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Summary
Summary
I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half vital motion.
Thus did Mary Shelley describe the vision that inspired her to compose Frankenstein on a trip to Geneva in the summer of 1816. A tale of science and morality, of love and loss, of hope and despair, the account of Victor Frankenstein's terrifying experiments into the very nature of life and death still echoes two hundred years after its original composition--an enduring reminder of man's ability to create and his ability to destroy. It has inspired generations of writers, artists, and filmmakers, and has borne countless adaptations--in print, on the stage, and on the screen.
But nothing quite like this.
Gris Grimly, another student of unhallowed arts and master of gothic horror, has long considered Frankenstein to be one of his chief inspirations. From the bones and flesh of the original, he has cut and stitched Mary Shelley's text to his own artwork, creating something entirely new: a stunningly original remix both classic and contemporary, sinister and seductive, heartstopping and heartbreaking. It is the first fully illustrated version to use the original 1818 text and is destined to capture the imagination of those new to the story as well as those who know it well.
Beautifully terrifying and terrifyingly beautiful, this is Frankenstein as you've never seen it before.
Author Notes
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was born in England on August 30, 1797. Her parents were two celebrated liberal thinkers, William Godwin, a social philosopher, and Mary Wollstonecraft, a women's rights advocate. Eleven days after Mary's birth, her mother died of puerperal fever. Four motherless years later, Godwin married Mary Jane Clairmont, bringing her and her two children into the same household with Mary and her half-sister, Fanny. Mary's idolization of her father, his detached and rational treatment of their bond, and her step-mother's preference for her own children created a tense and awkward home. Mary's education and free-thinking were encouraged, so it should not surprise us today that at the age of sixteen she ran off with the brilliant, nineteen-year old and unhappily married Percy Bysshe Shelley.
Shelley became her ideal, but their life together was a difficult one. Traumas plagued them: Shelley's wife and Mary's half-sister both committed suicide; Mary and Shelley wed shortly after he was widowed but social disapproval forced them from England; three of their children died in infancy or childhood; and while Shelley was an aristocrat and a genius, he was also moody and had little money.
Mary conceived of her magnum opus, Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus, when she was only nineteen when Lord Byron suggested they tell ghost stories at a house party. The resulting book took over two years to write and can be seen as the brilliant creation of a powerful but tormented mind. The story of Frankenstein has endured nearly two centuries and countless variations because of its timeless exploration of the tension between our quest for knowledge and our thirst for good.
Shelley drowned when Mary was only 24, leaving her with an infant and debts. She died from a brain tumor on February 1, 1851 at the age of 54. (Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (6)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 7 Up-Shelley's Frankenstein can be considered a lot of things; easy reading is not one of them. Grimly's version carefully strips down the original text, keeping only the bare bones of the story, and accompanies it with his comically gothic illustrations. From the Neo-Victorian clothing and emo hairdos to the steampunk backdrop of Victor Frankenstein's lab, Grimly's unique and twisted style blends perfectly with the material and breathes new life into these characters and situations. This graphic-novel format works exceptionally well during moments of dialogue, as readers can really see a range of emotions that would otherwise be lost through Shelley's dense language. Scenes that especially stand out have little or none of the borrowed text at all, relying only on the art to masterfully tell the story. However, some scenes are better fleshed out than others; it can be frustrating when large, unbroken paragraphs of Shelley's prose are presented with only one or two large drawings, and hardly anything is done with the various letters throughout the book. This can throw off the overall flow, but scenes involving Frankenstein's monster are fast paced, well executed, and help to restore the balance. Even with the adapted text and illustrations, this may still be a difficult read for some readers, but Grimly's beautiful and trim version is a great way to immerse a new audience in this important work.-Peter Blenski, Greenfield Public Library, WI (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Grimly's fans have been awaiting this reworking of Shelley's 1818 classic for four years, and they will rejoice in the end result. Spidery ink lines and a palette of jaundiced yellows and faded sepias plumb the darkness of the writer's imaginings. Frankenstein's bone-embellished military jacket and pop-star shock of hair turn him into a sort of anachronistic punk scientist, but other elements of the work are more circumspect. Crabbed, tense portraits of Frankenstein's friends and family combine historical detail with theatrical emotion. The images of the dissections that lead to the monster's creation dwell on flesh and bone, yet show, for Grimly, a certain restraint. Even more notable is Grimly's refusal to capitalize on the horror of the iconic scenes for which the movie versions of the story are remembered. The monster's crimes are shown mostly in b&w thumbnails, as if Grimly were hastening through them to probe more carefully the monster's self-loathing and Frankenstein's ruin. Fans will return to these pages obsessively; readers encountering the story for the first time may find Grimly's images rise to view whenever they think of it. Ages 13-up. Agent: Steven Malk, Writers House. (Aug.)? (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Horn Book Review
Adeptly "assembled from the original text," this graphic novel adaptation abridges Shelley's tale while staying true to its spirit. The inventive illustrations relocate Frankenstein and his creation to a goth-y, Tim Burton-esque time-out-of-time with a mix of modern, nineteenth-century, and steampunk sensibilities. A muted palette of sepia, gray, and olive tones is effectively punctuated by black, pinks, and purples, and, in more gruesome moments, bilious green. Grimly makes excellent use of his format with dynamic shapes, sizes, and pacing of panels; the novel's epistolary sections have an elegant (if difficult to read) handwritten look. katie bircher (c) Copyright 2013. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
A slightly abridged graphic version of the classic that will drive off all but the artist's most inveterate fans. Admirers of the original should be warned away by veteran horror artist Bernie Wrightson's introductory comments about Grimly's "wonderfully sly stylization" and the "twinkle" in his artistic eye. Most general readers will founder on the ensuing floods of tiny faux handwritten script that fill the opening 10 pages of stage-setting correspondence (other lengthy letters throughout are presented in similarly hard-to-read typefaces). The few who reach Victor Frankenstein's narrative will find it--lightly pruned and, in places, translated into sequences of largely wordless panels--in blocks of varied length interspersed amid sheaves of cramped illustrations with, overall, a sickly, greenish-yellow cast. The latter feature spidery, often skeletal figures that barrel over rough landscapes in rococo, steampunk-style vehicles when not assuming melodramatic poses. Though the rarely seen monster is a properly hard-to-resolve jumble of massive rage and lank hair, Dr. Frankenstein looks like a decayed Lyle Lovett with high cheekbones and an errant, outsized quiff. His doomed bride, Elizabeth, sports a white lock la Elsa Lanchester, and decorative grotesqueries range from arrangements of bones and skull-faced flowers to bunnies and clownish caricatures. Grimly plainly worked hard, but, as the title indicates, the result serves his own artistic vision more than Mary Shelley's. (Graphic classic. 14 up)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
As he explains in his author's note, Grimly spent four years working on his adaptation of Mary Shelley's classic novel, an endeavor that seems to mirror Victor Frankenstein's desperate quests to create life in the monster and to prevent the monster from taking his own. Grimly, who also illustrated Edgar Allen Poe's Tales of Death and Dementia (2009), does not neglect either the horror elements of Shelley's story nor the science-fiction ones. His striking artwork is an assemblage of genres, a kind of gothic steampunk, full of grinning skulls, odd machines, and characters in corsets or in coats decorated with bones. Befitting its source material, Grimly's creation is a hybrid work, combining elements of graphic and prose novels, and often so much so that it fights any simple classification. He mixes handwritten letters with long sections of illustrated prose and wordless pages of comic art panels that tell the monster's story. The text is, as the cover says, assembled from the original text by Mary Shelley, but despite that, it reads smoothly, without the abrupt cuts that mar some adaptations. Purists might frown, but the cover alone is sure to catch the eye of budding horror fans who might otherwise pass over the original.--Wildsmith, Snow Copyright 2010 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
For all its pop-culture resonance, Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" is now, for many young readers especially, a daunting text, overgrown with flowery language and a supernatural narrative that may seem tedious in the era of "Twilight" and "The Hunger Games." Enter Grimly, who has succinctly synopsized Shelley's 1818 text and added his own drawings. The result is less a graphic novel than an illustrated version of Shelley's book that enlivens the prose while retaining its power to both frighten and engage sympathy for the monster-creator Victor Frankenstein. Indeed, this adaptation reminds us that "Frankenstein" is as much about Victor's ominous melancholy ("This night is dreadful, very dreadful"; "the demoniacal corpse to which I had so miserably given life") as it is about the monster he creates to distract him from his gloom. Grimly draws in long, spidery lines; heads of hair and beards curl up into ghostly wisps. Pages are frequently divided into either 12 box-shaped or four oblong panels, the better to suggest an undulating urgency in the tale's visual pacing. Many of us grew up with the James Whale-directed Boris Karloff horror-film version of "Frankenstein" in our heads; Grimly provides a new generation with fresh images. This is a richly morose nightmare of a book, a primer for young readers on the pleasures and dangers of decadent languidness - the Y.A. version of Joris-Karl Huysmans's "Against Nature."
