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Underground > Comic Books >

7 Soldiers: Frankenstein

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Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

06:30 / 06.01.06

Fun read. It ... lost something, once we got past the undead "John Carter on Mars" narration and into the meat of the piece. I LIKE that we have no through-line showing us how Franky got to Mars. It just is. Saved my interest after #1, but there's still something slightly lacking in this particular mini.

10:50 / 06.01.06

I found the story a little thin, myself. In both this issue and #1, Frankie seems almost an afterthought... a character who comes in at the end and cleans up the plot.

The "purple prose" narration was fairly entertaining, though.

12:10 / 06.01.06

Frankie seems almost an afterthought... a character who comes in at the end and cleans up the plot.

I'm not connoisseur or expert, but Frankenstein seems to be a formulaic horror comic. Weird happenings and ugly disgusting bits of the human condition are met by the unexplained(Sheeda larvae, Martian flesh-eaters), until the protagonist swoops in to deliver the final, most disgusting blow(decapitating the nerd, feeding Melmoth to the bitch-beasts). It's about shock and like Franks says: judgment.

I'm sure Solitaire Rose or Sleazenation could offer a more substantial explanation for what makes a horror comic, and how Frankenstien fits it. I think it's Frank's decayed biceps that confuse us into thinking this is still superhero adventure fare. Heroes don't kill children or turn monsters into shit.

12:23 / 06.01.06

Plus: on the subject of the Shit Antagonist, did we just witness the birth of an incredibly scary supervillain? While life as poo is weird, what happens then? I'd assume that some bits of Melmoth will be digested and assimilated into the bitch-beasts, but after millenia of digestion by Martian beasts, and being cycled throughout a biosphere, Melmoth will have become as proliferated as Sublime. Did Frank set an immortal consciousness free of its shell?

yawn - thing's buddy

12:27 / 06.01.06

was a bit 'temple of doom' with all those kids in chains, mining.

14:41 / 06.01.06

'm not connoisseur or expert, but Frankenstein seems to be a formulaic horror comic.

That might explain it... I've never really been a fan of horror comics.

15:18 / 06.01.06

think of them more as survival manuals.

Cowboy Scientist

03:21 / 07.01.06

Argh! Frank 2 hasn't arrived here yet!!!!!!
...an'twaitcan'twaitcaN'TWAITCAN'TWAITCAN'TWAITCan'twaitcan'twaitca...

03:51 / 07.01.06

It's not really a horror comic. I don't personally see it as horror. It's Robert E. Howard, Edgar Rice Burroughs, adolescent pulp power-fantasy but with the teenage grotesquerie and self-importance amped up to 11. Which, I suppose, might *be* the same emotional origin of a lot of horror fiction, but I don't get 'horror comic' off of it at all. I think it's a simple dismissal.

So far it fits every theme of 7 Soldiers, about growing up, about arrested emotional growth, about coping (or not), about distressed protector roles.

It's The Complete Teen Male Anger Fantasy, it's very sharp, and I think we'll see it brought to its emotional conclusions and into adulthood by its end. I've no doubt it will continue to develop into an even richer picture.

14:20 / 08.01.06

Hey,
first post here, I usually lurk but had to put my $.02.

On this Wachowski Bros 'Doc Frankenstein'.

I been reading Doc Frankenstein too...just got the latest issue.

For some reason, I skipped on the previous 2 issues.

So just now, (issue 5 I think) I'm seeing that Doc Frankenstein is paired up with a Werewolf Cowboy Gunslinger type.........

Obvious observation here:

Is the "Werewolf Cowboy Gunslinger" a common figure in literature?....is this a well used archetype?

Or are the Wachowski Bros "borrowing" from Grant yet again?

16:19 / 08.01.06

I suppose they could be stealing again... but wouldn't it be a logical series of thoughts that lead from werewolves being susceptible to silver bullets, and the "wholesome" bullet-shooting vigilante is a cowboy, so mix the two, and there you go.

17:00 / 08.01.06

Steam engines really.

18:08 / 08.01.06

Puff, Puff, Chug, chug, Toot, toot. Etc.

Imaginary Mongoose Solutions

19:57 / 08.01.06

I'm assuming you mean Steam Engines as in "Steam Engine Time", yes?

20:22 / 08.01.06

I'm lost as well.

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

20:29 / 08.01.06

Well, they just revealed that Greg Saunders/Vigilante was a werewolf, so that's a fairly random synchronicity.

FRANKENSTEIN2 was much better on the second read, but it still doesn't pack the right oomph.

20:51 / 08.01.06

I thought this was genius, really. I thought it was really great. I loved this issue so much that I'd probably marry it. So, Gant, why do you keep on not replying to my e-mails? Why Grant, why?

16:18 / 10.01.06

hey, these last 3 Soldiers haven't been as packed with info as the previous 4, but damn they're fun. Frank #2 being my favourite so far [from the Bulleteer and MM group].

LDones got it right; it's mostly a weird dark comic, right from the middle of the 70s, as Morrison said himself on a interview, chanelling Len Wein's spirit. it's Frank in a bizarre location helping people out, fighting greedy men and horrendous monsters. this could be a description for a regular Conan or Man-Thing tale. but definetly in the style of DC's old Frankenstein stories, gothic psychedelia, those scenes of enjoying the red landscapes etc.

I'm on a 'Frank' vibe right now, having watched Branagh's movie again, finally read Shelley's book and LAS PIEDOSAS [a dark story by Argentinian author Federico Andahazi starring John THE VAMPYRE Polidori that takes place at that summer FRANKENSTEIN was conceived], so I got a kick out of all that.

also: best #2 cover of the series so far. I want a poster.

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hm, Melmoth as life blower [or sperm donor] to Victor F's creation. cool. this character is still a wild card in the 7S major plot, as others have mentioned, an I'll be waiting for his next move.

Phex: Dorset Doom

20:33 / 11.01.06

Just a little something I've noticed: Frank' compares the martian landscape to 'the troubling oneric flotsam that haunts the canvas of Yves Tanguy'. One of Tanguy's most famous paintings is called: The Invisibles. It's currently on display in the Tate Modern.

22:16 / 11.01.06

I really liked that, cos the panel really did look like a Tanguy, and I don't know much about art and that, but I do know I really like his stuff.

Phex: Dorset Doom

00:19 / 12.01.06

The reference is a bit odd though, now that I think about it- Tanguy worked from the twenties to fifties, while Franky was still on ice, so to speak. So, unless he fitted in a visit to the Tate between Frankenstein! #1 and #2, it's unlikely that he's the narrator, even though the narrator speaks in the same none-more-purple prose as F-dawg. Is it just an omniscient narrator? Or someone else?

01:11 / 12.01.06

It's the waters of the Cauldron talking.

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

15:30 / 18.01.06

I can't remember, was John Carter of Mars narrated by John, or by a family friend -- I seem to recall a bit at the beginning of the first book, but it's been quite a while. Since that's to some extent the "template" of this issue, it may give us a close to the narrative persona.

15:40 / 18.01.06

The story is narrated by John himself.

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

15:48 / 18.01.06

Hmm.

This may be stretching - okay, this is stretching - but maybe, given the amount of elapsed time between #1 & #2, Frank wandered around and took in some of the intervening culture.

I know, I know, it's probably just a chronology issue on Morrison's part, and there's no need to explain the logic behind it. And I find it difficult to imagine Frank wandering through bookstores or museums, because of who he is and what he is. Maybe there were Sheeda in the bookstore he had to beat up.

16:04 / 18.01.06

this is interesting when compared to Shelley's original book, which I've finally finished reading this week. by the end the Monster has read quite a lot, is articulate and - contrary to a lot of perceptions - even bears pistols and a shotgun.

00:19 / 26.01.06

From the wiki:

The caption that reads "1955" should actually appear on panel four. Panels one, three and five show the train wreck as in takes place in 1870. Panels two, four, and six show a town growing up on top of the crash site over the course of the next 135 years.

Really? I thought that panel 5 was supposed to be another trainwreck, like this town is characterized by sort of dull, monotonous growth punctuated by occasional cataclysmic trainwrecks. I thought it was an intentional bit of dark humor. I need to find my copy of this issue.

00:48 / 26.01.06

On my first read I thought that as well, diz, but if you examine the art closely, and the similarity of all the trainwreck panels, you'll see it's pretty clearly a panel-placement error. Occam's Razor, and all that.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

18:22 / 28.01.06

Loving Frankenstein- it's a horror comic in the Swamp Thing sense, more "Weird Tales" than anything else. ER Burroughs, Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith and, indeed, Len Wein all popped up in my head during a read of issue 2.

18:48 / 28.01.06

Heh. Horror comic in the Swamp Thing sense. I started to say something about Frankenstein being a horror comic, but not strictly so. Swamp Thing was a love story wrapped in the horror template. Frankenstein is an adventure story adorned in horrific elements.

Seeing as how issue four of each book has flipped everything in on its head and reaffirmed its hero, I'm really interested in how the adventure and horror elements will be twisted and inverted to push Frank into the next level.

22:13 / 15.02.06

So wasn't this supposed to be out today? Or was it pushed back?

22:15 / 15.02.06

#3's out March 1st.

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

03:53 / 16.02.06

Huh, I thought it was next week. Damn. That's disappointing, it's been what - two weeks with no Seven Soldiers? OH THE INCANDESCENT WOE. And I'm so looking forward to seeing how Our Man Frankenstein deals with the Bride, no doubt leading to another iteration of the Seven Soldiers and their hopeless romantic entanglements - why do we have to wait? Morbo demands answers!

20:30 / 27.02.06

#3 wasn't on Diamond's list for books shipping this week. More delays?

02:16 / 28.02.06

God, I hope not! The first one was bad enough. I need my Frankie fix!

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