The Bride
1822 - Doctor Victor Frankenstein creates a Bride for his Monster. Victor attempts to destroy her, but she survives and flees to Paris rather than reveal herself to the monster. She is able to find work as a courtesan, slowly building a palatial home for herself in the catacombs.
1859 - The Bride, ironically using the only name given to her by her creator, begins also working as an assassin, both in Paris and abroad.
1876 - The Bride and Frankenstein finally reconnect while traveling in Southern India. She rejects the idea that she was built to be his.
1902 - The Bride is mind-controlled by the cult leader the Red Swami, grafting her with additional arms as a reflection of his assassination god. When she is freed from his control by agents of the new American paranormal investigation organization S.H.A.D.E., she destroys the cult & becomes an operative of their organization.
1932 - The Bride & Frankenstein reconnect when he is recovered by S.H.A.D.E. and becomes an operative. She refuses to work with him.
1945 - The Bride joins the Creature Commandos as they fight in Vandal Savage's Secret War. She & Frankenstein finally become intimate.
1947 - The Bride is the only member of the Creature Commandos to survive the final mission to kill Hitler's brain. She discovers that she is pregnant, but the child is not alive.
18 years ago - The Bride learns that Frankenstein has been recovered by the DEO and is an enemy of S.H.A.D.E.
16 years ago - The Bride first confronts Frankenstein, revealing that she is still alive and almost killing him.
10 years ago - The Bride & Frankenstein discover that their son was gestated by S.H.A.D.E. and grown into an undead biological weapon. They must work together with the Freedom Fighters to find and destroy their son. She leaves S.H.A.D.E. but refuses to come with Frankenstein, returning instead to the Parisian catacombs.
7 years ago - The Bride begins to gather former S.H.A.D.E. assets from all around the world after their destruction, secretly beginning construction of her own private organization.
As a quick and largely unnecessary history lesson, the original Mary Shelly novel Frankenstein actually does feature a Bride character, sort of. The monster coerces Victor to build him a mate, but Victor winds up destroying her before he's finished, leading the monster to kill his wife Elizabeth. Honestly, this is one of the best and most important novels ever written. Just go read it.
The Bride of Frankenstein that we're all generally aware of comes from the 1935 film Bride of Frankenstein by legendary director James Whale, a sequel to the original Universal horror film and, again, one of the best and most important movies ever made. Just go watch it.
Most people's awareness of DC's version of the Bride is almost definitely the absolutely kickass version of the character that appeared in the Creature Commandos animated series. She's a fantastic invention, but you're going to find that we're trying to skew closer to the original comic book version of the character.
The Bride of Frankenstein that we're all generally aware of comes from the 1935 film Bride of Frankenstein by legendary director James Whale, a sequel to the original Universal horror film and, again, one of the best and most important movies ever made. Just go watch it.
Most people's awareness of DC's version of the Bride is almost definitely the absolutely kickass version of the character that appeared in the Creature Commandos animated series. She's a fantastic invention, but you're going to find that we're trying to skew closer to the original comic book version of the character.
The Bride's Comic HistoryWhile Frankenstein's Monster has been making appearances in DC Comics going all the way back to the 40's, the Bride of Frankenstein didn't debut until Seven Soldiers: Frankenstein, the 2006 miniseries that gave us our modern version of Frankenstein by Grant Morrison and Doug Mahnke, part of Morrison's Seven Soldiers of Victory crossover in which a time-traveling alien invasion is thwarted by seven characters who never actually meet.
Morrison gave us a fantastically strange pulp hero version of the classic monster, and of course a hero like this would have his own femme fatale sometimes-love-interest. Lady Frankenstein, or the Bride, was an agent of the newly introduced organization S.H.A.D.E., who Frank also had some history with, was an incredibly capable warrior who inexplicably now had four arms, and was drawn by Mahnke with with a certain Aeon Flux weirdness that made her an instant classic. Even once this series concluded, Morrison's version of Frankenstein would continue to appear all over the place, with the Bride usually not far behind. They were even a launch title in the New 52, although it didn't last long. You'll continue to see them pop up pretty much anywhere even until today, a continual reminded of just how weird the world of DC can get. |
Our Bridal StoryTechnically speaking The Bride (or Lady Frankenstein, if you're nasty) is really just a straight-up supporting character, but dear lord the amount of design work that went into this character for her relatively small number of original appearances is just over the moon insane. The amount of storytelling just dripping off her her is unbelievable, and that's BEFORE you start associating her with the fact that one of the best pieces of science fiction (also the first, depending on who you ask) actually gets to be canon to our DC universe.
Of course, in the novel, and even in the original Universal movies, the Bride of Frankenstein doesn't really get to do much living, or even really get any sort of identity of her own. Yes, calling the monster Frankenstein is a common mistake, but at least he gets NAMED. the Bride never ever gets that, she is forever identified as an appendage created for someone else. This actually gets to be the main driving idea behind the DC version of the character, that she is aggressively rejecting the idea that she is FOR anyone. She is violently forcing the world to make space for her. Even interwoven with her constant femme fatale role in the life of our Frankenstein where she's a villain at least as often as she's a love interest, this is a kick-ass version of what has proven to be a very cool character. |