Of Course There’s a Frankenstein Monster (Color)

And here’s the color version of yesterday’s Frankenstein monster. He’s got a little more green in him than I generally give my Frankensteins. I grew up with Herman Munster and the ubiquitous Universal Frankenstein and, however cool those characters are (or are not), I tend to react against them when I draw a Frankenstein.

As I understand it, the Universal Frankenstein wasn’t meant to be green. All of the original Universal Frankenstein movies were filmed in black and white. The makeup that Boris Karloff wore in the first films was green because it photographed as a sickly shade of grey. Color publicity photos and green shaded versions of the monster in later promotional material fixed his color as green in the public’s imagination.

The world is full of square headed green Frankies. I don’t need to add to the number. Mary Shelley’s version was a very different monster. There have been many different interpretations of the creature on stage and screen and comic book page in the last 180+ years. And I like different.