Bernie Wrightson's Frankenstein

The late great Bernie Wrightson was a comic book genius of my childhood whose artistic merits were probably overlooked due to the media he chose to work in. This volume, illustrating the classic gothic masterpiece of horror, hopefully went some way towards righting that wrong. The glorious and intricate black and white illustrations are a marriage between the horror comic books of my youth and the woodcuts of Gustav Doré a hundred years earlier. I remember being staggered by them in my teens and making my own poor attempts at replicating them in college life drawing. Sorry, Bernie.

Well, this is a bit of a two-fer. Along with world-building and satire, I also like stories of unintended consequences and human hubris and the story of Frankenstein’s monster is the touchstone for all subsequent works based on those themes. But why this edition, as opposed to others? Because of Wrightson’s powerful and masterful illustrations. This is not a graphic novel, per se; the story has not been converted into panels and dialog balloons. Instead, the text is punctuated by full-page, black-and-white, pen-and-ink illustrations of key scenes in the text. The drawings have a chiseled quality and often include a… show more.