Review Frankenstein The Graphic Novel

Review – Chris Mould – Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein – The Graphic Novel. 1997 Oxford University Press. I’m not a fan of classic novels presented as comic strip picture books. I wonder how many readers substitute them for the real books. Will students reading this adaptation go around convinced they have read Shelley’s masterpiece? I struggled to read the real Frankenstein. It is not an easy read like Stoker’s Dracula, which was a breeze. The text in Shelley is much heavier and a teenager I gave up, returning to the book in my thirties to complete it, and this time successfully. It was certainly worth it and remains one of my favourite books of all time. Mould’s book, coming especially as it does from the OUP (whatever were they thinking), may well be a replacement for many students, for the text itself. The artwork is undoubtedly beautiful, and it retains some of the horror of the original, which is where its problems start – It reads like a children’s comic book but carries adult themes of death and nihilistic revenge. It pares the story down to its bare bones and makes the reading virtually effortless. Told in about 30 pages, the story is well-captured edited highlights. The narrative devise and some of the most memorable lines are preserved. The horror of “I’ll be with you on your wedding night” is there, though we see nothing of the Monster’s breaching of the police protection network Frankenstein tries to guard his wife with (unsuccessfully). For me that was the book’s greatest sequence. Mould maintains the prologue of Captain Walton’s discovery of Frankenstein on the arctic ice, but fails to show why this is important. Walton is himself on a destructive, obsessive quest, to reach the Pole, despite the lack of food, bad weather, pack ice closing in on the ship, and the panicking crew growing mutinous. Frankenstein’s self destruction tells Walton what he needs to hear – the need to give up before it’s too late and the novel ends with him abandoning his lifelong dream before it is too late. The comic book ends as soon as he witnesses the Monster’s death. We know nothing from here of Walton’s own fate. The story is so stripped down that it’s meaning is lost in favour of a few pretty pictures. This isn’t the novel but a crude synopsis. It’s unlikely to satisfy anyone with a need to read and struggle to read Shelley’s version – the first and best Frankenstein, over all the film versions, including the Karloff classic and the Abbot & Costello version too. (that last bit is sarcasm)

Arthur Chappell