Frankenstein Takes the Cake (review)

This followup to Frankenstein Makes a Sandwich (BCCB 9/06) offers sixteen new monstrously funny poetic entries. Rex knits the volume together with recurring themes: there’s Frank, who’s getting married; there’s the Headless Horseman, whose official blog, “Off the Top of My Head,” records his trials and tribulations; then there’s Edgar Allan Poe, who struggles to write a poem as attending ravens heckle. In between, there are appearances by the Sphinx, Medusa, Dracula, and various other sundry horrors with versical inclinations. (Purists about the use of “Frankenstein” would do well to look to the back flap’s acknowledgment of the misuse.) The scansion sometimes deviates from the crisp, but readers will be having too much fun to care. The sequence of quick comedic bits has the zippy giddiness of good sketch comedy and the effective compactness of really good sketch comedy, while the wide variety of poetic forms offers opportunity for all kinds of massively silly readalouds, many declaimable in grand mock-heroic style. Rex is particularly versatile in his visuals, with high-textured, vividly dimensional paintings, faux-Japanese smoky brushwork, flatly digitized cuteness, and weird documentary photography (for the Headless Horseman’s blog) all amiably taking turns. Visually appealing and conceptually enticing, this is sure to sate the appetite of hungry and irreverent monster fans.