The Secret Laboratory Journals of Dr. Victor Frankenstein Book

Mary Shelley's creature is one of the most powerful images of literature, brought to life not only by her genius doctor, but also by the countless Hollywood movies, which have given the Frankenstein monster shape and form. The record of the personal and medical sojourn of hte brilliant and overreaching Dr. Frankenstein exists in its purest form in his Journal, filled with detailed notes and sketches documenting the flashes of genius, obsession and madness that led to the animation of his monstrous creature. Here we learn of the staggering obstacles faced by all scientists of his day: the difficulty of obtaining corpses to study, the time and effort required to fashion unavailable laboratory equipment, the charges of blasphemy leveled against scientists who dared to transgress the limits of knowledge.

With inspired and atomospheric illustrations that draw the reader deep into the castle laboratory and diary entries that track the doctor's progress with his daring, Promethean experiment, The Secret Laboratory Journals of Doctor Victor Frankenstein is the ultimate companion to the world's most enduring and most horrifying Gothic novel.

Kirkus Reviews

Fans of Mary Shelley's novel and the many movies it's engendered will find little new in this lavishly designed faux journal by the famously mad scientist.

The best parts of this heavily illustrated debut fiction are the annotations providing all sorts of real and spurious background information to the diaries (supposedly written between 180821): Kay (director of the American Museum of Cartoon Art) includes potted little histories of scientific knowledge during the period, and of the subjects Victor Frankenstein would have studied at the university, from electricity to anatomy, complete with the strange practices that were then considered science. The author's line drawings of the ancestral castle, Victor's laboratories, and the Monster itself all resemble the best alternative comic-book art, and Kay delights in the details of Frankenstein's equipment. The journal entries themselves are less interesting, though, and add little beyond a record of Victor's mental disintegration. The facts are well known: his early failed experiments; his loathsome assistant Franz; his body-snatching; his studies in alchemy and his search for the "sources of life." No sooner does he succeed in reanimating a cadaver than he fears he's unleashed something horrific, and the Monster proves how apt those fears are over the next two years as it tracks its creator across Europe. Eventually, it even demands a mate. The Monster kills Victor's brother and wife and becomes the hunted rather than the hunter as Victor searches the world over for the hideous creature. The mad scientist's end on an ice floe is reflected in the wobbly handwriting of the final entries. Kay's single most important deviation seems the least tenable: He has Victor deny any Godlike aspirations, which clearly goes against just about everything that's most compelling in previous books and movies.

A curiosity that will interest obsessive fans but confuse the uninitiated.