Rhapsodies

I’m really pleased how today’s prompt, “Franken Friday” turned out. I got an early start on it and the initial sketch flowed really well. If it wasn’t for a comedy of errors regarding the pen I’ve been using for this challenge and having to go replace it I would have finished it about an hour earlier than previous efforts.

At risk of starting one of those clashes of pedants, to me, Frankenstein is the doctor end of story. So when I have to do Frankenstein the doctor has to be there. (Not that I don’t enjoy drawing the creature as well. While there are obviously other great Frankensteins, for me it’s a toss-up between Colin Clive and Peter Cushing. While with Clive’s performance, I keep finding myself wanting to slap his doctor upside the head, I still find myself leaning towards his well-meaning doofus Frankenstein, rather than Cushing’s hubristic villain. In a way, Clive’s Frankenstein is one of the only “good” mad scientists in media.

Despite that I find myself using Cushing’s Frankenstein as a model for my version of Dr. Pretorious. Thanks, to James Whale’s Bride of Frankenstein and to a lesser extent, Cartoon Network’s Mary Shelly’s Frankenhole I’m finding the Doctor as important to the myth of Frankenstein as Igor. In the version I’m imagining right now, Pretorious is Frankenstein’s lab manager who both supports and enables him. He’s far more amoral than his boss, but at the same time, while more grounded lacks Frankenstein’s inspired mad brilliance… I think I’m going to play with this train of thought more.)

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