When DC Comics fans think of Halloween, they likely conjure spooky images of Batman, Swamp Thing, or Madame Xanadu. Yet, the recently released DC The Doomed and the Damned #1 subverts expectations by pairing up Frankenstein’s Monster (Frank for short) with the least likely member of the Justice League: Aquaman. And just when it seems this crossover couldn’t get any weirder, the Marine Marvel failed to find a babysitter for this adventure. Can Frankenstein, Aquaman, and his infant daughter, Andy, unravel a murder mystery on the spookiest day of the year? And how did Frankenstein end up in DC Comics in the first place?
In DC The Doomed and the Damned #1, Frankenstein discovers an Atlantean corpse on Mars. What is Frankenstein doing on Mars? He lives there, of course. Frank does the prudent thing and requests that the King of Atlantis teleport to Mars and collect his dead subject. As mentioned, Aquaman’s daughter is in tow. An autopsy reveals that this particular Atlantean, Jeremiah, had water in his lungs from a lake in Wisconsin. Arthur, Andy, and Frank eventually learn that Jeremiah was working with remnants of Cadmus to steal the United States’ water and sell it to struggling third-world countries at an inflated price. Two facts become immediately apparent: Frankenstein is bad with children, and nothing upsets Aquaman more than trying to steal his water.
DC The Doomed and the Damned #1 is a compilation of Halloween-appropriate horror and mystery tales featuring unlikely duos. The segment entitled “Follow the Water” was written by Brandon Thomas, and penciled, colored, and lettered by Baldemar Rivas, Ivan Plascencia, and Steve Wands, respectively. While Frankenstein was conceived by Mary Shelley in 1818, Aquaman wouldn’t appear for another hundred-plus years. Oddly enough, their pairing feels completely natural. What seems a little more out of place is Universal Pictures’ most famous movie monster appearing in WarnerMedia’s DC Comics. Is this a trick or a treat?
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein fell into the public domain some seventy years after it was written. The public domain is the state in which applicable intellectual property rights no longer apply to a creative work. This means that, by 1931, Universal Pictures could produce a film adaptation of the story without paying licensing fees. Similarly, DC could use the character in their comics. Edmond Hamilton and Bob Kane wrote Frankenstein into Detective Comics #135 as a Batman villain in 1948. Oddly enough, while the story and character are in the public domain, Universal still owns the rights to Frank’s physical appearance. Thus, the depiction of Frankenstein’s Monster with bolts, green skin, and a flat head has in the past elicited—and conceivably still could elicit—a cease and desist order. How DC gets away with drawing the character in this manner is a mystery.
Scary comic books are a fun tradition that no Halloween should go without. The pairing of Aquaman and Frankenstein in DC The Doomed and the Damned #1 was a stroke of genius. Other unexpected team-ups such as Lobo and the Wolfman or Swamp Thing and the Creature from the Black Lagoon would make for festive future one-shots. Sadly, those characters have yet to fall into the public domain and permission would be required to use them. Here’s hoping DC Comics finds other Halloween-themed monsters to add to future spooky series.