Frankenstein Meets Shirley Temple

By Roger Langridge
www.hotelfred.com

I thought it was really neat that Roger Langridge still made zines and showed up to minicomix event when I met him a couple of months ago at the Comics Thing in London. I only bought the one comic off him (though if I had more money I would have bought more), and it’s different from many other comics I read for this site.

Why? Because Langridge (whose name I have just learnt to spell) has been making comics for years, and it’s apparent when you look at this comic. The cover shows that his design sense and drawing ability are both top notch. The detail and cross hatching he puts into the art are excellent. Actually looking through some of the art inside I think he pretty much has to be using zipatone for a bunch of this stuff, but it’s still neat to see.

Anyway, this comic is from 1996 (so old!) and is really weird. But probably not in the weird way you might expect from the guy who writes and draws The Muppet Show and the comic where Fantastic Four enemy and giant space lizard Fin Fang Foom works in a restaurant kitchen. Instead Frankenstein’s monster and Shirley Temple wander through various landscapes; the monster makes pseudo-philosophical almost-monologues like “The building blocks of life owe us no explanation for making us what we are.” While Shirley Temple walks along beside him interjecting remarks designed to belittle what the monster is saying, though he rarely responds directly to her. It’s very odd, but the artwork is really good. Still, if you’re going to buy a Langridge comic I’d probably recommend the Muppet Show ones, even if I haven’t read them yet.