Bernie Wrightson's Frankenstein

I visited Dark Horse Comics in Milwaukie OR recently.  I was pleased to see the place thriving, despite the economy.  In the rush of each day’s news, it’s easy to forget the economy doesn’t sink equally everywhere.  Some parts do okay while the car and construction industries flatten like pools of astronaut gore on the surface of a cold, hypergravitational neutron star.

Mike Richardson showered me with books, and I was pleased to see a beautiful, redesigned reissue of Bernie Wrightson’s masterpiece.  Throughout the seventies he issued portfolios of illustrations to Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein.  Finally, in1983, Marvel published the novel with them all.

It was a disappointment.  I suppose it would have to be after the beautiful oversized portfolios, which by their  scale did justice to Bernie’s hyperrendered artwork.  He was in thrall not only to his early influence Graham Engels, but also to Golden Age Illustrator Franklin Booth.

Booth grew up in the country and didn’t realize the intricate woodcut engravings of artists like Gustav Dorè were actually done by artisans reproducing, through cut lines on the endgrain sides of dense hardwood blocks, based on Dore’s paintings.  He thought they were drawn right off by the artist in pen and ink.  So he taught himself to render as finely as the dollar bill in your pocket.

Anyway, things came together for Wrightson then.  He’d done his outstanding journeyman work in comics, was still without family responsibilities (I think), and living the art for art’s sake life.  He must have put in thousands of hours and so created a work for the ages.

But, as I said, I was disappointed with the Marvel book.  The design was perfunctory, even hostile to reading.   Small type and narrow margins created  too much text on each page – it made a difficult, meandering story a slog that quite defeated me, even when I tried to read it again last year.  

Presumably Dark Horse hasn’t tightened up Shelly’s maddeningly indirect tale (she was nineteen, after all, when she wrote it – and who am I to complain, it’s a mythic classic!).  But I can unreservedly recommend this edition.  The new book is much more readable, with some classy design touches and plenty of air in the layouts. 

It contains one of my favorite quotes: “Nothing so contributes to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose.”

A steady purpose.  Not a bad mantra. 

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