Frankly

My favorite horror novel is Frankenstein. It all goes back to the Monster and his longing for acceptance in spite of his physical appearance. Growing up, I wasn't really that awkward-looking a kid, but I felt awkward for some reason and didn't have a lot of friends. So I sorta relate to the poor monster.

He has this one line that's haunted me since I read it. I might be paraphrasing, but it goes something like, "I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other." I remember feeling that way as a kid. It's a good thing I wasn't a hulking monster with supernatural strength.

Anyway, thanks to my long-standing affection for the guy, I usually check out whatever new material is being made about him. I bought Marvel's series about Elsa Bloodstone (even though it was an obvious Buffy rip-off) because it had Frank in it, and Frankenstein was the part of Grant Morrison's Seven Soldiers project that had me most excited to read. I taped Dean Koontz's Frankenstein when it was on TV, but read enough horrible reviews of it that I never watched it, much less bought the tie-in novels.

Now though, I've learned that the novels came about because Koontz was dissatisfied with how the TV show turned out. I'm not sure why he's not writing them himself, but I've never read a Koontz book, so that's not a loss for me. Kevin J. Anderson (author of the first in the book trilogy) doesn't excite me much, but making the idea of the Monster being the good guy to Doc Frankenstein's villain into a police procedural/serial killer story does. More of that genre-crossing stuff that I like so much.