___________________________
Doc Frankenstein #3 and #4
(Burlyman Entertainment, 2005)
WRITTEN BY: The Wachowski Brothers
CREATED BY: Geof Darrow and Steve Skroce
ARTWORK BY: Steve Skroce
COLOR ARTWORK BY: Jason Keith and Shannon Blanchard
Greetings from the Wasteland!
Every local comic shop has a discounted box. Be they .50 centers or $1 books, these are the ones that never sold, that sat on the shelves past the date when their followers were long gone. I often miss out on good books. The beauty of the comic store is that they miss very little, and their huge back stock often forces them to sell at a discounted price just to be rid of the excess. I imagine this is how I came by these two issues in a .50 box at the comic shop.
Doc Frankenstein is a monster of a book. (Pardon that, I couldn’t help myself.) Created by Geoff Darrow, of Shaolin Cowboy fame, and Steve Skroce, and written by the Wachowski Brothers, known for their work on The Matrix series and the film adaptation of Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta.
Such a cast often overloads a project. (Ocean’s 13?) In this case it seems to be the right people at the right time.
The books follow the adventures of Doc Frankenstein (the monster), and his cohorts, Texas Dick (a werewolf), and the great, great granddaughter of Victor, Vickie. They are being pursued by the Roman Catholic Church, under the direction of a demented Cardinal with a holy army. It’s a battle between science and religion.
In issue 3, Doc Frankenstein is chained in a dungeon beneath a church for an audience with the Cardinal, and sums up the feeling of the book when he says, “Kinda symbolic, ain’t it? The only hope religion has for keeping a thinking man on his knees is a length of chain.” The “monster” escapes after the Cardinal tries to exorcise the demon he believes to inhabit the body, and Doc crashes into a room that hides, among other magical things, a fairy in a box. He is attacked with flamethrowers and hurls himself through a window to the sea below.
Issue 4 begins with a flashback of Texas Dick meeting Doc, a gunfight in which they trade enough lead to sever fingers and lose eyeballs, and end with them doing shots and Doc passing out.
Cut to Doc present day, climbing from the ocean and finding himself cornered atop a cliff by the Stantons, a family of redneck werewolves contracted by the church to kill him. The battle that ensues is epic and bloody, consistent with what I’ve seen of reviews of Darrow’s other books, and fun all the way. Who wouldn’t want to see Frankenstein’s monster battle it out with the Wolfman? Bela Lugosi and Lon Chaney, Jr. did it in 1943 in Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman, and it ended with the two being swept away in a river. This book ends with four werewolves, one armless thanks to Doc, prowling around the prone body of the monster, his head crushed beneath a boulder. You judge the superior ending.
As far as jumping into the middle of series goes, it’s hard to do nowadays. It seems like everything is billed as a huge event, a grand game-changer that will alter the face of the respective universes and alter everything we know about the comics we love. I seem to remember reading one book at a time, sometimes waiting for the next issue, often stuck on the one book because I couldn’t get back to the one store that carried them in time. So it’s easy for me to jump into a series mid-stream, and to let it go just as easily. If, when browsing the stacks, I come across issue 1 or 4 of Doc Frankenstein I’ll certainly pick them up, because the story is great and the art glossily wonderful, but I’ll just as easily pick up issue 12 or 17, just because I know they’re fun, enjoyable books.
___________________________
Follow Brad Gischia on Twitter: @comicwasteland
BAG & BORED 