With “Frankenstein” it also happens that its rich iconography, amplified by the cinema, conditions its approach in any medium and field. The shadow of James Whale, the filmmaker who filmed for Universal both “Doctor Frankenstein” (1931) and “The Bride of Frankenstein” (1935), both with the charismatic Boris Karloff incarnating the creature, is still elongated and pays the ground for copying and pastiche, despite the fact that the doctor and his monster are at the top of the list of fictional characters most times adapted to the screen: around a hundred, only behind Sherlock Holmes and in numbers close to Dracula and Hamlet.
Despite all this iconographic load, the effort of Red Fox Books to present a new version of “Frankenstein or the modern Prometheus” is successful thanks to a very careful edition and the powerful illustrations by David Plunkert. The base of the volume is an already classic translation of the work, by María Engracia Pujals and which, since its first publication under the Anaya label in 1982, has been one of the most reissued adaptations in Spanish. Here lies, in fact, the only objection to this new edition, and it is not about the translation: the publisher erroneously identifies the adapter as María Engracia Pujols, both on the cover and on the inside pages.
Still, this edition of “Frankenstein” is dazzling. With an unusual format (22.9 by 19.1 centimeters, which leaves an almost square volume), the book even changes the color of its pages to differentiate the parts of the story. Thus, Walton’s narration is reflected in a celestial, icy blue, while Frankenstein’s is reflected in the usual white pages, although reserving a distinguished plate on a sepia background for the beginning of the chapters, simulating a papyrus. These are details that enrich the volume, as well as the exquisite endpapers in black print on a red background that synthesize in a few images the Greek myth of Prometheus, punished for stealing fire from the gods to give it to men.
As for the illustrations themselves, they are introduced in various kinds. On the one hand, there are plates that reproduce anatomical elements, in the manner of an old treatise on surgery, closing each chapter, which once again favors the structuring of the story and reinforces the distinguished aspect of the volume. But there are also the plates illustrating passages from the story, powerful compositions in which Plunkert expertly uses collage to create highly expressive images with a suggestive Dada orientation, which evoke different passages of the text in a very unique way.
At first glance, the illustration that most attracts attention is the exquisite sheet that separates chapters 3 and 4 of the first part, introducing the awakening of the creature and the consequent terror of Frankenstein when he is aware of the abomination of which he is the author. . It is a fold-out that shows two instants of the aggregation process, of “membering”, with which Víctor Frankenstein is building his anonymous creature, here still devoid of a face. A complete visual delight that is completed in the next sheet with the very image of the doctor working in his laboratory, with his face also covered by a mask.
However, when delving deeper into the volume, when immersing yourself in its pages, there are other equally exquisite plates, in which the singular format of the book makes full sense. The peace and obvious beauty of the illustrations starring Elizabeth contrast with the expressive fierceness of the creature’s apparitions, with its face furrowed with scars, or the fury of Frankenstein when destroying the creature’s companion, whose remains he will sink in a black sea, a few pages later, in another beautiful composition that also integrates the text. Images, in short, that make this new “Frankenstein” a volume that lives up to the myth.