Considering occulted fraternities in America by reviewing true crime, Among the Bros, and the comic Fraternity

Let’s initiate ourselves into a clandestine brotherhood of reading piles. This week’s reviews consider how fraternities harness rituals and drugs to influence reality.

Books

Among the Bros | By Max Marshall | Harper | 2023

So that’s what a frat’s like! In his 2023 true crime expose, Max Marshall details a 2016 drug bust at the College of Charleston to reveal how fraternities function within drug-dealing economies.

The story centers around two brothers of the Kappa Alpha fraternity, Mikey Schmidt and Robert Liljeberg. Both boys rushed Kappa Alpha but went on divergent paths. Rob looked like the all-American boy: A student and a fraternity president. Secretly, he loved to party and move weight. Our lovable fuckup protagonist, Mikey, looks like a suspect. A college dropout and a chauffeur at a famous club, he developed supply connections within the Atlanta trap scene. The two boys shared a passion for dealing drugs in felony weights.

Frats seem like the perfect place for drug dealing. They’re closed markets with high demand. Customers aren’t price savvy and took public oaths to keep secrets from each other. The Fratboy kingpins primarily sold three drugs: weed, cocaine, and benzodiazepines (Xanax, benzos). They ordered powered benzodiazepine on the dark web and pressed it into pills at rented AirBnBs, then traded pills for weed or coke with other dealers. They distributed these products through frat houses across the south with a pyramid structure of dealers.

In the background is the collectively accepted insanity of fraternities. Every year, people die gruesome deaths in a hazing ritual. The organizations exist to enforce segregation. Marshall points out that the founders of Kappa Alpha saw themselves as the youth wing of the Ku Klux Klan. He also remarks how almost every president and business executive is a fraternity alumnus. What seems like a problem of childish excess is a symptom of a much deeper problem. Fraternities are the incubators for America’s highest institutions.

The story only gets crazier, with high drama, deep betrayals, lengthy prison sentences, and a surprising amount of dead people. Even Waka Flocka Flame makes an appearance. Among The Bros was an entertaining read that implies horrifying conclusions.

Comics

Fraternity | Jon Ellis (Writer) + Hugo Petrus (Illustrator) | Humanoids | 2022

Frats are secret societies. Fraternity, a 2022 comic from Humanoids, takes this to its heightened conclusion: are frats covens of wizards summoning Satan?

The comic follows two lifelong friends, Wyatt (Black) and Jake (White); they go to college together, and immediately, a fraternity starts using Satanic ritual magic to ensnare Jake. How does the magic work, exactly? Consider the ritual of the frat party.

Old mansions exist across American college campuses. In those mansions, young men invite over strangers, do secret hand signs, and exchange libations. Sure, this is “just like any party” except for the paddles, the exclusive sub-rooms, and the tendency to consume so much poison one blacks out and forgets everything.

Odd. Now, consider the initiation rites. The men enter a room and do secret rituals, promising always to work to progress the fraternity’s goals. These rituals are passed on from generation to generation. The practices often involve participants doing cruel, humiliating sexual acts.

The magic must sort of work, right? Why else would a secret brotherhood commit to doing the same silly rituals every autumn? The Sorority Sister Whore of Babylon, laid over this 24-panel grid, suggests the deeply sexualized nature of the Greek system. Sex becomes a means of control and mental programming. Consecrate rituals to Greek deities with sex magic.

Is there any way for your average goddamn independent to resist these demonic forces? Well, it’s a Humanoids comic, so we must harness some demons, too. Wyatt ends up making friends with Antaura, a God of Headaches. He’s not as powerful as the weird, Cthuluian Frat gods, but hey, headaches suck.

Fraternity is a fun, violent, short read on Hoopla and Kindle Prime. I hope to see more from debut writer Jon Ellis, and I have enjoyed watching illustrator Hugo Petrus make comics with Marvel and DC.

Pile of the Week

Here is a pile of rocks with a cow’s skull on it. I found this picture in the New York Public Library Image Archive by searching “Book Pile.” This week, the coveted Pile of the Week Award goes to NYPL’s digital archives! Look for your strange images here.