
Dark Horse Comics 2020
Written by Mike Mignola & Scott Allie
Illustrated by Ben Stenbeck
Coloured by Brennan Wagner
Lettered by Clem Robins
Mignola takes on Frankenstein! Frankenstein's creator lies dead in the icy grip of the Arctic, and the monster searches for a new purpose. Just as he thinks he's found one with a group of unlikely companions, disaster strikes—and the monster is catapulted out of Mary Shelley's novel and into the world of Hellboy.
This was sent to me for a review and I thought okay Frankenstein I am down with that. I had no idea it was going to connect to the Hellboy world but I can see that making sense for a number of reasons. So I sat down and started reading and I found myself thinking the idea sounds familiar and then things veered off into a new territory and I was hooked. Aside from the manner in which Frankenstein speaks, which I absolutely adore by the way, the anger, angst and loneliness that he feels and the regret for his actions come across so crystal clear. When he left and talked that revenge against him would be for him to suffer living than death well dammit right there and then was the moment I saw the brilliance in this book.
I am really rather impressed with the way that this is being told. The story & plot development that we see through how the sequence of events unfold and how the reader learns information is presented extremely well. The way the story flows and how we see and Frankenstein's journey as laid out before us just makes sense and you believe it. The character development here is off the charts and the connection to Frankenstein as he tells his tale throughout is strong, powerful and easily relatable to. Any one who suffers from body dysmorphia as he does can easily understand his struggle and that's really powerful to get across. The pacing is superb and as it takes us through the pages revealing the twists and turns along the way it helps to create such a dynamic ebb & flow to the book.
This engages the reader in a unique way and I doubt Mary Shelley was of what she was doing when she wrote him. Now more than ever the way the pressure to look a certain way that's placed upon us and how it can affect ever aspect of our lives and ability to love is as relevant today in ways I don't think she knew. So yeah to see his struggle with his acceptance of how he looks that's relatable to all of us.
I like the work on the interiors here. The linework is beautiful and how we see the varying weights utilised to bring out the attention to detail is stupendous! To see Victor on that bed in the pretty much Burberry design was incredible and the placement of his bolts is fresh and innovative though the nipples was a new one for me and well there kits for men to get that way heh. The creativity and imagination on display here is marvellous to behold. I am a fan of how backgrounds are utilised and their importance to a story. The way we see them utilised here is lovely and how that provides us with depth perception, scale and that overall sense of size and scope to the story is beautifully rendered. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels shows a superb eye for storytelling. I am also a fan of the colour work that we see here as well. I like how the various hues and tones with the colours are utilised to create the shading, highlights and shadow work that we see. There really is some beautiful work done I seeing the way colour is utilised.
This was an absolutely surprising and delightful story. Frankenstein as a character has always been intriguing but in this iteration I see new possibilities that I hadn't seen previously. I think that this is a book that went from request to curiosity to a must read book and I love when that happens. This is a phenomenal story and it's being told exquisitely.