Horror Hospital
Paul Cornell and Emma Vieceli’s The Modern Frankenstein updates Mary Shelley’s classic tale for the lockdown generation
PUBLISHED BY HEAVY METAL’S new Magma Comics line, Paul Cornell and Emma Vieceli’s The Modern Frankenstein is very much set in the here and now, even alluding to Covid-19.
“This is absolutely about modern life,” Cornell tells Red Alert. “And there are indeed references to the pandemic, and to the possibility of further ones.”
Centring on outstanding young medical student Elizabeth Kieve – who becomes involved with maverick surgeon Dr James Frankenstein – the five-parter doesn’t simply update Frankenstein; instead it uses Mary Shelley’s seminal 1818 novel as the starting point for a story of extreme medical misadventure.
“You can expect some ironic commentary on the original Frankenstein and how audience expectations of it relate to real modern medicine,” explains Cornell. “There’s a famous list of unethical medical experiments the results of which nevertheless advanced medicine, and the story revolves around that idea: that medical advances, under modern socio-political pressure, might come to stand against medical ethics. This is a world where the name ‘Frankenstein’ means nothing, where there’s no pop culture exemplar of unethical research.”
“What I remember of reading Frankenstein when I was younger is that there’s a lot less action and a lot more quiet, contemplative time than Hollywood has us believe,” adds artist Vieceli. “It’s a story with characters and the moral fibre of the soul at the fore, and Paul has certainly captured this.”
The mini-series boasts its own monster in the form of convicted child murderer Arthur Paxton. “James Frankenstein performs experiments on him, and he takes on many aspects of the creature from the book, and some from the movie versions,” explains Cornell. “And you might call Elizabeth ‘the Bride of Frankenstein’ in several different ways.” Vieceli partly modelled the look of James on a young Peter Cushing – fittingly, given that he played Victor Frankenstein in numerous Hammer horror films. “We knew we wanted to go somewhere between Tom Hiddleston and Peter Cushing in his prime, and if anything, I remember drawing some early ideas and editing myself with ‘I went too Cushing!’” laughs Vieceli. “For Elizabeth, I was entirely free to play, and she appeared almost fully-formed right away, as I ended up going with the very first sketch I did of her.”
Described as “a twisted horror/romance”, The Modern Frankenstein mixes up both genres. “It’s quite a hot romance book, with Emma bringing the female gaze as an artist of horny situations, meaning that James gets a lot of attention as a beautiful-looking man throughout,” says Cornell. “But equally it’s a horror book, and about ethics: ‘How far will teacher and student go? How far should they?’”
“One of my favourite things Paul is doing with this series is playing with external and internal horror,” adds Vieceli. “What’s worse? What we see in front of us, or what our minds can conjure? The experiment, or the fact that human minds can conceive of running it?” SJ
The Modern Frankenstein #1 is out on 28 April.