After last week’s disappointing relaunch of Animal Man, I was hoping Jeff Lemire wouldn’t disappoint me twice in one month. Lemire is a fantastic writer and I’d hate to admit that I dropped two of his new #1 books after one go. But this book, Frankenstein, has a lot of promise in that it’s a really crazy premise. Frankenstein and a bunch of other monsters team up to fight other monsters? How can I lose?

This is a comic where a good amount of exposition, or just a huge one-shot origin would have made it better. Lemire drops us right into the thick of things with Frankenstein getting introduced to his teammates and overall universe in a nutshell. But Lemire writes it in a way where it all seems common and not new for the readers. Take for example Dr. Frankenstein somehow having the power to generate into a new body (this case being a small, Japanese girl for some reason) and Lemire writes it in a way where he blows it off. I would have loved a more explanation then what is given here. Or how about how these characters came to be in the first place instead of yet another throw away line. Yes I want a crazy book out of this, and it is crazy with a bunch of fight sequences and Lemire throwing everything to the table. But what makes this book different from Thunderbolts, another ‘crazy’ book, is that Jeff Parker puts a lot of planning into his pages while Lemire seemed to go writing this and see if will play in the end. It doesn’t help that Frankenstein doesn’t get much to do here other then being the ‘reader’ in this case for being introduced to everything he would obviously know at this point. His constant ‘My God!’ or it’s variations got on my nerves quite quickly.

Alberto Ponticelli surprised me in that his style is remarkably similar to Jeff Lemire’s. While it isn’t a full, 100% likeness to Lemire’s art it does beg the question: Why didn’t Lemire draw this series in the first place? Considering how quickly he can draw an issue of Sweet Tooth it would seem to be a no brainer to let him draw at least one of these books. Maybe he just had no time considering of the massive workload he has right now. Anyways, back to Ponticelli. On one hand I like Ponticelli because of the Lemire comparison and his double page spreads of the huge action sequences are nicely done. But there is a lot of sketchiness to this, in a way that doesn’t make me like it in a Jeff Lemire sort of way. The anatomy and facial structure are very lose with Frankenstein’s head seemingly shrinking or enlarging in size in every panel. Dr. Frankenstein also looks pretty weird going from a Japanese school girl to a an American school girl with no rhyme or reason. It’s another instance where an inker would’ve been better in this case because if I learned from the art in Animal Man is that not all artists can ink themselves and do it well. The coloring is pretty good though by Jose Villarrubia which again might link to the Lemire likeness since he also colors Sweet Tooth.

Even though this wasn’t a bad book by any means, it’s a solid 3-star in my mind, I don’t think I’m going to stick with it. Lemire is obviously having fun with this and I’m sure the action is going to come fast and heavy with this title. But it feels like Lemire is just doing individual moments of action instead of making a coherent narrative. (Plus with practically no explanation for a lot of what’s going on it’s hard to care in my mind) Add in some rough (but not terrible) artwork by Ponticelli and it’s a pretty inconsistent title for me. It’s an obvious ‘trade wait’ title in my mind and while I’ll be more then happy to wait to read this I’m a bit upset that this didn’t ‘wow’ me enough for an ongoing read.

Sorry Jeff.