That memed image from the comic - you’ve seen it, the one where he’s tapping on the window laughing - it’s actually a perfect distillation of the comic. When the monster is given a prospective mate by his creator, the moment we see the two together on the page we understand why these two will reject each other - there’s no room for them to stand together!Ĭlaustrophobia is key in this adaptation. He’s large, but in an emaciated fashion, a walking hollow that can never be fed. Ito’s Frankenstein looks like a massive version of HP Lovecraft but with the skin boiled off to expose the raw flesh, a kind of object that doesn’t quite create sympathy but rather a feeling that his pain in existence is so harsh that its comprehension would harm you. Here the delirious dirge of horror pollutes the prettiness of the plain. And then he stands up! In the room that can’t sustain him! There are plenty of depictions of Frankenstein’s monster that capture the poetry of this moment - Bernie Wrightson’s illustrated version immediately comes to mind - but this is the rare vision which makes the act of creation as violent and grotesque as an act of killing. It’s too big, gnarly, already a mistake, too much body for the room to bear. What we are drawn to is the mass of body parts strung together, their organs oozing onto a mat laid out so that maybe the floors will stay clean. Scientific-looking trinkets are littered about the room like scattered beer cans, the room of his birth more a 19th century man-cave than a laboratory. In Ito’s hands, there is no marvelous invention, no awe-inspiring contraption to ogle. The brilliance of Ito’s version reaches its pitch in Frankenstein’s creation of the monster. Without that gloomy labor, Ito could be any mangaka, and this is just a comic book of Frankenstein.

These pages are light, literally so - daylight leaves little room for Ito’s oppressive hatching, and it leeches away the distinctive character of his art. Maybe I have a short attention span, but it often seems that Ito does as well. When Ito is not chasing this feeling, the comic falls slack, stiffening into the straightforward retelling of a Classics Illustrated, where pages upon pages unfold of men and women in stodgy Victorian dress and upright posture, discussing plans for weddings that I couldn’t care less about. Junji Ito’s Frankenstein is a comic chasing a feeling, a vibe, one great impression gleaned from Mary Shelley’s novel and essentially nothing else. Has black and white hatching ever looked so brown? No space could contain his painfully large body, and the rooms he inhabits are dank and cramped. He’s afraid, he’s screaming, he’s mocking you, but whatever he is, it’s hard to look at him without getting the feeling he’s howling, or moaning constantly. His eyes stare out a face that seems to lack skin. Bits of human bodies strewn on the floor, hacked apart with clumsy implements and sewn together with dirty needles.

Frankenstein junji