We chat with the cartoonist about his first foray into the Universal Monsters realm and his love for the Monster.
Welcome to Creator Corner, our recurring interview series in which we chat with the coolest and most thought-provoking creators in the industry. In this entry, we're conversing with Michael Walsh about Frankenstein. Listen to the unedited audio HERE.
First came Dracula, then came The Creature from the Black Lagoon Lives, and now we have Mr. Tall, Green, and Gorgeously Grotesque. The latest team-up between Universal Pictures and Skybound Entertainment is Frankenstein, spearheaded by the delectably twisted cartoonist Michael Walsh. The four-issue series adapts the original 1931 film, based on the Mary Shelley classic, but adds a new character and radically expands the perspective of every other character involved, especially the Monster and all the pieces he's made of.
Michael Walsh can't remember a time when he wasn't aware of Frankenstein's Monster. The creature is inescapable, having thoroughly soaked himself into the popular imagination. After Shelley dropped the good doctor and his creation into our dreams and nightmares, countless writers and artists have put their spin on the concept. Rarely do you encounter anything fresh. Miraculously, Walsh finds a new way in, as if his art alone wasn't already enough of a sell.
Frankenstein's first two issues are currently available, and we Zoomed with Walsh in an effort to better appreciate his point of view and the mission that comes with it. We discuss his earliest experiences with Frankenstein, how his relationship with the material has evolved since then, and what the worst adaptations get so wrong about Mary Shelley.
This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.
Michael Walsh Can't Escape Frankenstein
Brad: I am curious about when you experienced the Frankenstein story the first time, how old were you, and what version of the story was it?
Michael Walsh: Well, I think that as a kid, you just see Frankenstein's Monster everywhere, and so you know who the character is, who Frankenstein's Monster is, what he looks like, or at least the most iconic version, which is the version that I got to use for my book, which is the Boris Karloff version. So, I don't know when I first saw the Monster, let's say that, but I was actually quite terrified of horror movies and shows and the genre itself as a young kid. I wasn't a big horror guy until I was in grade seven, eight, nine, until I became a young teenager. And then, at that point, I became obsessed with it.
Early in high school I did a deep dive of all the classic horror movies, and I watched the original 1931 Frankenstein at that time, and I really loved it. Then I read Mary Shelley's Frankenstein also in high school, and that became one of my favorite novels of all time, and it's probably still in my top 10 favorite novels. I think it's just an incredible book, so far ahead of its time, and it still just holds up in so many ways today.
Brad: And how has your relationship with that story evolved since you first read the book, first saw that movie?
Michael Walsh: Well, I think that as you get older, you look at things with more insight into the world and into people's relationships. I think as a young teen, sometimes, at least, I did read things a little bit superficially, and now when I read them or watch them, I look at them through a totally different lens, and I see a lot of the unspoken messaging and themes and stories, especially with something like Frankenstein where there's in the novel, there's just so much depth, and the character arcs are a little bit unpredictable. They're not your typical character arcs. And it's not like you're on a hero's journey, let's say, which I think a lot of what we get today exists in that shape. These stories that are being told to us. It's nice to get a story like this where there's no clean delineation between good and bad. I picture Frankenstein as a tragedy first and a sci-fi, psychological horror second.
Brad: Yeah, for sure. And I think in your comic, the first time the word monster is uttered is towards Henry-
Michael Walsh: Yes.
Brad: ... and not towards the creature. Clearly that's on purpose-
Michael Walsh: Yes.
Brad: Leaning into the tragedy of it all.
Michael Walsh: Yeah. And I think that's a big part of why I introduced the character of Paul, which is an original character that I've added into the mythology of the 1931 Frankenstein. It was so that we could see the doctor from the point of view of someone who is removed from his life and his story. Because I think when you frame the story from the doctor's point of view, you're able to sympathize with him a little bit more because you get more of his interiority. But when you're seeing the doctor's story through the point of view of an outsider, it makes him look quite despicable, especially if you're seeing him at his worst moments.
I wanted to show him at his worst, the doctor at his worst, to start the story and then move backward through there. He has a backward character arc that you'll see here. And he exists peripherally to the story for a good chunk of it, because I really wanted to put the focus on some of the underutilized characters from the film like Fritz and Elizabeth. So you'll get a little bit more of those character stories. And even in the last issue, you'll get to see a little bit more of Maria's father, who I think has the possibility to be an interesting character.
Michael Walsh Gives New Life to Frankenstein
Brad: By introducing Paul, you also create a level of stakes that were not necessarily there for the reader beforehand.
Michael Walsh: Yeah, that was also really important because I've done a few adaptations in my time in comics. I did The Last Jedi, and I've worked on X-Files and some things like that. But I find if you know where the characters are going to be after the story, then there's no stakes because there's never any tension of whether this character is going to make it out alive. By introducing a new character, I wanted to hopefully give readers a sense that there is actual danger for Paul in this story. Since we've never seen him in the movie before, we have no idea where the story will take him. And having that mystery adds another element to the story that I think would've been missing without some new characters.
Brad: And you also play with the story's structure. When you read the second issue, you revisit some critical sequences in the first issue. How did you land on that?
Michael Walsh: The story is structurally quite complex, actually. You don't really get that from the first issue, but as the issues keep going, I don't think it's too much of a spoiler because you'll figure it out right at the start of the second issue. But essentially, each issue has a framing sequence where it starts off going farther and farther into the past, and then the rest of the story moves farther forward and forward. So we have two diverging timelines showing how we get there and where it is going. I thought that would be a really interesting way to tell the story, to be able to show the body parts before they were part of the monster and then also focus on the monster and show those body parts now where they are.
There are some other questions that the reader is being asked. Is there memory in the bones, in the skin and the muscle? Do these things carry on with the body after the brain is gone? Or if the hand of the monster and the brain of the monster have encountered each other in a previous life, what battle does that create within the body of the monster itself? I don't know. It's just like there's a bunch of bigger, weirder questions that are happening underneath the skin of the comic that I think are really interesting, that I had a lot of fun with, that they're not super relevant or they're not super topical in terms of the plot in the book itself. But they're things that I had a lot of fun playing with while writing the scripts.
Brad: And a lot of fun that I had in reading the comics. When we get to the second chapter, "The Brain of a Killer," and we go back a little bit in time in those first few pages to the brain of the killer and how you transition then to where that brain is now. Yeah, it does create a lot of energy and a lot of mystery in the concept of the monster that we've all had some relationship with for a very, very long time, but maybe we've never really approached it this way before. Certainly, I hadn't.
Michael Walsh: I hadn't really read anything where it covered each of the body parts. I think the closest to what I'm doing, just in terms of that question, would be maybe Penny Dreadful, which I thought was a really fun show. I thought probably the best part of it was Frankenstein's Monster and the performance of that actor. And it gets in a little bit in that about the previous life of the Monster, but in that version of the story, Frankenstein's Monster is just one thing, one person with one face that has a history, whereas this has all these conflicting histories of each of the body parts. So, I think that internal conflict is something that you'll see more of within the creature.
Michael Walsh on The Good, The Bad, and The Frankenstein
Brad: What do Frankenstein stories do wrong when they interpret it poorly?
Michael Walsh: I think the biggest, the cardinal sin of doing a Frankenstein story is to make the monster evil or bad or monstrous even. I feel like the monster just has to be a tragic figure. And even in the novel when the monster decides that he's going to go on this huge journey of revenge, and it's so dark and cruel, he gets to that point after being abused, after losing his innocence. I think showing the innocence of the monster is really important, showing that the monster was mistreated and twisted up by the actual monsters, which are the people around him, which are the doctor, which are Fritz, and some of the townsfolk that don't even know that this guy did hurt Maria and are willing to burn him alive.
I am trying to get to the heart of that a little bit as well. It's almost a bit of a nature versus nurture story there thematically. I really want people to feel bad for the monster because it's not the poor monster's fault. He's just the childlike creature that was created by a doctor grasping for greatness. And that's a really important thing.
And I think also portraying Dr. Frankenstein as this endearing, philosophical protagonist that's just trying to do good is to take away from some of, I think, the depth of the character where he was doing a great experiment, he's a genius, but he also threw away all the things that he cared about. He sacrificed his humanity for the experiment and became a monster himself. I think that's a really important part of the story that must also be told.
Frankenstein issues 1 and 2 are out now from Skybound Entertainment and Image Comics.
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