Neal Adams Monsters

Legendary '70s superhero comic artist Adams has put his version of a classic monster movie into a graphic novel, and the result is an expensively produced storyboard for a hoped-for movie project. The characters—a vampire nobleman, a scientifically created monster, a werewolf—are inspired by the classic Universal horror films, but their designs are different for trademark reasons. A young couple, pursued by a pack of wolves, is saved by a mysterious Prince Vlad and taken to his lonely castle. The rescued man is the nephew of the infamous Baron Frankenstein, so Vlad holds his fiancée hostage to force him to build another monster. The girl almost dies but is instead turned into a werewolf, in a chapter that seems like it was imported from another story altogether. The artistic approach, with pages saturated with computer color, works against the classic style. The pages are busy and full, and readers' eyes will struggle to find a place to rest as a result. Modern layout effects also work against the purple prose (the most frequently used punctuation is the ellipsis) and old-fashioned storytelling style. The book concludes with a selection of Adams's sketches from various horror films and covers from random monster-related comic books he illustrated. (Apr.)