THE GOODS: MONSTER-MONTH: COUNTDOWN TO HALLOWEEN (Day 6)

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Our sixth day of Monster-Month features another favorite of mine,

the Marvel Monster!

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In the ‘70s, Marvel Comics took note of the growing popularity of their non-superhero monster/horror themed titles and decided to make a go of a comic based on Mary Shelley’s creature. The end result of this was a three year run of a series called

THE MONSTER OF FRANKENSTEIN.

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The first third of the series focused on reimagining Mary Shelley’s novel and, featuring distinctive art by Mike Ploog and fairly faithful storytelling by Gary Friedrich, the Monster was born, the Doctor was dead and then in an attempted suicide the Monster slips into “suspended animation”. A condition the Monster returns to now and again when confronted with overwhelming cold.

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Through the centuries, the Monster is awakened and has adventures until, finally he is awakened into the age of the Marvel heroes, with whom he often finds himself in conflict and/or in cahoots. Here are a few of the characters he’s clashed and cavorted with--Marvel’s version of Dracula, Werewolf by Night, Man-Wolf, Iron Man, Howard the Duck, Nighthawk, She-Hulk, Hulk, Thor, The Avengers, Ulysses Bloodstone, Elsa Bloodstone, and Spider-Man

(Click to Frankensize: Wonderful words by Friedrich, Pretty pictures by Val Mayerik)

Marvel’s Monster has been portrayed as smart, well spoken and slow and monosylabic throughout the years. Explainations range from damaged vocal cords and damage to his reanimated body.

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FIVE FRANKENSTEIN FUN FACTS:

Marvel Editor-in-Chief, Roy Thomas, who was working on a similar project involving Dracula, wanted to adapt Shelley’s FRANKENSTEIN, but passed the project on to Gary Friedrich due to time constraints.
At some point, the Monster was temporarily pulled out of time to serve in Kang the Conqueror’s Legion of the Unliving in a battle against THE AVENGERS.
In 1981, an animated television movie loosely based on THE MONSTER OF FRANKENSTEIN was released by Toei, a Japanese company. It aired there as KYOFU DENSETSU: Kaikil Furankenshutain. An English dubbed version was released in 1984 untitled, but advertized as both MONSTER OF FRANKENSTEIN and FRANKENSTEIN LEGEND OF TERROR.
Once he befriends Ulysses Bloodstone, a famous monster hunter, the Monster is sometimes referred to by the name “Adam”.
Mike Ploog based the look of the Monster on John Romita Sr.’s design for the character that differentiated it from the classic Universal Monsters design.