Justine Frankenstein


Frankenstein started inspiring adaptations, rip-offs and sequels soon after publication. In 1818 the copyright laws did little to prevent it. The novel continues to do to this day. One sequel I recently read was The Mad Scientist’s Daughter by Theodora Goss in the online magazine Strange Horizons. I thought it was charming story and would have loved to have done a portrait of the cast. Unfortunately I didn’t have the time then (soon after our move to the new apartment), nor do I have the time now (with much busyness at the day job and much Oz Squad on the drawing table), to work on one. All that I managed was the sketch on the left of Justine, Frankenstein’s “Daughter”. If you’ve read the novel you can guess her providence without reading the story. Read it any way.

The drawing on the right has nothing to do with The Mad Scientist’s Daughter that I can think of. I had the image in my mind insisting that I draw it and so I did.

Ackroyd’s Frankenstein


I read Peter Ackroyd’s The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein this last April. I’d been inspired to do so after reading an announcement that Timur Bekmambetov is planning to direct a film adaptation of the book. I’d heard of the book when it first came out but my interest in reading it had been tempered by my having read that Ackroyd mixes the story of Frankenstein with the biography of Shelly. Percy Shelley, not Mary Wollstonecraft Shelly. And, honestly, I don’t have a lot of interest in Percy Shelley. These days I get a lot of my reading from the library and the process of reserving a book on line is really simple so I went ahead and ordered. And once the book arrived I read. That’s probably obvious, right?

It reads like Ackroyd was a fan of (Mary) Shelley’s novel and who, being also a writer of biographies and a fan of Percy Shelley, decided to combine his interests. And write a logical, realistic novel than (Mary) Shelley did. Which he does. Ackroyd spends a lot of time with Frankenstein’s research into bringing life back to the dead. No longer is the Monster a stitched together giant. Now he’s a recently deceased fellow who had willed his body to science. Frankenstein is no longer the insufferable self-absorbed whiner. He no longer abandons the Monster – the Monster runs away. The Monster kills a couple of people and then feels bad about it. Maybe it’s all a dream or Frankenstein is insane.

Ackroyd even rehabilitates (Percy) Shelley by having the Monster kill his first wife instead of her killing herself after Shelley abandoned her as happened in real life.

I can’t say I didn’t enjoy the novel. I did. It is well written. Better written, certainly by today’s standards, than the Mary Shelley original. It has a plot where consequences follow actions, characters who are have some depth and nuance and the number of highly unlikely coincidences are kept to a minimum. I’m sure that it could be the basis for an entertaining movie.

An Unexpected Find

So I was poking around io9, one of my favorite nerd sites, today and found this. What a nice surprise!

The credit really goes to Pierre Fournier, the man behind Frankensteinia, who has been gathering all that wonderful Frankenstein emphemera in the first place.

Dropping in to Say, “HI!”


It seems terrible to have nothing new posted so here’s a Frankenstein Creature to keep you company for awhile.

He’s much friendlier than he looks. He doesn’t know his own strength so be careful what sort of games you play together.

A Modern Deucalion


This is my attempt at representing Deucalion, Victor Frankenstein’s first creation, from Dean Koontz’s Frankenstein trilogy. Deucalion has named himself after the son of the mythical titan, Prometheus. Koontz’s story isn’t a sequel to any specific version of Frankenstein; neither the original novel nor any of the multitude of plays and films that have been inspired by it. Deucalion, rather than being hideous at his awakening as in the novel (and most of the movies), was apparently very handsome. His facial scars are the result of Frankenstein’s attempt to destroy him after he rebelled against his creator. A Buddhist monk added the tattoos to distract from the scars.

The Other Frankenstein Monster


Frankenstein’s Monster has come to be depicted as a patchwork horror, a creature crudely stitched together seemingly at random with odd bolts or wiring sticking out of him. While I think that’s rather far from how Shelly actually envisioned him I have to admit it’s a fun pattern to try to invent new variations on. I did an earlier version of this fellow as one of my first contributions to A Patchwork of Flesh. I do like this design. It’s a variation on the hulking creature of the movies without (I think) referencing any specific version.