Frankie Stein is a British comic book character who was popular throughout the 1970s. He should not be confused with the identically named female character from Monster High.
The original Frankie character was invented by Ken Reid and was the incredibly stupid creation of Professor Cube, who spent most of his time trying to figure out how to get rid of his useless, greedy and accidentally-destructive creation. When Robert Nixon took over in the 1970s, the character and the strip were softened, making him more a hapless innocent who is unaware of his grotesque appearance. These new strips were considerably less anarchic than the earlier ones.
Frankie first appeared in Wham! in 1964, and failed to make much impact, but when publishers Odhams were bought out by Fleetway, the character was revived to appear in the semi-spooky kid’s weekly Shiver and Shake.
When Shiver and Shake was cancelled and ‘joined forces’ with Whoopee!, Frankie moved over to the new comic and became more popular than ever. So much so, in fact, that he was also featured as the ‘editor’ of the newly-launched Monster Fun.
So popular was Frankie at the time, he also spawned two softcover annuals (The Whoopee! Book of Frankie Stein) in 1976 and 1977, and holiday specials each year from 1975 – 1982. His comic book career came to an end on 30th March 1985, when Whoopee! was finally cancelled.
