Something Spooky: The X-Men Meet Frankenstein* In ‘X-Men’ #40

The story of Frankenstein — both the monster and the scientist — has straddled the line between science fiction and horror since its inception. Some consider it the first modern science fiction novel ever, in the way it features a character deliberately using modern scientific experiments to achieve fantastical results. Yet it was created to be a horror story, the entry of author Mary Shelley into the contest amongst her coteries of friends for who could write the best horror story amongst them, and thanks to Hollywood and performers like Boris Karloff, it resides most firmly in the horror genre today.

The fuzzy genre distinctions which surround the story (this is all to say nothing of its placement in the Gothic subgenre of literature as well) prime its themes and characters for use in cross-genre exercises, and not surprisingly, the tale of Frankenstein and his monster has a long and notable presence in the world of comic books. The first appearance of Frankenstein’s Monster in a Marvel Comic came in 1953 (when the company was called Atlas, and was publishing a lot of monster comics). The second appearance came in the late sixties, in the pages of X-Men #40.

True to the blurred genre lines of the original story, X-Men #40 lands more firmly in the “science fiction” camp than the horror camp. In part, this is due to the limitations of mainstream American comic book storytelling at the time, which was prevented from doing horror stories in any but the blandest possible ways by the Comics Code Authority. In part, it’s due to the fact that the X-Men themselves are cross-genre characters, being superheroes who, like the Fantastic Four, lean more heavily into science-fiction tropes than some of their superhero counterparts (and in the form of Angel’s wings and Beast’s extra large hands and feet, the mildest of body horror elements). But it’s also due to the fact that the Frankenstein Monster whom the X-Men battle in this issue isn’t the real (more on that shortly) Frankenstein’s Monster, but A. a robot and B. an alien.

The idea, as helpfully laid out in the closing panels via an infodump from Professor X, gleaned via a hasty scan of the Frankenstein monster’s mind, is that a race of beings from a tropical world sent the monster to Earth 150 years before the story as a sort of ambassador. Unfortunately, it went berserk, malfunctioned, attacked people, and was chased to the Arctic, where, being designed by especially warm-blooded beings, it succumbed to the cold, getting trapped in ice before breaking loose at the start of this story. How Mary Shelley came to learn of the android monster in order to dramatize it for her novel, Professor X cannot say.

But it does mean that, as far as this story is concerned, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is an adaptation of actual events. What’s wild is that, as far as the Marvel Universe is concerned, this story isn’t wrong about that: both Frankenstein and Bram Stoker’s Dracula are considered by the denizens of the Marvel Universe (at least the super-powered, in-the-know ones) to be fictional accounts of actual events (this idea is also explored in Frankenstein Unbound, a 1973 novel by Brian W. Aldiss, one of the more vociferous advocates of the “Frankenstein is the first science fiction novel” argument).

What’s even wilder is that years after X-Men #40, when Comics Code restrictions on monsters and other horror elements in general audience comics had loosened, Marvel would publish a Monster of Frankenstein series, starring the actual, non-alien android, Frankenstein’s Monster. Which means that, at one point in the in-universe history of the Marvel Universe, there were two Frankenstein Monsters running around, one of whom resembled the other purely by coincidence, and that Mary Shelley’s Marvel Universe counterpart somehow learned of one or both of these creatures’ existences and adapted their story into her novel.

All things considered, X-Men #40 isn’t a great comic. When it was first published, the series was struggling sales-wise and Roy Thomas, still coming into his own as a writer, was mostly biding time before beginning a story that shakes up the book drastically in an effort to goose sales. Penciler Don Heck is a solid Silver Age artist, but his work on the issue falls into the “perfectly adequate” camp of artists that characterize the visual aesthetic of X-Men in the years between Jack Kirby and Neal Adams (barring a couple Jim Steranko-drawn issues). Story-wise, it reads a bit like an X-Men/Hulk battle, with the Frankenstein’s Monster android mostly depicted as a big dumb strong guy, only in this case the Hulk is also particularly sensitive to cold and it takes the X-Men until the very end of the issue to remember they have a guy whose whole deal is “being cold” and proceed to get out of the way so Iceman can put the creature back in stasis.

But while not great, this is nevertheless one of my favorite Silver Age issues of X-Men. If I can’t read an actual, you know, good Silver Age story, one which follows through the promise of its cover and premise by presenting a genre-clash between classic Gothic horror and the more modern sci-fi of superheroes, then this is the kind of gonzo nonsense I want in my classic comics. A story where the plot is both brain-numbingly simple (“we can’t just send the ice guy out to end the fight in one panel, we’ve got pages to fill, let’s just have the characters punch each other for a bit”) and unnecessarily-complex (“that’s not Frankenstein’s Monster, it’s just an alien robot!”), one which randomly establishes an important Marvel Universe fact (“all those classic horror novels from the 1800s actually happened!”) that later gets even more complicated by future stories (“this isn’t Frankenstein’s Monster, but Frankenstein’s Monster is a character in the Marvel Universe!”).

As both a chilling slice of horror featuring one of literature and film’s great monster characters and as an intriguing genre-mashup that highlights the disparate conventions built into the premise of its antagonist, X-Men #40 utterly fails. But as an example of delightfully nonsensical, “we’ve gotta get the next issue out and if we offhandedly establish a wild premise for our burgeoning shared universe in the process, so be it!” bit of Silver Age storytelling, it’s second-to-none.