College student spawns comic book career

Morgan B. Herron displays his comic book creation Frankie Boy Monster at a convention. Photos submitted

By Tom Victoria

Morgan B. Herron created a monster. Unlike the one that was the undoing of its creator Victor Frankenstein, Morgan’s creation launched his comic book career.

The young writer and artist, whose character Frankie Boy Monster deals with such entities as the grim reaper and headless horseman, explained his preference for comic books over other works.

“For me, it's been the autonomy of it,” he said. “I really respond to creators that do more than just the writing. They take most of the jobs into their own hands. They're my favorite. I love cartoonists. I love people that write and draw. There's something pure in that of someone writing the story, drawing it themselves and having it be 100 percent them on the page.”

Morgan, 20, of Tennessee followed in the footsteps of such creators as Will Eisner, creator of The Spirit; Frank Miller, who revitalized Daredevil and created Sin City; Walt Simonson, who revitalized Thor; and John Byrne, who handled many DC and Marvel books in addition to his own creations.

“That's what I try to do,” he said. “I'm primarily a cartoonist. I write and draw my own material. Only recently have I started to occasionally do collaborations with other artists. But I like that autonomy and you're not juggling too many other personalities.”

However, Morgan still appreciates creative combos that gel.

“I do like teams that are in sync with each other,” he said. “One of my favorite creative teams was Jeff Loeb and Tim Sale on The Long Halloween, Dark Victory and Catwoman: When in Rome. It definitely can be done, but I like it when everything's in sync. And to me, comics are most in sync when it's one person doing everything for the most part.”

“I came up with this idea of a 12-year-old boy monster named Frankie, who instead of being rejected by the professor or the doctor, this  doctor was just an overprotective single parent.”

Morgan gives his John Hancock.

Morgan’s choice of character was inspired by watching the classic 1931 Universal adaptation of Frankenstein, which was forever immortalized by Colin Clive’s Henry (altered from author Mary Shelley’s Victor) Frankenstein yelling ‘It’s alive! It’s alive!’ as Boris Karloff’s behemoth stirs.

“I was watching the movie last summer with my mom after I had really bad creative burnout,” he said. “The last comic I made just fell apart and I felt horrible about myself. So I took a break. I relaxed. I was sketching in my sketchbook. We were watching the movie and I loved pausing on the stills and looking at the frames and the atmosphere of it.”

Morgan already enjoyed creepy comics.

“I was already a fan of Mike Mignola,” he said. “Hellboy is my favorite comic of all time. He (Mignola) always cited the Universal monster movies as a big influence on him. After watching these movies, I could see frames that looked like the comic panels that he would draw on Hellboy and stuff like that. And there were a lot of commonalities there, a little bit of German expressionism, too.”

After watching the Frankenstein Monster lumber around, causing chaos, Morgan was hit by inspiration.

“After watching that movie, something hit me,” he said. “I came up with this idea of a 12-year-old boy monster named Frankie, who instead of being rejected by the professor or the doctor, this doctor was just an overprotective single parent. That stems from my own actual experience of being an only child of a single mother.”

The artificial preteen solved a quandary for Morgan.

“For the longest time, most of my stories had that dynamic in it, but I couldn't find the right genre or characters to voice these ideas and themes until I came up with that concept,” he said. “It all fell in line from there.”

Frankie simultaneously deals with being a kid and creature.

“He's a boy monster,” he said. “They call him Frankie because he's like a normal kid.”

Morgan said the original Frankenstein Monster does exist in his universe.

“I don't think it'll ever be brought up, but I definitely drew a few references here and there,” he said. “Frankie's his own character. I just took Frankenstein's Monster as an archetype and made a new character out of the archetype.”

However, Morgan doesn’t nail down whether the original Monster was real or a solely work of fiction in Frankie’s reality.

“I’m not sure about that one myself,” he said. “But there is a reference to the Boris Karloff interpretation in a Halloween story I just finished for Frankie: Boy Monster issue 5.”

Morgan stressed entering his fictional world is vastly different from the Frankenstein mythos.

“I always feel weird because people always talk about they’re big fans of the book Frankenstein,” he said. “I read it a long time ago when I was 12 and I always feel weird when people say that because Frankie is its own thing. If you're going with expectations of this is for fans of Frankenstein's Monster, then you might leave disappointed because that's not what my thing is. My story is about a 12-year-old boy monster who feels like an outsider, who has an overprotective single parent.”

Morgan took inspiration not only from the Universal monster, but real life as well.

“I used the concept of Frankenstein’s Monster from the classic Universal monster movie but shifted in reverse,” he said. “I also drew upon my own experience about feeling like an outsider as a weird creative kid in elementary school through middle school.”

But that doesn’t mean Morgan’s Frankie isn’t going to experience some action and adventure.

“There's a lot of fun,” he said. “In issue 5, there's this story where I'm a big Edgar Allan Poe fan, so I've always wanted to have the Red Death in one of my stories and it came about where I could finally do that. There's this Halloween party every year that Dr. Fritzlang, that's Frankie's dad, hosts for Frankie every Halloween so that he can feel normal. If everyone's wearing costumes — Frankie is also in costume — so that's the one night a year he gets to be normal, quote, unquote.”

The antagonist crashes the party to cause mayhem for Morgan’s hero, whose creator is named after groundbreaking director Fritz Lang.

“In this story, the Red Death visits to poison the fruit punch and just cause trouble.” he said. “There's a lot of fun genre fiction. That's why I refer to my comic as my all-ages monster comic. There's a lot of things from my childhood that I'm putting in the story, but also there's a lot of fun genre fiction from shows that I enjoyed growing up, like Ben 10, stuff like that. I always love a little bit of action in my stuff.”

Morgan said comic creators are more of an influence on his work than eerie movies from such directors as the man behind Sleepy Hollow, Edward Scissorhands and Beetlejuice.

“A lot of people think that my stuff looks like Tim Burton,” he said. “It's definitely mostly like Mike Mignola's work. But I've also been looking more at Gustave Dore, who was an influence on Bernie Wrightson, and Bernie Wrightson was also an influence on Mike Mignola. Bernie Wrightson even did a pen-and-ink adaptation of Frankenstein. So I've been looking at the people that have also influenced my influences and trying to track down my lineage of artists.”

Morgan prefers a cartoony style rather than the ultrarealistic work by such people as Neal Adams or heavily detailed work by creators such as George Perez.

“I like bold graphic art,” he said. “The thing I love about Mike Mignola is when he simplifies something, he's simplifying something for effective storytelling. He's doing it to be effective, and he's doing it to serve the story. I never want to draw a panel that doesn't serve the story.”

Morgan also doesn’t want to clutter up his panels.

“I don't feel the need to over-render,” he said. “I feel like if I over render an image or if I overwork something, I lose impact. I've never been a maximalist. I am, for the most part, I would say, a minimalist, but I offset that with a graphic color palette and a sense of value and composition in my work.”

Historically, creators were striving to be newspaper comic strip creators due to the salary, which eclipsed comic book pay for many years until Image Comics came along and made the latter category lucrative. Morgan prefers the comic book format regardless.

“I prefer the feeling of having a book or pamphlet in your hand,” he said. “To me, it’s much more intimate of a reading experience than a big unwieldy newspaper.”

Morgan found his publisher, Cosmic Line Productions, last year.

“Last summer, 2023, I was working on my portfolio and I heard about a convention called HeroesCon,” he said. “Before I came to Middle Tennessee State University, I was already in correspondence with a comic artist named professor Doug Dabbs, who actually has work with Image Comics. He did a book with writer Doug Wagner called Klik Klik Boom. I'd been in correspondence with him for a bit.”

“Once I finished drawing the final page of  Frankie Boy Monster  issue 1  on August 26 or 30, he called me, was like, hey, I got a slot open if you want to publish with us.”

Dabbs tipped off Morgan to the opportunity.

“He told me about this convention called HeroesCon, where I can meet a lot of my favorite heroes in the comic book industry,” he said. “I got to meet a bunch of my heroes like Daniel Warren Johnson, Jeffrey Alan Love, Ed Piskor and Jim Rugg. They had a YouTube channel called Cartoonist Kayfabe. That was before Ed unfortunately passed.”

Morgan was searching for another creator.

“I was trying to find this guy named Kevin Anthony Catalan who created this book with Cosmic Lion Productions called Space Knights. I heard a lot of good things about it. I wanted to get my copy and I wanted to meet him. I couldn't find him the whole con until the last day. I met Kevin. I showed him my portfolio, and he was like, do you want to meet my publisher? I said, yeah, I'd love to. He brought me over to his publisher's table.”

Morgan then met the company’s main man.

“Eli Schwab is the head over Cosmic Lion Productions,” he said. “They've been publishing comics for four years. But Cosmic Lion's been around for 10 because Eli also does podcasting. I met Eli. He wanted to stay in touch. And we did. Once I finished drawing the final page of Frankie Boy Monster issue 1 on August 26 or 30, he called me, was like, hey, I got a slot open if you want to publish with us.”

The company offered Morgan a deal he couldn’t pass up.

“I looked over the contract,” he said. “I had a friend of mine named Anthony Carranza, who's a co-publisher. I had him read it over, and he was like, this is a good deal. You should definitely take it. I did, and I got published last Halloween.”

Schwab gives most of the profit to Morgan.

“I make 70 percent and he makes 30,” he said. “He only has publishing rights, so I own the IP (intellectual property). If someday I were to have the whole comic book series done in its entirety and I have the series bible ready, I could pitch this to Cartoon Network and have it be a show.”

Morgan said animation is the way to go with his creation.

“I don’t think my intellectual property would benefit from being live action even with CGI,” he said. “The way I render with shadows and poppy color doesn’t make real world sense and I’m not trying to. I want Frankie to feel like fun and dynamic 2D animation of my youth like Ben 10 and The Spectacular Spider-Man.”

Morgan is receptive to a company taking some liberties with an adaptation of his work.

“I'm not going to sit here and act like I'm a perfect storyteller,” he said. “I know that I have my own weaknesses, and maybe there are some aspects of my concept that could use adjustment. I wouldn't mind little tweaks, but I wouldn't want Frankie to lose the spirit of what it is. I wouldn't want it to be watered down. But if they have some things like, oh, this would work better or you had a pacing issue when you introduced this concept. You should have introduced it a little later then. I wouldn't mind something like that.”

Morgan hopes to have an advisory role with any adaptation.

“I would hope that I would be at least a consultant to whoever's directing and art directing,” he said. “I'm interested in having Frankie maybe turn into a cartoon one day, but I don't see myself being an animator. I think of myself as a cartoonist. I am a storyteller. I don't want to actually do animation, but I would love to be a consultant or art director with my IP, for sure.”

Unlike many fictional works, including comic books, Morgan isn’t interested in doing things for shock value.

“I'm already not following trends that a lot of my peers in indie comics are doing right now,” he said. “A lot of indie comics are more mature. The pacing of their comics is good, but I feel they are making mature comics just to cater to adults. I'm catering my stories to myself. This is a story that I have in me that I'm trying to get out onto paper. And as long as I'm trying to get my vision out onto paper, then I think shock value doesn't matter.”

Morgan is more interested in providing entertainment.

“Any shock value I put in my work is just incidental for the most part,” he said. “The only thing I really try to do is make myself laugh when I'm making my own work. I put gags and jokes that are funny to me and, hopefully, a reader doesn't think it's bad humor and poor taste. A lot of my friends, when they read my comics, they're like, yeah, Morgan, we can read your humor in your work. That's really the only thing that I try to put in my work consciously is fun visual gags.”

Morgan’s property lends itself to that style.

“I love visual humor,” he said. “One of the things that Frankie does is, you can pull him apart and put him back together. In issue 3, the Grim Reaper comes out of nowhere and shocks him, so his head literally starts flying off. He grabs it and then puts it back on. I'll do stuff like that to keep myself as entertained as I create the work. And it just so happens, that goes on to entertain whoever reads that book.”

Morgan draws upon a variety of sources for story inspiration.

“Sometimes, it comes from a little bit of living my life,” he said. “Sometimes, it comes from me writing down notes of knowing what I want to do next. Sometimes, I'll even ask myself the question of what do I feel like drawing? And then I'm like, okay, if I feel like drawing this, then why is that in the next issue? How can we make this make sense? Sometimes, it'll come from my actual own lived experiences, but fictionalized of course and in me asking the simple question of what do I feel like drawing.”

Morgan explained how that process works.

“After issue one, I was like, I want to draw Frankie fighting a werewolf,” he said. “Okay, if I introduce a werewolf character, then what's the story behind that? And then I'll ask more questions like what's been done before with werewolf stories? And then what's not been done before with a werewolf story? When Frankie fought a werewolf, I wanted to play with the trope in a way that I didn't think had been seen before.”

Morgan settled on misleading the reader as to the werewolf’s identity.

“The werewolf was this kid who was being abused by his father, but that wasn't revealed to the end,” he said. “That was the twist. It was implied that the father was the werewolf and that's what I was trying to lead the readers to believe till the end when we realized the son actually got rid of this father who was abusing him for years because he was a werewolf.”

Morgan will repurpose art if it isn’t serving the original purpose.

“I'll try not to push something if it's not working,” he said. “But then I'll just abandon it altogether and maybe come back to it. There was going to be a short story in issue 2 that is actually a scene in issue 3. But I realized for some reason, it wasn't working in issue 2 the way I wanted it to. I finished drawing it, but then I took some tracing paper, completely redrew it, repaste some things and made it a scene in issue 3 and it fit way better.”

Since Morgan does independent, creator-owned work, he operates under his own timetable.

“My deadlines are self-imposed,” he said. “I always have goals that I hit. The original goal for issue 2, once I had issue 1 out last school year was April. I kept moving it thinking it's not going to be out till May or something. I did hit it. It did come out in April. My next goal was I could get issue 3 done before school starts. And then I did as well. So I have three issues published before I turned 20 years old this November, which was another goal I had.”

Morgan hit another goal.

“But even before that, my goal was to get published by the time I turned 18,” he said. “That happened after I met Eli, which was great because I got published officially on Halloween before my birthday, which is November 24. I always have self-imposed deadlines that I set for myself when it comes to the comics, but scholarships pay my bills, so my deadlines that I have to commit to are my school deadlines.”

“I’m always thinking about how can I be more efficient in my storytelling and in my workflow.”

Although Morgan admires illustrators depicting more realistic characters, he extols the storytelling possibilities with a more cartoony style.

“I respect people like Gary Frank who can draw more realistically, but I like bold graphic cartooning,” he said. “I like art that resembles that more. You can take someone like a Mike Mignola. He's doing it for an effect. He's doing it to communicate themes, atmosphere, emotion. He's great at cinematic zooms, zooming in and zooming out. There's a story he did called Box Full of Evil where the establishing shots were these deer heads on a wall. He honed in on one of the deer heads. Then he kept zooming in till we started to notice blood dripping from either its mouth or nostril.”

Morgan strives to be effective in his ability to tell a tale.

“The reason why I've also simplified my stuff in that way is to be more effective and to have more impact and also for efficiency's sake,” he said. “I'm always thinking about how can I be more efficient in my storytelling and in my workflow.”

Morgan draws famous characters, including Batman and a zombie Robin, for the heck of it.

“That was for fun,” he said. “DC's not paying me for that. Also, I find if I do that and I'll post it, it'll get shared around. That definitely helps because you're more likely to get more likes and follows if you draw familiar characters as well. I'll occasionally do that to help speed the algorithm, see what comic fans may want to follow me, because my original characters only matter to the people that are already following me or who are beginning to take an interest in my work.”

But diversions won’t ever replace Morgan’s passion.

“I love my characters,” he said. “The books are more important to me than feeding the algorithm. However, it is a necessary evil for me to feed into it. I did that for fun because I was actually getting a little burnt out working on some issue 5 pages, and I just needed a break from it. I'm working on this swamp story for issue 5, and I just needed a break. For whatever reason, the whole Jason Todd's death kicking around in my head, and I was like, what if I actually drew him as a zombie? I just did it for fun, get it out of my system. Same with the rose that I posted the day after. I did that for fun, to also just practice and keep my skills sharp.”

Morgan keeps in mind that even cartoony versions of serious characters need a professional approach.

“I may be an independent cartoonist, but I grew up reading Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo's Batman,” he said. “I do genuinely like Batman, so I drew it with reverence.”

Morgan said Frankie’s story will come to an end at some point.

“I just don't know when Frankie is going to end,” he said. “I'm letting it grow organically. I have an end in mind. In fact, I've been sowing seeds for the past three issues of the main storyline that I'm building up to, and by the time I get to issue 6, I'll be kind of getting into it for sure.”

Morgan collaborated with musician and producer Izzy Rage.

Morgan doesn’t have any concrete plans for what story follows Frankie’s.

“I've been so laser focused in on Frankie, it's been hard for me to come up with other things,” he said. “Even when I do come up with other things, I work on it for like a little bit and then it just falls apart. So I don't have anything at the moment.”

However, Morgan does art for other projects, including characters for people such as musician and producer Izzy Rage.

“He made T-shirts that we did for a show,” he said. “That's part of the hustle of getting my art out there. Izzy and I are friends and we have respect for each other's crafts. We wanted to do a collaboration and also have fun with it. That goes into the portfolio building. It's always good to diversify.”

Izzy developed an imaginative and elaborate storyline involving a fallen angel for his music.

“One of the reasons why we head off pretty well even though we have different mediums is that we both have our own intellectual properties that we're both investing in,” Morgan said. “We're trying to communicate these themes that are important to us through our respective mediums. We have a kinship in that regard.”

Morgan is open to adapting someone else’s work such as the master of the macabre.

“I'm a big Edgar Allan Poe fan,” Morgan said. “The thing that appeals to me more is maybe adapting one of his short stories into a comic book and getting that into libraries. My biggest dream with the whole comics thing isn't even to land a movie or TV deal or anything like that. The dream is when I'm older and I have the entirety of the run done, I have it in a couple of trade paperbacks or one big graphic novel. Have that in libraries all over the country or the world.”

In the 1980s, kids could find comic books in drug stores and newsstand spinner racks. Eventually, comic book shops became one of the few places to locate the chronicles of the Avengers, Fantastic Four and Superman. Morgan said it’s vital comics are accessible to children.

“Not that it was difficult for me to find comics, but my best resource was my local library to read comics,” he said. “I want that for kids growing up like me to have that readily accessible to them.”

The Man of Steel was the first comic book character to stand out to Morgan as a youth.

“Definitely Superman,” he said. “I was very fortunate enough to watch the original Max Fleischer cartoon on DVD. I forgot what I had, but I was really sick when I was younger and to pass the time, my mom, nana and papa would put in that DVD set. I would just watch Superman fight mad scientists, so my first impression of Superman was the Max Fleisher cartoons and then that's how I got into superheroes and then later, comics.”

Morgan recalled the first comic he bought.

“Batman: Hush by Jeph Loeb and Jim Lee,” he said. “It was the trade paperback and it was at Books a Million.”

The Hush storyline was originally published in the Batman comic book before being reprinted in trade paperback. Graphic novels are original works published in the squarebound format, such as Frank MIller’s Batman story set in the future, The Dark Knight Returns. Cinematic adaptations such as The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen often mistakenly refer to the original works being graphic novels. The League was originally printed in a comic book miniseries followed by a trade paperback reprinting the tale. The original story was never a graphic novel.

Morgan pointed out there’s a misconception that graphic novels are a higher art form than comics when the distinction comes down to format.

“People that are not into comics think that there's a difference between the two,” he said. “No, it's all comics. It's just one has a spine and one is a floppy. But they don't even know what an issue is anymore. It feels like issues are this dying thing.”

Morgan prefers his fiction to have some comedy rather than be the overriding element.

“I don't like comedy as a genre and that always surprises people when I say that,” he said. “If you actually know me as a person, I'm pretty goofy but also I am pretty serious. I like moving narratives that have heart in it. I like comedy sprinkled in it. Just like I have action sprinkled in it. Growing up with Cartoon Network shows like Ben 10, yes, there were funny moments and there were a lot of amazing visuals, but there was still a sense of things being learned.”

Morgan’s long-range goal for his work is to make it as accessible as possible.

“Anything I would do is to make sure that my story gets out there first and foremost,” he said. “For me, it's not about making a bunch of money though I do need the money, obviously to live, but the main goal is to get my story out there, but also live to draw another day and live to tell my story another day. That’s always what I have in the forefront of my mind is what's the best way I can get my story in front of other people that have not heard it before?”

Morgan is attending college for drawing and teaching.

“Visual arts, specifically illustration,” he said. “I believe I'm getting my master's degree because right now creator-owned comics are not paying the bills. I want to teach what I love as well as continuing to publish part-time.”

Morgan didn’t have to fret about finding motivation when he started the book.

“Freshman year, it was like I had all the fire in my belly,” he said. “I just wanted to make comics and art. That's all I was about. What I did was after every assignment I would finish, my reward would be working on the comic. My downtime was just do more work. Work on your comics, work on a page. Oh, you did your math homework. You got it on time. You don't have anything due tomorrow. Work on pages till you crash and fall asleep. I still had a social life, but I'm definitely a lot more social this school year than last year.’

Morgan dispensed advice to aspiring comic book creators.

“Keep it short and simple,” he said. “When I was first starting out, the reason why I had a bunch of failed projects before Frankie is I was biting off way more that I could chew too soon. I am thankful that I drew those projects because that's still drawing I did. That's still me practicing my craft, but I was way too ambitious too soon.”

Morga learned to craft short tales to weave into a large tapestry.

“Frankie issue 1 is just three short stories in one issue,” he said. “Two 10-page short stories and a 4-pager. That's 24 pages and that fits like a good issue’s size. My advice to a young cartoonist starting out is to start small and watch it grow as you develop as a cartoonist because your characters will also grow with you as your skills develop.”

Morgan’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/herron__art/