Artus was about to torture and kill his latest victim, a Korean woman, in an attempt to shave her hair off until said woman fought back and used his axe against him, leaving him to die. However, Derica and the other demons somehow got in contact with him and gave him the ability to use the Clean Room as Astrid and Chloe.

With information of Derica's existence and the means of defeating her, Artus finds himself entering the organization's building and entering the Clean Room with Chloe and Killian interrogating him, entering a memory of his latest and failed attempt with his past victim. As he taunts the girls about his kills, he is met with a beat down by Chloe, now admitting to having knowledge of defeating the demonic infant but instead of telling them otherwise, uses his newfound ability to escape his memory and leave Chloe and Killian at the mercy of his memory-self. Making it back to the Clean Room, Artus demands the presence of Astrid Mueller or he'd threatened the lives of Chloe and Killian, using them as bargain chips until Astrid herself confronted him.

In an attempt to seize her as his own, Artus decides to "punish" her into proper behavior by showing her a memory where she last saw her "father" (actually a demon taking his place), one of which she later killed him. Having enough of his antics, Astrid shows off full dominance over him and gains total control over the Clean Room once more, she had him cower before her and forced him into teleporting back to the memory where Artus first left Chloe and Killian at his memory-self's mercy. After being curb-stomped to the ground, Artus finally decides the jig is up and spills out the secrecy to Derica's defeat; exoduction (which is to exorcise her from existence). Already pathetically begging undeserved mercy at the hands of the "woman of his dreams" as he proclaimed, instead, Astrid decides to leave him in his own memory of his death at the hands of a pitch-black demon where he'll suffer for the rest of his life eternally.

Heinous Standards[]

Clean Room is mostly full of demons from outer space/another dimension that roam around killing, man-eating, and psychologically tormenting a number of innocent people left and right, while monstrous human bastards and criminals go about killing and torturing others that make them no better than the demons crawling within the series. One of the known demons, the Surgeon, has his main shtick about giving the loved ones of those who worked under him to be placed in "fate worse than deaths" with the infamous example being the "pony man", a male human whose flesh, organ, and bones were to be reorganized into a grotesque horse humanoid with a disturbingly large face and spine bone pulled out as the tail. Then we got Reston Wenuka who owns a torture room full of nasty tools for unsuspecting newcomers preyed onto his grasp.

Luckily for us, Derica stands out as the one setting the comic's high heinous standards as a whole and eventually becoming the new leader of the demons despite being only born for likely a few months. For a demon in the form of an innocent and, by Chloe's words, a "beautiful baby girl", as wholesome as it sounds from Chloe's perspective, little did she know that even the most innocent thing can eventually become a full-blown monster in seconds despite her resource tier but nevertheless commands a whole ship of demons and incredible psychokinetic powers, including demonic magic. To which her actions range from psychologically tormenting her victims with visions of demons and deceased loved ones to the point of having them incarcerated in mental institutions, enforced a guard to kill himself with zero bullets, and personal villainy of sending Chloe visions of her dead husband just to mess with her.

The insane plan of Derica

There is so much unsubtle chaos in his plan that it's hard to comprehend the madness this one-year-old has shown.

Her overall plan on tormenting humanity into chaos is what makes her different from other demons who simply conspired with the intentions into fruition. Her insane plan involves a much later one on building a bridge built entirely from countless humans, the vision explicitly details that the humans will be horrifically stitched and merged with the bridge for the demons to walk onto with agonizing pain. Then she goes onto casualty numbers of attempting to globally cause bus crashes ranged from dozens to hundreds - mostly targeting school buses full of children - then to causing plane crashes to destroy towns and cities from Minsk to Motown, and later on killing wide numbers of women and children through unknown means that sees them drop dead and coughing out blood. Then the last was to have the president kill his own wife on television while announcing marital law. To which she already succeeds on killing several members connected to the Mueller Organization (including Dr. Suichi and Terry) and causing a blackout that sees her an elderly woman's hand bitten off. So out of all the demons, Derica cements herself as the absolute worst of her brethren.

Artus, on the other hand, is merely a human with no bigger connections or resourcefulness like owning a company building if he were to be in Wenuka's shoes but has only the weakest ounce of control over the Clean Room and is at best, an average-level serial killer with a garage full of tools to use. However, Artus is noted to have the most kills for a human villain compared to one-time murderers in the beginning, and we manage to see a pattern of over a total of eight victims through the form of model heads with wigs, indicating he's killed them and disposed of their corpses, at the same time, tortures them by modeling them into becoming an Astrid replicate but failed. The methods he used involved axes and electric clippers after shaving their hair off, which is a rather nasty niche to his simp-fueled obsession. What pushes him further is that he is in cahoots with Derica and the other demons, withholding information of her defeat in exchange of having Astrid to himself.

In context, Artus is implied to have known about the infant and her kindred's plans for humanity but chose not to lay off such information until he got what he wanted, especially out of fear of what they'll do to him, meaning he was fine with humanity being overthrown into insanity and chaos. So yeah, Artus does enough for a human... and an incel.

Mitigating Factors[]

Derica's case[]

Astrid: The entities come from another place I haven't yet been able to determine. Another dimension, another galaxy, hell itself. All are plausible. But they've been here a very long time. We are their distant outpost, Chloe. We are the Devil's Island. The entities that are sent here are the outcasts of their species. The sadists, the killers, the torturers and rapists. Their culture has no death penalty. So they are sent here, to live as best they can without supervision. Because we are not sufficiently advanced to matter.
Chloe: But... but why bother with us at all? If they're so advanced-
Astrid: Because they're bored, Chloe. Thousands of years, stuck in a lightless cave, only to torment us. Waiting for something.
~ "Outcasts" are keyword to this, it proves that a remainder of their hellish species aren't exactly the same as them but they did the best to punish them on their culture's intentions.

Moral Agency isn't an issue. Despite being a newborn infant, Derica was able to manifest intellect quickly and can speak thoroughly while having the mannerisms of a one-year-old, albeit akin to that of early signs of psychopathy at a young age. Plus, there are still the antics of a one-year-old in her such as demanding her diaper to be changed and wanting apple juice on a whim, but not only just did little to make her agency problematic, but none of which is played for comedy wholeheartedly with her actions being taken seriously as best demonstrated by Chloe and Astrid's horrified reactions once hearing them.

The real iffy is how the demons here are portrayed, to one's confusion, it's easy to mistake them for their unusually weird but sadistic behavior and language, and at best they are seemingly and entirely Chaotic Evil from where they come from. However, as best explained by Astrid, these race of demons from a dimension named "the void" are actually inmate ones we see in general. As in, the "most vile" demons that were banished by other demons due to their heinous crimes, meaning the latter demons that banished them have moral standards and may not be as evil as them. This exemplifies that they aren't entirely Chaotic Evil, let alone the fact that there is but one who might break out of such behavioral instincts.

That example is Spark, a demon Chloe Pierce befriended, was said to have been exorcised into being "good" and cleansed of its evil inherent, but despite that, Spark refuses to help Astrid in the moment of death simply because of the opinionated reluctance of her hating him and his kind, it took a moment for Chloe to convince him otherwise. There's also the time that Spark was absolved by Chloe in order to help dispute Killian and Duncan, though just when it looked like he was reverted back to his kind's evil inherent, from the moment Chloe used the Clean Room to warp to Spark's memory of possessing a young girl and killing her mom, he starts to feel genuine remorse and reluctance to look back at it. Thus, pretty much confines to the idea that the demons aren't inherently evil as they look, especially since Spark began to help out in Derica's exoduction willingly despite being "absolved".

Otherwise, none. Derica's a full-blown sadist who simply hates humanity just because they are little to anything but "cattle" to her and her kindred, on an arbitrary whim on saying "the cow goes moo" as the sole reason for it, let alone nonsensically petty. She extremely hates her aunt Astrid to the point of wishing to kill her and her loved ones under imaginable circumstances and we're left with little evidence if she cared about her father. Well, to her, I don't think "family" fits into her vocabulary that is sadism and she is quick to dismiss Webber's death in spite of his loyalty to her, and as if Bad Boss behavior wasn't enough, she showed little concern over the rest of her kindred blown up by Dr. Hagen, more focused on losing enough manpower than the numbers. So yeah, no problems left on her end.

Artus' case[]

...bruh.

Artus is a textbook, self-entitled simp/incel. His fanatical obsession with Astrid Mueller is anything but genuine, and from first glance he seemed touched to finally meet the woman of his dreams to where he cried "tears of joy", albeit under behavioral toxicity. However, by the time he got what he wanted and meets her in person, the bastard goes about claiming Astrid was his for the taking and like how he treats women as "critters", she was no exception to his treatment of them. What doesn't help his case is that this is literally the same man who wrote a FANFIC about him and Astrid being lovers. Already quickly giving away how possessive and entitled he is to her, not to mention realistic. At the end of the day, what he thinks of Astrid is no different from how he sees women, to him, she's just another "critter".

Speaking of that, as a misogynistic serial killer, he refers to them as "critters" and treats women like Chloe and Killian with little acknowledgement to his stead and goes about acting all buddy-buddy with them despite their expressed disgust for his actions, just to be a remorseless prick about it. Not to mention being a biddy-eyed coward who couldn't have the guts to maintain dominance over the more strong-willed Astrid once she toppled all over him, reducing him to a sobering, cowering mess. And his fate of being trapped in his own memory with a pitch-black demon at his mercy is never played for sympathy but is well-deserved for how he treats women and killing them for his sick obsession for Astrid.

Hell, we don't even know much about his life (one of the memories we see him attending a funeral) and relationship with his father, who taught him the means of being a "hunter". Not that it really matters since for the latter is merely a one-line giveaway with no further implications, and the former is especially left super vague. So there's no room for excuses for Artus' actions.

Final Verdict[]

Probably the weirdest choices for a Halloween-themed proposal, let alone a duo one where we have an literal Enfant Terrible archetype and a simp/incel, a psychotic one at best. Nevertheless, it's a solid yes to both.