 Noteworthy Items:
by DAVID
BIRD
pp 01-04: It’s 1870 and the famous Monster is throwing
open a door and to hear the words, “Die, Frankenstein!
Die!” And who is saying it? Our old friend Melmoth.
Mind you, he’s not looking very old. In fact, he looks
much more human than he did in Klarion. It’s
Frankenstein that has the Sheeda blue skin tone – albeit
it a greyish blue. They don’t tell us why they hate
one another, and so we don’t know, but we do learn
that they’d kill each other if only the Monster were
living or Melmoth could be killed.
We know from his last appearance that he can’t be.
The waters of the cauldron of life run through him. But the
deposed king thinks he might have a way to stop Frankenstein
and sets a group of deformed midgets, with severe gingivitis,
on him. He says they’re carrion eaters. Perfect for
destroying a man made of dead bodies. Frankie’s response?
He shoots Melmoth’s head clean off. Now we know why
his neck was stitched up, though we don’t learn why
his complexion changed. With Frankenstein screaming, “Death
to the circus of maggots! Death to its blasphemous ringmaster!” the
train goes off the tracks.
The train crash is a bit odd because the panels are out
of order. The correct order should be (panel) one, three,
five, two, four, six. But it’s further complicated
because panels two, three, and six are captioned 1925, 1955,
2005. Shouldn’t panel four be 1955? I’ve not
heard an explanation of this error, but we have learned a
little about Melmoth, we see that Frankie’s gun is
one of the weapons the time tailors boxed up in Seven
Soldiers #0, and, given that Frankenstein is buried
in a train wreck from 1870 to 2005, we can be should he isn’t
the Johnny Frankenstein that fought at Miracle Mesa.
pp 05-12: Some kids never get a break.
Meet… well,
we never learn his name. The kids call him Uglyhead, and
that’s all we have to go on. Whoever he is, he is ugly
and since he forced into the social torture we call high
school, he is not being allowed to forget it. The moment
he steps on to the school grounds, its ugly, ugly, ugly.
Interestingly, the first time we see him, there’s a
flying insect near him.
Enter Kim. This issue follows the conventions of high school
stories everywhere, even to the point of staging its climax
at the prom, and Kim is the pretty girl who could be part
of the popular clique, but chooses to not join. She tells
Uglyhead to ignore them. He seems surprised. Likely he’s
not used to being spoken to. Then he drops the bomb. He’s
a mind reader. Even better, people’s thoughts appear
to him as though they were written “on those little
white comic book clouds.” He spends a moment considering
how beautiful Kim’s thoughts are, and then he decides
to spare her. Spare her? Not to get too far ahead, but I
think that Uglyhead is a natural psychic, that the Sheeda
exploit this through a spine rider, rather than causing it,
and that the flying insect we saw marked the spine rider’s
arrival. If the thoughts on display to him are any indication,
it’s not much of a gift. His classmates seem to have
given themselves over to their various high school stereotypes.
Kim has a boyfriend, who, at first glance, he seems to be
a dumb jock, though later he demonstrates an heroic side.
Uglyhead isn’t sure whether he’s schizophrenic
or a god, but he decides to find out by approaching a pretty
blonde. She’s standing outside Excalibur Fantasy Butterfly
World, a shop very much like a comics shop, only centered
on butterflies. I say “centered on” because I’m
not exactly sure what a butterfly shop would sell. He starts
telling her what she is thinking and then move on to making
suggestions. He moves from reading to writing, if you will;
from observing the story to controlling it. A small town
Zor? He convinces her that she’s an uglyhead, too,
and then he goes on to talk about butterflies and maggots
and change. There is a rather large spine rider on his back.
He tells her that butterflies start as maggots, but they
actually start as caterpillars. We’ve seen “maggots” in
the story, of course. Buried with Frankenstein.
When we next see the girl, she’s sitting in front
of her computer and her appearance has rapidly gone down
hill. Yes, she’s an uglyhead, too. Complete with spine
rider. Her boyfriend Steve calls. She tells him she’s
given up cheerleading and the prom for collecting, and that
she has a new boyfriend who’s all about zits and no
confidence. She manages, just barely, to exert herself long
enough to plead for his help. He doesn’t come running.
He doesn’t seem to remember her plea until the next
day, when his criticisms bring Uglyhead to her defence. In
defending her, though, Uglyhead seems to have found his voice.
He immediately brings everyone there under his control, telling
them that the maggots are at the butterfly shop, that they
need humans to grow on, and that they must all to go to the
shop to prepare for prom night.
pp 13-22: Kim arrives at the prom with
her boyfriend. The parking lot is deserted. They notice how
weird everything is in town. The school is dark and quiet.
They walk in on Uglyhead surrounded by the student body.
The students all have maggots on their backs. A maggot on
the left has a spine rider emerging. Uglyhead recognizes
Kim and asks her to be his queen. She thinks he’s crazy
and, given that he’s
a mind reader, that’s not the safest thought to have.
They both run for their lives, with the boyfriend laying
his down in order to give her time to get away. “I
love you,” he says, “In a totally doomed way
that you’ll never forget.” As she runs we see
the word Uglyhead spelt backwards in her thoughts. She’s
not doing a Zatanna like spell. The only thought balloons
we see in the issue represent the thoughts Uglyhead is reading.
From his perspective, the word isn’t backwards.
It looks like all is lost for Kim, when… Frankenstein
emerges through the school floor. Apparently he’s been
able to sense something of what is going on around him, but
he isn’t focused until Kim attempts to zap him with
a taser. The jolt of electricty is is just what he needed.
In no time at all he throws Uglyhead through the window of
the butterfly shop, grabs a sword out of the window and uses
it to kill the boy and the spine rider in one blow, then
he burns down the school in order to destroy the infestation.
Interestingly, the sword in the window is the same one he
had on the train. He calls it Michael’s Sword, presumably
a reference to the archangel
Michael who is often depicted with a sword. According
to the Book of Revelations it will by Michael who defeats
Satan. Just the weapon to fight evil. Kim wants to
go with him. She could be Girl Frankenstein. But, no, this
monster walks alone.
As story’s go, it has little to do with the main arch,
but it does contain a lot of useful information. We learn
something of Melmoth, and the origins of the spine riders.
Just how much their presence in the Northwest has to do with
their invasion is an open question. If these “maggots” are
the same ones that crashed in the train, they may have nothing
to do with it (Melmoth having been overthrown by Gloriana).
The return of the butterfly motif is interesting as well.
When Justin found Olwen in Shining
Knight #1 she had
butterfly wings, and when the captured knight was brought
before the Sheeda Queen in issue three there was also a butterfly.
Butterflies represent change and rebirth. There are the final
state of the capterpillars. Given what we know of the future
and the origins of the Sheeda, perhaps the motif is supposed
to suggest something about our relationship to them. The
story also has some thinly disguised swipes at comic collectors,
but I’ll let that go. I am one and we can quite masochistic
when it comes to these kind of insults. We just take it.
What I liked most about this issue is how interested I became
in the main character. When I first saw the list of soldiers
the one that did nothing for me was Frankenstein. What could
they do with Frankie? The second issue takes things up a
few notches, but when I was done reading this one I was convinced
Morrison had picked a winner. The Monster as dark avenger.
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