When I was in sixth grade, my best friend, Ed, discovered a strange book on the shelves of our school's library -- Fungus the Bogeyman.
Fungus is a graphic novel (aka comic book) by Raymond Briggs that depicts the life and existential angst of a Bogeyman named Fungus, who dwells beneath the earth in Bogeydom with his wife, Mildew, and his son, Mould. Bogeys prefer dank, wet, filthy things and their main job is venturing to the surface to scare humans via making things go "bump" in the night, rattling doorknobs, or popping out from behind trees. Left to themselves, however, they are quiet, gentle creatures with a rich culture and history that the book describes in vivid detail.
Ed and I poured over the book and its detailed drawings and humorous descriptions of Bogey life. We could scarcely believe that a school library would stock such a book as it appeared to have very little educational value and was chock full of disgusting grossness and frank topics such as Bogey anatomy (the females have three breasts) and their various unsanitary habits.
But underlying the book's attempts to make the reader squeamish, there is a touching story of one Bogey's attempt to make sense of his life.
I bought a copy of my own a few years ago, and showed it to Ray a while ago but it was way too advanced for him. We recently started reading it together again, however, and he loves it. He doesn't seem at all bothered by the scenes showing a Bogeyman creeping into people's houses; he takes it all in stride. He's even taken to pretending to being a Bogey and likes to make scary noises and tries to frighten me and Amy.
I didn't appreciate this back in sixth grade, but in re-reading the book to my child I am pleased by the total and complete lack of any supernatural or religious content. Here we are dealing with a Bogey on the verge of losing his way in life, who is seeking the answers to the great answers of where he came from, why he does what he does, and what does it all mean. Given the rich and detailed mythology Briggs builds for his Bogeys, it would have been easy to construct a theology for them that would neatly wrap everything up, but he does not do so. Fungus seeks answers not via believing in imaginary sky-fathers or the promise of a glorious life after death, but in the simple pleasures of poetry, a good glass of slime, and the enjoyment of poking sleeping humans with his Bogey-stick. And, importantly, he does not find concrete answers in the end ... not because he's looking in the wrong places, but because concrete answers are not easy to come by and may not even exist.
In looking stuff up for this post, I learned that there was a live-action movie version of Fungus the Bogeyman made a few years ago, The reviews I've seen are lukewarm at best, but I stuck it in my Netflix queue anyway.
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