By Dustin Cabeal

What’s frustrating about Blackwood is that it’s clearly following the Dark Horse formula of mini-series over ongoings. Its what made Hellboy and the Mignolaverse successful because each new series is inviting to new readers. With Blackwood wrapping in one issue, it’s clear that this segment of the story will come to a close, but that the bigger story is just starting. I’m frustrated because I want to read a lot more of this series and who knows how long we’ll have to wait for it.

By Dustin Cabeal

I’ve written about this many times in reviews, but there was one point in my review life that I feared first issues more than second issues. The first issue is the journey into the unknown. You can’t possibly know if you’ll like the book at all until you crack up the pages for the first time. This, of course, leads to finding a lot of comics that aren’t in your wheelhouse. A few years back though it was as if every creator figured out the formula for a successful first issue. It could have been something amazing, but instead what happened was mediocre to poor second issues that felt more like first issues. It was like someone pulled some zero issue bullshit and so one after the other, I read horrible second issues. Suddenly, first issues didn’t even phase me. I expected them to be good to great, but to this day I still live in fear of the second issue because they still rear their ugly heads and send me away from a series faster than you can count the number of first issues released by Marvel in the past year.