Frankenstein's Animated Monster

 

Graphite on paper

Haunted Hot Rods

I was, and still am, I guess, a monster kid. I think I have shared before the story about how one fateful afternoon in the 1980s I was exposed to Tod Browning's Dracula, and my mind was suitably blown and primed to seek out monster movies, and related ephemera, from that point forward. Of course to present that as the moment I was introduced to monsters in the pop cultural sense, would be inaccurate, because I had by that point, already been toddling around in Incredible Hulk t-shirts since I was in diapers, and had had a shoe box full of Masters Of The Universe figures–a large number of which were monsters of various sorts. 

As I grew older, and my interests diversified, monsters (more so than straight "horror") stuck with me. And as I got into comic books, and later music and other things, I found these amazing overlaps in the spheres of the Venn Diagram of my hobbies. There's surf music about monsters?! There are comic books with monster stories?! I quickly grew to favor supernatural comic book characters like Deadman, Ghost Rider, Werewolf By Night and Swamp Thing, and scoured the weekly TV Guide for listings of monster and sci-fi movies on AMC (back when they were more akin to what TCM is now, than a version of early 90s HBO). Fortunately the late 80s/early 90s burgeoning basic cable market was flush with shows like Werewolf, Forever Knight and Monsters, and the Universal Monsters were back in vogue, popping up in everything from toys to Doritos packaging.  

As I pursued these various interests I found that the offerings to discover were often unilaterally declining in quality the more recently they were produced. Straight-to-video horror might have a certain outsider charm to it, but something like Galaxy of Terror or Creature didn't seem to hold a candle to Creature From The Black Lagoon or The Mad Ghoul. I don't like gore if it's the focal point of a movie/comic/novel, I don't enjoy films about groups of people, often teenagers or thirty-somethings playing teenagers, being systematically butchered in novel ways by some psychopath in a mask. I also don't have time for parodic material that doesn't respect the source. Was I whole-heartedly obsessed with The Misfits when they crossed my path? You bet! But metal that glorifies senseless brutality, not so much. 

Yadda yadda yadda. My brand of horror has always been more Hammer Films, Boris Karloff, EC Comics and Famous Monsters of Filmland than Fangoria, Rob Zombie and the hyper graphic Twisted Tales. That isn't to say there isn't a great deal of contemporary horror stuff that I greatly enjoy, but prior to the 1970s the idea seemed to be providing entertainment, not entrails. I like a bit of fun with my fear and there's lots of great stuff buried in the past if you dig for it. I've dug out a 1964 issue of Pete Millar's Drag Cartoons magazine to share today. It's a quick little hot rod monster mash produced by noted animation designer and cartoonist Alex Toth. Page 3 is a little faded but still reads just fine. Note the resemblance of the Monster in this strip to Dick Briefer's design for the creature in his Frankenstein comics (pictured below).

Cartoonist Dick Briefer had two different creature 
designs for two different iterations of his Frankenstein comics,
one humorous and cartoony, one menacing for straight horror
stories. The above is a panel from a horror-oriented 1954 issue.

 I'm not a gearhead by any measure; both of my grandfathers were career body men for various dealerships, my appreciation, however, is more or less confined to the aesthetic appeal of vintage car body design and the George Barris TV car creations, hence why I have the source material for this here post.

Enjoy.

Frankenstein's Monster Meets Manga

Cultures cross-pollinate all of the time, and while some channels of transmission are more (or less) reputable  and/or harmful than others, it can only benefit all people everywhere to be exposed to things outside of their tiny spheres of influence. Though context is important. Despite any anti-American sentiment other cultures may hold, or xenophobic tendencies seem to be rearing their disgusting head here in the U.S., the exchange and assimilation of various cultures' pop ephemera can show how our interests are more aligned across cultural and geographic boundaries, than alien. Such things have been stigmatized in recent years with the constantly argued and blurred demarcation of cultural appropriation and exoticizing over cultural fascination and celebration, but this isn't a political blog and 100 different people may have 100 different definitions of any of those aforementioned concepts.

An example I present to thee...the appearance of the Americanized Frankenstein's Monster in Japanese manga. Seems pretty trivial, I know. You may point out that the Frankenstein's Monster isn't American at all, but English, since it stems from the 1818 novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus by author Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. True. I guess you could argue that The Monster is potentially German, since the titular Frankenstein is in fact Dr. Victor Frankenstein, the medical student who builds and animates the creature, does so at the University of Ingolstadt. Its birthplace, so to speak. On the other hand, I suppose, if Victor Frankenstein made life, and that life is The Monster, and therefore is considered his progeny, I guess it could be argued that The Monster is Swiss, since Victor Frankenstein's family is Genevan. But Victor himself was born in Naples, which would undoubtedly make him an Italian citizen, which might make The Monster Italian? The phrase "it could be argued" gets bandied about a lot here, because that's all it is, meandering rhetoric. 

No, we're talking specifically about the repurposing of the Frankenstein image created by Jack Pierce for James Whale's 1931 Universal film Frankenstein. It is by and large the default visual shorthand for the Frankenstein Monster and has been since the picture's release. Below are some examples from my personal manga collection.

First off we have some excerpts from Tetsujin 28-go, initially created in 1956. The volume these images are presented from are from a tankobon reprint released in 1970. Herein we see Tetsujin 28-go square off against a very familiar-looking green-pigmented monster.

The cover to the first volume of Sunday Comics' Tetsujin 28 Go   
(aka Iron Man 28, aka Gigantor in the U.S.) by Mitsutera Yokoyama.

                              

Below are some samples of the Frankenstein story from Osamu Tezuka's Astro Boy, originally serialized in Shonen magazine between November 1952 and April 1953 per the Tezuka In English website. This english version is from the Dark Horse Comics Astro Boy Omnibus 7 collection released in 2017.

 I'm sure there are other examples, the Junji Ito adaptation for one. If anyone has any other examples, please feel free to let me know. I'd be interested in seeing them.