Oddities: James Whale’s Frankenstein – the photonovel

James Whale’s Frankenstein was published in 1974 by Picador in the UK as part of their Film Classics Library series.

I’ve been wrestling with how to categorise this one for a while… Does it count as a noncomic or an oddity? Or is it neither? Or all three?

I eventually concluded that it can’t be a noncomic because noncomics are things that seem like they might be comics (such as the William Shatner biography) or things that are connected to comics but actually aren’t comics (like the Superman Which Way book). Whereas this book doesn’t, at first glance, look like a comic-book, but it actually is one.

Ah, but is it?

Yes, it is.

Edited by Richard J. Anobile, James Whale’s Frankenstein is 215mm by 280mm, and clocks in at a nice, hefty 2⁸ pages, which is of course 100000000 in binary (or 256 in normal numbers).

An error: the blurb on the back says “Produced in 1932…” but the film was released in late 1931 in the USA. With most publishers, a mistake of that magnitude meant that heads would roll, but not so in this case because they were bolted on.

Inside, there’s an introduction by the editor (which, rather oddly, includes a photograph of himself) in which he chats about the making of the movie, and then we’re on to the actual contents!

“But Uncle Rusty, what are those contents?” I shall pretend you’ve asked. “If this article is merely a review of book about the 1931 Frankenstien movie, then why is it included here on your world-not-famous comics blog?”

Well, first, you’ve mis-spelled “Frankenstein” there: the handy way to remember it is that the E and the I at the end should be in alphabetical order. And second, here’s a look at the insides of the book…

(Pages 196 and 197 of James Whale’s Frankenstein, : the dark area in the middle is where the light from my scanner can’t quite reach. Plus I’ve trimmed the margins a bit to make it easier to see the pages.)

Yep, someone — the editor — has gone to the trouble of assembling over a thousand frames from the movie into a book format! See, back in 1974 there was no easy way to watch movies unless they were currently running in the cinema or on TV — movies weren’t available on video because there were no home video systems. Well, there were some very early versions, but such things were only available to the massively wealthy or burglars. And if you had a 16mm or 8mm film projector you could sometimes buy severely cut-down versions of some movies (you could even buy those if you didn’t have a projector, but they’d be a lot less fun) but they were rare and expensive. And there was certainly no streaming or downloading or YouTubery going on.

So books of this nature were one of the few ways a consumer could experience all the thrills of the cinema in the comfort of their own home. Or out in the garden, even, if it was a nice day. Photonovels were all the rage for a while: here are some more from my collection…

A complete set of Star Trek fotonovels, all twelve of ’em.

In the “hen’s teeth” category is the Alien “movie novel” which was also edited by Richard J. Anobile (as was the Wrath of Khan book above). This has the same dimensions as the Frankenstein book, just about, where the others are all standard paperback size.

Photonovelry is an artform that’s defunct now, surpassed by newer and much, much, much, much better ways of bringing movies-on-demand into the home, but in the sense that a photonovel (or Fotonovel if you want to get all trademarky about it) is a story told via a sequence of still pictures, then such a thing should indeed be classed as a comic-book.

Back to Frankenstein, then. After the introduction by Mr Anobile, the cameras roll and the movie begins. It opens with Edward Van Sloan, who plays Dr Waldman, standing in front of a curtain warning us that this is a scary story, then the title cards come up:

You’ll note that the top-billed character is Henry Frankenstein, and not Victor — this adaptation has meandered some distance from its source material. Let’s have a closer look at those production credits…

I’ll try to unravel that… Mrs. Percy B. Shelley (see below for a rant about that!) wrote the original novel, Peggy Webling wrote a play based on the novel, John L. Balderston wrote a composition based on that play, and then Garrett Fort and Francis Edwards Faragoh wrote a screenplay based on the composition, then of course the movie was made from that screenplay. (So this is a book based on the movie based on the screenplay based on the composition based on the play based on the novel.)

So, yeah, viewers only familiar with the movie who then read the book will find that there are quite a few differences aside from Frankenstein’s first name.

Here’s the rant I promised two paragraphs ago… So, in 1931 “Mrs Percy B.” was apparently an alternate spelling of “Mary”, eh? No, back then it was common for women to be addressed as though they were just an extension of their husband, just one of the many, many ways in which men attempted to exert control over women: strip away their identity, and thus minimise their accomplishments. There’s some considerable irony there, given that Mary Shelley’s mother was the author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. And Mary herself was no slouch: Frankenstein is a horror story, a gothic romance, but because the story hinges on an extrapolation of then-current scientific knowledge, this is also science fiction. It is arguably the first proper science fiction story.

Anyway. Going back to the movie’s cast list, it’s also interesting that the actor who portrayed the monster (spoiler: there’s a monster in this movie!) doesn’t receive a proper credit, merely a question-mark. Curious indeed… and a bit pointless, as we’ll see later.

Immediately after the titles we get two frames/panels showing hands on a rope…

… and on the following page we see that they’re lowering a coffin into the ground. If you’re familiar with the story of Frankenstein, you can guess what’s going to happen to the occupant of that coffin. If not, I shall tell you: the dead person within will soon be removed and sliced up to become part of a reanimated composite zombie.

I’ll skip ahead a bit here. Because the editor’s insistence on reproducing the movie in as authentic a manner as possible we get a lot of, well, boring stuff that someone less reverential might decide to ditch. And that’s the biggest problem with this book: it’s pretty dull. Page after page of photos like this thrilling spread:

As far as I recall, in the movie that’s a rather tense scene. Here, not so much.

In some photonovels, such as the Star Trek ones pictured above, the dialogue is presented through speech bubbles, but in here it’s done Rupert Bear-style, appearing below the pictures:

And so it goes on, and on. The film is still a classic, way ahead of its time, but this adaptation just flattens it all out, stripping away any sense of tension or drama. You could zip through this book and read it in less than half of the movie’s runtime, but it’ll feel a heck of a lot longer.

The book is a curiosity, and I’m sure would be of interest to die-hard fans of the movie, but in this modern age of gammamax video players and super-9 home projectors, the photonovel format feels even more archaic than the movie it’s presenting.

To wrap up, though, a couple of mysteries…

First, about the book: if this is supposed to be an “authentic” reproduction, why are most of the frames cropped to portrait mode? The true movie experience should be landscape, even if it’s only in a 4:3 ratio.

And second, a mystery about the movie itself: why wasn’t Boris Karloff credited in the opening titles? Surely everyone knew who was playing the role? Karloff already had over seventy movies in the can before Frankenstein was released, so it’s not like he was a complete unknown. Plus his name is clear in the closing credits…
… so what was the secrecy all about?

Incidentally, Frankenstein was actually banned in Rusty’s ancestral homeland of Ireland for being “demoralizing and unsuitable for children or ‘nervous people’.” It was unbanned a few days later, but still, that’s something to be oddly proud of.

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Bonus: In the 1930s the handwriting of those working in the medical profession had yet to devolve into the “written while cycling at speed over cobblestones” scrawl with which modern audiences will be more familiar…

(I do like that he’s underlined the 7, just to be sure there’s no confusion as to exactly when he made this journal entry.)