Frankenstein :The Mad Science of Dick Briefer

by Dick Briefer

A truly unusual take on the Frankenstein mythos, Frankenstein: The Mad Science of Dick Briefer reanimates a most unusual Frankenstein monster, one “who, like Ferdinand the Bull, would rather pluck flowers than pluck off people’s heads.” Briefer’s Frankenstein mixes screwball comedy with canny observation of postwar America into a creation that would shock the original monster senseless! It’s alive!

Collects Frankenstein #1–#7 (Prize Publications, 1945–1946).

Genres: Comics, Humor, Fiction, Graphic Novels

260 pages, Hardcover

First published May 27, 2015

Reviews

[Bob Fish · Rating 5 out of 5]

These are the first seven issues of the brilliant Frankenstein comic book by Dick Briefer.
PS Artbooks did a complete collection, I did a video review :

https://youtu.be/FjDWXMvluG4

[Glimmer · Rating 4 out of 5]

good ol' hearty, fun comics for all ages

[Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Goodreads (and Amazon) have the various collections of Briefer's Frankenstein work listed as different editions of the same book but they are not and each is a very different collection. So for each review I'm dropping in this note which will hopefully help folks.

IDW's The Chilling Archive of Horror Comics: Dick Briefer's Frankenstein gives the best over view of Briefer's humorous and horrific takes on the Monster, with selections of both. All selections are in color, printed on flat comic paper. Features: Amply-illustrated multi-page introduction by Craig Yoe.

THIS COLLECTION is Dark Horse's Frankenstein: The Mad Science of Dick Briefer is a collection of the complete first seven issues Briefer's humorous take on the Monster. All stories are in color, printed on flat paper but not comic paper. Features: One-page forward by John Arcudi. (This is a very nice collection and is recommended. It is interesting to note that Craig Yoe, the driving force behind IDW's The Chilling Archive of Horror Comics, is given a special thanks in this collection and thus to me that shows that this has some of the "B sides" of Briefer's humorous Monster work that Yoe could not fit in the IDW collection.)

Idea Man Production's The Monster of Frankenstein: Dick Breifer's 1950s Horror Comic Epic is a collection of Briefer's 1949-1952 all-horror take on the Monster . All stories are printed in black and white. Features: Three-page introduction by David Jacobs and Afterwords by E.J. Robinson and Alicia Jo Rabins.

[Bill Wallace · Rating 4 out of 5]

Briefer's Frankenstein went through three incarnations...an early horror strip in Prize comics, a later horror run, and between those two conventional interpretations of Ms Shelley's monster, this wacky, free form humor comic. Some of the strips are like Charles Addams for children, set in a world of vampires and ghosts with human neuroses, while others are humor strips in which Frankenstein could be replaced by virtually any other funny comic character. My favorites are the strips that come completely untethered from physics and reality, like the one where Frankie is imprisoned in a bottle and becomes a benign genie. These strips are being reprinted by two different companies, so I'm not sure if Dark Horse will continue to reprint the series or not, but I hope they do!