Dark Horse Announces Mike Mignola & Ben Stenbeck’s ‘Frankenstein Underground’
In case you haven't noticed from the fact that all your Twitter friends have changed their display names to delightfully sub-Cryptkeeper puns, it is finally October! And that, my fiends, means that it's finally time for some spoooooky announcements about upcoming projects, and Dark Horse is getting the jump on everyone else by touting a brand-new comic that won't be out until 2015.
There's a reason they're announcing it now, though: It's a brand new comic about Frankenstein's Monster written by Mike Mignola, and that's kind of a big deal. Along with artist Ben Stenbeck, who worked with Mignola previously on Baltimore, the series will be called Frankenstein Underground, and will be set in the same universe as Hellboy and BPRD.
While this is a new series, it's not the first time that Mignola has taken on Mary Shelley's classic monster. Frankenstein previously appeared in Hellboy: House of the Living Dead, an amazing tribute to the Universal monster movies (with a little bit of Hammer Horror thrown in for good measure), and before that, Mignola had definitely worked with a few decidedly Frankensteinesque characters, like Roger the Homonculus. This time, though, the focus will be entirely on the Monster himself.
According to Dark Horse's press release, Mignola and Stenbeck hope to hew pretty close to the feeling of their source material:
“It’s intimidating as hell to take on an icon like the Frankenstein monster,” said Mignola. “I’m trying to do something that’s true to the origin Mary Shelley created for the creature but also captures a bit of the feel that Boris Karloff brought to the role in the classic Universal films. At the same time I’m throwing the monster into an entirely new environment, so I think the result will be something new. It’s an odd one, but ultimately will add an important new wrinkle to the Hellboy/B.P.R.D. world.”
“This version of the Frankenstein monster has the same thirst for knowledge readers will remember from Mary Shelley’s novel,” said Scott Allie, Dark Horse Comics’ editor in chief. “The monster takes the reader through some of the biggest mysteries of the Mignolaverse, shedding new light on important stuff we’ve only touched on before.”
Frankenstein Underground will be on sale next year from Dark Horse.