asexual and global in ways that Trujillo
never was, but all three Dark Lords (Morgoth, Sauron, Trujillo) sought to
achieve total tyrannies, the Lidless Eye everywhere, and there's much in
their projects that resonates.

Kirby's work is equally vital to the book: his insane creativity, his
cosmic-level mythologies, and iconography, which flipped my lid when I was
growing up. I mean, consider his signature villain, Darkseid, whom I also
tie to Trujillo: Darkseid and his Omega Beams and their ability to
encapsulate a person - have you ever heard or seen anything like that? You
have if you grew up in Santo Domingo. And then there was Kamandi.
When Oscar dreams the end of the world, he dreams in Kamandi lines.
And I'm sure it's obvious to those who read the novel that I'm a huge fan of
Kirby's characterIn October 2013, the results of a then-recent Pew Research poll had been making the rounds, which stated that 18% of Americans believe they have actually seen a ghost. Arriving just in time for Halloween, the study addressed the persistence of belief in the supernatural among adults in the 21st century, despite the absence of scientific theories about such phenomena to match these beliefs.

University of California at Berkeley sociologist Claude Fischer noted at the time that, “most American adults in the 21st Century say that they believe in life after death and in the devil,” while more than one-third believed in similar things like haunted houses.

The numbers of those who count themselves among “believers” remains in the distinct minority, as one might expect with the passing of time,