Michael Walsh Talks Universal Monsters: Frankenstein and Crafting The New Horror Story

Michael Walsh is the talented writer/artist behind the current Universal Monsters: Frankenstein comic with Toni Marie Griffen for Skybound Comics, with the second issue releasing today. Walsh, who is known for his work on The Silver Coin, Magic: The Gathering, and Creepshow, is putting his own take on the classic Frankenstein mythos, earning acclaim for his take on the horror property. We spoke with Walsh about crafting the series, the response, and working alongside Universal for the comic. Check out our full conversation below!

How did this project come to fruition, and how exciting was it to do your own take on such a storied property?

It came to fruition after I'd worked with the editor, Alex Antone, on the Creepshow series. He had started working on Universal Monsters and was starting to cast for the books outside of Dracula, and he approached me about writing and drawing one of the books. Frankenstein seemed to be the best fit for my sensibilities and for the kind of story that I wanted to tell.

I've been a big fan of Frankenstein for a really long time, so that's the character that immediately stood out to me. It was daunting to integrate new characters and new ideas into the world of the 1931 movie, but at the same time, because I've been working in comics for so long, it's a feeling that I've become accustomed to, and I've learned how to just move past really quickly and kind of get my nose to the grindstone and get to work.

The title credits are obviously inspired by the original Universal Monsters. How important was it to honor history while trying to do something new? Was it a challenge to pull from the past while also trying to keep things fresh?

Yeah, it was really important to me that I didn't conflict with the continuity of the film, and so I watched that movie literally hundreds of times, the original Universal Monsters Frankenstein, and tried really hard to make sure that what I did enhanced the original film and added context and depth without stepping on any toes or without conflicting any of the moments from the original film. So I think it's kind of a companion piece instead of a retelling, and they're meant to be seen simultaneously and to experience both of them to get the full experience out of either. It was really important to me that I honored that version of Frankenstein because I do think it's probably the most iconic version of that character and of the monster, especially when people think of Frankenstein's Monster, they think of the Universal version of that creature.

And so it was really important that I made sure that I made this with love and reverence for that film and that property.

Speaking of perspective, did you always want to show different points of view with each issue? Was that an intentional choice from the start to see this story that we've seen so many times through a different lens? 

Yeah, I had a few different ideas for where I wanted to take the plot, but in all of them, I had Paul as the starting viewpoint character, so we got to see the beginning of the experiment from a completely new perspective.

I wanted to try and frame the characters in a new way instead of seeing this story from Frankenstein's perspective, which kind of paints him not necessarily as a protagonist but as someone who's a little bit more relatable in the story. My idea was that it would be really interesting to see Frankenstein from the outside perspective, so we didn't get any of Frankenstein's interiority in the first issue. And when we see him, he's probably the most monstrous character in the book, not his experiment, not the monster that he's created.

It's the Doctor himself that I wanted to be really terrifying in that first issue.

How much fun is it to be on a line? How is it to get on board and see what Skybound and Universal are doing with these characters and the creators?

Yeah, I was actually initially booked on another project. So when Alex first approached me about doing a Universal Monsters book, it wasn't going to be able to fit into my schedule. So I was incredibly bummed out because I'm a huge fan of James' [Tynion] work and Ram [V] and Dan [Watters], and they're all some of the best writers in comics, in my opinion.

So even to just be invited to sit at that table, it was very flattering, considering I've got a bunch of writing under my belt, but I have nowhere near the catalog that those other writers have. They're a pretty talented group of individuals. So when the other project fell through, I immediately took it as a sign that I needed to go and do one of these Universal Monsters books because I had been thinking about it the whole time, that it was going to be one of those projects that when I saw it out on the shelves by a different creator, I was always going to be a little sad that it wasn't me who got to do it.

So when the other project fell through, I was pretty happy to be able to jump over to this and to really put my stamp on the character.

Do you have conversations with the other writers on the books?

Yeah. While I haven't spoken to Ram and Dan too much, I do speak to James quite often because we've worked together, we're planning some stuff for the future, and we're buddies, so we chat.

It was enlightening to get his perspective on working on the characters and the books, and he offered me a few tips. So it's always very valuable to have peers and colleagues in the industry that you can always talk to when you're doing something new, and you want to get some new point of view.

Working on this with collaboration with Universal, are they hands-off? Are you allowed to tell the story you want to tell? Is there strict guidelines to what you can do?

They've been great, honestly. I've worked with a lot of licensors in my career. I've worked with LucasFilm on Star Wars and Fox on X-Files, and even, strangely enough, when I did Justice League/Black Hammer, Justice League was technically being licensed to Dark Horse, so I was working with licensors at DC instead of the in-house editors.

So I've worked on a lot of books like this, Nickelodeon on Ninja Turtles, and it's always a very different experience, and sometimes it's great and sometimes it's a little tough, but Universal have been incredible. All the people involved from Universal just want to make a really good book, and any of the notes that they have are in service to the quality of the book, and they don't feel superficial, or they don't feel like they're noting things just to note them. It always feels like they're coming from a place of affection for the property and for the characters, so I really value that, and they were always really astute and really observant notes.

They weren't super heavy-handed or micromanaging by any means, but they were taking a look at everything and making sure that it fit within the framework of what they wanted the comics to look like. So yeah, they were fantastic. To be quite frank, I'd be happy to work with them again.

What are the main differences between sustaining horror in an anthology like The Silver Coin versus over a few issues like Frankenstein?

Oh, they're such different beasts. With Silver Coin, because each issue is a new writer, and I'm drawing it all, and we have an editor on it, but we don't have an entire editorial system to manage the books. I'm doing a lot of that kind of work myself, so just due to necessity, there's just so much freedom for the writers.

So usually I'll let the writers know where in the timeline there are spaces available where we don't have stories for the coin, and then I let them run free. And as long as they're not killing characters that we might see later on in the mythology or conflicting with any of the other stuff that we've set up in other issues, the writers are very free to tell their own stories. We'll usually have a Zoom meeting before they start writing, and we'll kind of hash out some ideas and break an issue down, and then I'll say, you know, this would be fun to draw within the concept that you've presented, and then they'll go back and write it based on their initial idea and my kind of take on it, the things that I found interesting about it, and then they'll come back to me with a script and we'll go from there.

So in that sense, there's kind of this fun experimental nature to the way that Silver Coin works and to the way that world is built, whereas with Frankenstein, it was a lot more formal where I had to outline the four issues completely, figure out all the character arcs and the narrative structure of everything before I even started writing. So it was a lot more organized, definitely, and there was a lot more moving pieces in Frankenstein, whereas Silvercoin, yeah, I'm kind of just flying by the seat of my pants most of the time.

Speaking of Toni-Marie Griffin's color work, it features some very intentional choices to spotlight mood. How impressed have you been with that work and kind of how it helps set the tone for the book?

Yeah, Toni has done the work of her career thus far on Frankenstein, I would say. She's colored me on Silver Coin and Creepshow, and she co-colored a lot of Black Hammer/Justice League and has been flatting me longer than that even. And I think that Frankenstein is the first time that she's kind of really finding her identity as a colorist.

And what she's mainly focusing on is using really monochromatic or duochromatic palettes to enhance the emotions of scenes. So instead of trying to go with really naturalistic formal coloring, she's almost picking a palette and then using that to just really build up atmosphere and tension and emote bright, icky, super-saturated greens and yellows. Sometimes that's pinks and purples, sometimes it's blues.

So there's really, really dynamic palettes throughout the entire series, and you're going to see some really huge differences between issue 1, 2, 3, and 4 in terms of the colors that are being used. But I think that they always are really thoughtful choices, and I think she's really just nailed it out of the park on this book.

What is it like to see the reception to the book? I've seen some big creators and obviously the audience react with very positive words.

You never know how your work will be received when you put your energy into making art. I've had books that I thought were really, really good get bashed by the critics and vice versa sometimes. I think maybe I didn't do my best work on this one, even though I always try to do my best work, and it's really well-received by critics.

So I never really know exactly what to expect. I did feel like it was quite a strong first issue, and when I had sent it out to my colleagues and peers before it had come out, their feedback was incredibly positive and complimentary. So I had a feeling that it was going to go over really well, but I didn't know that it was going to go over just as well as it did.

It's been getting universal acclaim, and fans of the property love it, and new fans of Frankenstein love it. So, obviously, that feels really good for me for a lot of different reasons, but as creators, we work so, so hard. We spend hundreds of hours putting these books together, and people read them in 15 minutes, and then they just move on.

So it just feels nice to be seen a little bit, I guess, more than anything. And because I've created Paul, and I think that Paul is one of the characters that is really resonating with fans of the book, it feels nice to have created a new character in this world of Frankenstein 1931 that is really connecting with audiences because he's a character that is near and dear to my heart as well. When I was writing this book, I had just had my son, so the ideas of fathers and sons and their relationships and the meaning behind them was really topical for me and at the forefront of my mind while I was writing it.

So I think Paul is a little bit of me, a little bit of my son. When you write with that kind of honesty and channel the things that you feel and know, then the characters feel a little bit more real, and I think that's one of the reasons why people are really connecting with Paul.

Thanks to Michael Walsh for taking the time to do this interview! Universal Monsters: Frankenstein #2 is available in comic book shops now!