Fun With Frankenstein

Let's continue our look at Dick Briefer's classic Frankenstein strip during the comedy period with a trio of tales from 1946.

I mentioned last time that Briefer created the first few stories under the name Frank N. Stein. Six years later, he added a recursive layer to the weird humour of the series and brought in Frank N. Stein as a character -

Man - That nose still weirds me out. Just how bad was ol' Victor with the scalpel?
Anyway...

The nature of the series at this point was quite fluid, allowing Briefer to let his mind and brush wander as he pleased. Even off to the bottom of the ocean to visit Davy Jones (Not the Monkee)...

At the end of 1945, Frankenstein's popularity spawned his own title while he still continued to appear in Prize Comics. The first 17 issues would continue in the comedy vein before taking another twisting turn in direction and tone.

In this tale from early in the series, we see once again that Briefer can take the character anywhere to suit his mood and story.
Or anywhen...

As previously mentioned, however - it was not the somewhat deranged humour and unique character art that truly made Briefer's Frankenstein so Odd. It was the ever adapting nature of the strip that really stands out...

page art by Dick Briefer for Prize Comics #s 62 & 64 and Frankenstein # 3 (1946)

The Frankenstein Brief(er)

In the first of our recent posts featuring the work of Dick Briefer, i mentioned that he had done his own distinctive version of a famous classic character...

Early episodes frequently made note of the fact that while technically he's Frankenstein's monster, everyone calls him Frankenstein. As you can see from the introduction above, things evolved along the way. One thing remained consistent was Dick Briefer (though he used the name Frank N Stein for the first few, then Richard Briefer before settling into Dick Briefer for the next few decades.)

The strip went through some odd changes over the years, but the most famous incarnation was this strange comedy version of the character. (Fret not - we'll come back to those other versions)

To give an indication of the weird humor prevalent in the series, here are some of the splash panels kicking of some of the stories-

Along with many strange adventures, he also met the man who made him famous in the cinematic world -

To wrap up this first post, here's the story to go with the cover above -

Coming up - some of those other weird tales of Briefer's Frankenstein...

page art by Dick Briefer for Prize Comics #s 43 & 48 and Frankenstein Comics #s 2, 3, 6, 10, 11, 14, & 15 (1944, 1946, 1947, 1948)

Scarlet Before Red

A year before Simon & Kirby unleashed the Red Skull upon the world, there was already a crimson cadaver headed villain on the scene - the Scarlet Skull!

Did Joe and Jack ever see him? Is Batman a transvestite?
Who knows?

But let's take a quick peek at these three (1-page) episodes of Seaweed Sam - The Rhyming Rover...

Hmm...  using Doctor  Doom  Danger's gravity nullification beam to send our heroes flying into orbit. That seems familiar somehow...

We'll come back to Victor Pazmiño's odd little series which ran for about 75 issues of Famous Funnies after i finish beating the week into submission.

page art by Victor Pazmiño for Famous Funnies #s 73-75 (1940-1941)