Frankenstein, Agent of SHADE #5

Somehow His Arm Does Exist?

This comic begins with Frankenstein on a mission in Tibet turning Mountain Dwarves into jelly. And this issue gives all the lazy people who couldn't figure out how to decipher Old Portuguese a translation key!

Spoiler: Frank kills him.

I'm not sure why DC finally decided to provide a key to their alien language. Perhaps it was a mistake and they never actually meant to give the fans an easy way to decipher the language. Or maybe they wanted everyone to purchase a copy of Frankenstein, Agent of Shade Issue #5 to get their hands on a copy of the key. It's a pretty good key. It provides 14 letters. Anybody who can't figure out the rest of the letters of any future Old Portuguese statements isn't trying hard enough. Or the future statement is only composed of Qs, Xs, Zs, and Js.

Once Frank is done killing Dwarfs, Father Time's head appears and tells Franky that he's needed at Checkmate Headquarters! Again! Or, um, the first time? Am I just going to read the same story as in OMAC #5 except with different art? So, Frankenstein meets up with Maxwell Lord to find out what his mission is.

How can he know that?! Does he understand the meaning of the word, um, uh, doesn't this seem a little familiar?

Do I really need to comment twice on the same story?

Story Has Already Diddily Ended?

Once again, I read an issue out of order when I really didn't need to. This issue is just a retelling of OMAC #5 with a slight modification of the viewpoint. In OMAC, it seemed as if Brother Eye was getting the better of SHADE.net and reducing its defenses to rubble. But in this issue, those defenses seem to be a trap and allow Father Time and Ray Palmer to download all of the information from Brother Eye. I'm guess they both got information from the other without realizing that the other one was successful.

Brother vs. Father. It's cute the way those labels were juxtaposed in this issue.

The fight with OMAC ends the same way although Frank doesn't throw a gas tanker at OMAC's head. But Frank does lose his arm when OMAC teleports to safety! Frankenstein is evacuated immediately and brought to Nina from the Black Lagoon who is working on a new arm to graft onto his body. She suggests to Frank that she might be able to learn who is body parts belonged to through DNA analysis.

Study His Antique DNA, Extracted?

Can't he undergo past life regression hypnosis?

After he sees Nina, Frank yells at Father Time about being used and storms off into his room. You know, like Hellboy always does! Just like OMAC is really just The Hulk with some satellite talking in his brain, Frankenstein is just Hellboy but green instead of red.

This version of the story was more enjoyable than the OMAC version but there's no way a comic book is going to rise any rungs in the rankings by retelling another story! Sorry, Frank!