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Forty Days of Frankenstein, Final fragment: I've mentioned before the Frankenstein gaps—years in which I could find no Frankenstein media. One such gap was the thirteen years of 1885-1897 inclusive, in which there were seemingly no Frankensteins to be had. Until, that is, this year, when I found an illustrated edition of the Mary Shelley novel from 1890, from publishers W Nicholson & Sons. The illustrations are uncredited, but here's the standard illustration of the moment when the Monster looks in on his Creator for the first time:

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Forty Days of Frankenstein, Bits and Pieces: Continuing with Frankenstein images I found this year, just too late to squeeze into the sequence. Being willing to go where the Frankensteins lead often yields delight, as in the kids' computer animated TV show, "Casper's Scare School." The character of Casper the Friendly Ghost has been around since 1945, but this 2006 iteration of the character finds him enrolled in a fright school (not the first or last time this trope would be used) with spooky creatures and monsters abounding. Among these, the perfectly designed P.E. instructor Frankengymteacher. Lightbulbs instead of electrodes, gym socks and shorts, the green flat top? Just marvelous. The character first appeared October 20, 2006, and he's voiced by the prolific voice-actor Joe DiMaggio.

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Forty Days of Frankenstein, Bits and Pieces: Continuing with Frankenstein images I found this year, just too late to squeeze into the sequence. When you follow the Frankensteins you never know quite where you'll end up. Tonight's find had me ending up in Germany, for this book published in 2000, and used in German elementary schools for the teaching of reading. Titled *Frankenstein gegen Dracula* (that is, literally "Frankenstein against Dracula") the book comes with questions and activities at the end of each chapter to test the reader's comprehension. In the book the Frankenstein Monsters goes up again Dracula, each trying to out-monster the other, until, at the end of the book, they decide to make friends, team up, and open a hamburger restaurant together—obviously the best possible outcome. The artwork, including a painted cover and interior line art, is by artist Julia Scherer. The Monster has a very "Peter Boyle in Young Frankenstein" feel to his design, and also it seems to me like the illustration of the Monster wandering the streets of a German village is based on a shot from a movie, but I can't place it.

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Forty Days of Frankenstein, Bits and Pieces: Continuing with Frankenstein images I found this year, just too late to squeeze into the sequence. Here's a lovely kid-friendly Frankenstein from the 70s. *Children's Playmate Magazine*, which today, sadly, seems like kind of an unfortunate name, was published from 1929 to 2009. It was a product of the Children's Better Health Institute, and was intended to promote health, fitness, and fun. Anyhow, in the October issue of 1972, for Halloween, we get this humorous drawing from artist Bob Beckett. It's a favorite comedic conceit of mine, and a delightful daydream, that one might be out trick-or-treating, and knock on a random suburban door in a perfectly normal neighborhood, and encounter a kindly Frankenstein living a quiet ordinary life and handing out caramel apples. He's even traded out his asphalt-spreader boots for a pair of white tennis shoes! That cowboy and that clown don't know how good they have it!

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Forty Days of Frankenstein, Bits and Pieces: Continuing with Frankenstein images I found this year, just too late to squeeze into the sequence. Tonight's is something pretty interesting. In 1966 (the year I was born), Universal Pictures teamed up with Topps (the baseball card people) to create this set of "Frankenstein Stickers." The stickers themselves aren't all that hard to find, but kids had a tendency to throw away the wrapper, so the wrapper is rarer. Here it is, with art by frequent Frankenstein artist Wally Wood. This is almost, we might say, the perfect, solidified archetype of the Monster in the American consciousness, almost the global consciousness, after 35 years of the Karloff/Pierce design. If you tell someone, "Close your eyes and picture Frankenstein," something like this Monster (only probably green) will be the picture.

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Forty Days of Frankenstein, Bits and Pieces: So, after I get to day Forty, I like to fill out the remaining days till Hallowe’en with Frankenstein images I found this year, but too late to squeeze into the sequence. And as I did last year, I want to start this part of the extras with what amounts to another White Whale. Here's the deal: after well over a decade of following the Frankensteins, there are still some weird chronological gaps in my investigations. That I have no images from 1901-1909 makes a certain sense. Likewise that there are no images 1911-1914 and other pre-1931 gaps (1931 is the year the Universal Pictures Karloff feature debuted). Certain other gaps are odd. That I can find nothing from 1936 is odd. Even more odd, though, was my inability to find anything from 1955. Not only no films and no comic books, but not a single boardgame, book cover, TV teleplay, advertisement, nothing. That 1955 wasn't a great year for Frankensteins, I get—gothic horror was out, big bug, space alien, and dangerous robot horrors were in. But nothing? Until this year, that is. This October, I ran across this beautiful, painterly comic cover to a 1955 Portuguese Frankenstein comic book published by Brazilian publisher La Selva, painted by artist Jayme Cortez. What this now means is that I can show that, at least from 1937 on, there has never been a year without a Frankenstein! Very satisfying. This is a savage-looking brutish monster, with nary a Sport Coat in sight. Also, he's huge!

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Forty Days of Frankenstein, Day Forty: And here we are! Arguably the crown jewel of 2012's Frankenstein season was the old-school monster mash, *Hotel Transylvania*! An animated joy, it featured the tradition buddy-buddy-buddy dynamic that monster fans like me want to see, with Dracula, the Wolfman, and Frankenstein (along with the Mummy and the Invisible Man for good measure) being friends and getting up to standard-issue monster high jinks. Frankenstein's character design is great (I would have liked some neck-electrodes, but since this is Columbia Pictures and not Universal, and neck-electrodes are a Universal thing, I get it; in fact, that's also why he isn't green); I especially like that he has stitches for eyebrows for no reason, and that here his Sport Coat isn't just Pretty Good, it's great when paired with a dress shirt and tie. Every shot of Frank in the film is wonderful, but this particular frame of him is my favorite, because he's just said the words folks like me have waited all our lives to hear: "Thank you, monster nerd!" Bonus: Frank brings with him his bride "Eunice Stine," and her character design is an utter delight.

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Forty Days of Frankenstein, Day Thirty-nine: One of the big Frankenstein moments of 2012 was the feature-length film of Frankenweenie, a property that began life (unlife?) as a live-action featurette that originally got Tim Burton fired from Disney back in 1984 because they thought the film was "too scary." Its later success on home-video brought about a reassessment that led to this stop-motion love letter to the old black-and-white monster movies of Universal Studios. Representing the Frankenstein Monster and his bride are undead Good Boy Sparky and his girlfriend Persephone. If you haven't seen the movie, see it, it's a delight:

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Forty Days of Frankenstein, Day Thirty-eight; yet another art Frankenstein, which is really amazing from my point of view as someone born in 1966. I don't know why these particular shades of red and blue are so compelling for a Frankenstein, but they are. Regard "Frankenstein Creature in a Storm," a lovely but very archetypal Monster by Martin P. Davey, published in 2012.

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Forty Days of Frankenstein, Day Thirty-seven: Zombie Jombie is, or rather, was, a on-line card game (think Pokemon or Magic the Gathering, that sort of thing, only purely on-line) back in 2012. The premise of the game was that you played as a Jombie (a zombie-master who controls zombies) and you built yourself a deck of zombie cards which functioned as your zombie army. The people who played it apparently loved it fiercely, but it didn't make enough money so, like many other on-line ventures, it died the ephemeral death of the Internet, leaving only scattered goodies behind, like this Frankenstein card. Yes, one of the zombies you could control, as a Jombie, was the Frankenstein Monster. I quite like the character design, particularly the oversized brass neck electrodes, the buckles on his shoes, and the buttons on his Pretty Good Sport Coat™. Not sure why he has sharp, pointy teeth, though. Anyhow, spare a sigh for all the disappointed Jombies out there who don't get to control the Frankenstein Monster tonight.

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Forty Days of Frankenstein, Day Thirty-six: Okay, gang, this is a weird one, and I'm not even sure I understand exactly what's going on here. This is a poster for a 2012 play called "The Strange and Terrible True Tale of Pinocchio (The Wooden Boy) as Told By Frankenstein’s Monster (The Wretched Creature)," put on by a drama troupe called the Neo-Futurists. And outside of a few reviews (example: https://chicagocritic.com/the-strange-and-terrible-true.../) that's all I know about it. I should dearly love to watch the show, though. And the poster is very good—imitative of the Karloff/Pierce 1931 makeup, without being slavish. And I have to admit, until this, I had never thought of how many parallels there are between the Monster and the wooden boy.

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Forty Days of Frankenstein, Day Thirty-five: back in 2012, artist Benjamin Dewey was creating a series of humorous cartoons called the "Tragedy Series." #78 in that series was this one, featuring a bald Creature, and am Igor/Fritz that seems like he was sketched from Dwight Frye. I do see what the Doctor here was going for, but the cartoon is correct. Such a tragedy!

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Forty Days of Frankenstein, Day Thirty-four: here's a nice black-and-white art Monster, by artist Melike Acar, published in 2012. This image beautifully captures the Monster's stark rage and determination. Here the normal Pretty Good Sport Coat™ has been replaced by the more dramatic Epic Longcoat™. With just a glimpse of neck-electrode and a whisper of scars along the rim of the flat head, this is a gothic and stylish Monster.

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Forty Days of Frankenstein, Day Thirty-three: A commercial art Monster, published by Kim Parrish Creative Services Inc., to advertise an Orlando Medplex. The Frankenstein meme has always existed at the intersection of medicine and science, and this image takes advantage of that. Enjoy this all-too-seldom realized ideal of affection between Creator and Creation. The way many of us secretly (or not-so-secretly) wish it could have been.

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Forty Days of Frankenstein, Day Thirty-two: As I mentioned back on day twenty-eight, there have been, to date, five versions of the Monster in Lego minfig form. Specifically, this one is called "Monster Butler," and was issued in 2012 as part of set 10228, "Haunted House." He has a certain Addams Family "Lurch" vibe, while still very definitely being a Frankenstein Monster. It's the forehead stitches that seal the deal. I love, though, how he's definitely in black-and-white. We won't see another minfig Frankenstein until 2015.

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Forty Days of Frankenstein, Day Thirty-one: Another art Franken Berry, this one by artist Matt Kells, who works under the name "vonblood." This piece, titled, "The Curse of Frankenberry," imagines the Berry as the prototypical Monster in a Universal/Hammer style Frankenfilm, pursued by torch-wielding villagers. For me, this image suggests an entire film series, with perhaps a "Bride of" and a "Son of"—or perhaps a "Revenge of" or a "Horror of." One might even dare to dream of a "Young Frankenberry," or even a "Frankenberry Must Be Delicious." I would watch them all.

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Forty Days of Frankenstein, Day Thirty: another cartoon from The Argyle Sweater, by artist Scott Hilburn, from October 8, 2012. I have to admit, this one surprised a snort out of me when I first saw it. I do always love the conceit of the Monster and the Bride living somewhere in domestic bliss. Brings new meaning to the phrase "sneezing your head off"!