Frankenstein: Morrison and before Flashpoint

So I figure I'll start with work actually done by Morrison and a guy whose avatar I'm using since who knows when on CBR forums - Frankenstein.

Frankenstein is one of those pop culture characters that baffles me a bit. Obviously every adaptation changes things a bit here and a bit there, but I still don't understand how we went from the version present in the book to... what we usually see in adaptations. It would be probably easier to list similarities than differences at this point.

So what Morrison does with the Frankenstein? Do we get an attempt to move character closer to its roots? Do we get an update on what is the pop culture image of the character? No, Morrison instead moves the character further away from these places to something new, something unique. 

We spend little time arguing about his name. Yeah, technically he is a monster and Frankenstein was a doctor, but who cares at this point? In fact, importance of the doctor is diminished even further by a reveal that it is Melmoth's blood that keeps Frank running. Does it ignore the core premise of the book? Yes, but it is not like other adaptations really focus on it either so might as well remove it entirely for something that fits the DC universe better.

So what is really kept? Look that looks familiar, him being an artificial life and most importantly his poetic soul. And thats really it. What we really get here is a monster hunter. A monster hunter who is more like a force of nature. Every issue we basically have some horror trope doing its own thing before suddenly Frankenstein appears and ends it. Add to that wonderful art by Mahnke and it is no surprise that Frankenstein is the only thing that really lasted once Seven Soldiers wrapped up.

We also get SHADE and Bride in these four (and bits in closing chapter) issues. While Morrison to me wrote the best Frank I think that I prefer what other writers did with SHADE and Bride. It is not that there is something bad about them here, but they didn't get that many pages and Morrison's SHADE to me felt a bit generic.

So anyway, what happens after Seven Soldiers end and before we move into brave new world with Flashpoint? Not much, Frank mostly appears in some books for a big splash page with many other characters or a panel here or there. Morrison does use him a bit more in Final Crisis, but Final Crisis is way bigger than Frank so naturally not many interesting things for him happen there.

Only bigger usage of Frank is in Grundy storyline (Faces of Evil, Grundy, Superman/Batman) that was related a bit to Blackest Night event. In Seven Soldiers it was revealed that Frank is related to Grundies (due to Melmoth's blood) so on paper it makes sense to pair them up, but... that is not addressed at all. Instead SHADE sends Frank, Bride and some human agents to take out Grundy. And he gets a pretty good showing there unlike many other monster characters that Grundy beats. Character development? Not much, Frank tries to get on the good side of Bride, but she is not really interested. But I, and some others probably, like Kollins' art so it is fun to see Frank kill Grundy. And I think that Kollins' writing isn't bad either, but problem is that the storyline didn't really have much of a point. It ended and I was not sure why it happened in the first place so it is hard to recommend such storyline.

Asides of that DC has used many other version of the Frankenstein character over the decades like Spawn of Frankenstein or Young Frankenstein, but I don't consider them same character and I'm basically pretending that they never existed. It looks like DC feels the same since they haven't really used them after New 52 relaunch.

One minor exception is Frankenstein in DCU Halloween Special 2010. He "teams-up" with Flash there to kill some monster, but he is written and drawn in such way that I'm not entirely sure if it is really supposed to be same Frank. Either way that short story isn't good or interesting so it is another thing that can be easily ignored.

And thats that for our first real blog post. Looking back at this time period only Seven Soldiers is really worth reading if you want to get some quality Frank content. Final Crisis doesn't have much of him, but you should read it anyway. Everything else is an easy skip.

At some point in the future second post of Frankenstein series will see the light of the day and we will look at Lemire's work.

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