FRANKENSTEIN’S MONSTER: MARVEL STYLE

This weekend’s escapist, light-hearted superhero post here at Balladeer’s Blog looks at the way Marvel incorporated the Frankenstein Monster into their 1970s horror comics.

MONSTER OF FRANKENSTEIN Vol 1 #1 (Jan 1973)

Title: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

Villains: Mutineers

Synopsis: This loose adaptation of the Mary Shelley classic starts out in January of 1898. Readers meet Captain Robert Walton IV, descendant of the Captain Walton who encountered Dr. Victor Frankenstein in the frozen north roughly one hundred years earlier.

This Robert Walton has been searching for any sign of the remains of the Frankenstein Monster sighted by his ancestor. He and his crew at last find the being and carve out the huge ice chunk in which its body is held.   

That chunk is brought on board Walton’s vessel and stored in the hold. While the captain relates to a crew member the tale told to his ancestor about the monster’s creation and history, the rest of the crew plot a mutiny over being kept in the frozen north for so long just to recover a monstrous corpse.

Captain Walton is only partway through his tale about Dr. Frankenstein and his monster when the mutiny erupts and in the fighting a fire starts. The fire starts to melt the ice encasing the Frankenstein Monster.

MONSTER OF FRANKENSTEIN Vol 1 #2 (Mar 1973)

Title: Bride of the Monster

Villains: Wild animals and monster hunters

Synopsis: The Frankenstein Monster has been in suspended animation within the ice and the heat from the fire melts enough of that ice for him to break free. The Monster, who is intelligent like in the original novel, saves the cabin boy from the raging fire.

The crew put out the flames as the Monster, confused but feeling protective of the unconscious cabin boy in his arms, retreats from all the gun-wielding crew members and Captain Walton. The creature carries the boy up to the crow’s nest and stays with him, besieged by the crew below.

Walton orders his men to continue holding their fire while he picks up where he left off last issue with the saga of the Monster above them. The captain covers the Monster’s struggles for survival against bears, wolves and monster hunters. He also relates the creature’s war on Victor Frankenstein as he began whittling down his creator’s friends and family members. 

Victor’s creation and quick destruction of the Bride of the Monster is recapped as well and for the cliffhanger ending the ship strikes an iceberg.

MONSTER OF FRANKENSTEIN Vol 1 #3 (May 1973)

Title: The Monster’s Revenge

Villain: The Monster itself

Synopsis: In the chaos unleashed by the collision with the iceberg, the Frankenstein Monster kills all of Captain Walton’s crew except for the cabin boy and the captain himself. The three of them board a lifeboat as the ship sinks.

Conveniently, they eventually come across another long-abandoned ship stuck in the ice and board it for shelter. The Monster sardonically insists that Walton resume telling the cabin boy about his tragic existence. 

The captain’s tale covers the Monster’s stalking and slaying of Victor’s own intended bride and the way Victor and the creature hunted each other by turns in the years ahead while the Monster continued killing off Victor’s friends and family plus anyone else who got in his way.

After Walton recounts Dr. Frankenstein’s end after the final confrontation with his creation, the ship in which the trio are sheltered begins to cave in on them. 

MONSTER OF FRANKENSTEIN Vol 1 #4 (Jul 1973)

Title: Death of the Monster

Villains: Lost Polar Tribes

Synopsis: The Frankenstein Monster carries Walton and the cabin boy from the collapsing derelict and as the trio begin trekking southward the creature decides to pick up from where Walton’s narrative left off in 1799.

With Frankenstein dead, the Monster wandered the Arctic Region, fighting and killing polar bears and seals for food. Marvel Comics now throw in a very weird story element by having the Monster attacked by a Lost Tribe of surviving Neanderthals near the North Pole. (?)

After the creature kills several tribe members in battle, their Chief recognizes what a great ally the Monster would make and invites him to join his people. The tribe adopts the Monster and he lives contentedly with them for a time. 

A rival tribe of surviving Neanderthals eventually come into conflict with the creature’s adopted people. In the apocalyptic battle that results, the Frankenstein Monster kills all of the enemy tribe but they have slain all of the Monster’s people. Ultimately, he falls through a crack in the ice and freezes, to be found by Captain Walton in the “present day” of 1898.

The cabin boy dies in his sleep and as the captain also freezes to death he informs the Monster that the last of the Frankenstein family are still alive and pleads with it to make peace with them. The creature cobbles together a seaworthy craft from the derelict and heads southeast toward Europe.

MONSTER OF FRANKENSTEIN Vol 1 #5 (Sep 1973)

Title: The Creature Walks Among Us

Villain: The werewolf Lenore

Synopsis: It is still 1898 as this issue begins. The Monster’s boat has gotten it to the Scandinavian countries, where it embarks and makes its way further south, killing and eating game to keep itself alive.

He befriends a cast-out woman named Lenore and defends her from attacks by villagers. Lenore claims to be unjustly persecuted but it turns out she was exiled for being a werewolf. That night at the rise of the full moon, she transforms.

The werewolf Lenore and the Frankenstein Monster fight it out and our title character at last kills her by piercing her heart with a silver-tipped sword taken from one of the defeated villagers.

FRANKENSTEIN MONSTER Vol 1 #6 (Oct 1973)

NOTE: The series is now called The Frankenstein Monster.

Title: In Search of the Last Frankenstein

Villains: Colonel Blackstone and his minions

Synopsis: The Frankenstein Monster at last reaches Ingolstadt and uses the subterranean entrance of Castle Frankenstein to begin searching for leads to any surviving Frankensteins. He finds the lower levels occupied by the evil Colonel Blackstone and his mindless human servants.

The colonel maneuvers the Monster into the web of his giant spider and informs the creature that the spider is a supernatural beast that sucks out the souls of its victims, not their bodily fluids. The Monster will therefore be left as mindless and obedient as the rest of his thralls.

Our title character breaks free and its battle with the spider bursts a wall, letting in seawater which kills Blackstone and his servants. The Monster kills the giant spider and gets to dry land.

FRANKENSTEIN MONSTER Vol 1 #7 (Nov 1973)

Title: The Fiend and the Fury

Villains: A hunchback and a vampress

Synopsis: The Monster reaches a village where he saves a Gypsy girl named Carmen from a depraved hunchback. The Gypsies welcome him into their camp and he travels with them.

Marguerite, the leader of this Gypsy band, tells the Monster she can lead him to the last Frankenstein. The band travels to Transylvania, where Marguerite reveals she is a vampire. Caught feeding, she is attacked by a torch-bearing mob which is driven away by the Frankenstein Monster.

Marguerite leads our title character to a cave in which is a coffin. Before the Monster realizes that Marguerite has led him into a trap, she opens the coffin and yanks a stake from the heart of the body inside. That body rises as Dracula himself.

FRANKENSTEIN MONSTER Vol 1 #8 (Jan 1974)

Title: Frankenstein Meets Dracula

Villains: Dracula and Marguerite

Synopsis: Dracula and Marguerite both attack the Frankenstein Monster. Eventually the creature kills Marguerite but Drac escapes.

While searching for Drac, the Monster finds that the Gypsy band has been slaughtered by the villagers from last issue and that Dracula has fed on Carmen. The villagers attack the Monster and enough gunfire from them manages to wound him enough so that they can bind him to a stake.

They then start a fire under him.

FRANKENSTEIN MONSTER Vol 1 #9 (Mar 1974)

Title: One Must Die

Villains: Dracula and Carmen

Synopsis: The Frankenstein Monster breaks free of his restraints and battles his way through the villagers as he tries to find Dracula for killing Carmen. Drac meanwhile lies low with a coffin maker whom he kills then sleeps in his wares for a few days. 

The Monster returns to the cave where Dracula’s original coffin was hidden and waits. Three nights have passed, and Carmen has arisen as a vampire herself. She arrives at the cave and tries to kill the Monster.

He pulls her off him after her fangs have sunk into his neck, thus damaging his vocal cords and making it so his speech from now on is severely limited. The creature kills Carmen, then is attacked by the returning Dracula. Using a crude crucifix, the Monster outmaneuvers Drac and stakes him to death. As the sun rises, a man named Vincent Frankenstein introduces himself to the creature.

FRANKENSTEIN MONSTER Vol 1 #10 (May 1974)

Title: The Last Frankenstein

Villains: Vincent Frankenstein and his hunchback Ivan

Synopsis: Unwilling to trust anyone anymore, the Monster attacks Vincent and is attacked in turn by Ivan, a preternaturally strong Russian hunchback. Their battle causes the creature to start falling over a cliff but Vincent has Ivan save him and pull him back up to safety.

Vincent explains that word reached him about an alleged creation of his ancestor traveling with Gypsies and searching for him. He offers to take the Monster with him and Ivan to the new Frankenstein castle in Great Britain so he can transplant its brain into a normal human body.

Once the trio arrive there, the Frankenstein Monster soon realizes that Vincent is not to be trusted and fights Ivan again. Sedatives (or “sedagives”) that Vincent has been injecting the Monster with finally knock him out and Dr. Frankenstein prepares to operate.

FRANKENSTEIN MONSTER Vol 1 #11 (Jul 1974)

Title: Carnage at Castle Frankenstein

Villain: Vincent Frankenstein

Synopsis: While Vincent prepares to transplant the obedient Ivan’s brain into the body of the stronger Frankenstein Monster, Vincent’s wife Lenore lies in bed upstairs – in labor and attended by her devoted maid Betty. The maid delivers Lenore’s son Basil but it looks like Lenore may not live much longer from a problem delivery. 

Betty pleads with Vincent to come to his wife’s side to see if his genius can heal her. He does so, but Lenore is too far gone and dies. Vincent coldly returns to his lab and his current experiment. In his absence, the Monster has broken free and is once again battling Ivan. 

When Ivan is about to stab the Monster with a sword, Dr. Frankenstein shoots the hunchback to death in order to preserve the body of his ancestor’s creation. The creature attacks Vincent now but he pumps enough bullets into the Monster to make it reel.

Dr. Frankenstein thinks he’s escaped with his life, but Betty, furious over the way Vincent’s work always made him neglect his wife Lenore, shoots him to death.

She then leaves with the baby to raise it as her own.

MONSTERS UNLEASHED Vol 1 #2 (Sep 1973)

NOTE: In 1973 Marvel started presenting additional Frankenstein Monster stories which, though being published alongside the series The Frankenstein Monster, had actually jumped ahead to 1973. Stan Lee had already decided that after wrapping up the Monster’s adventures in 1898 it would wind up injured and frozen again.

        It was found again in 1973 and, still inert from the cold that had sent it into hibernation, was put on display by a traveling circus. This story picks up as the circus has begun a series of shows in Illinois.

Title: Frankenstein 1973

Villains: Derek McDowell and his girlfriend Tish

Synopsis: Neuroscientist Derek McDowell is intrigued by the circus attraction which looks like it could really be the supposedly mythical Frankenstein Monster. He and his girlfriend Tish offer the circus owners money for it but are refused. Derek remains obsessed with somehow obtaining the Monster.

Tish fears what his obsession may drive Derek to do, so she sneaks into the circus after hours, soaks the Monster exhibit in gasoline and sets it on fire. She accidentally burns herself to death and the fire does nothing to the Monster but at last wake it up from suspended animation. 

Confused by its surroundings the creature runs amok and the authorities intervene, driving it to climb the circus’ ferris wheel to flee the men shooting at it. Eventually it gets enough wounds that it falls and seems dead. Derek McDowell knows better and bribes the politicians necessary to have the Monster turned over to him.

MONSTERS UNLEASHED Vol 1 #4 (Feb 1974)

Title: The Classic Monster

Villains: Derek McDowell and Dr. Owen Wallach

Synopsis: Derek McDowell has been covertly experimenting on the Frankenstein Monster and reanimated it with electricity. Its brain was apparently damaged during its fall from the top of the Ferris Wheel, and the Monster will only carry out specific instructions. 

Derek’s equally ruthless mentor Dr. Owen Wallach is dying of cancer and the pair decide to send the Monster out to kill a series of victims and bring the bodies back to their lab. None of the bodies’ soft tissues are compatible with Wallach’s.

Impatient, Derek tranquilizes Dr. Wallach and transplants his brain into the body of the Frankenstein Monster. He preserves the Monster’s brain for further study. (And don’t worry, it gets its original brain back in a few issues.) When Wallach comes to and realizes what Derek did, he kills the younger man and resolves to find a way of getting his brain into a non-monstrous body.   

MONSTERS UNLEASHED Vol 1 #5 (Apr 1974)

Title: Once a Monster

Villain: Dr. Owen Wallach

Synopsis: Before Dr. Wallach (whose brain is in the Monster’s body) can get rid of Derek’s and his own corpse, their nurse stumbles upon the horrific scene. The Monster kills the nurse to keep her quiet.

Next, Wallach uses his brain tissue expertise to repair the brain damage to the disembodied brain of the real Monster. He then sets up his automated, programmed machines to transfer his mind from the monster’s body into another as soon as he finds one suitable.

Going back to the circus, the Wallach Monster kills a female acrobat and abducts her male partner, planning to use his body to house his mind. Back at the lab, freak accidents cause the automated devices to misfire, with Wallach’s mind put in the body of one of his experimental animals and that animal’s mind in the body of the Frankenstein Monster, driving it into a bestial rage.

MONSTERS UNLEASHED Vol 1 #6 (Jun 1974)

Title: Always a Monster

Villain: James Sinoda, the Master of Freaks

Synopsis: We readers learn that everything that has transpired at the Wallach/ McDowell laboratory has been observed mystically by the horrifically disfigured and malformed James Sinoda, the self-styled Master of Freaks. 

Sinoda wants the Frankenstein Monster’s mind back in its body because he has plans for the Monster. Using Voodoo, Sinoda animates Derek McDowell’s corpse in the swamp where Wallach dumped it. The decomposing, mud-slimed thing treks toward the laboratory. Meanwhile, the animal-minded Monster kills the body of the lab animal in which Wallach’s mind was trapped.

Derek reaches the lab and controlled by Sinoda, restores the Monster’s mind to its own body. 

MONSTERS UNLEASHED Vol 1 #7 (Aug 1974)

Title: A Tale of Two Monsters

Villain: James Sinoda, the Master of Freaks

Synopsis: Derek calms the Monster and proceeds to regale it with his own tale of woe that led him to this fate. Still under the control of the far-off Master of Freaks, his zombified form then has the creature follow it to Sinoda’s mansion in a wooded area.

Its job done, James Sinoda burns the Derek McDowell doll and his zombie form burns to ashes as well. Sinoda then uses a trap door to drop the Monster into his dungeon. He greets it and tells the Monster it can play a part in his plans for revenge against the world which made them both outcasts.

MONSTERS UNLEASHED Vol 1 #8 (Oct 1974)

Title: Fever in the Freak House

Villains: James Sinoda and his Freaks

Synopsis: The Monster ignores Sinoda’s words and, angered by his slaying of the seemingly friendly zombie which led it to this isolated mansion, attacks him. The villain has his gang of freaks try to restrain the Monster but it is too strong. At length Sinoda uses a large gas canister to render the Monster unconscious.

When the creature wakes up, it is chained to the wall standing up. Sinoda tells it he wants the Monster to join his army of freaks and get revenge on the “beautiful people” of the world. While the Monster was unconscious Sinoda had his freaks abduct Julia Winters, the beautiful woman who rejected him, and she is chained up near the Monster. 

Julia points out that he didn’t look this hideous when she rejected him. It was his depraved personality that made her do it. Sinoda takes off his elaborate mask and makeup to reveal he is a normal looking man. He adopted his Master of Freaks masquerade to recruit freaks and commit crimes with them.

Sinoda’s freaks have never seen his real face and there is a disturbed hubbub among them. He’s too busy gloating at Julia’s plight to notice and when he tries to use a hot poker to disfigure her the Monster breaks free and stops him. Sinoda’s freaks then tear him apart while the Monster and Julia escape. 

*** The Frankenstein Monster’s 20th Century adventures continued back in his regular series plus in other stories in black & white magazines like Monsters Unleashed and Legion of Monsters.