Shop Indie Bookstores

Thursday, May 07, 2009

A Monster's Notes

Design by Peter Mendelsund
Buy this book from Amazon.com

A book that spins Frankenstein so far off its axis (Mary Shelley didn't invent the monster, but meets him when she's a young girl and after he's been abandoned by Viktor; this is the monster's account of his and Shelley's lives) demands a no-neck-bolts-and-green-skin approach, and Mendelsund nails it. We don't lose the grotesqueness of the creation, and we're reminded of the humanness of it all.

9 comments:

Ian Koviak said...

love it. looks like old anatomy notes. Great script. You rarely see scripts being used on covers. especially with no size variation.

Unknown said...

almost perfect.

Anonymous said...

almost?

Anonymous said...

The name of the monster isn't "Frankenstein," it's Frankenstein's monster. Frankenstein was the mad scientist figure who made him.

Sorry.

/ultimatepetpeeve

Joseph said...

Pet peeves allowed. Fixed :-)

Tropolist said...

Did anyone else think of the Zero cover when seeing this?

Anonymous said...

Almost perfect. Look at that apostrophe hanging out in left field.

T-Bone said...

this looks awesome… but that is a curious space between the r and the s…

The Oxen of the Sun said...

As someone who's got all Mendelsund's Osamu Tezuka books by Vertical, this one comes as no surprise. Take a look:

http://z.about.com/d/manga/1/0/6/9/-/-/Dororo1_500.jpg

He's done well with that one freaky anatomy book!