Frankenstein: Justice League

When Lemire left Frankenstein's ongoing he started writing another book - Justice League Dark. And after few issues he decided (or maybe it was editors?) to add Frank to this team. That decision lead to some good and some irrelevent things.

Now, lets start with the good. JLD being attached to Justice League had some staying power and had many more issues published than Agent of Shade. It also means that it got to participate in crossovers like Trinity War and Blight. It also lead to many guest appearances when one of the JLD members would have his origin story and we'd see a panel or a page showing his teammates. Or just in general when someone wanted to show that situation is important and all the superhero teams are gathering or watching some events unfolding.

If Frank wasn't added to this team then it is very likely that he would have gone into obscurity after Agent of Shade ended. But being in this team lead to many, many guest appearances and, at least in theory, raised Frank's profile.

Now lets step back a bit and look at how JLD came to be. With New 52 relaunch many characters that were published under Vertigo were moved to mainstream DC continuity. So titles that usually would be published under Vertigo or were a bit darker and weirder were put under "The Dark" line. Agent of Shade was one of those titles and, like many other characters from the same line, joined JLD team at one point or another.

Idea was that JLD would deal with magical threats and that would give it an unique edge when compared to other teams. I get that team books need some hook or specialization so that when reading it you don't start to wonder why Superman and Batman aren't dealing with the current crisis. But I really dislike teams that are based on either geography or specific threats. Superman is not going to ignore a threat just because it is happening on another continent (and many other characters have access to super speed or teleportation) or because villain is using magic. Superman or Batman aren't solving JLD's problems because they are not important enough and JLD never felt like a premier team that Titans, JSA or Suicide Squad at times manage to feel like.

Second problem is that magic, dark, mythology, mysticism and weird are different things. Sure, on the surface level you can label them all as "Dark" and it works as a marketing term, but when you start writing stories... it just doesn't click. So many characters, including Frank, didn't have much to do. Usually he'd just stand still or swing his sword for a cool visual. Or maybe he'd lose a limb to sell the threat. Maybe sometimes he would even get a vision of his dead son and The Bride when villain would be screwing with the team. But it is nothing memorable, nothing that you should get out of your way to read.

With Rebirth initiative JLD book was relaunched and some have praised it as being much better. I don't see it and I think thats mostly due to Tynion and Ram being more liked writers than people who worked on New 52 version so people were more willing to give it a benefit of a doubt. As for Frank, he appears only in couple of issues in this run, but serves the same purpose - explodes himself selling the threat.  But it is ok, SHADE will just get him a new body. Anyway, eventually the book was downgraded to backups in Justice League and those ended when JL book was cancelled for Dark Crisis event.

Asides of that Frank, together with other creature commandos, made an appearance in few issues of Parker's Justice League United. They didn't really do much there and Parker's run was cut short due to DCYou flopping and DC going into Rebirth initiative. So it is not something that I'd recommend either.

So thats that, it is good that Frank was added to JLD team, but sadly nothing really worth reading came out of it.