When comic books were a new and unknown territory for me, I stuck to the generic comics. I read things about good looking superheroes that battled weird and socially frowned upon villains. You typically know right from wrong and good from evil in those types of stories. And usually you know how the story will end, the good will prevail over evil and evil will squirm its way back into the city. It’s a seemingly perpetual story line until one unfortunate day when the hero finally dies or decides to respectfully retire. As I got older and inevitably more mature (more experienced in the comic book reading world) I started to find myself bored with these comics. The world is not all black and white and as the saying usually goes, there are many shades of grey. Who can really determine right from wrong, or even good from evil? People aren’t what they are perceived to be, especially not visually.
As I travel to the dark end of comics, the horror comics that are usually displayed on the very last shelf or rack at a comic book store, I find that the story lines tend to be more realistic than fictional and life doesn’t get any scarier than when you realize that horror based comics teach us more about manners and morals than anything else around us.
Monster & Madman is the story of Frankenstein’s Monster and Jack the Ripper. Quite the morbid combination, right? That couldn’t be more understated. This is a story of a man versus a monster and you’d be surprised at things that the man does that the monster wouldn’t dare. The storyline follows Frankenstein’s Monster on a journey for a companion (everyone feels a little lonely sometimes). Will he get his companion and if he does, will it be in a way that he feels comfortable accepting her? That’s where the story ends and it was an ending I personally saw as flawless, I expected nothing less from the extremely handsome and charming Monster. After reading Monster & Madman I sat down and reevaluated my life and where I stand in the world. It made me reevaluate the way I understand people and exposed me to some really morbidly beautiful art by Damien Worm. He’s actually become one of my favorite artists and I was more than excited to share this comic with you guys. Check out Monster & Madman, it’s a three issue series and the last issue was out a little while ago, fret not, you can still purchase it here! Writer Steve Niles and artist Damien Worm, ladies and gentlemen.