The Book of Hsssh

It is probably important to start this by saying that I don't like Gunn's movies or TV shows. I have tried few of them and it just isn't my thing. So naturally I'm not interested in the upcoming DC cinematic universe. But then again, it is not like there are many adaptations featuring Frank, Bride or Nina... So I decided that I should watch this new CC animated series and see if anything good or interesting was done with few characters that I care about. Overall it didn't change my opinion about Gunn's work. I think that this animated show was mostly bad and script needed few more revisions. But it is not all bad. I think that voice acting and animation itself was fine. It did what it was supposed to do and didn't detract from the experience. There is always a risk that adaptation will change too many things that you liked in comics and due to adaptation being popular these changes then will trickle down to comics and force a change on the character that you...

Father Time was introduced by Morrison in Seven Soldiers: Frankenstein mini. Not much was revealed about him at the time and he was fleshed out mostly by other creators. Was anything interesting done by them? In my Freedom Fighters post  I mentioned that Father Time plays a role there. So what was it about? I guess basic idea is that in WW3 #1 Father Time gets injured by Black Adam. Due to these injuries he gets a new body. Now he is white guy and generic evil government guy. What? So anyway, at some point he turns black again and reveals that he was just pretending that he is generic evil government guy. Why? To achieve some complicated goals that didn't make much sense in the end. And there is also JSA Classified #25 that features white Father Time. So before New 52 there is not really much worth reading with Father Time after his introduction. Sure, he makes brief appearance in Final Crisis, but it is not like Morrison does much with him there either. But hey, here comes New 52....

Since there is nothing really new being released with Frankenstein I figure that I might as well cover some of the supporting characters that appeared in his stories or are somehow related. And what better place to start than with Ray Palmer? Now, I can see someone raising an eyebrow here. After all, Ray Palmer is classic Silver Age character with many appearances and solo stories. Meanwhile Frankenstein had like a decade of prominence and now is fading into obscurity. Well, regardless of that Palmer did appear as a supporting character in Frankenstein's ongoing and was attached to SHADE during New 52 era. But we'll start a bit earlier. Just like with Frankenstein and Creature Commandos during Flashpoint, Lemire actually wrote Ray Palmer before New 52. After All-New Atom flopped for one reason or another DC decided to try again with Ray Palmer as Atom with Nucleus storyline. This story starts in Brightest Day: The Atom #1, then continues as backups in Adventures Comics #516-521...

I remember being rather excited for Futures End weekly and enjoying at least first half of it. Then it collapsed and had one of the weirder non-endings. But sometimes series reads better on a second go. Not this one. Heck, I'd probably argue that it reads even worse on a second go. But we are here to talk about Frank and not the series itself. So, what about Frank? Like every other weekly this one has a core of characters that we follow and Frank with Amethyst are one of them. But unlike others, their story is rather isolated from the main story so they have to deal with less bullshit. I assume that this section of the weekly was mostly written by Lemire because it works well with his Agent of Shade run. Basic idea is that someone blew up Stormwatch's spaceship and Shade sends Frank, Amethyst and Ray Palmer to investigate what happened. During the investigation Frank loses his arm and Ray Palmer figures that the best thing to do is to attach to him Hawkman's arm. Don't ...

With everything, asides of Futures End, till 2023 covered in previous posts it is probably time to make a list of what actually I consider worth reading and how I try to explain away continuity problems between pre-Flashpoint and post-Flashpoint versions. Lets start with reading list. I'm dividing it into two parts: must read and worth reading for one reason or another. If some Frank story is not included in this list then I pretty much don't consider it as being in continuity or mattering. Must read: Seven Soldiers: Frankenstein and Seven Soldiers #1 Frankenstein, Agent of S.H.A.D.E. #1-5 Superman Vol. 4 #12-13 Worth reading: Frankenstein, Agent of S.H.A.D.E. #6-9; 16 Men of War Vol. 2 #8 Pieces of me  from Young Monsters in Love #1 Batman and Robin Vol. 2 #19; 31-32 and Robin Rises: Omega #1 At first I wasn't sure about including stuff like Men of War and Batman and Robin #19, but I changed my mind in the end to make the list a bit more "complete". So, thats tha...

So I figured that I'd close this series of recaps once the new year starts rolling in case of something big and unexpected happening in December, spoiler alert - it didn't. For fans of not very popular characters DC doing many anthologies is both blessing and a curse. On one hand your favorite might get a short story focusing on him, on another hand anthologies are expensive and rarely you'll enjoy every story (or even majority of stories) in it. With short stories we have three that focus on Frankenstein. First one is  in Young Monsters in Love anthology, it explores Frank's feelings towards The Bride. Nothing fantastic here, it is fine, but not something that you'd buy entire anthology for so check if you find other stories interesting as well. Second one is The Doomed and the Damned where he teams up with Aquaman and I don't get Brandon Thomas' writing. I know that he has some fans (well, everyone has at least a few), but I haven't enjoyed anything he...

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, raise...

With all major appearances (and minor ones before Flashpoint) covered it is time to start looking at various guest appearances that Frankenstein made over the years. I think that Tomasi is a perfect starting point since he has used many toys that were either introduced or revamped by Morrison. Frankenstein is no exception. We start with Batman and Robin series by Tomasi and Gleason. This series really represents Tomasi's work in general for me, some of it I really like, some of it I really dislike. Luckily for us Frank appears in the better parts of the run. And I'd say that this title always had pretty good art. After Damian's death Bruce goes a bit crazy and tries to find a way how to bring back his boy back to life. One of the option Bruce is exploring in #19 is turning him into a Frank-like monster. This leads to a conflict with Frank. It is fine one-shot (and is later referenced in #27), but at the same time not really worth tracking down unless you are interested in t...

So far I was basically going in the order of Frank's publications, but here I'm making a big jump ahead since after Agent of SHADE ended Gotham City Monsters was the first series since then where Frank could be considered a lead character. And Sideways fits thematically to what I want to talk about. Midnighter was the first Orlando's work that I have read and I was very optimistic about him back then. He liked lots of things that I like and he really looked like he could become next big writer for DC. Years later? Sadly, Midnighter probably remains the best thing that he has written for DC. On surface level Gotham City Monsters, like majority of Orlando's work, looks like something I should dig. It features characters that I like, it references continuity and brings back some old things that I like as well? How could I not like it?  My main problem here really is that we never really move beyond references. Melmoth is back, but he is doing same plot he did in Seven Sold...

While I love Frankenstein I'm fully aware that he is a D-lister at best and well, characters like him usually don't have long ongoing series. With that in mind it is not surprising that Frankenstein's New 52 ongoing didn't last even two years. So, lets see how Matt Kindt wraps it up. In my earlier posts I praised that Morrison, and to lesser extent Lemire, moved Frankenstein away from the traditional interpretations. Unfortunately Kindt moves in the opposite direction and much of his run is focused on Doctor Frankenstein. We also spend some time on Frank having some visions about the previous owners of his body parts that starts and stops without much narrative purpose. Didn't like either of those two things. Kindt basically writers two one-shots and two three issues long arcs. First one-shot and three issues arc slowly sets up the return of Doctor Frankenstein, while second arc is a tie-in to Rotworld crossover. And final one-shot does its own thing. So, Doctor Fra...

I have not bothered to count it, but I feel like Jeff Lemire is most prolific Frankenstein's writer. He wrote a mini, an ongoing and later did use Frankenstein in his various other books. In this blog post I'll be covering his solo adventures, while stuff like Justice League Dark (or Futures End if we ever get to that!) might warrant a separate post entirely. Lemire started writing Frankenstein during Flashpoint event. Frank got his own mini and was paired up with other universal movies inspired monsters. This pairing makes sense and I wonder why previous versions of Creature Commandos did not include some version of Frankenstein*? Anyway, this miniseries is often praised as one of the good things that came out during Flashpoint event and... it probably says a lot about overall quality of Flashpoint event? Frankenstein's mini is not well plotted or well written, artist changes every issue so art direction is all over the place as well and it ends just as it starts going. On...

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 th...