In what’s sure to be the lead up story to Abe’s accident mentioned in B.P.R.D., this tale sees Abe setting off to talk to one of the relatives of his favorite author. Of course the author wrote about demons and abandoned his first family after knocking up a grad student of his, but we all have our interests’ right? This story opens with a chilling scene of Abe and then zips to the past to work its way back. It’s not the most original storytelling, but it’s effective.

Abe is enticed to visit the old house of Garver,the author/professor that Abe respects to see what he was working on before disappearing from the public’s eye. He and the grandson of Garver arrive at the house to visit the only other remaining family member, an uncle. Upon entering the house the Uncle instantly kills his nephew and Abe is forced to gun him down. He calls in the homicide to the local PD and stays and waits for them. When the officer arrives he takes Abe’s gun and starts to process the crime scene. That is until something begins moving from behind a door in front of the two dead men. The officer heads down the long hallway ordering Abe to stay put, but soon Abe is the only one left to figure out what’s going on in this crazy ass house.

This is another one of those books that I find it hard to say something new about the writing team, since I’ve talked about them at lengths already. Believe it or not Mignola and John Acrudi still make a great writing team and continue to create an interesting universe full of monsters.At this point I have to say if you don’t like their storytelling and writing styles then you’re not ever going to, but if you like them you’ll continue reading. Also if you’ve never read anything by them, then definitely give it a shot. That’s really all you can say about the writing at this point.

Something I can give fresh prospective about is the art,having never seen James Harren’s art before I was really taken in by it. Harren has a great style that looks a bit like Locke& Key from IDW, but colored by Dave Stewart it has that tone and feel of the Hellboy-verse. Harren does a great job of not only drawing action scenes, but just setting up the panels in interesting ways to look at. A great example is a panel in which Abe is curious by what he’s hearing and has turned his head. The way the panel is set up makes you turn your head to look at Abe and this device is effective at emerging the reader into the story.

I’ve always said that I never read too much B.P.R.D. and what little I did, I quickly discovered that I wasn’t a big fan of Abe’s. I just never got into his character and so I wasn’t expecting much from this issue. Fortunately, Abe and company didn’t care about me liking them and delivered a great story that heavily connects to the bigger stories happening throughout the Hellboy-verse.If you’ve been digging Hellboy and B.P.R.D. then picking up this book is a no-brainer.

Score: 3/5