Frankenstein's Creature

Figura Obscura has settled into a nice groove: Giftsmas-y figure in the winter (1, 2, 3), mythological figure in the summer (1, 2, 3), literary horror figure in the fall (1, 2, and now 3): Dr. Victor Frankenstein is a brilliant but misguided man consumed by the desire to unlock the secrets of life. Building a creature out of body parts from corpses which he collects from gravesites, Victor achieves his dream and brings his monstrosity to life. Rather than being delighted at his success, Dr. Frankenstein is horrified by the creature he has constructed, and he immediately flees from the sight of this monster. Alone and unwanted, Frankenstein's Creature escapes into the wilderness. Forced to learn the ways of the world on his own, the Creature is met with fear as he encounters humans for the first time. Chased away by their terror of him, the Creature moves from place to place until he stumbles upon a remote hut inhabited by a blind man and his two children. Observing this family from afar, the Creature learns to speak and he begins to understand the importance of belonging and family. This realization only serves to increase the sense of isolation that Dr. Frankenstein's creation feels, and he is eventually chased away from the hut when the man's children behold the monster who has invaded their home. That's only part of the text from the back of the box, because the Four Horsemen have opted to take advantage of this toy's larger box to print more than 500 words worth of biography back there. That's like your teacher asking you for a two-page paper. The longer this line runs, the fewer Mythic Legions parts get used in each subsequent figure. This Frankenstein follows the book's description of the creature, meaning (among other things) he's eight feet tall - or, in the case of this figure, a little below 8". So normal Mythic Legions aren't in a 6" scale, but this release is? Okay. Anyway, that means no matter what the sculpt would be like, none of the existing parts would be large enough to create this monstrous frame. Out of the tray, he's wearing a tattered, patchwork greatcoat that's had the sleeves ripped off, softgoods black pants held up by a rope belt, and large boots. You don't have to worry about losing the belt, for once: CJESIM designed it so the belt is stitched to the pants unobtrusively, with the garment actually being held in place simply by the hips and the velcro flap in the front. But that's the Creature later in life. He wasn't born wearing clothes, so the Horsemen have given us the option to display him in a much more nascent form. Slip his coat off, remove the boots, take off the pants, trade in the bare feet, and take the figure apart at the waist to lose his truss and give him his modesty bandages. This appearance lets us see more of the scars and sutures that run all over his body. According to the writeup on the Figura Obscura page, Eric Treadaway (who, you'll remember, was himself once a Dr. Frankenstein) researched era-appropriate medical equipment, which is why Frankie's got stitches instead of staples. Dang, man; as the internet's premier purveyors of "why would you spend time looking that up nobody is ever going to notice or care," we are impressed by your dedication to your craft! Game recognizes game. Respect. If you only know Frankenstein from pop culture and not the original book, you may be surprised to see his skin is yellow, rather than green. In fact, everything about this toy's appearance is straight from Mary Shelley's pen: yellow skin, black lips, glossy eyes nearly the same color as the skin, and long black hair. Figura Obscura went right back to the source for this one, and it looks great. Although Victor Frankenstein's narration of his story reveals that he had chosen Junior's face specifically to be attractive and that he already had the hair, this release suggests that it's something he grew as he wandered the world: we get two alternate heads, and they're both bald. Fresh off the slab, baby! One of them has the mouth closed, and the other is grimacing. The set also includes alternate hands for the monster, ones open slightly wider and therefore more relaxed. The bandages he wears are similar to the wraps Red Death wore, though they're not the same sculpt. Their dingy gray coloration contrasts against his skin quite nicely. The yellow they've chosen for him is a terrific shade, definitely recognizable as "yellow" but still managing to look organic rather than toyish - not something easy to do! There's a heavy wash on the toy, really bringing out the musculature, and all his stitches are pale gray. There are a few cuts on the body that don't get stitched up; was Victor just busy, or did he think nobody would look at the monster's back? Those cuts end up almost looking like breaks in the toy's plastic, but worry not, they're meant to be there. Frankenstein's Creature may not use many existing Mythic Legions parts, but he does still have the same kind of modular construction, and therefore has the same articulation: ankles, knees, hips, waist, wrists, elbows, shoulders, and head. Like Anubis, he gets the new neck hinge joint, and he also has swivel thigh joints that are far from standard in the Mythic Legions style. Since the coat is fairly thick PVC, it tends to look best when he's just standing straight up - anything else and you'll have to deal with it sticking out. We already have two highly distinct appearances for this toy, but where the set really goes hard is the accessories. There's enough here to stock an entire lab, beginning with a large operating table. It's adjustable, able to go from horizontal to (nearly) vertical with two angled stops in between. The hinge is very stiff, popping from position to position, but that just means it will be able to support the weight of a big figure on it. Or hanging off it, as the case may be - Frankenstein is taller than the table is long. It has sculpted hand-wheels on the sides to pretend like that's how it's adjusting, and there are knobs on the sides where the included straps can be attached to restrain the body. The base looks too modern, with its four spread feet and foot-pump lift, but the paint does a wonderful job of making the whole thing look like it's seen some heavy use. There's a matching side table, for holding supplies. What've we got? Well, we'll start simple, with three black jars with fancy clasps in the center of the lids. Upon reflection, they're probably meant to be Leyden jars, the first type of manmade capacitor. In keeping with that theme, we also get a voltaic pile, the first kind of battery. (Capacitors store their charge physically and release it all at once; batteries create a charge from a chemical reaction and release it steadily over time.) To go with both of those, there's a hand-crank generator. It doesn't move, but there is a thin, bendable wire that runs through it and out to the sides, and a channel beneath the voltaic pile you can feed the wire through, as though they're connected. Next we have three bell jars and specimens to put inside them. The jars are different sizes, and the specimens are existing Mythic Legions parts: a skeleton hand, a bare skull, and a decaying head - we can finally make out those details from Hagnon! There are four broken manacles, sized in pairs for his ankles or wrists (the chains can be fed through loops on the operating table, too), and three leatherbound books in green, red, and black. Those will also be seen with the upcoming Mythic Legions Xue figure, though here they're not all chained together. They could either be medical texts Victor is referencing, or books the monster is reading later in life. The increased package size allows for a lovely Nate Baersch illustration. The outside "book cover" flap shows the creature fleeing through the woods on a clouded night, with a torch-wielding mob persuing him from a high cliff in the background. The inside of the flap shows Victor's study... well, presumably Victor's study. It might well be someone else's study, mightn't it? There are no names on anything, it's not like scientists labelled their spaces. As far as you know, this could be the room where John Hunter performed the first artificial insemination. First intentional one, anyway. What a time to be alive! Either way, this makes a perfect backdrop for all the lab equipment scenery we get. Frankenstein was conceived of in 1816, while Mary Shelley was vacationing in Switzerland with her (not yet) husband Percy. Meeting Lord Byron (who was on the lam from angry creditors and ex-lovers back in England) and staying at his villa, the group entertained one another by telling ghost stories; after struggling for a few days to come up with an idea for an original story of her own, Mary was sleepless in her room around 2:30 AM on June 16 when inspiration finally struck, and the germ of the idea that would eventually become the first science fiction novel in history began to grow. However, Frankenstein was not the only seminal work to come out of that conclave. Also in attendacnce was Dr. John Polidori, who took an old folk superstition and polished it up with a new twist: his story, The Vampyre, was the first to ever make the familiar creature not a mindless monster, but a suave, seductive, creature of class and refinement, meaning that one idle suggestion of telling stories birthed two major horror genre staples. Amazing! Also of note: Shelley's title character is a mopey bummer who spends all his time complaining about things he screwed up instead of taking any action to change them; Polidori's Lord Ruthven was an aristocrat who delighted in causing shame and degradation to anyone unlucky enough to catch his fancy; can you tell they wrote these after being stuck in a house all summer with Lord Byron? -- 10/19/24 What do you think we'll get next Halloween? Tell us on our message board, the Loafing Lounge.

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