Even with superheroes in retreat in the early 1950s, super-powered protagonists sometimes continued to come to the rescue in comic books.
The Frankenstein monster himself was capable of doing innocent people a good turn on occasion.
In Prize Comics, the four-color Frankenstein monster — white-faced, his stitched-up features seemingly half-melted — began rampaging through New York in a story set in 1930.
“By the time artist-writer Dick Briefer introduced the Frankenstein monster in the seventh issue of Prize Comics (Dec. 1940), there had been three highly successful Frankenstein movies, each starring Boris Karloff,” noted comics historian Ron Goulart. “Briefer was obviously thinking of the actor when he created his version.”
“1944 was a pivotal year for the volatile Frankenstein feature,” noted comics historian Frank M. Young. “Briefer had most recently had a scientist attempt to reboot the monster as a gentle, lawful soul. Kidnapped and hypnotized by Nazis, in darkest Germany, the monster then wore Reichstag regalia and did the Führer’s dirty work. This was as extreme a posture as any comic book feature had taken, at the time. Perhaps Briefer thought better of making his anti-hero an outright villain. He quickly reversed the situation.”
“A man with a strong, though slightly perverted, sense of humor, Briefer gradually tired of doing all the ghastly stuff straight,” Goulart wrote. “By the mid-1940s, he had converted Frankenstein into a comedy feature.”
“With each successive story of ’44, Briefer pushes the strip into a realm of macabre humor,” Young noted. “The tipping point occurs in Prize 46, when Frankenstein and his ghoulish friends, frustrated by wartime housing shortages, gleefully vandalize an exclusive Manhattan apartment complex until its mortal inhabitants flee. In this story, one sees the ‘ah ha’ moment of the series. Briefer hits on a nervy mix of screwball humor and horror themes. The monsters’ acts of destruction are ingenious and amusing. From this point, all drama goes out the window. Slapstick, satire and droll gallows comedy are the new order.”
When Prize Comics ended in 1948, the monster shambled on in his own title, a magazine that had started in 1945.
In Frankenstein 18 (March 1952), the cartoony comedy run ended, and the title shifted back to horror-suspense — the 20th such title on a newsstand already crowded with horror comics.
In the penultimate issue, Frankenstein 32 (Aug.-Sept. 1954), a shipwreck deposits the monster on a primitive tropical island where he’s promptly speared by the islanders. Shrugging off his wound, he scatters his attackers, who plan to regroup and destroy him.
But the village wise man, the “Knower-of-All,” advises against this, arguing instead that the monster be greeted as a savior from the sea and treated to a feast.
“We must make him feel welcome, then we will find a way to get rid of him,” the Knower says.
Mollified with food and entertainment, the monster is told, “Spears had no effect upon you at the beach — You are all-powerful — Look upon us as servants … and deliver us from those who threaten us!”
Those enemies include Mok the crocodile and Pono the lion, but the scheming islanders are shocked when the Frankenstein monster is able to destroy both.
Overhearing a cry for help, the monster climbs to the top of a volcano, where he finds a shipwrecked couple who’d been chained there as a sacrifice.
“If you are going to kill us, do it now!” the chained man demands. “It’s better than being chained in this broiling sun waiting for this volcano to blow its top!”
The narration follows the creature’s thoughts: “For a moment the monster hesitates. Then he laboriously thinks back to the way the islanders attacked him on the beach … and he wonders why they couldn’t kill the crocodile and the lion, instead of sending him in to battle them … and he decides to take a chance on these two prisoners.”
Snapping their chains, the monster flees with the couple to their lifeboat as the volcano erupts. His powerful oar strokes enable them to escape in the heaving sea.
When the lifeboat is spotted by a seaplane, the monster hides under the water until the exhausted couple is safely flown away.
“And once again he is alone on an endless sea,” the narration explains. A decade later, the passage that follows would have applied equally well to the Hulk, another super-powerful monster who does good reluctantly or accidentally: “At least he is not plagued by his enemy … man. But wherever he goes, he is sure to meet with violence and resistance, for man is out to destroy him!”
When this issue appeared on newsstands in June 1954, I was busy elsewhere, being born.
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