The Death Of Frankenstein

My Monster Memories this time are of "2073: The Death of the Monster" as printed in the June 1974 issue #6 of Skywald Publications "Scream" comic magazine.

(Click on images to enlarge.)

Being picked up by a strange woman at a bar made him feel cheap.

These mags were scarce and hard to find on the newsstands in my area back then for some reason. I never passed up an opportunity to get them whenever they turned up.

This particular issue comes with an olfactory association that most don't have. I was 15 when I found it in one of my weekend walks down to Chi-chester's drugstore on Vineville Ave. in Macon Ga. As I headed back to (you guessed it) my Grandma's house, where I was visiting for the weekend as I liked to do, I took the railroad tracks instead of the main road. The tracks ran beside Vineville about a block over, and as such went right behind my Grandma's house, which was on the short dead-end street Carolina Avenue across from the GA Blind Academy. As my zippered boots crunched in the gravel, the odor of the treated railroad ties was strong in the summer heat. Reading as I walked, the scent became attached to my times walking from the store, but also when I read this particular magazine I can still almost smell it!

"Give my creation... li-i-i-i-i-ife!"

Over at my other blog, Sweet Skulls, I posted the skull-centric cover art to this issue, since it fit the format better. But the inside comic fit here better, so I've scanned in the pages of the cover story for your enjoyment, and am posting it here, on the more appropriately-themed blog.
View the cover over at the entry on Sweet Skulls.

The art is exceptional, and the story unusual; Frankenstein's Monster and futuristic flying cars are not something you'd ever expect to see together. And the way the woman are fighting over him in the story,

one supposes they heard about the oversize dimensions of all his body parts as discussed in "Young Frankenstein!" "He's going to be very popular," as Igor rightly surmised.

Starting off abruptly with the Monster's unexplained return to life, the story gets underway rapidly without going into all the details that can be taken for granted; although one does feel as if a page is missing. Unless a mistake was made in printing (it's been known to happen) all of the pages are here, I counted good while scanning. UPDATE: I have found the earlier story that explains how he got there! Read it here.

Not strong on bone-crushing action as we might expect, the idea is engaging nonetheless, one of the highlights being the flashback of his creation by the Modern Prometheus. I think you'll enjoy it.

Revenge is indeed a dish best served cold. And although he doesn't allow himself to indulge in the offer of multiple feminine partners, he does at least get a good hearty belly-laugh before expiring, and I'm sure that made him feel good. And for once his departure was peaceful, surrounded by beautiful nurses, rather then pitchfork-waving villagers and the like, setting fire to him, or blowing him up, or drowning him, giving him a thousand paper cuts, and so on.

I have another "Frankenstein's Monster in the future" from another issue, which I'll post as soon as I can find it in my bookcase!

Oh, and just as a freebie, in case you didn't get enough Frankenstein to satisfy your craving yet, here is an extra: a scan of "Master And Slave!!" from my dog-eared copy of Marvel's July 1971 issue of "Creatures on the Loose." It was a reprint from the original Atlas comics in 1961.