Better days have certainly been seen for this crew of misfit monsters.
What They Say:
FLASH QUESTION: Can our heroes find the cure to their afflictions, or will the monster hunter Miranda Shrieve kill them before they get the chance?
The Review:
After the origin story that dominated the first issue but sent them into the present day after their World War II adventures, life is definitely harder for Frankenstein and his crew now. The uncertainty of the world is a big part of it and the way it seems to them that the evil that they faced is still very much in the world, just in a different guise. Though they’ve managed to escape from the facility where they were stored away in, they’re not intent on wrecking havoc. Rather, they want to try and help Nina find out what happened to her father as it cuold lead to further clues about what really happened to them. That has them deep in the swamp looking for the house she grew up in and where her father first experimented on her to try and ease her breathing problems. The house still exists, but the clues are lacking as it’s simply fallen apart over the intervening seventy years.
Nina’s origin isn’t given a lot of time, but seeing how her father worked through things with her in the past in the small space, which lead to the bigger things he did with the rest of them in Project M, shows the genesis of everything. Nina’s fuzzy memory doesn’t help too much, but there is a bigger secret below the house, hidden under the water that’s there. Watching as she and Frank head down to investigate is a good sequence of events as we see how the two work together and how Nina is standing for herself more rather than being an introvert with little to say. Bringing her back to a palce that she’s very familiar with from her childhood helps her mindset a lot, and lets Frank come across as a bit more protective in a good way.
The issue does focus on Shrieve a fair bit as well, first as she deals with the good general over getting the GI Robot that she doesn’t want since it’s just a relic that really doesn’t look like it’d do any good. But with the crew that the general wants her to go after, she’ll need everything she can get when she finds out who they are. It’s such a lifelong dream of hers to go after them, which find more about as she relates her tale in the midst of battle in an awkward way. Lemire generally handles the book well considering its material and it being all new, but throwing this in when he did just kills the flow. Her reasons are what they are and there are no surprises there and you can even see how things could turn so they’d be a potent team with some tension thrown in for good measure. That it’s that predictable just isn’t a good sign though.
Digital Notes:
This digital edition of Frankenstein is from Comixology and contains only the original cover for the release and the book itself with no extras or advertisements.
In Summary:
I can’t say the first issue blew me away, but I definitely came away from it wanting to see more of this cast and how they’d fit into the larger DC Comics universe. It’s the freaks on the outside thing that’s common, but with the classic monsters aspect giving it a little more to work with in a primal sense. Lemire has a good work here overall and I like the progression of it even as it riffs the Hellboy stuff in an open way. But at the same time, he’s making it his own and it’s showing us a different aspect of the Flashpoint universe that can be slid into the new universe that’s coming afterwards. And it even ends with a big, fun and goofy reveal of who will be a big part of the next and final issue with Frank’s bride.
Grade: B
