Review: B.P.R.D. - Hell on Earth #145

I am truly a sucker for comics that marry epic supernatural storytelling with small-scale dramatic beats. Constant cosmic destruction quickly can get boring while long sequences of characters talking, runs the danger of becoming stagnant and ignoring the visual side of the medium. But if you can successfully combine the two, as BPRD #145 does, you end up with a thrilling adventure that manages to remember just why we care about the giant lizard stomping his way towards the BPRD's Colorado base. There's a lot going on at this point in BPRD. The base is being evacuated by a reasonably stressed out Kate Corrigan who realizes Panya is up to something. Liz and Johann are stalling for time, fighting a losing battle against the Ogdru Jahad, but Liz is falling apart from exhaustion and Johann is being tempted towards oblivion by forces beyond his control. Last of not least, Valslskjlkdjkfj and Ioseph have returned from Hell with some friends familiar to those who know Mignola's lore (no not Hellboy, sadly). While this last point does feel like a bit of an afterthought (though a pretty cool one and no, it's still not Hellboy), the issue is generally very successful at balancing its stories while progressing them each.

This last arc (and to an extent the entirety of BPRD Hell on Earth) has been about sacrifice. As the earth comes closer and closer to extinction, the cast of BPRD doesn't consider giving up but instead grit their teeth and fight forward, losing friends, family, and in some cases, their humanity in the process. Roger is dead, Abe and Hellboy are missing, Kate is alone, Panya is old and tired, and Liz is near death. Unlike every other superhero book on the market, the apocalypse of BPRD hasn't been avoided. Despite the best efforts of the Bureau's best agents, the world is cracked and broken as an elder God rampages across a brutally changed world.

And in the midst of this brutal, large-scale destruction, this issue takes some time to quietly focus on a couple of characters who have been quietly developing for over a hundred issues. Kat Corrigan who has, over the course of BPRD gone from a bit Hellboy backup character to a realistically developed leader and mother to the team, confronts Panya about her increasingly erratic reclusive behavior. Panya finally let’s go of her secret and, surprisingly, it's not one based in mythology but characterization. She is old and wants to die. In a small parallel to the team as a whole, Panya, in the face of overwhelming exhaustion, wants to give up and let it all be over but Kate can't let her go. It's a wonderful little moment earned both by this issue and those that came before.

By the end of the issue, there are a couple of larger plot swerves I won't spoil here, but that little character moment remains my favorite part. Entering its home stretch, BPRD Hell on Earth is proving itself to be a worthy finale in terms of mythology, spectacle, and heart. There's a lot of ground left to cover, but BPRD #145 proves Arcudi, Mignola, and Campbell are more than up to the challenge.

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B.P.R.D. - Hell on Earth #145 Writers: Mike Mignola and John Arcudi Artist:  Lawrence Campbell Colorist: Dave Stewart Publisher:  Dark Horse Comics Price: $3.50 Format: Ongoing; Print/Digital

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Review: Rise of the Black Flame #1

I've never had the opportunity to read a whole lot of Mike Mignola stuff. I know that this is probably blasphemy from a comic reviewer, but I simply never had the opportunity or drive like I did with other titles, which is why I decided to review this book, Rise of the Black Flame. To begin, the cover is creepy and reminiscent of other Mignola story covers I've seen in the past. The cover, art by Lawrence Campbell and Dave Stewart, shows a skull emerging from a mountain top above an ancient jungle temple, some kind of strange statue and three figures shrouded in shadow, only their knives highlighted in red. Very cool start to this book, as it sets a dark and foreboding tone.

The inside credits page sets the stage for the story, telling how young girls are disappearing from cities across Burma. Our first story page starts out great, with some flashbacks of things we don't know about yet; a character looking somewhat like a smoldering Ghost Rider confronts a woman in June of 2014, below that the same character in March of 2006 is behind a horde of what I can only describe as big frogs with teeth and radioactive tongues. We then see the same character in October of 1944, simply telling someone “I am Death.” Finally, February 1932, where there is a meeting between this character and a few regular people. He doesn't strike me as the type to simply hang out with regular people, but who am I to judge.

One final flashback leads us to May of 1923. We are in an ancient temple covered in roots and overgrowth. A lone monk speaks to the “Great Darkness”, and it is soon apparent that he, along with two masked and sword-wielding men, that they are going to sacrifice a young girl in order to revive this great darkness.

We are now in one of the British colonies of Burma. Police Sergeant Geoffrey Mcallister is investigating one of the disappearances of these young girls. The mother recaps the story of the young girl along with her caretaker are out visiting the gardens when, after a while, the caretaker was found murdered, and the girl was gone. Mcallister, along with his partner Sandhu, leave the house and discuss that although there is little hope of finding the girl, they must do their best.

We move along to a large building in which a mob has gathered out front. A man has been murdered, and our boys Mcallister and Sandhu arrive on the scene. Word from another policeman is that this guy tried to stop a man in a black hood from kidnapping a young girl, only to be strangled to death. The officer finds a coin from a neighboring country, freshly minted, which is the very first clue as to which direction to look in to find this kidnapper. Sandhu then reveals that he thinks it’s the work of a cult and goes on to describe the terrible things the cult used to do to travelers, including BUM, BUM BUUUUM blood sacrifices. This leads the two officers to go undercover and travel to Siam in order to find out more about this cult. It's here that, after some investigating, they encounter a woman that seems to be quite knowledgeable on such things as cults, monsters and the like...

This is my kind of story: a slow burn. The writers have given us just enough from the beginning to catch our attention: blood sacrifice to the “Great Darkness.” We then meet up with our two protagonists, two officers caught up in something much larger than themselves. They go on a journey to figure out what’s really going on... I speak of tropes a lot in my reviews. Is this a story I haven't heard before? No. This is a fairly typical setup, which is fine because it's all in the presentation for me. I found myself anxious to get to the next page or panel to see where the story was headed next. I'm also very interested in this “Black Flame” character, as anyone with a fiery skull for a head is a winner in my book.

The art was very classic looking and fit the time period of the story perfectly. Not overly detailed, which helped the overall atmosphere of the story, making it just feel like a classic story that's been around for years. Colors were a little muted and not vibrant, which drew me in more as it all felt so right. Overall a fantastic art style for this story.

This book has me very interested. Stories like this can always hook me in so long as they're done right. I will ding it a little for giving me that “I've read this before” feeling, though. Not that there's not enough new stuff here to make it different, but it's still not a completely original story by any stretch. Here's hoping that's just the first issue.

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Rise of the Black Flame #1 Writers: Mike Mignola and Chris Roberson Artist: Christopher Mitten Colorist: Dave Stewart Publisher: Dark Horse Comics Price: $3.99 Format: Mini-Series; Print/Digital

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Review: Witchfinder: City of the Dead #1

You may get a feeling that you are reading a Sherlock Holmes comic. The entire issue read like a Sherlock Holmes movie or book. The main character is essentially a detective like Sherlock and lives in London. Citizens use his abilities to investigate crimes and just like Holmes; Sir Edward investigates crimes or instances that others cannot seem to understand. Although the living dead is not something Sherlock would deal with, you still can’t get past that this is essentially a Sherlock Holmes story with the characters renamed. Sir Edward was given the nickname Witchfinder based on an investigation into what is similar to what the Salem witch trials were. There were rumors and sightings of witches, and Sir Edward decided he would see to the end the investigation into the witch sightings. As he would explain, they were all just misunderstandings, and there weren’t witches per say but rather groups of people that had different beliefs than what the iconic belief system was back in the 1880’s. Even though there was never really any witches, people still identified Sir Edward as the Witchfinder because to them he had stopped the witches from continuing their shenanigans. Up till the events that take place later in this issue, Sir Edward considers himself a logical man, but when the dead begin to rise and attack people, no amount of logic can help a person understand that.

As stated before, this reads exactly like a Sherlock Holmes story. It is as if Mignola and Roberson took some stories from the creator of Sherlock Holmes and created a similar character with hopes he would be a successful hit like his counterpart. Regarding creativity and originality, this falls short except for the zombies walking around, but it seems like zombies are in every other comic series so that aspect is not really original either, rather it sets itself apart from any Sherlock Holmes story. Sir Edward is a decent character, there is a good chunk of background information on him, but besides the Witch investigation, you do not get much in terms of his investigation style. It seems as if Mignola and Roberson are banking on getting a lot of Sherlock Holmes fans to jump on board. Personally, the Witchfinder just didn’t have that gusto that would make me want to commit to finding out the remainder of the story.

Besides the eerily similar character, and story style to that of Sherlock Holmes, the dialogue throughout the issue is actually solid. There is conflict, mystery, and surprises throughout which is a positive. The artwork that Stenbeck delivers is quite remarkable. He captures 1880’s London well, all the way from the buildings and architecture to the people’s clothing and even the cars. Stenbeck does an excellent job with character emotion and background. His style is dark and quite beautiful. Without the excellent artwork done by Stenbeck, the issue would have been very bland and probably deterred a lot of new readers from continuing into future issues.

Overall, not a bad first issue, but this is likely to be a series I will not be continuing. It just lacks a lot of creativity and is far too similar to Sherlock Holmes. If you are looking for a detective story, then give this a shot. The price tag is not going to break the bank, so if you are curious check out the first issue and if you do not like it, then you are only out a couple of dollars.

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Witchfinder: City of the Dead #1 Writer: Mike Mignola and Chris Roberson Artist: Ben Stenbeck Publisher: Dark Horse Comics Price: $3.50 Format: Mini-Series; Print/Digital

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Review: Hellboy and the BPRD 1954 #1

At what point does the Hellboy franchise reach the point where you can describe a story as 'a good Hellboy story'. After all, I know what to expect from 'a good Batman story' (crime, shadows, and fisticuffs), I know what to expect from 'a good Superman story' (truth, justice, the American way, and fisticuffs), and so on. And suddenly, Hellboy is a brand with 23 years of comics, two films, two cartoons, and a whole lot of spinoffs. Which is to say, a Hellboy story is a known quantity with familiar rhythms, story beats, and twists. Mike Mignola's grumpy, large-hearted half-demon always ends up in pulpy fistfights with occult monsters. Hellboy's adventures will always split the difference between tragic folktales and dime-store fantasy novels finding a tone all of their own. This isn't a bad thing and doesn't mean every Hellboy is the same, but it means you can't open up a new story without having the frame of reference of adventures past. As such, Hellboy and the BPRD 1954 won't blow any fans minds, but it will serve as a pleasant reminder of why this character and these stories are still fun, 20 some years later. The conceit of the Hellboy and the BPRD minis (of which this is the third) has been that they tell the stories of Hellboy's first few years as an agent of the Bureau. It's an excuse to tell the short one and done stories that made up the early half of the Hellboy core title before the scope became so apocalyptically large. 1954 see Hellboy and enthusiastic agent Farrier journey to an island in the Arctic Ocean where a group of researchers are being attacked by a yeti-like monster. I would have expected the story to mine some claustrophobia from the deadly terrain and lack of sunlight as seen in Whiteout or 30 Days of Night, but at least in the first issue, Mignola and Roberson seem to be taking a lighter approach, using the setting as a means of slightly altering the usual Hellboy monster formula.

A lot of humor is mined from the relationship between Hellboy and agent Farrier (who, as it quickly becomes apparent, is more Bill Nye than he is Jason Bourne). Farrier thinks the monster is likely a new and possibly mythic species of animal (his specialty) while Hellboy casually and correctly posits it's a mutant polar bear. It's a spin on the buddy cop relationship, with Farrier as the young, naive recruit and Hellboy as the world-weary Pro which is made much more amusing by the implicit knowledge that Hellboy is a fairly young agent himself.

As things progress there are a few fun twists in the store which is especially welcome as a typical downside to Mignola comics is a slow building first issue. But what really makes this issue a rock-solid entry into the Hellboy mythos is the art by Stephen Green. His work is clean, stylish, with a good use of negative space making the issue flow smoothly throughout. He also manages, what is to me the mark of any great artist on a Mignola book: he manages to draw Hellboy right. In the hands of many artists, including some great ones, Hellboy looks too realistic (making his horns and underbite look grotesque and silly) or too stylized, making him look like a cartoon parody of Mignola's original designs. In the hands of Green, he is once again a brawny monster fighter with a weathered face and oddly soulful eyes.

All in all, I enjoyed Hellboy and the BPRD 1954 #1 more than any of the Hellboy spinoffs of late. It takes the traditional Hellboy formula and simply executes it well which, as seen here, is enough to make for a pretty darn great read.

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Hellboy and the BPRD 1954 #1 Writers: Mike Mignola, Chris Roberson Artist:  Stephen Green Publisher: Dark Horse Comics Price: $3.99 Format: Mini-Series; Print/Digital

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Review: B.P.R.D. Hell on Earth #144

Comic Bastards has always focused away from superhero comics. Yes, we review some when we are sent them, but the idea is always that we are a site that provides coverage to the other half of comics. With publishers like Image and Boom! putting out creator-owned books from A-list creators, it can be tempting to write off superheroes as a juvenile exercise in basic pulp storytelling--something you are glad helped get you into comics but which doesn't add much to the medium anymore. I love capes and cowls as much as the next guy, but crossovers, constant deaths, and shifting creative teams have been overused to the point of cliché and certainly hard to apply any rigorous examination to. And then you have BPRD, a shared universe 144 issue mega series, with about twenty artists, a giant cast of superhero style characters and a constantly expanding mythos which somehow turns the style of superhero storytelling to its advantage. BPRD #144 is in many ways nothing more than a reminder of where each of the major players as a setup to the coming climax of Hell on Earth, but it works surprisingly well by using the history of the series to build melancholy and stakes. Most of the issue is set in Hell itself (which is ironically looking a lot more peaceful than Earth at this point, hence the series title). Ioseph and Varvara tour the underworld looking for possible allies but finding only the shattered dystopia last seen in Hellboy in Hell. Without a knowledge of that Hellboy series, much of this issue might not make sense, but that's also part of its brilliance. The Mignola books occupy a small enough line that it's actually a fair assumption that everyone will understand why Hell is destroy and Satan dead. In fact, tying in with what has been, up until now, an insular cutoff part of the continuity is in its own way thrilling. It implies, as fans may have long hoped, that the original Mignola hero may be ready to make a return to the BPRD.

As for the BPRD themselves, things are looking bleak (well, even more bleak than usual that is). We only get a few pages set on earth, but they serve as a good reminder of why we care about what's happening elsewhere. The ogdru Jahad continues making its way to the BPRD base in Colorado with Liz and Johann doing their best to act as damage control. Kate meanwhile is attempting to evacuate the base which is proving more difficult than expected. It's fascinating to see a world that instead of treating apocalyptic disaster like a weekly occurrence in the manner of DC or Marvel, has come apart at the seams. The stakes seem real here because each issue of BPRD is willing to change the world entirely going forwards. It's rare to be able to enjoy these pulpy, continuity based adventures without knowing what can and cannot happen at the story's end.

And fundamentally, as dark as it continues to get, BPRD is fundamentally still a book about pulpy thrills. As Johann and Liz roast freshly spewed monsters like oversized shish kabobs and Ioseph the undead Russian soldier faces his personal demons (literally), it's hard not to enjoy the spectacle of it all. BPRD is not, by any means, highbrow (it doesn't ever reach the poetry or quiet beauty of Mignola's Hellboy), but it's effective, quality pulpy storytelling, and that's rare enough to celebrate in its own right.

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B.P.R.D. Hell on Earth #144 Writers: Mike Mignola and John Arcudi Artist:  Lawrence Campbell Colorist: Dave Stewart Publisher:  Dark Horse Comics Price: $3.50 Format: Ongoing; Print/Digital

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Original "Hellboy" Graphic Novel To Be Published in 2017

Next spring, Dark Horse Comics will publish an original graphic novel,Hellboy: Into the Silent Sea, co-written by legendary Hellboy creator Mike Mignola, co-written and illustrated by Eisner Award-winning artist Gary Gianni and colored by award-winning colorist Dave Stewart. Following the events of the classic story “The Island,” Hellboy sets sail from the wreckage of a deserted island only to cross paths with a ghost ship. Taken captive by the phantom crew that plans to sell him to the circus, Hellboy is dragged along by a captain who will stop at nothing in pursuit of a powerful sea creature. Gary Gianni has previously collaborated with iconic writers including George R. R. Martin, Harlan Ellison, Ray Bradbury and Michael Chabon and teamed up with Michael Kaluta to work on the classic pulp hero, The Shadow. Gianni is best known the creator of the Monstermen series, which appeared as a back-up feature inHellboy. He also illustrated Prince Valiant, the syndicated newspaper comic strip, for 8 years. Gianni will illustrate Hellboy: Into the Silent Sea, with colors by Dave Stewart; Mignola will provide a cover, with colors by Stewart.

"I imagine if Hellboy: Into the Silent Sea were a movie, the Hollywood hyperbole would describe it as Hellboy's greatest adventure,” said Gary Gianni. “Yes... it's Hellboy as you've never seen him before, laughing , loving and battling his way across the stormy seas! You'll be thrilled as he faces cosmic forces terrorizing a haunted ship manned by a desperate crew! Be sure not to miss Hellboy: Into the Silent Sea, the biggest comic book event of the year!"

Hellboy: Into the Silent Sea is the third Hellboy original graphic novel, following the classics, Hellboy: House of the Living Dead by Mignola, Richard Corben and Stewart (2011) and Hellboy: The Midnight Circus by Mignola, Duncan Fegredo and Stewart.

Review: Hellboy and the B.P.R.D.: 1953

Hellboy: Seed of Destruction was the comic book that got me into comic books. Sure, I grew up on the Batman, Spider-man and Justice League cartoons, but like most kids, they never made me pick up a single issue.  I saw comic book movies, even the Hellboy one, and remained ambivalent. No one around me read comics and without any comic book stores to visit, there was just never a reason to jump in.

But then I was in high school and it was one in the morning. I was flipping through TV channels trying to find anything to watch when I found the Hellboy animated movie Sword of Storms.  This straight-to-video, cheap-looking cartoon is where Hellboy gets stuck with a magic sword and is sent into a strange alternate dimension filled with Japanese folkloric creatures. I can’t tell you if that movie was good but it set a fire in my brain—this juxtaposition of the weirdness of folklore with a sarcastic and hard-hitting demon protagonist showed me a type of storytelling I never knew existed. I immediately got on Amazon, bought the first three trades, and read them in a single night. I was all in.

Hellboy was the comic that introduced me to Alan Moore, whose books introduced me to Neil Gaiman, Grant Morrison, and Warren Ellis. My love for comic books traces back to this series and, to be honest, this is the first Hellboy book I’ve read in six years.

Hellboy and BPRD: 1953 is another short story collection that takes place during Hellboy’s earliest days working for the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense. The stories told here range from investigating a severed hand haunting an old British estate to a story from Hellboy’s father figure, Trevor Bruttenholm, about how he lost a friend to a Scottish water spirit when he was young.

If you’ve ever read a Hellboy short story collection before, you should know whether you’ll like this book.  If you’ve never read a Hellboy book at all, please go buy Seed of Destruction right now and start there.

I stopped being able to keep up with the series when I left for college and now that I’ve come back, it’s a lot like coming home. The stories feel shorter and smaller paced than they used. The art looks a little different. Hellboy’s always been a series that starts with an eerie ghost story and builds to a fist fight but now those fights seem like they’re coming on a little too quickly.

The last third of the collection covers a story about Hellboy investigating and stopping a giant, mutated dog from harassing a quiet Californian suburb. The series has always played with its pulp science fiction elements, but here, more than ever, felt like a genuine formula shake-up. The mystery builds slower and leaned harder into the science fiction stories of the 1950's like Them! than I expected. My first reaction was to be put-off. This wasn’t the type of story I remembered or wanted. What was I supposed to do with this?

The rhythm of this book as a whole felt different, never quite matching up to the Mike Mignola stories that I grew up on and loved.  Yet it still worked. I still found myself grinning when Professor Bruttenholm talked down an army of skeleton centurions or tilting my head at the strange and water-bloated horse face of a Scottish kelpie ready to drown Trevor’s friend in the lake. What worked in the previous Hellboy story collections works here even if it’s working slightly differently.

It was Mike Mignola’s stories that made me fall in love with folklore and that’s still here with great effect. The folklore of our ancestors, all those stories of ghosts and fairies and kelpie, were to make sense of the unknown, to give that darkness in the forest definition and meaning. But when we encounter them in this series, it’s not just a reminder that those unknowns are still present but that we live in places with history—that they have pasts, with people and with nightmares. Yet Hellboy has never been a series content with letting that history lie but rather about the ways we can break their cycles. In most folkloric stories, the beasts and ghosts can only ever be sated—to disappear and reappear, haunting a region in perpetuity. But in these stories, Hellboy will be sure to change that and beat the crap out of those monsters until they never show their faces around here again.

At first I was put-off by the final story in the collection, “Beyond the Fences,” because the subject matter was too much science fiction when I wanted folklore. Yet the more I thought about it, the more I realized that Mignola was leaning into a type of distinctly American folklore. Not Bigfoot or the chupacabra but the dropping of the Atom Bomb.  After all, folklore has never been about whether a subject had a basis in history as much it is about a reaction to history and to the world, few things in America’s history have generated more fantasy than the nuclear bomb. Whether it was the fantasies of an apocalyptic wasteland or the horrific creatures conjured up by radiation, people across the world took the reality of the nuke and crafted fantasy in order to process this new horror. Now it's just Hellboy’s turn to punch it out.

So even if the line work looks  slightly different or the faces look to have a little too much detail, when you see the crumbling stone fences and the thick, foggy forest trees on the page, you know you’re still reading a Hellboy story and you know that all sorts of spirits and folklore beasts are hiding just out of view.

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Hellboy and the B.P.R.D.: 1953 Writers: Mike Mignola, Chris Roberson Artists: Paolo Rivera, Joe Rivera, Ben Stenbeck, Michael Walsh Publisher: Dark Horse Comics Price: $19.99 Format: TPB; Print/Digital

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