The Bride of Frankenstein Lives #1 Review

Jacob PollardNovember 3, 2026

Any readers that have checked in on us at GateCrashers know for this Halloween season we have been monster crazy. After covering every Universal Monsters comic coming out of Skybound in recent years, I have to say my excitement for Kelly Thompson and Mattia De Iulis’ The Bride of Frankenstein Lives has only risen and I am over the moon to say this creative team has smashed is out of the park. Acting in the vein of a sequel to the original 1934 film, the series focuses on the Bride after escaping the clutches of mad scientists and monsters where she finds herself “a broken whole”, exploring a cruel and unforgiving world.

*The Bride of Frankenstein Lives* #1 / Thompson, De Iuils, Carey / Image Comics, Skybound

It’s safe to say none of the classic Universal films have much in the way of complex female characters, and despite the Bride being in the title, the original film has similar issues. When Thompson was announced as a writer, like any one who is familiar with her work, I knew this would be an aspect of the original that would be subverted entirely. Thompson’s prose adds an incredibly sober, sometimes upsettingly real lens to view the tragedy of the Bride in a way that not only centers her, but distinguishes her from her male counterpart. There are various horrible things that happen to the Bride in this issue that reflect a real lived experience, but unlike many comics, the Bride’s agency and dignity is never torn away in the service of moving the plot forward.

The care taken with these ideas and moments elevate this adaptation far beyond any other attempt to handle this character. Like the Frankenstein series also published under this initiative, this series uses the concept of being a whole made up of others, but where Frankenstein’s approach projected this idea outwards in the loss of others, The Bride of Frankenstein Lives turns the horror introspectively. Thompson explores the loss of agency through the harvesting of the deceased for parts. In this issue alone we see the horror of not only the people connected to those used in the Bride’s creation, but in how it fractures the Bride’s understanding of self, further alienating her from the world.

*The Bride of Frankenstein Lives* #1 / Thompson, De Iuils, Carey / Image Comics, Skybound

What elevates this already strong narrative and rich thematic work from Thompson is the excellent art and colors by Mattia De Iulis, each panel is both as beautiful and haunting as the last. The art perfectly captures the film’s closing moments whilst smoothly transitioning us into this new approach. The use of a smaller number of panels on each page allows for the art to be truly lived in. When acts of violence occurr accompanied by smaller images it really allows for the weight of the art to be conveyed to the reader. I think a quintessential part of why the art works for me was in the design work.

Every setting and person felt fully realized in De Iulis’ vision, the Bride especially. Her design is beautiful without being sexualized or having the reader leering, a trait that has followed all the artists that have worked with Thompson in recent years. The color palette used pulls together greys, greens, and red to envision a macabre world that the Bride is thrust into being brought to life with violent and loud colors only to see the world in these muted tones feels very deliberate. With the stark white gutter spaces bringing a sensation of being trapped, this creates an unsettling tension throughout as if you the reader are also in constant fear of your surroundings. To me, this is easily the strongest opening issue for any of these Universal Monsters titles, and after the ending of this issue, you best believe this series will be a consistent member of my pull list for the following months.