A Prize for an All Winner

There will be many books we'll review, overview, and overlook (!) from time to time. And our hopes and Other People's work for upcoming books. One of those books (or series of books) that I'd love to see happen, is a reprinting of Dick Briefer's insane Frankenstein comic strip which ran in Prize Comics in the 1940s....a comic strip which started insane and then got even more insane! It transplanted Mary Shelly's story to America and made the monster a MUCH larger giant. As the monster would, every month, revenge himself on Frankenstein by destroying this or that, Frankenstein wound up with custody of a boy who'd been orphaned by the monster. The boy became a costumed (?) hero named Bulldog Denny, who hunted the monster (who was now being called Frankenstein). And then, without skipping a beat, the monster got a personality transplant and it became a humor strip -- Munsters LONG before the Munsters. As a humor strip, it became so popular that it was awarded its own title. And THEN, with the 18th issue, it became a horror strip - with the Monster being mute (as he usually was in the concurrent movies).

Like I said -- it went from crazy to crazier to even MORE crazy!

But the publishers are running into a little difficulty. Don't worry - this shouldn't cost you a dime. I quote from all-time triple threat Roy Thomas, one of the best things to happen to comics, who is editing these volumes and more:

​PS Artbooks and I are still looking for hi-res scans or loaned copies of PRIZE COMICS #16-18 & #32 for the Dick Briefer Frankenstein stories therein. For some reason, these seem to be rarer than it makes much sense for them to be. Does anyone have any facilities for spreading the news to Facebook or other lists, or some such? PS Artbooks in England will give out copies of the $50 forthcoming ROY THOMAS PRESENTS FRANKENSTEIN, VOL. 1, in exchange for this, as well as other expenses. (Please don't send me any hi-res scans, though, as I'm not on broadband and hi-res stuff causes me horrendous problems with my server.) We can't put out that volume until we get hold of these four stories, though otherwise everything is all set for printing.
I've recommended to PS Artbooks that we go ahead with, believe it or not, RTP FRANKENSTEIN VOL. 3, which begins the actual FRANKENSTEIN title after the PRIZE stories, so we'll see how that goes. Who says Vol. 1 has to come out before Vol. 3? The main thing is that, over the next year or so, all of Dick Briefer's Frankenstein work, including his unsold newspaper strip samples, will be collected in hardcover... if we can just get hold of those few PRIZE stories. Well, actually, I haven't checked yet on what we need from later PRIZE issues for Vol. 2... but we'll take care of that, too. The newspaper strips are set for those two volumes. Amazingly, Frankenstein expert Don Glut has already written all eight of the intros for the books!

So that's the story. Or the story as it can happen if someone out there has those stories from Prize Comics #16-18 and #32. And your name will be forever revered in comics history! (Really!)