Gallery – Frankenstein Process GIF

When I want to try new techniques (or practice old ones) I tend to use familiar characters for the images. Frankenstein’s Monster is an old friend for these. The gif below is a recent experiment in color illustration. My art, especially my color art, tends to be a mix of physical drawing with digital effects. I’m constantly trying to find ways to speed up and simplify the process of producing color work. I find that the more of a drawing that I finish on paper the less noodling I’m tempted to do on the computer. I like the results here.

Story Seed #44
Building a Better Dark Universe

A few years ago Universal Pictures got the idea of creating a shared universe film franchise of their “Universal Monsters”. Their first official entry, The Mummy, flopped and they shelved the concept. I haven’t seen The Mummy so I can’t comment on its quality but having Frankenstein in the gallery above has me thinking about why I didn’t see the film and what I would find appealing in a shared “Universal Monsters” film setting.

Why didn’t I see the film?

Partly it’s because I don’t go see many movies in the theatre anymore. Time and price have a lot to do with it. I like the experience of seeing a movie in a theatre. I don’t feel like I’ve got a lot of time to spend doing it these days. It’s an event for us – travel time, theatre time, after-the-movie-meal-to-talk-about-the-movie time, travel home time. I generally only watch an hour of television a day. Going to the theatre eats up 5 to 6 hours. But that’s what keeps me from seeing a lot movies that I think I might enjoy.

The things that turned me off were the preview and the basic idea of a Univeral Monsters franchise. Let’s start with the preview –

There’s a spectacular plane crash. Then there are a lot of explosions and Tom Cruise running. I like spectacular plane crashes and explosions. I’ve enjoyed most of the Tom Cruise movies I’ve seen. But the original 1932 Mummy is a horror movie. The 1999 remake is a supernatural adventure movie set in the 1930s. The preview seemed to be trying to trying to sell me a big budget action movie set in the present day. The supernatural threat takes a backseat to the spectacle. And, honestly, I’m kind of tired of spectacle. We’re had a couple of decades of CGI apocalypses. Some have been great. Some have been terrible. There have been enough of them that they’re no longer interesting simply for being there. Both the 1932 and 1999 versions, while very different in tone, feature villains (the Mummies) who want something most of us can sympathize with – they want their lost loves. Based on the preview, the 2017 Mummy wants to rule the world. I’m as tired of wannabe world conquerors as I am tired of CGI apocalypses. So the preview unsold me on the movie.

Rather, it finished the job of unselling me that earlier marketing material had already started. But I’ll get back to that.

I have a lot of thinking time while delivering mail. Since the job is basically the same every day, once a thought gets stuck in my head it tends to cycle for hours. Last week my brain spent a few hours working out a plot for a first “Universal Monsters” movie.

The character who started the mashups and met the most other monsters in the original series (ignoring the Abbott and Costello Meet comedies) was Larry Talbot, the Wolfman. Out of all the original monsters, Talbot is the only one who really maintained a personality. The rest of them might start out as interesting fellows in the first film but would usually become lurching zombies in later entries.

So …

Dark of the Moon

Elevator pitch –

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Meets the Wolf Man! Mad science vs ancient curses!

Plot summary –
Larry Talbot, architect and current alcoholic, shows up at his soon-to-be-ex wife’s house. Her (surprisingly understanding, police detective) boyfriend is there. They argue. Larry is trying to apologize for being a drunk and wish them well but they’d rather he sobered up. They take his car keys and call an Uber for him. He’s outside, still waiting on the ride when he hears screaming and gunfire. He’s stealing himself to investigate when the boyfriend’s disembodied head lands at his feet. He looks up to see a blood covered man griinning at him through the broken window of the house. He can’t focus on the man’s face. He runs, calling 911 on the way. 

The police arrive. He’s interrogated but let go. He starts having nightmares and drinking more heavily. He’s pulled over for a DUI and sentenced to AA. His first meeting is led by Dr. Henry Edwards. Edwards’ family was killed two years before in a home invasion. Edwards sympathizes with Talbot and agrees to be his sponsor. 

Since his divorce wasn’t finalized Talbot still has access to his wife’s house. He designed it and knows some secret hiding spots. He searches it and find files secreted by the detective boyfriend. He reads some of the files before getting spooked and feeling like someone is watching him. The boyfriend was investigating a criminal network run by a man named Eddie Hyde. Hyde is distributing some kind of designer drug called “JKL”. He brings the files to Gwen Conliffe, the detective in charge of the investigation. She thanks him and chastises him for moving evidence instead of calling her in. 

Larry gets back to his apartment to find that someone has broken in and is searching the place. He calls Detective Conliffe. He is pursued by a grinning man whose face he just can’t focus on. Conliffe arrives with some beat cops. Barehanded, the pursuer kills the cops before Conliffe and Talbot can escape. 

Talbot gets more paranoid. He call Edwards from a bar. Edwards comes to pick him up but Talbot’s stories of the grinning man freak Edwards out. Talbot’s stories trigger Edwards’ memories of his family’s murder. Edwards calls his sponsor, a woman named Maleva Ouspenskaya. Ouspenskaya arrives but Edwards has gone missing. Ouspenskaya takes Talbot to her home to sober him up. She’s shares the home with a group of women who freely admit to being witches. 

A group of shadowy men try to break in. The witches perform a ceremony that seems to drive them away. Talbot is even more freaked out. He’s unable to sleep that night. He wants to drink but Ouspenskaya is able to talk him out of it. 

Conliffe calls to arrange a meeting. The files have disappeared and she wants to know what he remembers about them. “JKL” is supposed to be some kind of psychedelic, a drug that temporarily changes a person into someone else both mentally and physically. Conliffe is pissed off. That’s nonsense. 

Talbot is more freaked out. He’s at a bar, ready to drink. He calls Edwards. No answer. He calls Ouspenskaya. She’s on the way to the hospital. Someone attacked one of her housemates. She picks up Talbot. Her housemate is severely injured and tells of being attacked by a grinning man with a blurry face. The rest of the witches are at the hospital. They tell Talbot that since he brought the problem on them, he’s going to help them fix it. 

They perform a ritual, injecting a wolf spirit into Talbot. They demand that he put himself between them and the shadowy men. Surprising himself, Talbot agrees. 

Talbot begins to investigate. His senses are now heightened. He follows scents from the witches’ house across town to a wealthy neighborhood. He sneaks into a mansion and eavesdrops on a group of people discussing the problem of the witches and Conliffe’s investigation, about the need to make more JKL. The people are all wealthy types but leading the meeting is Eddie Hyde. Talbot can’t focus on Hyde’s face. Hyde spends  part of the meeting discussing business with a Dr. Pretorius. Talbot’s presence is revealed but he manages to escaped using new, enhanced physical abilities. 

He returns to the witches’ house to find it empty. A recording from Ouspenskaya tells him that they will find him when he is done. Until then, beware the moon. He may lose control under the light of a full moon. That’s in two days. He meets with Conliffe to tell his story. She thinks he’s on drugs. His story is insane and he’s too cocky and energetic. He’s not the coward he was.

He returns to his wife’s house. He recognizes a scent from the mansion. He tracks the scent to the mansion of a wealthy record producer. He confronts the man. The man laughs. Talbot can’t prove anything. JKL physically transforms them. They leave no evidence that can be traced to their normal selves. Conliffe has followed him and interrupts just as the producer is transforming. Talbot and the transformed producer fight. Talbot kills him but is severely injured. 

Conliffe and Talbot go into hiding. Conliffe has investigated Eddie Hyde. She hasn’t been able to find out much. The people she has spoken to are terrified of him. Talbot is healing quickly. 

Edwards calls him. He asks to meet. Ouspenskaya is gone and he needs to be talked down. Edwards and Talbot meet in a park with Conliffe shadowing them. Talbot recognizes Edwards’ scent as Hyde’s. He confronts Edwards. Edwards thinks he’s insane. Edwards flees. Talbot and Conliffe pursue but Edwards is snatched up by a group of shadowy men. The men pursue Talbot and Conliffe. Conliffe is snatched. Talbot kills a couple of the men but the rest escape with Conliffe. 

Talbot searches the city using his new senses. He’s almost fully healed. Hyde calls him. He admits to having once been Edwards until he created JKL and freed himself from the petty life of ordinary men. Hyde has a separate life from Edwards. Edwards killed his family as Hyde to free himself from distraction. Hyde is wealthy and powerful. He only keeps Edwards around out of sentimentality. Hyde says he will exchange Conliffe for Talbot. Talbot has a magic that Hyde wants to study. Hyde summons Talbot to his offices in a downtown skyscraper. 

The story climaxes as Talbot, now a full fledged werewolf, fights Hyde and his minions in the skyscraper. Conliffe is freed and calls in SWAT. Talbot no longer thinks like a man and fights SWAT with as much violence as the Hydes, killing and wounding many. Talbot and Hyde are the last “men” standing. They fight. Talbot kills Hyde. As he dies he transforms back into Edwards. 

Conliffe and Talbot face each other. Talbot tries to control his bloodlust but fails. He charges Conliffe and she’s forced to shoot him with an assault rifle. He falls out a window and into the river below. 

Roll credits. 

Mid credit sequence – Dr. Pretorius meets an associate at the airport. He says that this project has gone south. It’s time for him to get back to his main interests. 

“How is Frankenstein faring?”

End credit sequence – The river, far downstream. Larry Talbot, bloody but alive, drags himself out of the water. Ouspenskaya is waiting for him. She says that she will wait for him to heal but, when he is well,  they have much to do.  

Cast Tom Cruise as Talbot. If he’s not into going full Wolf Man then streamline the makeup Werewolf of London style. It worked for Nicholson in Wolf. Russell Crowe was Jekyll in The Mummy. He’d make a fine Edwards/Hyde here.

Or not.

I mentioned that early marketing for the “Dark Universe” had turned me off to the “Dark Universe”. It was obvious that Universal used The Mummy to launch this franchise not because it was a good organic starting point but because the 1999 Mummy had been the last iteration of their characters that had been a financial success. The Univeral Monsters well of characters isn’t a deep one. Dracula. Frankenstein. Bride of Frankenstein. The Wolfman. The Mummy. The Invisible Man. Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde. The Phantom of the Opera. The Creature from the Black Lagoon. A Hunchback. Less than a dozen recognizable characters. All of those characters, except for the Creature, are in the public domain. Universal doesn’t own them. Universal owns the copyrights and trademarks to their visual appearance in the Universal movies but anyone who wanted to could make their own monster mashs as long as they didn’t duplicate the Frank Pierce’s make-up designs.

Cast someone other than a superstar and keep the budget under $75 million. My ideas can easlly be used by simply changing the names and the physical appearance of a few characters. No one has done it in film yet but I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s fan fiction covering the same territory.

Next week: Dark Bride

Recommended

So, I’ve just spent many words about how one could do a mash-up of classic monsters and (maybe) make it work. Quite a few entertaining mash-ups already exist. If such stories appeal to you you might try –

Mad Monster Party

Here’s where I admit that I still haven’t seen this. I missed it when it was originally broadcast when I was a kid. It’s on the list of the many many things I’ve missed that I’d like to see someday but probably won’t because I don’t think I can find the time.

The Monster Squad

This was fun.

Van Helsing

I remember enjoying this when I saw it in the theatre. Watching this preview now I wonder how accurately I’m remembering.

Penny Dreadful

I loved this series. A big part of my love was its portrayal of Frankenstein’s Monster – romantic, articulate, lonely. The Creature isn’t as physically imposing as the novel’s version but, so far, no filmed version has been. I’ll appreciate what I can get. The series kinda sorta wrapped up but still left enough plot threads dangling for a 4th season that will never come.

The Adventures of the Athena Club
by Theodora Goss

This trilogy of novels is an expansion on The Mad Scientist’s Daughter, a short story originally published in Strange Horizons, an online SF magazine. I love the short story and would recommend it to anyone who enjoys the “classic” monsters. The trilogy is a different beast. It’s more of a penny dreadful/pulp serial sort of thing without being either very suspenseful or very shocking. I enjoyed it but, at over 1200 pages it’s farther down my list of recommendations. The series was optioned for developement as a TV show back in 2018. I think it would adapt well to that medium.

Local News

I’m writing this on Monday morning. I’ve had the last week off from USPS. It was a planned vacation; the time set aside back in January when most of us had no idea what 2020 might have in store. The coronapocalypse didn’t throw off any carefully laid plans. My plans were vague. I wanted to get some art done and I wanted to move my studio into another room.

Art got done – a long delayed book cover and some sketching for the fun-and-practice of it. Other art got delayed as I just ran out of steam. My life may not have been as affected by Washington’s quarantine as other folks’ but I’ve still felt the psychic disturbance of it all. I say that as someone who is both psychically untalented and doesn’t believe in psychic phenomena. I made it to Wednesday and then just stopped.

I managed to get myself heading back on track artwise by setting the timer and just working on sketches no matter how crappy they looked and being willing to redraw them when necessary.

Furniture has not gotten moved. My studio remains in place.

I had a birthday on Saturday. I prefer to ignore the actual number of the birthday. I find that thinking I’m “over 25” is enough. I’m an adult with responsibilities to other adults and a few cats. Thinking of myself as a specific age calls up too many cultural expectations for people of that age. I had three phone conversations – one with a friend of over 30 years, one with a friend of over 40 years and one with my younger brother. He’s been a friend for over 50 years. I’m going to ignore these sentences now. They have framed my age too well.

Other than the phone conversations, celebrating the day mostly consisted of thanking Facebook folks for sending birthday wishes and appreciating my Big Sister’s latest culinary care package. This time she delivered: a savory bacon, artichoke, leek, comte cheese tart; two kinds of chicken samosas with a cilantro yogurt sauce and a fruit ginger mint sauce; and a kurobuto baked ham with gravy, roast veggies and brussel sprouts. And a bottle of Champagne. The tart and the samosas were delicious and have been swallowed up. We’ll have the ham tonight.

This was a long newsletter. Thank you for making your way through it. Hopefully it was entertaining. I appreciate your time. I hope the rest of your day is as restful or as exciting as you need it to be and no more. Take care!