The Monster....

As the early 70's dawned, the big thing in comics at the mo' was spookery.  DC had brought in Joe Orlando to overhaul the moribund House of Mystery title, restoring it to its original format of chills.  While horror comics had never completely gone away (Charlton and Gold Key had been published mild ghost stories for a decade), it was a long way from the halcyon EC days.  HoM was revived as a somewhat watered-down version of what Jim Warren was doing with Creepy and Eerie.  It worked - sales took off, and soon DC was flooding the stands with scary stories.  Marvel, of course, took notice.  Their first response, a series of anthology titles, didn't catch fire (though there were some excellent stories, some superior to what DC and Warren were doing, including adaptations of Ted Sturgeon, Robert Bloch, H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard).  Almost all were cancelled or turned into reprint books within a couple years.  Their next attempt was a slew of titles, seemingly inspired by the Universal monsters - thus, we got Tomb of Dracula, Werewolf By Night, The Living Mummy, and The Monster of Frankenstein.

Monster has to be one of the great frustrating losses of Marvel-dom.  The first half-dozen issues, written by Gary Friedrich and drawn by the great-great-great Mike Ploog, stand as one of the best horror comics ever done.  Ploog's art, heavily influenced by Will Eisner, with a touch of Ghastly Graham Ingels, never looked better.  The first three issues were a perfect adaptation of Shelley's novel, depicting a monster that was simultaneously sympathetic and frightening.  #4 picked up where Shelley left off, with the monster returning to 19th century Europe in search of surviving Frankensteins, leading into a decidedly effective werewolf story in #5 and a solid mad-scientist story in #6.  Up to this point, Monster ranks as one of the best of Marvel's horror titles.

Unfortunately, the worm turned fast.  Ploog left the title, and art reins were handed over to John Buscema, who graced it with the most phoned-in looking art I've ever seen from Big John (and I've seen my share of phoned-in Buscema jobs).  The story, with Frankie encountering Dracula in the 19th century, should've been a classic.  As it was, it was minor entertaiment - a nice 30's-40's Universal vibe, done in by Buscema's hackwork.  At least Ploog would have brought it the kind of dripping atmosphere it needed.  In this storyline, the formerly eloquent monster was robbed of his ability to speak, a major loss.

Friedrich helmed a couple more issues, with weak art by Buscema and then even weaker art by Bob Brown.  The storyline had run out of steam anyway, with the monster fighting a succession of hunchbacked brutes and yet another (albeit saner) Frankenstein descendent showing up to no apparent purpose.

With number 12, Val Mayerik had taken over art, Doug Moench, trying to salvage something, the writing, and Frankie found himself frozen in ice and revived in the swingin' 1970's.  Under this creative team, Monster (the mag was now retitled The Frankenstein Monster) essentially morphed into The Hulk, with teenage loser Ralph Caccone filling the Rick Jones role.  A fairly creepy beastie known as The Jigsaw Creature turned up, and yet another descendant of Frankenstein entered the mix -Veronica von Frankenstein.  So too did a crime ring called I.C.O.N.  All of this was pretty schizophrenic, not at all in the Gothic horror mode appropriate for a Frankenstein title.  Too, Mayerik was one of the odder 70's Marvel artist - his work tended to veer from effective to grotesque, often in the same panel.  

As the series wound down, Frankie got his speech back.  But his personality seemed completely different than the one established early in the title's run (said personality had long since disappeared, and the monster had been void for some time).  Mayerik gave him a goofy look that suggested he wasn't taking the whole enterprise too seriously anyway.  Not unwisely.  The final issue (#18) featured Frankie and his new robot buddy fighting off a posse of dwarves under the command of Victoria von Frankenstein.  Yes, yet another Frankenstein.  

While this suggested a possible return to the Gothic nature of the early issues, it also suggested a schizophrenic book and an uncertain direction on Moench's part as to where he would turn next.  We'd never know - the story ended there.  A subsequent Frankenstein series, seemingly unconnected to Monster,  ran in the b&w Monsters Unleashed for another couple years, also written by Moench and drawn (mostly) by Mayerik, but the stories were unmemorable.  Moench simply didn't seem to be able to make anything interesting out of Shelley's monster.

Since then the monster has occasionally turned up, usually as a hulking, silent brute.  It seems Marvel didn't have any better idea of what to do with him than the mortal world.