Back in the day Japan sure got a lot of really neat adaptations of their films released in their magazines! While I have covered a lot of manga adaptations from yesteryear, there were also fairly regular novelizations (some of which we now have officially translated into English from scholar Jeffrey Angles), as well as sonograms (picture books with records) and the so-called illustrated stories or picture stories—prose retellings with copious accompanying sketches mostly in monotone and occasionally with color. I have only covered these illustrated stories sparingly as I don’t own many of them, but I wrote extensively about the Monster Picture Story: Godzilla (1954), and I have read the picture story versions of Godzilla Raids Again (1955), Rodan (1956), and The War of the Gargantuas (1966)—as well as the illustrated version of Frankenstein Conquers the World—or Frankenstein vs. Baragon, the topic of today’s review. Originally published in the summer special issue of Shonen Magazine back in 1964 and reprinted as part of the Godzilla All-Movie DVD Collectors Box series Vol. 20 (the one that also included the Frankenstein vs. Subterranean Monster manga I reviewed earlier), the tale (here titled Movie Story Frankenstein vs. the Subterranean Monster) is easily the shortest picture story I have read. Nevertheless, it features some killer art and interesting departures from the source material, so let’s dig in with my usual overly detailed summary (I’ll italicize it so you can skip to the analysis if you like).
The story jumps in right in the middle of the first act, with one Sueko Togami feeding an already enormous Frankenstein monster double the size of a normal human. This unnaturally large man is being held in the storage room of a hospital, and Sueko gives him a bucket of food while murmuring about what a poor creature the fellow is, trapped in a place like this.
We soon learn that the monster originated as a Caucasian waif found in a cave in the mountains, and that he was taken in at the local Hiroshima hospital where he began to grow at incredible speed. It appeared that the child had been exposed to the radiation from the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Dr. Bowen, who works at the hospital, speculates that the Germans sent the heart of Frankenstein’s monster (just called Frankenstein in the story) to Hiroshima, that the heart possessed the secret of eternal life, and that after arriving, it sprouted legs and arms and became a human. If this really is Frankenstein, though, he figures that should he cut off the creature’s arms or legs they will grow back quickly. To prove his hypothesis, he decides to perform an experiment, a dismembering… broadcast on television.
So, Dr. Bowen gets together a bunch of reporters with their cameras to watch as he cuts off Frank’s limbs. The lights from the reporters and their cameras ticks off the monster man and he flies into a rage. Dr. Bowen promises not to cut off the monster’s body parts after all, but Frank is inconsolable despite Bowen’s desperate please and manages to break free. A squad of policemen crowd in to take Frank down, spraying the creature with bullets to no avail. Frank bodily picks them up and throws one after the other onto the roof of the hospital. Patrol cars come speeding in to assault Frank, but the monster knocks over a light pole, taking out multiple vehicles before running for the hills.
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Back in the hospital, Dr. Bowen discovers an enormous living hand crawling across the floor—when Frank broke free, the monster severed his own hand, and the fact it can crawl of its own volition proves the freakishly huge white kid is really Frankenstein. The monster himself can also grow his own hand(s) back, Bowen reasons.
Soon, in Lake Biwa, Frankenstein appears again, now thirty times the size of a normal human being. Three police patrol boats attack Frank, only to have the giant outmaneuver them, smashing the boats up good before proceeding to Mt. Fuji.
According to the news, the JSDF is sending a tank battalion to go kill Frank, and when Sueko hears that, she insists to Bowen that they need to go save the big guy. Dr. Bowen agrees, stating that he was hoping to experiment on the oversized galoot some more, so they get in a helicopter and head on over to Mt. Fuji.
When they arrive, the earth starts shaking, trees start falling over, and a huge dinosaur bursts from under the ground. Immediately, Dr. Bowen identifies the beast as a Baragon and theorizes that the warm ground under the earth helped it to survive.
Baragon rampages through twelve rocket launchers as they launch their attack, bashing some into the air with his tail and crushing fleeing soldiers. The good Dr. Bowen realizes it’s best to run, but as he and his assistant perambulate with alacrity away from danger, Sueko trips on a root and sprawls on the ground long enough for Baragon to scoop her up in his claws.
Thankfully, Frankenstein appears just then, now the size of fifty men, and faces down the reptilian beast. Baragon lets Sueko go before attacking the giant. The pair grapple, with Frankenstein performing an epic judo throw on Baragon that shakes the earth. In response, the underground kaiju unleashes an electric ray from his mouth, splintering trees and smashing rocks with its astonishing power. Frankenstein runs for it as the woods go up in flames, Baragon blasting the tops off the trees around him.
Frankenstein has had enough and stops running, pulling up a flaming tree by its roots and using it to pound Baragon into submission. Baragon tries to dig into the earth to escape, but Frankenstein grabs Baragon from behind, choking him out and bashing him with rocks until he dies. Sueko is so happy she does a dance by the car where she had been watching instead of running away. Apparently as a response, Frankenstein raises his hands, but his whole body is covered in wounds. He stumbles to the lake and sinks under the water, lifting one hand out of the depths a final time to signal his departure.
Dr. Bowen waxes eloquent about how Frankenstein will never truly die, but that he simply could not live with human beings. The pair peer at the lake for a long time. The end.
Naturally, with only seven pages, much had to be cut and reassembled here to summarize the screenplay. The entire opening sequence from the film with the Nazis taking Frankenstein’s heart to Imperial Japan is excised, replaced by Bowen somehow magically knowing the truth behind Frank’s origins. We also get the most direct confirmation that the heart simply sprouted limbs and became a man that I have seen in any adaptation. Dr. Kawaji is gone, and instead Dr. Bowen is the heartless scientist who wants to viciously slice off Frank’s limbs—and he is so proud of it, he decides to broadcast the procedure! In the movie, Baragon has some build up, having appeared briefly early on, but here his entrance is about as abrupt as the Giant Octopus in the alternate version of the film. As a consequence, there is nothing about Frank getting blamed for Baragon’s destructive tendencies—in this case, Baragon has an electric ray (the same one he had in some promotional materials) rather than his heat ray from the movie. In the movie version, there is a scene where Sueko trips and is menaced by Baragon—but the dinosaur never picks up the harried heroine. The manga version features a similar rescue, but as Sueko was cut from the comic, Baragon grabbed Bowen in that version—presumably, every take had to include some kind of rescue depending on the available cast! Unlike the movie version, in the illustrated version, Frank and Baragon are not swallowed by the earth—instead, after killing Barry, Frankenstein voluntarily takes a dip in the lake, his final goodbye surrounded by a fiery blaze and a lake red with the reflection of flames—it feels like a proto version of the conclusion of Terminator 2.
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Art by Takashi Minamimura (a prolific tokusatsu/sci-fi/fantasy artist who has illustrated many picture stories and monster publications, including work on Godzilla, Ultraman, Gamera, Daimajin, etc) is detailed and colorful, sometimes pretty spectacular—alternating with full color paintings and monotone blue imagery. The monsters do not closely resemble their filmic counterparts, with Frankenstein appearing older and far more muscular. Frank has none of his filmic youthfulness, and instead sports bulging veins and is wearing distinct flowing white pajamas (possibly reflecting a hospital patient’s gown) instead of a furry caveman onesie. Baragon, meanwhile, seems directly based off of early concept art by Akira Watanabe—he has a more squat look than the final design, with huge elephant-like ears and a distinct mouth shape that closely apes the concept sketches. Sueko and Bowen, meanwhile, look nothing like their human counterparts—Sueko as portrayed here has a sort of short pixie cut and youthful appearance far removed from Kumi Mizuno’s mature sensuality, and Bowen sports a thick mustache and taller stature compared to Nick Adams.
The writer, Akira Nakao (not to be confused with the actor), was a science fiction author and extremely prolific translator—he did many Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie translations, as well as Bram Stoker’s Dracula in Japanese—plus H G Wells, Robert Silverberg, Frederick Pohl, and many more. When I was reading his text for this illustrated story, I was impressed with the range of vocabulary he was using—while still generally easy to follow, his expressive use of language in the attack sequences felt more alive than many of the simplistic action stories I have read, such as the Godzilla: Monster of Justice series or even Shigeru Kayama’s Ruler of the Jungle King Gorion. Of course, with such a short digest version, Nakao cannot flex his literary muscles much here, and everything is still limited and simplified. His ghoulishly evil take on Dr. Bouwen (smashing together Bouwen and Kawaji from the film and removing any conscience) was one of my favorite remixes introduced here, and I also far prefer Frank choosing to retire rather than that death-by-earthquake nonsense from the movie.
Overall, I really enjoyed this. The Frankenstein vs. the Subterranean Monster illustrated story version is short and quick, crammed with spectacle, features well-executed artwork, and is fun to read. Where the movie can occasionally feel a bit draggy in places, the story version cuts away all the fat (and really almost everything else), leaving only a lean shot of adrenaline. It might be empty calories with none of the thematic weight that the film bears in its best moments, but this version manages to entertain despite its bare-bones flair. The illustrated story version may not conquer the world, but at least it can kill a few minutes on a long afternoon. |
