Posted in: Comics | Tagged: Ben Stenbeck, Comics, dark horse, dave stewart, entertainment, Frankenstein Underground, mike mignola

When Frankenstein Underground #2 Dropped The Mic

In honor of the succinct traits of most of the comics both written by Mike Mignola, I'm not going to overburden this statement with a lot of verbiage. If you've been following the radically interesting interpretation of the life and times of Frankenstein's Monster in Frankenstein Underground, then you know that in the series' opening issue, the Monster flashes back to many scenes of woe and oppression as a forced fighter, the lowest of the low, before an elderly woman brings him aid. And then his world falls apart further. Any faith he had in the "rightness" of things in the universe seems lost. Then literally and figuratively, he plummets into hell. Or at least the inner recesses of the planet where he's going to find many wonders, but none so far particularly encouraging to his existential dilemma. Drawn by Ben Stenbeck, with colors by Dave Stewart, the book seems as compact a package of storytelling as you might ever find, with hardly a line or word going to waste.

What we do get in Issue #2, as well as in Issue #1, are flashback reflections on the Monster's experiences, and in this issue, probably the most brutal narrative of all, concerning seeking refuge in a church and being driven out by a malignantly extremist priest. All of these details are important, as important as the wondrous creatures that the Monster meets in his fall through the earth, but the use of the language that accompanies the story in Issue #2 is what I want to focus on here.

Fans of Mike Mignola's work know that over time, he's pressed his knack for using poetry and snatches of song woven into normal dialogue or silent imagery to greater and greater accomplishments of mood. Some of his eeriest panels are laced with a few phrases of Poe's or borrowed from a moldering folk tale's own quite old rhymes. But I don't think we've ever seen him go so stark with his pared-down prose as we see here in Frankenstein Underground #2. And the subject matter–well, that's another thing that he's pursuing further than before here, too–is all about the nature of the "other" in society and the "outsider". The phrases work well for Hellboy and his universe as well, though they elaborate with great precision on the themes of the original novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. And yet, this is somehow all Mignola and strikes out toward the reader with great poignancy, regardless of where the phrases may have come from originally in literature or tradition.

Here are some of those phrases:

Then I say there are no gods and I am done with this world…

This endless maze of stone walls, my prison forever.

I have escaped man but there is no escaping the horror of what I am.

Break him, chain him, cast him forth into the outer darkness…

Mike Mignola is one of the few writers working today who makes you wonder occasionally if he's being ghost-written by Shakespeare. But in all seriousness, Mignola's meditation upon outsider status, spring-boarding off the original prose and ideas of Shelley's novel, does rise to a new level, or should I say delves to a new depth? We see the utter wretchedness of the Monster. And for what reason? There is no significant reason other than because of what he is–taken for an abomination by mankind.

For me, as a longtime Hellboy reader, it feels like Frankenstein Underground is able to say in perhaps a more direct, unvarnished way, many of the things that have been utterly wretched about Hellboy's own plight and for many of the "friendlies" among the monsters or allies he encounters. This is an intense series that lays bare many of the ideas that are core to the Hellboy Universe.

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