AJ, or Absolute Justice, became monstrous through random chance. A freak time machine accident turned him hideous and gave him perfect knowledge of the past, present, and future. Faced with dimension-encompassing omniscience, he decided to turn to his lifelong dream, creating a more just world, to give him purpose. He uses his abilities to prosecute criminals before they do wrong, crushing crime rates and gradually creating a peaceful, albeit paranoid, society. 

AJ’s actions may or may not make him evil, but monstrosity is a different beast entirely. In Monster Culture (Seven Theses), Jeffrey Jerome Cohen argues that “The monster is difference made flesh, come to dwell among us…. Any kind of alterity can be inscribed across (constructed through) the monstrous body”       (pg. 7). He argues that monsters are defined by their difference from the society that births them. In this way, AJ is monstrous because he is entirely alien to the fundamental systems of logic we all use to perceive the world: causality, the before and after of reason, syllogisms and deductions are all meaningless before his (literally) timeless wisdom. In thesis III of Monster Culture, Cohen talks about monsters challenging logic and rationality: “In the face of the monster, scientific inquiry and its ordered rationality crumble… the monster’s very existence is a rebuke to boundary and enclosure” (pg.7). AJ is monstrous because his mind is monstrous. None of us can hope to relate to AJ’s mentality even remotely. 

AJ also resonates deeply with collective dread, another one of Cohen’s common characteristic of monsters. In thesis II Cohen says “”Monster theory” must therefore concern itself with strings of cultural moments, connected by a logic that always threatens to shift,” (pg. 6). Therefore, monsters represent societal movements and fears of the time they are written. AJ represents the fear of inevitability. Once AJ has decided you are guilty, there is nothing you can do to convince him of your innocence. His knowledge is infallible. He knows you’ll do evil in the future, and there’s nothing you can do to prevent it. The fear of inevitability is a common thread in modern society, especially in gen Z. The advent of climate change and an onslaught of depressing news gives rise to the idea that we are living in a secondhand apocalypse we have no power to prevent. Gen Z is aggressively ironic and insincere because of the fear that we’re screwed no matter what we do. By prosecuting the innocent for their inevitable crimes, AJ represents and affirms that fear.  

Not everyone in AJ’s fictional United States feels that way, however. In fact, general society trusts him enough to make him a governmental entity with semi-total control of the justice system. His authority is given to him by the litany of people who put their faith in him. If AJ is a monster, he is one who makes the world better for his “victims”. He is a figure who inspires both fear and awe. AJ makes the world a better place for its people, and his motivation is benevolent and austere. His only desire is justice. Can such a being truly be called monstrous? 

In Cohen’s framework of monsterhood is tied to the general societal observer, the many unanimously declaring one monstrous. Whether for its physical hideousness, its alterity, or its defiance of logic, monsters are born from the collective consciousness, so it is always the collective consciousness which delivers the final verdict on monsterhood. When that collective consciousness fails at unanimity, what is left to declare AJ monstrous? 

AJ is a monster only because we do not live in AJ’s world. To us, AJ represents societal fears, challenges our perception of logic, and is difference made manifest. But to those living under AJ’s rule, he is a simple truth of life. To them, AJ does not embody the same breach of rationality, because they live with it every day. He does not resonate with their fears, because that fear has given way to mundane paranoia. He is not so different from the system that first rejected him, because he has come to embody that same system. In other words, a system cannot be monstrous, because a system will never be foreign to its inhabitants. The moment the monster comes to dictate the collective consciousness that judges it, it ceases to be monstrous.