River City History: The legacy of Frankenstein

Frankenstein became a name synonymous with uncontrolled science in the twentieth century, but the legacy of Victor Frankenstein’s creation sat fresh in the minds of many people around the world as the Second World War raged on. Dozens of artificial beings inspired by the original creature were created over the course of that half-decade, but perhaps the strangest had his origins in River City.

Albrecht Stein is now believed to be a descendant of the Frankenstein legacy, but modern records cannot be sure if even he was aware of that knowledge when he set to work on creating an artificial man as the United States entered the war in 1941. It is known that despite his German heritage he had an unrepentant hatred for the Nazi war machine.

But perhaps that does not forgive what some still call a crime against nature.

Stein gathered three veteran military men, all crippled in battle. None of the men remained functional members of society and Stein picked them because they all exhibited suicidal tendencies. Still, his methods still seem insane to most. Instead of operating on corpses like his ancestor Victor, Stein abducted these three men to make his artificial being. (Debate still exists as to whether the three men came willingly or not.)

It took him only a matter of hours to complete the complex surgery necessary to create his artificial man. Three men died, but a super-man took his place. Stein filled his creature’s veins with another experiment of his, a serum that caused that made his ubermensch nearly indestructible as well as faster and stronger than a mere mortal.

Albrecht’s son Andrew watched the whole procedure. Unfortunately for the Steins, he did it while compromising the job assigned to him by his father. Stein’s experiments were known to the United States government, but they were also known to Fifth Columnists within the U.S. ranks.

That would, in the end, cost numerous American lives.