Old Classic Comic Book Review: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Comic books are easier to review than novels for several reasons.  Comic books are shorter.  The reviewer can show more pictures and make the review more appealing visually.  The comic reviewer can also critique words and art, giving the reviewer more to work with.

Despite all this, I rarely review a comic book on my blog.  Comic books don’t have the universal appeal of most bestselling novels.  Plus, comic book readers would rather read a comic book themselves than waste their time reading a comic book review.

Comic books based on classic novels are a little different, though, at least for me.  When I was a kid, my dad had a small collection of Classics Illustrated from the 1940s and 1950s, and I read a bunch of these over and over, and then when I was a teenager I started reading the classic novels.  Without the background and context of the Classics Illustrated comic books, I might not have understood much of what was going on in these classic novels.  With the help of these classic comics and a little persistence, I finished most classic novels that I started.

One of those difficult novels was Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.   Frankenstein is a perfect novel for a classic comic.  There’s enough interesting stuff  going on in the book to make for interesting illustrations, and the words in the book are difficult so that most average readers struggle with the book.

Without further ado, here’s my review of my very own copy (which originally belonged to my dad) of Classics Illustrated #26: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.