Flashpoint: Frankenstein and the Creatures of the Unknown #1
Written by Jeff Lemire; Illustrated by Ibraim Roberson
DC; $2.99
I apologize for whiffing on last week’s Pulptacular. Between Father’s Day and getting my son ready to go to summer camp, the weekend got away from me. I had sort of a Father’s Day theme in mind too, so it’s either especially sad that I missed the deadline or particularly appropriate that it was parenting that got in my way. I’m gonna go with “appropriate,” just to make myself feel better.
It’s weird and twisted, but one of my favorite stories about fathers is Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. It’s all about what not to do as a dad, but oh boy is it ever a story for male parents. I’m not so sure I can stretch the definition of Pulp to include Frankenstein (though I’m up for trying), but I certainly couldn’t get away with calling it New. That’s okay though, because I’m not going to talk about Shelley’s novel. Instead, I’m going to talk about a Frankenstein story that’s both New and Pulp: Frankenstein and the Creatures of the Unknown. It’s a story all about Nazi-fighting monsters and there's even some stuff about fatherhood in it.
Potentially one of the scariest things about the comic is the Flashpoint in the title, but don’t let that bother you. While FatCotU takes place in the same world of DC’s big, summer Flashpoint event, there’s no need to read any other comics to understand it. Not the first issue, anyway. FatCotU begins in WWII with a top-secret government project that’s creating monsters to fight the Nazis. Inspired by the arctic discovery of the actual Frankenstein monster, head scientist Dr. Mazursky has transformed a crippled soldier into a wolf-man and a treasonous pilot into a vampire. And just to show how dedicated he is to the project, Mazursky’s even converted his own daughter into a Creature from the Black Lagoon-like gill-woman. The doctor’s plan is to change the three volunteers back at the end of the war, but when the war ends, the government decides to put them – and Frankenstein’s Monster – into suspended animation until they decide they need them again. That doesn’t go over well with the Monster and his pals, but unfortunately the military has GI Robot (exactly what he sounds like, for anyone not familiar with the character) on their side. There’s a fight, but our horrifying heroes go down.
Flashpoint forward 65 years and the team awakens to find their facility all but destroyed, but not quite deserted. They’re now in the time of the rest of the Flashpoint event, but what’s cool is that they don’t know any more about it than the reader. I’m sure that anyone reading the other Flashpoint books would know why there’s also a huge container emblazoned with the Superman symbol in the facility – and why it’s cracked in two like something escaped from inside – but I love the mystery of not knowing. It’s likely not important to the story and I don’t even particularly care if it’s ever mentioned again. It just adds some dread to the scene and ramps up the tension even more in a story that’s chock full of it already.
The Monster makes a great, classic, pulp hero. He’s grumpily suspicious of authority, but willing to join the military for an obviously good cause. He’s got his ragtag team of diverse personalities a la Doc Savage or The Avenger and they’re all entangled in an adventure that’s well out of their comfort zone. As long as the rest of the three-issue mini-series keeps them on the periphery of the Flashpoint event, it promises to be a – dare I say – pulptacular ride.
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