I, Frankenstein - The monster is a Private Dick, Dracula is the Kingpin. Someone call the Monster Squad

I, Frankenstein is a Darkstorm comic book created by Kevin Grevioux (Underworld) that combines the stories of Frankenstein's monster, the Invisible Man, Dracula and other iconic literary creatures into one and places them in the all-new context of Dark Haven. The Monster, for example, has evolved, learned how to control his anger and now acts as a private investigator. Dracula, meanwhile, is a kingpin of crime, and the Invisible Man is a secret operative.

Death Ray Films, director Patrick Tatopoulos and Grevioux have teamed up to develop the story for the big screen. It's also a comic series from Darkstorm Comics, set for release later this year.

Speaking to Sci Fi Wire, Grevioux said that his prescription for success is to take the source material seriously rather than reduce it to a reference or punch line. "These things could work together, given the proper execution and respect for the material," Grevioux said. "If you look at it more realistically, and look at it in a cooler sense, I think you're really going to get more out of it. Looking at what is traditionally considered silly or sophomoric by the public at large, I think you could take and make them very serious and get a really cool action-adventure piece out of it, and that's what we're trying to do here."

"Like with Underworld, my inspiration has always been the classic horror movies, in particular House of Frankenstein, which had Frankenstein, the Wolf Man and Dracula all in one film. Looking at stuff like that, I conceived building a world where all of the classic ... monsters of literature lived in the same city, called Dark Haven. So I thought it would be cool to put them in a modern film noir kind of setting, where the public is completely unaware that these creatures of legend actually exist. I thought that would be interesting, and have Frankenstein as the star, so it was kind of cool, it was kind of fun. Like, one of the things that I've always wanted to see is Frankenstein versus the Mummy, so in a sense we'll get a little bit of that, things like that: pairings of different monsters, how they would interact in this city."

This all sounds like excellent stuff, but could easily go the wrong way as the not very good Van Helsing did. However, the whole premise does seem as if it could work and I do like the updating of all the characters. I also like the fact that Frankenstein's monster is the hero. Grevioux had this to say about the reason why the monster was chosen as the lead.

"I guess because he's just the classic motif of an action hero: He's big and strong. Also, I guess if you want to get down to a more, I don't want to say existential sense, but he was the first sci-fi piece that ever existed. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is what kicked all of this off. Using Frankenstein and looking at the original novel, this was a very intelligent creature. He was smart, he was cunning, he asked questions about his existence, things like that. There is a lot of mythology there that you can pull from in terms of his motivation—why he is like he is right now—and I like that."

What do you think of this? Has the Wolfman got nards?

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