Review: Frankenstein, Agent Of S.H.A.D.E #1 - #6
Jeff Lemire and Alberto Ponticelli have given us a gift and there is no way for us to repay them with sufficient thanks. It really is that simple.
No, it's even simpler than that: DC could reboot the whole damned universe every year like clockwork and it would be worth it if it gave us something as good as Frankenstein, Agent of S.H.A.D.E. every time. This book is almost everything I want comics to be and there is no other medium in which this story would work as well.
Let me try to enumerate the things that I love about it:
First, the characters are compelling and interesting and none of them are driven by angst. This is a super-team essentially made up of no less than the Universal Monsters - a wolfman, a vampire, Frankenstein, the (ex-)Bride of Frankenstein, a mummy and a shameless ripoff of The Creature from the Black Lagoon - and not a single one of them spends their time on the page whining about their state. They are, instead, active and outgoing and effective in their work. Oh, there are rivalries and plenty of snark and I love few things in comics more than watching the interplay between the cigar-chomping fratboyish vampire and the loyal, obedient, werewolf who seems ready at any moment to fetch someone's slippers, or the great relationship between Frankenstein and his ex-wife, but the book isn't about these characters' tiresome feelings.
Instead, it's about adventures and big, crazy, over-the-top locations and hordes of monsters and planets that are alive bearing continents literally covered, every square inch, in slavering enemies. It's about a mad scientist in the body of a little girl who loads monstrous heroes into an interdimensional life raft, shoves them through a wormhole and then tells them to kill everything in sight and make it back before the wormhole closes. It's about nanotech prisons inside cities that are, themselves, concealed by being kept at a microscopic scale. It's fun and funny and active. It's a book about the undead, mostly, but the story itself is just vibrantly alive and dynamic and exciting.
Would that more comics were like this!
Also, it's one of a tiny handful of New 52 books that aren't about protecting a child. Huh! The comics readership demographic really has shifted, hasn't it?
Seriously, if you aren't reading Frankenstein then you should be. Do you like outsized action and snappy dialogue and beautiful art and zany stories about mad science gone horribly awry? Run, don't walk, to your nearest comics supplier. This book is fan-fucking-tastic. It is just incredible. Read this book. Buy it in trades when they come out. Give Lemire a back rub. Send Ponticelli a box of chocolates. Do something to show your appreciation. Books like this are decidedly not a dime a dozen and they are worth anything else we must endure in order to get them.
Klarion
Posted to Comic of the Week, Comics, Review on 14 February 2012
· Comments (7)
Other stuff like this: Alberto Ponticelli, DC Comics, Frankenstein, Jeff Lemire
I have to admit that the art doesn't exactly grab me on this book, so I'm looking forward to the art shift in a few issues. Otherwise, I'm really enjoying the writing and characters on the comic, so I'll definitely be sticking around!
See, I love the art, but I don't have a sufficiently sophisticated understanding of art or my own tastes to explain why. I wish I did, because next week I pan Animal Man in part on the basis of hating its art.
But yay for other readers of Frankenstein!
LOL... I'm not sophisticated at all, either, so I could come up with some nonsense about why it doesn't appeal to me, but it'd all probably end up being gibberish. I guess the best I can say why I'm not a fan is that it's too blocky and angular for my tastes. It's the same reason why I don't care for John Romita, Jr's art (*gay gasp* Blasphemy, I know).
And yet, I love Animal Man's art because it's just so bizarre and out there. Either, way, don't let the Animal Man art hold you back... Travel Foreman is being moved to Birds of Prey and Steve Pugh is moving to Animal Man starting with issue #7!
It looks like I was wrong about the art change on Frankenstein, so I guess I better just get used to it! ;-)
I'm liking the general book, but I don't like the Frankenstein character.
He's way too self-rightous for my liking.
And as a vampire fan (proper monster vampires) I don't like how the one on the team gets treated like scum all the time.
See, as a fellow lover of all things vampire (except for Twilight because honey please) I just adore the vampire. In many ways I think the genius of these characters is that Lemire has taken the Universal Monsters and inverted their personalities in some major way: he vampire is flip and immature; the werewolf is obedient and well-behaved; the Creature from the Black Lagoon is a thoughtful scientist; the Mummy... um, talks, I guess; and Frankenstein is soulful and serious and self-righteous.
You are absolutely right, he is a self-righteous prick, but I see that as part of his over the top cartoonish quality. I take it as camp.
Now, all of that aside, what do you think of I, Vampire? I picked up the first issue, loved it, but had a lot on my plate and relegated it to "when the trade comes out" status. Lately I've been itching for it, though, to the point I've been considering buying up all the back issues if I can find them around.
I'm loving I, Vampire so far! I don't really know anything about the previous iteration of the character, so I can't compare the two, but this has been a lot of fun to read so far.
Sadly, I get the impression that it's not doing so well sales-wise (unless it's doing better digitally than it is in print, since they seem reluctant to release ANY digital sales numbers), so I worry that it won't survive the next round of title cuts.
I haven't followed the sales numbers, to be honest, but my extremely limited impression is that it is selling better than expected, no matter how much that specific quantity might be. I base this on never being able to find back issues at my local shop. When I asked about it at the counter the reply from staff was that they have had trouble keeping it on the shelf and getting it restocked because DC keeps running out of it. That's part of why it got lumped into my "first round of trades" list, which I'll be posting in two or three weeks.