2 out of 5

Right, so: my arbitrary rule that media shouldn’t exclude the reader – it shouldn’t expect you to do homework to “get” it. That requires quite a bit of qualification, though, because obviously some things that are sequential like comics, or television series, can’t / shouldn’t have to recap all the lore every single time, and there are going to be books or etc. that are allusions to specific events or parody something or other, and if the references are fully explained, well, that’d be akin to the second-screen format 2020s era streaming viewers are familiar with, i.e. make sure you continually give me context because I can’t be assed to pay attention.

But I’m sincerely allowing for all of that, because I believe you can make even the most lore-bound / referential work accessible by dint of it being presented well. If there’s a reference in there, and let’s say it’s to make a joke, then the setup could make me laugh on its own – like I get that it’s funny but I don’t know why – or the scene itself is entertaining, even without the laugh. In the former case, I’d probably get an inkling that something else is going on and then be motivated to find out, or in either case, the whole thing works, regardless, so I don’t necessarily have to know the reference. In more serious fare, all stories are archetypes. The first story you’ve ever heard is an archetype, and if you connect with it, it’s because you connect with it – you see or feel yourself in the material in some way, let’s say. From there, the same principle applies: I can enjoy how the story’s told, and ideally, I’m so intrigued that either I decide to research whatever was alluded to, or watch the rest of the episodes / read the remaining series / etc. So I stand by my first statement: you don’t have to exclude, and doing so based on an “if you know you know” assumption isn’t necessarily bad, but, well, it’s not very accessible, and I’d maybe argue it is bad, in that it leaves behind some essential storytelling elements. I’m willing to have my mind changed, always; however, when I’ve run across examples in the wild where I’ve really enjoyed something and then had to accept that it doesn’t translate for those not-in-the-know types (and this is separate from something just being not to someone’s tastes), it’s made me ask: if I stripped out all the in-the-know details, is there still a story there? And if there’s not, then am I just riding high on those details?

Anyhow, if you don’t care about references to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, or haven’t read / aren’t interested in James Tynion’s ‘The Oddly Pedestrian Life of Christopher Chaos,’ then I don’t think you’re going to find much to grab on to in Tate Brombal’s expansion of the Adam Frankenstein character from the latter series, using the former as a guide for how to weave the worlds together. I do appreciate the exercise, and I think Tate tries to be cautious and smart about what elements he uses from Adam’s “origins” in Tynion’s world to turn the character into Shelley’s version, but all the same, it reads very much like an exercise, and as such, it’s pretty exclusionary, drawing a line between the worlds with all of the relevant plot beats nods to one writer or the other – jumping from Adam’s post-creation bonding with a family, to his first battle with his creator, Victor, to a later point when Victor has started his experiments anew (backed by a mysterious group from Tynion’s worlds) and Adam once more becoming intertwined.

Artist Soo Lee’s loose, almost Janson-like jaggedness is conceptually right for the gothic notes of the tale, but their character work isn’t quite strong enough to make the drama in the later parts work, and there’s not a great sense of fluidity between panels during the bigger / more action-y moments. Patricio Delpeche’s brown and blue color palette works, but the blotchy application doesn’t help the lack of definition mentioned in Lee’s art.

The flipside of the book features a short “Monsters in Love” tale by Mark Bouchard and arted by Naomi Franq. Franq’s art is very Boom!-like – big, bubbly characters – but has heavy inks which gives it some great texture. Bouchard’s humorous tale of a proposal gone awry thanks to an ill-timed bite from a wolf (if there’s ever a good time?) is an acceptably distracting short, but the punchline doesn’t really make sense…