Zombies? Frankenstein Was Undead Before It Was Cool!

When I was a kid my favorite thing to draw was Frankenstein’s monster. Eventually, I drew a little monster family, and wrote little stories about their adventures together. They had a little dog, too. Frances, the daughter, really liked math and science, and liked to play with building frankenbugs.

Some kids are cooler than others.

I thought it’d be fun to do a post about my love of Frankenstein and fill your brains up with some frankenlove, but when that post crept up over a thousand words, I thought, how about a series of posts where we can just keep talking about Frankenstein for the unforeseeable future! I’m brilliant sometimes, like a dark and arrogant scientist I heard of this one time.

But, okay. We can’t talk about Frankenstein, without looking at where it all began: a book by a young woman waaay back in the day. Let’s get these posts started with some fun and interesting trivia, so you have something to talk about when you’re hanging out with your buddies in the cemetery.

Frankenstein, the book, Trivia:

• Frankenstein was originally published anonymously in 1818.
• Despite what you may have seen in some movies out there, the monster talks in the books. He’s well-spoken, and lonely. He says that even the devil had admirers like himself, and the monster is just the monster, all by his lonesome.
• Both Mary Shelley and the monster are vegetarian. I don’t make this up, it’s in the book folks.
• Frankenstein’s monster was not green with bolts in his neck. He had yellow eyes and skin, and straight black lips with long black hair. Frankenstein was trying to make him look as human as possible, it just, you know, didn’t go so great.
• While today we make Frankenstein monster cupcakes and Halloween costumes, back in the day this book was considered very controversial. Victor Frankenstein created the monster, created life, and there are many allusions to God in the story. There’s also drama about Mary Shelley being married to the famous writer Percy Shelley (actually there’s a whole world of drama there! but focusing on the book…) and her originally publishing the book anonymously. Many debated how much work he did on the book. The people who said of course she wrote it, said so because they considered the book poorly written. Drama, drama, drama.
• The story was written after a challenge by Lord Byron to write a ghost story on a trip with his friends, including Mary Shelley and her husband. Mary Shelley had a dream about someone coming back from the dead, and Frankenstein was born.

And while we’re getting this party started, why don’t you…

Check out The Midnight Society’s Frankenstein Pinterest board!

There are so many fun finds on there. Old wind up toys. Cupcakes. Tattoos. Pillows. Nails. Jewelry. Frankenhumor. Check it out!

Follow Midnight’s board Frankenstein on Pinterest.

And so it begins!  Are you partial to any Frankenstein stories out there? Anything you’d like to see in future Frankenstein inspired posts? Is it too cheesy to call this series of posts the Frankenblogs, or should I embrace it? Until next Wednesday, Midnighters!