FRANKENSTEIN (Guillermo del Toro, 2025)

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***+ / *****: Some amazing performances - especially Jacob Elordi’s Wrightson-brought-to-life Creature - and moments of brilliance but overall left me wanting. The Netflix sheen shellacked over Del Toro’s too-conservative / reverent direction of his own script diluted what should have been a cinematic powerhouse into the streaming version of the early 90’s ABC event mini-series iterations of JEKYLL AND HYDE and PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (presented with limited commercial interruption); I’m not mad, just disappointed.

Berni(e) Wrightson's FRANKENSTEIN

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Roamed an antique mall yesterday and, in one of the packed booths, saw the left side of a book that said “Frank” and “Ber”. Key-bearer opened the case, and there it was: an original edition of Bernie Wrightson’s 1983 “Marvel Illustrated Novel” labor-of-love version of Shelley’s FRANKENSTEIN:

"I've always had a thing for Frankenstein, and it was a labor of love," the artist said. "It was not an assignment, it was not a job. I would do the drawings in between paying gigs, when I had enough to be caught up with bills and groceries and what-not. I would take three days here, a week there, to work on the Frankenstein volume. It took about seven years." ... Wrightson was influenced by the pen and ink masters of the early 20th and late 19th centurie,s and Wrightson named artists like Franklin Booth, Jason Cole and Edwin Abbey."I wanted the book to look like an antique; to have the feeling of woodcuts or steel engravings, something of that era," said Wrightson.

Thrilled to have this beauty in The Collection (not only of comics, but of Frankenstein). If you haven’t read it, Bernie’s collaboration (along with Kelley Jones, who finished the project after Bernie’s death) with Steve Niles, FRANKENSTEIN ALIVE, ALIVE, is considered a sequel to this piece of comics passion unleashed.