By Dustin Cabeal

HA! Jokes on Koshchei, because he’s fucking dead! I feel like Koshchei has one of those names that if you don’t hear it said properly the first time you’re going to butcher it forever or find something similar to it to call him. Like Cold Seat. Or John Koltrane, but nowhere near as talented. Anyway, Kochete takes place in the Mignolaverse of course. I am unfamiliar with the character, but the solicits indicate that he was once a throne in Hellboy’s ass. Now, he’s dead and having a drink with Hellboy, in hell, telling him his life story.

I’ll admit that I’m not the target audience for this book. I found it to be a bit dull. Unlike other Mignola titles, Koshchei comes across as only being for people that enjoyed the character’s previous appearances in Hellboy. Which is just strange to me considering how welcoming I’ve always found the Mignolaverse to be. I have read zero, and I mean zero Hellboy back issues. I started reading in 2011/2012 and just read what was released, and I’ve never once felt lost or unwelcomed to the story. Hellboy and other titles don’t suffer from the problem that DC and Marvel do, in that there are no good jumping on points to a book, you just have to jump. With all of Mignola’s stuff I’ve found that you don’t need to jump, you can just walk alongside, and you’ll be caught up in no time. That is sadly not the case here.

What’s also disappointing is that with the main character already being dead, we pretty much know the ending. It almost seems gratuitous to go through the origin of this character, but then for hardcore fans, the day one readers, it might be long overdue. Like Wolverine’s origin or some shit, but hey, we all know how that turned out right? That aside, when he’s given his task to remain immortal, it’s predictable and very biblical which of course is a staple of the series. It just didn’t excite me. Mignola’s such an influential writer/creator that I would have thought based on his history that he would make me fear and hate this man, but then in the course of explaining his origin, humanize him and make me love and understand him. Instead, he goes for the sympathy card quickly and then turns him into a piece of shit. It works well enough, but it’s nothing new and not even particularly interesting to this universe. It failed to invoke any emotion from me.

The art from Ben Stenbeck is terrific. He’s become a stable to the verse, and it’s nice to see him working on things outside of Baltimore. Stenbeck is a gifted visual storyteller, and there were times when all I wanted to do was look at the artwork and soak it up. Visually the comic is stunning, but I can’t decide if the story put too much pressure on the art or didn’t trust it enough. It’s a fine line, and it’s hard to say for sure which one it is, but something didn’t quite line up.

There’s hope that the remaining five issues will be better than this first issue. Hell, anymore I’ll take a weaker first issue to have a better overall series. Sadly though, it felt like a tired story that Mignola finally got around to telling, rather than something any fan needed to read. We’ll see on the next one, but for now, it’s all a bit dull.

Score: 3/5

Koshchei: The Deathless #1
Dark Horse Comics