In the 46th installment of the Golden Age of Comic Books Podcast, we discuss the Golden Age Frankenstein created by the great Dick Briefer for Crestwood Publications for their titles, Prize Comics and Frankenstein Comics between 1940 and 1954. The Golden Age comic book version of the Frankenstein Monster first got his start in Prize Comics #7 in December of 1940. The character started out as a terrible and destructive creature, causing death and destruction around the City of New York. Ultimately, the monster’s creator, Victor Frankenstein, was phased out of the comics so a superhero character, Bulldog Denny could take his place and battle the Frankenstein monster. As WWII came to end, Crestwood changed its focus to humor mags, and Briefer followed suit, making Frankenstein a humorous feature starting in 1945. The “Merry Monster” got his own title, Frankenstein Comics in 1945. Crestwood stopped publishing the humorous Frankenstein stories with Prize Comics #68 and Frankenstein Comics #17 in 1949. With the rising popularity of horror comics in the early 1950’s, Crestwood brought back the Frankenstein monster for more horror stories with Frankenstein Comics #18 in March of 1952. Briefer’s monster rampaged through the pages of this magazine until it came to an end with issue #33 in October of 1954.
If you are interested in reading more about the Golden Age Frankenstein by Briefer, check out Alter-Ego Magazine #41 (October, 2004) and The Monster of Frankenstein: Dick Briefer’s 1950’s Horror Classic by IMP Publications in 2006.
In this edition, we also talk about the new Marvel Masterworks Atlas Era edition devoted to Tales of Suspense. As mentioned in the show, Michael Kelleher is responsible for some of the cover and art recreations in this book, and is auctioning some of his work to support the Hero Initiative. You can learn more about this November , 2006 auction at http://www.michaelkelleher.com.
Happy Halloween! Enjoy the show!
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