Darkness Waits To Ambush The Light — Reviewing ‘Frankenstein New World: The Speed Of Darkness’ #1

Welcome to the table,

Dark Horse Comics and Curious Objects have brought us another chapter in the ongoing tale of Frankenstein and Lilja. Let’s get into Frankenstein New World: The Speed of Darkness.

Picking up quite some time after the events of Frankenstein New World: The Sea of Forever, this series is scripted by Mike Mignola, Christopher Golden, and Thomas Sniegoski, with art by Peter Bergting, colors by Michelle Madsen, and letters by the always present Clem Robins. This story of Frankenstein and his human companion feels like a departure in tone from the two chapters that have come before.

This is not necessarily a bad thing, but something feels slightly shifted in the narrative. The wide-eyed wandering adventurer of an Earth long after the fall of mankind and the end-time events seen in the pages of Hellboy and the B.P.R.D. seems to be less strange and more structured than we have seen in previous tales.

Frankenstein and Lilja, using the strange Vril energy they both share, have been summoned by shared dreams and prophetic visions of Liz Sherman to her crystalized chamber, where she has charged them with stopping the corruption of the far future Earth by the forces of the Rot.

Called by Liz Sherman in visions to save the new world, Frankenstein and Lilja use Vril energy to aid them on their quest. But, as is the nature of such stories, Earth is being corrupted by a powerful and parasitic evil. Our wandering protagonists are running out of time to stop the darkness from spreading.

This third miniseries feels like it could be drawing the story to an end. I could very well be wrong, but the first two tales seemed to showcase class figures from the well-storied Hellboy and the B.P.R.D. landscapes. This one seems to be forging new ground, with only Liz and Frankenstein to anchor us to the world before the fall.

The Rot, an evolved and corrupting vampiric sickness, has grown its influence. It corrupts what it touches as it evolves over time, trudging like some rough beast towards our protagonists. The thing wants the energy they possess, a mystical light of sorts that they both share with the “Star Woman” Liz Sherman.

It’s a very real “darkness seeks to consume the light” situation. I really love this immortal construct who once fought vampires in the rain-slick Victorian streets and now crosses oceans in some far, far future of a world that has already begun its next cycle of life without seemingly the corruption of mankind. However, there is something that feels missing in this first chapter.

I think that is why this feels like the beginning of the end to me. There is a reaffirming of larger plot points. Lilja, a child in past chapters, is older now, more assured of herself. Frankenstein is immortal, but his hair has grown more; he seems more pulled together in the surface landscape of the “New World.”

This does not feel like the beginning of an adventure to cross a vast ocean and encounter fresh horrors, or a quest from the depths of the Hollow Earth to the surface to follow the shared dreams of an ancient and powerful pyromancer.

It feels like the team is establishing the battle lines, and with the rot’s newest metamorphosis, we are getting into direct classes between the vampiric malignance that the rot has grown in the lifeforms it has twisted and the characters we have been following for years through this strange new landscape.

I don’t dislike this issue by any stretch of the imagination, but it does not feel like the chapters that have come before. The sense of wonder seems to have been replaced with existential dread. The book that once felt like an exploration of a world so far into the future that it would take generations to reach and twice as long to explore feels as if its gears have been shifted to focus more on conflict and corruption than meeting new inhabitants.

This newest chapter of Frankenstein New World is no longer on a peaceful pilgrimage that is dusted with danger. We are now witnessing the full effects of the rot, and its corrupting evil as it directly clashes with our powerful protagonists in a world far beyond The End of all things. We are seeing that when the light arrives, it has indeed found that darkness was already there waiting to ambush it with tooth and claw.

Until next time, I’m not sure what is coming next in this post-B.P.R.D. world, there have been moments in past chapters where I thought I could reasonably see where the narrative was going to take us, but I’m without a rudder in this one, so only time will tell what happens next in this four-issue series.