Friday Night Fights - Think you could make it with Frankenstein?

I wasn't about to let a little thing like a Halloween theme month get in the way of participating in the weekly Throwdown Cosmic that is Balactus's Friday Night Fights. Instead, I've used the Promethean power of MAD SCIENCE to combine the two concepts into a single horrifying hybrid. Call it FRIDAY NIGHT FRIGHT, um, FIGHTS!

So, what terrifying bit of comic book ultra-violence was fitting enough to kick things off with?

Frankenstein socking an evil gorilla henchape in the kisser.

It's comes from the acid-eaten pages of Dell's Frankenstein #2 (September 1966), a rather pitiful attempt by the publisher to grab some of that sweet superhero dollar without actually having to, y'know, really try too hard. The book, and the similarly conceived Dracula, employed the old "let's capitalize on a familiar property (preferably one in the public domain)" trick to reposit classic monsters as Space Age superheroes. The results were incredibly awful, yet utterly forgettable.

Frankenstein (okay, "Frankenstein's Monster," actually, but the comic doesn't worry about petty details, so neither will I) wakes up inside his creator's castle, which just so happens to have been relocated to the outskirts of Metropole City. (It must have occurred during the wild castle relocation craze pioneered by "Wacky" Willy Randolph Hearst. It was a huge phenomenon during the 1930's, ranking just behind "foraging in garbage cans for bread crusts" and "beating hobos with axe handles" as the popular pastime of choice.)

Still groggy from his long sleep, the creature -- who has somehow exchanged its "classic" bolts-and-scars look for a fleshtone muscleman's body, green head, and Frank Sutton Signature Style^TM flattop haircut -- slaps on a "lifelike" rubber face mask and wanders out into the brave new world as "Frank Stone." Though the magical power of "Let's just get this backstory shit over with, it's not like the brats pay attention to it anyway," Frank rescues a millionaire from a car wreck. The millionaire dies, but not before leaving his vast fortune to his not-entirely-successful savior.

He then rescues a woman from a gun-toting thug, so that she is free to become his requisite romantic interest/trouble magnet, "Miss Ann Thrope." I shit you not. (Her parents must have been huge Molière fans. Or they simply had a cruel sense of humor.) Discovering the appeal of helping people through punching things, Frank puts his mass murdering days (and Miltonian eloquence, if he is the literary -- as opposed to the film -- version of the creature) behind him and takes up the superheroic mantle.

The first challenge he faces comes in the form of Dr. Freek, a standard-issue Bald Mad Scientist^TM with a gorilla henchman. Frank tussles with the ape for a couple panels before the creators realized that it was five minutes to quitting time amicably allowing the beast and his master to go home. The end.

To think it was all done for the sake of rooking naive waifs out of twelve cents, and it even failed dismally in that modest task. Still, I'm sure it's only a matter of time before there's a Previews solicitation for Alex Ross's Monsters, featuring superhero Frankenstein and superhero Dracula in full painted, photoreferenced glory and with enough fan reverence to make the most devout Whedonite look like a dilettante. The plot won't make a damn bit of sense, but golly darn will it be reverent.

New York Dolls - Frankenstein (from New York Dolls, 1973) - Who needs Edgar Winter, when I've got the future Buster Poindexter?

Whoever smelt it, dealt it, Frankster...