For example, we know that the young men who go on murderous rampages are not always sociopathic monsters but, rather, sometimes more or less "regular" men who suffered from crushing depression and suicidal ideation.

CNN: The overwhelming maleness of mass homicide

And the monsters are not exclusive to Highland fresh water lochs.

BBC: Monsters Inc: Scottish lochs and their creatures

These may not be the sea monsters Jules Verne describes in Journey to the Centre of the Earth, but Iceland is the setting for his famous novel.

BBC: An Icelandic journey to the centre of the earth

The monsters are not just evil.

NEWYORKER: Show The Monster

But Mr Putin, it seems, did not declaw one set of monsters only to create another set.

ECONOMIST: Putin versus the oligarchs

Odysseus eventually made it through the narrow straits between the two monsters, but not without losing six of his best sailors.

FORBES: Chuck Schumer, Scylla, Charybdis

Some took issue with Gaga for that tweet because she has always been such an outspoken advocate of her Little Monsters loving themselves for who they are and not giving in to the pressure to be thin that so often results in serious eating disorders.

FORBES: Just When You Thought Lady Gaga Couldn't Get Any More Awesome

Taking that world and trying to shoehorn it into a world where flying aliens shoot heat beams out of their eyes, magical princesses have powers and gifts given to them by mythologial gods, with monsters invading Earth from outer space, is just not going to work.

FORBES: Joseph Gordon-Levitt Not Playing Batman, Say Reps

"I'm not sure if it is possible to climb all three of these monsters in one go, " he said from Everest Base Camp.

BBC: Kenton Cool attempts to climb three Himalayan peaks

Snyder wants to make the slaughter less ideological and technological than it has seemed, and more geographic and territorial: a question not so much of evil ideas carried out by industrial means as of ancient hatreds brought to life by modern monsters in ancient terrain.

NEWYORKER: Faces, Places, Spaces