Originally published May 18, 2006, at GJSentinel.com.

• Produced by Mark Newman Sculpture Inc.
• Sculpted by Mark Newman, who also painted the kit in the photos
• Scale: About 1/5; the figure is 15 1/4 inches tall
• Material: Solid resin
• Number of parts: Five, including the base
• Price: $150 plus $12 shipping in the United States

Fans of monster models could fill whole shelves with the Frankenstein Monster. I should know, I’ve done it.
The Monster, first pieced together in the pages of Mary Shelley’s novel and reborn time and time again on both the big and small screen, is arguably the most popular subject for fans of figure models. This is particularly true of the Universal Studios Monster, first embodied in 1931 by Boris Karloff. A flat-headed, neck-bolted Universal Monster was the first monster model released by Aurora in 1961, and the kit was so popular that the company followed it up with more monsters that were released and re-released over the years.

Horizon Original made a great Universal Monster kit, as did Billiken, GEOmetric Design and more. MANY more.

However, the Universal Studios version of the Monster isn’t the only one to win fans. Plenty of other visions of the creature have also kept kitbuilders busy over the years. Click on the “popular subject” link above for a good sampling.

Some of those monsters represent the unique visions of their creators. That can be said of this week’s subject: “Frankenstein’s Monster” by Mark Newman, 43, of Oakland, Calif.

I’ve known Mark’s name for a while now, having heard time and again from hobbyists with a longer garage-kit background than my own 4 1/2 years, who considered him one of the best sculptors in the field. They usually spoke of him in terms of someone who had moved on from GKs to other works, and on the rare occasions they came up on eBay, his kits were at the center of bidding wars.

Then, a few months ago, Mark sort of reappeared on some Internet forums, and not too long after that he started asking people about the Frankenstein sculpture he was working on. “Would you consider buying this if it were a kit?” he asked.

Of course, the answer was a loud “Bring it on!”

As one of the Frankenstein Monster’s many longtime fans, I figured I just had to e-mail the mad doctor behind this latest version.

Q&A WITH MARK NEWMAN

Resin the Barbarian: How many versions of the “Frankenstein” story are you familiar with? (i.e. the Mary Shelley novel, various movies and comic books and so on.) And, which version is your favorite?

Mark: I’m not really sure how many versions of the classic “Frankenstein” story there are.… Read the rest