Tag: Frankenstein

Those Little Monsters!

Long time vis­i­tors to my site might recall that around Hal­loween, I have a tra­di­tion of doing some­thing Franken­stein-relat­ed. This year, it’s a fake com­ic cov­er for Gold Key’s The Lit­tle Mon­sters!

If you grew up in the ’60s, and you want­ed a com­ic book fea­tur­ing your favorite car­toon char­ac­ter, most like­ly you were going to buy a Gold Key com­ic. They had man­aged to sew up the rights to pret­ty much all of them. And with edi­to­r­i­al offices here on the west coast (most of the pub­lish­ers were based in New York City), it placed Gold Key in a unique posi­tion, giv­ing them access to artists who in many cas­es had actu­al­ly worked on those cartoons.

Though the bulk of Gold Key’s books were licensed prop­er­ties, they also came up with some of their own indige­nous cre­ations. This book was one of them. Some­thing that was def­i­nite­ly part of the pop cul­ture land­scape at the time were old mon­ster movies and TV shows (one of the cool parts of being a kid in the ’60s), and clear­ly The Lit­tle Mon­sters was inspired by that.

The Lit­tle Mon­sters must have sold fair­ly well, as the book made it through 44 issues spread over some 14 years (though based on the cov­ers, some issues look to have been reprints). Appar­ent­ly, who wrote and drew all these comics is a bit of a mys­tery. I found cred­its on comics.org for one issue that list­ed John Carey and Pete Alvara­do as hav­ing done art on some sto­ries. Both artists had worked for the ani­ma­tion stu­dios, and also did a lot of comics work for Gold Key. So maybe Carey and/or Alvara­do con­tributed to the oth­er issues too.

I’ve only got one issue of The Lit­tle Mon­sters myself (#7), but it’s a lot of fun. The art has a lot of charm to it, who­ev­er did it. One sto­ry, “The Return of the Spi­der,” seems to have been inspired by the pop­u­lar­i­ty of the Bat­man TV show that would’ve been air­ing around that time.

Hope you enjoyed my take on the Lit­tle Mon­sters. Have a safe and hap­py Halloween!

Funky Frankie

It’s that time of year when I have a tra­di­tion of doing some kind of Franken­stein imagery. Right after I fin­ished the one I did for last year, this one came to me in a fore­head-slap­ping “D’oh!” moment.

Unlike last year’s image, this is a real song, as some of you will know. The Edgar Win­ter Group’s “Franken­stein” is one of the coolest rock instru­men­tals of the ’70s. I’ll give you moment to check it out here, if you haven’t heard it before.

…Okay, you’re back now? “Franken­stein” was a big hit and actu­al­ly made it to #1 on the charts. My under­stand­ing is that in record­ing and fig­ur­ing out the song, the band end­ed up hav­ing to do a lot of phys­i­cal edit­ing of the song parts. Today, that’s just a mat­ter of hit­ting a but­ton or two. Back then, you had to lit­er­al­ly take a razor blade to the record­ing tape to cut it apart, then tape it back togeth­er again. With all the var­i­ous tape pieces lying around the stu­dio wait­ing to be pieced back togeth­er, the band’s drum­mer observed that the song had become “like Franken­stein.” The name stuck.

I knew what I kind of want­ed the illus­tra­tion to look like, but think­ing about col­or was anoth­er thing. Then I remem­bered that for awhile now, I’d been intrigued by the idea of try­ing some­thing with flu­o­res­cent col­ors, like a black­light poster. It struck me that this was the per­fect oppor­tu­ni­ty to try that out, so here you go!

Hap­py Halloween!

Do the Frankenstomp!

It’s that time of year again! Hal­loween! And long-time vis­i­tors to my site might recall that I have some­thing of a loose tra­di­tion of doing Franken­stein-themed stuff in hon­or of the hol­i­day. Here’s this year’s: a sin­gle from the ’60s by the Orloks, doing the Frankenstomp.

There was a big pop cul­ture fas­ci­na­tion with mon­sters in the ’60s, like­ly spurred ini­tial­ly at least in part by TV sta­tions look­ing to fill time, and resort­ing to run­ning old mon­ster movies. They caught on with young view­ers and cre­at­ed a demand for more, result­ing in all kinds of games, mod­els, TV shows, cartoons…and even nov­el­ty 45’s like this.

I’m a big fan of this kind of mid-cen­tu­ry art style (and the style of graph­ic design that goes with it). It’s very sil­hou­ette- and shape-ori­ent­ed. I must con­fess, it does­n’t come entire­ly nat­ur­al to me to try to draw this way (it’s like throw­ing a car in hard reverse, after years of try­ing so hard to get vol­ume and dimen­sion into all my work). But it’s fun to at least attempt it like this every now and then.

Enjoy, and Hap­py Halloween!

Frank? Is That You?

Long­time vis­i­tors here might recall I have some­thing of a loose tra­di­tion of doing draw­ings of Franken­stein’s mon­ster on Hal­loween. So here you go again!

…What? You don’t rec­og­nize this guy? That’s because he pre-dates the Uni­ver­sal Studios/Boris Karloff ver­sion we’re all more famil­iar with. In fact, you’re look­ing at the first film ver­sion of Franken­stein ever, from 1910! Released by Thomas Edi­son and run­ning between 11–16 min­utes (depend­ing on how fast the film passed through the pro­jec­tor), you could say it was some­thing of a “Cliffs Notes” ver­sion of the sto­ry. Like the lat­er Uni­ver­sal ver­sion, there were some alter­ations to Mary Shel­ley’s orig­i­nal nov­el for var­i­ous rea­sons (such as run­ning time).

For years, this film was thought to be one of the (sad­ly) many lost films of the silent era. Grow­ing up, I only ever saw a cou­ple of still images from it in library books about old sci fi, hor­ror and fan­ta­sy films. But the film was lat­er dis­cov­ered in a pri­vate film col­lec­tion! Appar­ent­ly, the Library of Con­gress did a restora­tion project of the film not long ago, and you can see it here.

One of the things I was struck by was how dif­fer­ent the mon­ster’s cre­ation is in this film. In place of the more pseu­do-/qua­si-sci­en­tif­ic birth of the clas­sic Uni­ver­sal ver­sion, we have some­thing that feels more magical/mystical/alchemical in nature. It must have been stun­ning for audi­ences 100+ years ago. As a mod­ern view­er, it’s not hard to fig­ure out how they did the effect here, but it’s no less effec­tive for being able to under­stand it. The whole film has some­thing of a dream-/night­mare-like feel to it.

I start­ed this off just think­ing it would be fun to do a creepy por­trait of the mon­ster, and def­i­nite­ly got car­ried away with the ren­der­ing, but I was hav­ing fun doing it. Obvi­ous­ly the film is in B/W, so my col­ors are only a guess. But they felt about right to me, and kind of worked with the val­ues in the still shots.

Hope you enjoy my ver­sion of Edis­on’s ver­sion of Franken­stein. Hap­py Halloween!

 

The Boop! of Frankenstein

Long time vis­i­tors to this site may recall that come Hal­loween, I have some­thing of a loose tra­di­tion of doing a Franken­stein draw­ing to celebrate.

This year, I was kind of wrack­ing my brain for inspi­ra­tion, look­ing at var­i­ous old comics cov­ers, movie stills and things, and none of the ideas I was com­ing up with were real­ly grab­bing me. Then I stum­bled across a two hour block of Fleis­ch­er Stu­dios car­toons air­ing on TCM, done by way of cel­e­brat­ing the stu­dio’s 100th anniver­sary. Watch­ing one of the Bet­ty Boop car­toons, an idea final­ly struck me that I had to do. It grew from there. This is the result.

Orig­i­nal­ly, I was just going to do the black and white image, but while work­ing on it, the thought struck me that this could also work as a com­ic book cov­er. Some of you may be won­der­ing: why make this a Gold Key cov­er par­tic­u­lar­ly? Because back in the Sil­ver Age, if you want­ed to read a com­ic fea­tur­ing a car­toon char­ac­ter, you were going to end up buy­ing a Gold Key com­ic. They had the licens­es to pret­ty much all of the char­ac­ters. Though (so far as I’ve been able to deter­mine) they nev­er actu­al­ly did a Bet­ty Boop com­ic, if any­one had pub­lished one back then, Gold Key would’ve been the publisher.

I’ve always had a gen­er­al soft spot for the “ball and rub­ber hose” school of ani­ma­tion. And more specif­i­cal­ly, I’ve always got­ten a kick out of the Fleis­ch­er Stu­dios car­toons, because they have their own per­son­al­i­ty that’s noth­ing like Dis­ney’s, Warn­er Bros., or any­one else’s. The Fleis­ch­er car­toons are chaot­ic in a fun way, where almost any­thing can hap­pen. Inan­i­mate objects come to life at a momen­t’s notice.

If you don’t know about the Fleis­ch­er Stu­dios car­toons, you real­ly should do some­thing to rec­ti­fy that. You can prob­a­bly find a num­ber of them on YouTube. They’re a real treat (no trick!).

“Dad joke” free of charge. Hap­py Halloween!

Twistin’ with Frank!

If you’ve poked around my site for any length of time, you might have noticed I have some­thing of a loose tra­di­tion of cre­at­ing some kind of Franken­stein image for my site around Hal­loween, when I have the chance. Here’s this year’s!

I had the good for­tune that dur­ing my child­hood, mon­sters were a big part of the pop cul­ture land­scape. This def­i­nite­ly informed me (or warped me, depend­ing on your per­spec­tive). Mon­sters were kind of every­where! Car­toons, TV shows, books (like How to Care for Your Mon­ster), mod­el kits, toys, games…all kinds of fun stuff! There was even the occa­sion­al nov­el­ty mon­ster-themed 45 record.

That’s sort of where this idea came from. This mid-cen­tu­ry Car­toon Mod­ern type of style is not some­thing I’ve done a lot, but it’s how I envi­sioned this look­ing in my head. You spend years try­ing to get vol­ume into your draw­ings, but you kind of have to throw your brain into reverse and think more in terms of flat­ter shapes and sil­hou­ettes in order to do some­thing like this. I find it a chal­lenge, but a fun one.

When this idea came into my head, it just felt like a record that should’ve exist­ed back then, so I took it upon myself to make it hap­pen. I hope you enjoy my lit­tle illus­tra­tion and design experiment.

Hap­py Halloween!

“What Have I Done??”

So back when I first start­ed this site, I had in mind cre­at­ing a tra­di­tion of doing Franken­stein-relat­ed art for Hal­loween, when I had time. It’s been awhile since I did one. So here you go!

Mil­ton the Mon­ster is one of those car­toons from my child­hood that I’ve always looked back on fond­ly. Cer­tain car­toon prop­er­ties are well-remem­bered and seem to come back for revivals every so often. Mil­ton is one of those car­toons that seems to have slid into obscu­ri­ty, unfor­tu­nate­ly. Most car­toon fans either don’t remem­ber it, or have nev­er heard of it.

For those who don’t know about the show, the con­cep­t’s right there in the show’s theme song! Take a look. I had­n’t watched the show in a long time, so doing this cov­er was an excuse to watch some episodes and refresh my mem­o­ry. Yes, it’s def­i­nite­ly lim­it­ed TV ani­ma­tion, and the jokes can get a lit­tle corn­ball, but I still get a kick out of it. If some­one were to actu­al­ly do a revival of this show, it would be a blast to be involved!

Search­ing for actu­al char­ac­ter mod­els to draw from, I could­n’t find any. I have a sense that TV ani­ma­tion in the ’60s some­times had a much broad­er inter­pre­ta­tion of “on-mod­el” than what it does now, or even when I start­ed work­ing in ani­ma­tion in the ear­ly ’90s. It’s sur­pris­ing to see how much the look of the char­ac­ters on this show can fluc­tu­ate from episode to episode, depend­ing on the animator.

And of course, this had to be a Gold Key cov­er. They actu­al­ly did pub­lish one issue of a Mil­ton the Mon­ster com­ic back in the mid-’60s. If you were a kid in the ’60s and want­ed to buy a com­ic book fea­tur­ing your favorite ani­mat­ed character(s), Gold Key had the rights pret­ty much sewn up to all of them!

Any­way, I hope you enjoy this. And Hap­py Halloween!

“Hey Franky! I’m Seein’ Double!”

Frankenstein 23 ReworkedWe’re com­ing up on anoth­er Hal­loween here, and it seems I’ve devel­oped some­thing of a tra­di­tion of doing some kind of Franken­stein piece when that hap­pens. Instead of doing just one this time though, you’ll see I got ambi­tious and actu­al­ly did two com­ic cov­er recre­ation­s/rein­ter­pre­ta-tions. Which seemed appro­pri­ate, giv­en the sub­ject mat­ter. I’ll explain.

If you ask most comics fans around my age which comics artist comes to mind first when they think of Franken­stein’s mon­ster, you’ll prob­a­bly get names like Bernie Wright­son or Mike Ploog. But fans whose aware­ness goes back a bit far­ther might give you anoth­er name: Dick Briefer.

Briefer­’s asso­ci­a­tion with the char­ac­ter in print was not only longer than any­one else’s (run­ning from issue #7 of Prize Comics through #68, as well as 33 issues of his own mag­a­zine), but he did three dis­tinct­ly dif­fer­ent ver­sions of the char­ac­ter! He start­ed with a straight hor­ror ver­sion, spin­ning right out of Mary Shel­ley’s orig­i­nal Franken­stein sto­ry. Kind of a gut­sy thing, to do an ongo­ing hor­ror fea­ture in a com­ic in those ear­ly days. From what I’ve read on the sub­ject thus far, there’s a good case to be made that it was the first of its kind.

Frankenstein #1 ReworkedThen lat­er, in 1945 it was decid­ed to retool the fea­ture as a humor­ous strip. The new, humor­ous Franky hit news­stands in Franken­stein #1. You might think it would be hard for some­one so involved with a dif­fer­ent ver­sion of the char­ac­ter to retool their vision so dras­ti­cal­ly, but Briefer did it. And the fans bought it.

That ver­sion ran its course in 1949, then in ’52 (when the ’50s wave of hor­ror comics was under way), Briefer was called to bring the mon­ster back to life yet again! Pick­ing up after the last issue of his pre­vi­ous incar­na­tion with #18, Briefer brought back a more seri­ous ver­sion of the mon­ster. This new ver­sion though was not sim­ply a revival of Briefer­’s ear­li­est ver­sion of the char­ac­ter. For one thing, the art I’ve seen thus far tends to be much more open for col­or. And the few sto­ries I’ve seen to date seem to play up more of the mon­ster’s pathos than Briefer did back when he first worked with the character.

I must con­fess that only recent­ly have I been learn­ing about Dick Briefer and his version(s) of Franken­stein, but it’s been fun learn­ing (I hope those who are more knowl­edge­able about this strip than I cur­rent­ly am will for­give any inac­cu­ra­cies here). Thank­ful­ly, though we no longer live in comics’ Gold­en Age, we do live in what could be con­sid­ered the Gold­en Age of comics reprints! Many old strips (like Franken­stein) that were pre­vi­ous­ly inac­ces­si­ble unless you had lots of dis­pos­able funds to buy back issues, are now being col­lect­ed and reprint­ed in qual­i­ty hard­cov­er edi­tions and trade paper­backs. A Briefer Franken­stein book is one of those that I would hope to lay hands on soon.

Oh, before I close, I guess I should get to specifics about what I did here. My Franken­stein #23 is a rein­ter­pre­ta­tion of Briefer­’s, and you can see his orig­i­nal here. Briefer­’s orig­i­nal ver­sion of Franken­stein #1 can be seen here.

Hap­py Halloween!

Frankenstein and Dracula

What? These weren’t the guys you were expecting? 🙂

Appar­ent­ly back in the mid/late-’60s, some­one at Dell Comics thought it would be a good idea to take some of the clas­sic mon­sters and re-imag­ine them as super­heroes. There had been a sort of resur­gence of inter­est in the old Uni­ver­sal Mon­sters, due to their expo­sure to a new gen­er­a­tion on TV. You cou­ple that with a burst of inter­est around that time in super­heroes from a pop/camp per­spec­tive (thanks to the Bat­man TV show), and you can see the reasoning.

I’ve nev­er actu­al­ly come across one of these books to be able check them out for myself. My aware­ness of them is very lim­it­ed, gleaned only from their occa­sion­al men­tions in places like Roy Thomas’ Alter Ego mag­a­zine, or on var­i­ous blogs or comics sites.

Then why am I draw­ing these char­ac­ters? I guess there’s a fun sense of wonk­i­ness to the whole thing that kind of appeals to me. Sort of like watch­ing Plan 9 from Out­er Space. I thought it would be a kick to just take a crack at these guys and see what it might wind up look­ing like.

Hap­py Halloween!

How to Care for Your Monster

Here’s anoth­er “inspi­ra­tional stuff” post for you. It isn’t about a com­ic this time, but a book. One that I’m not even sure is in print any­more. But if not, it should be.

I came across this book called How to Care for Your Mon­ster when I was about 9 or 10 years old. As a kid, there are often cool things which cross your path and cap­ture your atten­tion for a while. Every so often though, you get your hands on some­thing and real­ize that not only do you think it’s cool now, you know for a fact that you will still think it’s cool even when you’re an adult. And How to Care for Your Mon­ster was one of those things for me.

The book was writ­ten and drawn by Nel­son Brid­well (the same guy respon­si­ble for Clif­ford the Big Red Dog, I believe). The con­cept was pret­ty clever; talk­ing about var­i­ous types of clas­sic mon­sters as if they were pets, serv­ing as a guide to the do’s and don’ts of car­ing for them. The humor is even mild­ly bent at points, in a way that I’m not sure a mod­ern kids’ book could get away with. I thought this book was great then, and I still think so now!

The draw­ing above is my attempt (I put the empha­sis on the word “attempt”) at try­ing to cap­ture the style and feel of the illus­tra­tions in the book. “Fan art,” kin­da. I prob­a­bly should’ve just drawn this in my own style, but my ani­ma­tion train­ing com­pelled me to attempt to put it on-mod­el. Still, it was an inter­est­ing experiment.

Any­way, it’s a real­ly fun book. If you ever come across a used copy at a rea­son­able price, give it a look! As a pub­lic ser­vice, I’m post­ing a scan at right of the cov­er of my very own much-loved copy that I’ve hung onto for all these years, so you’ll know what you’re look­ing for. Don’t say I nev­er did any­thing for you!

How to Care for Your Mon­ster is ©1970 Nor­man Bridwell.

 

Is There an Echo in Here?

Just mov­ing in to the new place here, fig­ur­ing out where to put stuff. Hope­ful­ly, it won’t take me too long. Bear with me while I try to get this sort­ed out.

Why the image? Well, it’s just a cou­ple days after Hal­loween, and I think this would look too bor­ing with­out a lit­tle visu­al inter­est. Plus it gives me an oppor­tu­ni­ty to try to learn how to work all the var­i­ous han­dles, noz­zles and gear shifts around here.