Comic Reviews: Abe Sapien Volumes 1 & 2

The Drowning

    The first volume of Abe Sapien tells the story of his first mission without Hellboy.  Generally speaking, it feels like a Hellboy story, just with Abe put in Red’s place.  I like the premise, and there are a lot of good scenes.  What I don’t like is Abe.  It’s weird, but my recent reading of B.P.R.D. and now reading this, I find myself enjoying Abe less and less.  I don’t know if Mignola isn’t sure what to do with him, or if he is sure, and it’s just not something I respond to.  Like Liz Sherman, Abe has become a sort of listless, self-doubting, sad-sack.  And this first solo (well, he’s got several red-shirt agents along with him…for a few pages) adventure does little to lend him much gravitas.

    As I said, I really do like the premise of the story.  An island which had been a leper colony and the center of a supernatural event, was rededicated to worship of the Sea.  Then something awful happened, and something was buried.  Abe and crew don’t exactly cause the problem, but their arrival sets some stuff in motion, and as often happens in these stories, the proverbial crap hits the fan.  There are more connections drawn to the Hyperboria, Atlantis, and Lemuria, some deep history and some weird magic.  And I really like Jason Shaw Alexander’s artwork.  But, at the end of the day, like in B.P.R.D., Abe is seeming more and more like a shadowy afterthought of Hellboy, like a vessel for unused story ideas that were meant for our doomed hero, but would no longer work for him.

The Devil Does Not Jest and Other Stories

    The second volume feels even more like classic Hellboy, being a bunch of short stories that feature various unrelated events.  That said, it feels like Abe has a bit more personality here.  The Haunted Boy and The Abyssal Plain showcase Abe’s very different, more thoughtful approach to weird events.  The Devil Does Not Jest sets up something really cool, but doesn’t pay off, which was too bad.  Pretty much everything up until the finale was cool.  I wonder if it’ll have any kind of follow-up in future Abe books, or in B.P.R.D.

    The art is a mixed bag, as this is an anthology.  But it’s all passable, at least.  However, I still can’t figure out if I actually like Abe anymore.  He’s such a potentially interesting character, but like several plotlines on Lost, the more you find out, the less interesting he becomes.  There were so many ways to take the character, and it seems like they’ve found most of the bad ones.  As much as I love Hellboy and B.P.R.D., it frustrates me that what was one of my favorite characters feels lost to me, now.  Like I can’t connect to him or to what he’s doing.

Abe Sapien: The Drowning
Author: Mike Mignola
Artist: Jason Shawn Alexander
Publisher: Dark Horse Books
ISBN: 978-1-59582-185-0

Abe Sapien: The Devil Does Not Jest and Other Stories
Authors: Mike Mignola & John Arcudi
Artists: Patrick Reynolds, etc.
Publisher: Dark Horse Books
ISBN: 978-1-59582-925-2

-Matthew J. Constantine

Comic Reviews: B.P.R.D. Hell on Earth 1, 2, & 3

New World

    The Plague of Frogs is over…Right?  Everything must be OK, then.  Everything should be getting back to normal, huh?  Of course not.  The Frogs were the beginning, but there’s a whole heck of a lot more trouble on its way.  It is, as the title suggests, a new world.  Humans are adaptable, and they’re gonna have to do some serious adapting.

    This volume sees the return of some old friends, and hints at new dangers on the horizon.  The B.P.R.D. team, now having to deal with being folded into the UN, is still haunted by the loss of Hellboy from their ranks.  Without his spirit at their head, they’ve never quite worked as well.  Abe has become sullen, Liz has wandered off again, Kate is stretched to her limit, Johann is more and more secretive and weird.  The cracks in the team are like the cracks in reality, letting vile darkness creep into the world.

Gods and Monsters

    Monsters are crawling out of the ground, people are loosing their minds, and out of Texas comes a profit, leading the lost and displaced away from danger.  What’s her deal?  Well, someone seems to know, and we get a history lesson in pre-human civilization, and hints of what is to come.  And then there’s Liz’s adventures in trailer park living.  Bad, bad business.

    There is an art shift half way through this volume, with Tyler Crook taking over from Guy Davis.  He does a pretty good job of not making the shift too distracting, and while not as distinct a style as Davis’s, I think it’s perhaps a bit easier on the eyes.  For all the horror contained in this book, it feels like a relatively restful intake of breath, before it all goes down.

Russia

    And so, in this volume, it all starts to go down hill fast.  When Kate takes a trip to Russia, we see that things haven’t been going too well there, either.  The world is breaking down, the rules are being forgotten, and people are learning to live with a lot of things.  A lot of pretty awful things.

    It feels like with the trip to Russia, the new conflict in a post Frog war world is revealed.  Pieces are being put on the board, and the first moves are made.  Kate is forced to finally accept that Hellboy is gone, and what’s up with Abe this time?  No wonder Abe and Hellboy were such good friends.  Both have greatness written in their destiny.  Both want to do good, to be good, to fight for good.  Yet both built for cataclysmic evil.  That’s got to weigh on a person, be they a fish man or a demon.

    The first three volumes of Hell on Earth are steeped in the cosmic dread one expects from Mike Mignola’s world.  For all the fun and excitement of Hellboy and Abe’s pulp flavored adventures, there has always been an underlying doom of growing, rolling, unstoppable horror, and in B.P.R.D., that horror is bursting out of its prison, hungry and wild.  Can the broken and battered investigators and agents of the Bureau save humanity?  Can they at least buy us a few more sunrises?  It’s looking less and less likely.

B.P.R.D. Hell on Earth: New World
Authors: Mike Mignola & John Arcudi
Artist: Guy Davis
Publisher: Dark Horse Books
ISBN: 978-1-59582-707-4

B.P.R.D. Hell on Earth: Gods and Monsters
Authors: Mike Mignola & John Arcudi
Artists: Guy Davis & Tyler Crook
Publisher: Dark Horse Books
ISBN: 978-1-59582-822-4

B.P.R.D. Hell on Earth: Russia
Authors: Mike Mignola & John Arcudi
Artists: Tyler Crook & Dave Stewart
Publisher: Dark Horse Books
ISBN: 978-1-59582-946-7

-Matt

Comic Review: B.P.R.D. Plague of Frogs 4

    Another volume of B.P.R.D. another part of the world irrevocably altered.  Actually two parts this time.  Germany and Indonesia…oh, and California.  Three parts.  A lot is revealed in this final volume of the mega-arc Plague of Frogs.  But of course there is more to come.  I don’t know what happens next, but considering how bad this arc has been, I have to think one called “Hell on Earth” is going to get dark before it gets light…if it ever gets light.

    So, this time around, the team is trying to figure out what’s going on with that dream/ghost Liz keeps seeing.  And like me, they’re trying to figure out why Lobster Johnson would hijack Johann’s ectoplasm and shoot it.  On the trail of this Memnan Saa, they also begin to unravel the secret of a sad and unloved occultist from the 1800s who orbited in the same social circles as the team’s new mummy member, Panya.  The quest takes them to Asia, where a member of the team is snatched.  Then to German, where they discover that the Frog threat isn’t as contained as believed and that it has become much more complicated.  And then to the frozen wastes of the Russian-Chinese border.  There is a return of an old enemy and that of an old friend…sort of.  And though I hardly think his tale is done, there is a kind of peace found for the Lobster.

    Abe and Liz go through absolute hell over the course of the volume.  Like Hellboy, Abe has never been comfortable with command, and it is weighing very heavily on him.  Both learn a great deal about themselves, and their place in the cosmic play that is unfolding.  These beings (heroes and villains) seem to be like gravity wells, attracted to each other and causing all sorts of damage as they pass, and massive destruction when the collide.  Even with the best intentions, Liz is a tremendously catastrophic force.  And if Abe found himself uncomfortable with command before, what fate seems to have in store for him will not be improving his outlook.  With Hellboy out of the picture, these two are coming into their own, and it may just spell the end of the world.  And through it all, there’s Kate.  Good, sane, steady Kate.  With all the flash and noise of these weird people it’s easy not to notice Kate, but without her, everything would be falling apart (not just lots of things but everything).

    Though this volume ends a story arc, it is not the end of the story.  And in a way, the Plague of Frogs is all just setting the stage for what comes next.  And by the end of this volume, you’ll have seen a few glimpses into what that may be.  And it’s not good.  Things have changed for our heroes.  Their lives are in constant upheaval, their losses profound and their gains sometimes fleeting.  But they press on, battling against the tidal waves of cosmic horror.  B.P.R.D. is a great series that takes its emotional cue from Lovecraft.  These brave men and women are not fighting for good or justice.  They may not even be fighting to win.  They’re doing everything they can to stop an unstoppable force, to delay it, to give the Earth just one more day of light.  The wave is coming.  And the only thing between us and the end is a team of weirdos who may themselves be the keys to our ultimate destruction.

B.P.R.D. Plague of Frogs 4
Authors: Mike Mignola & John Arcudi
Artists: Guy Davis & Dave Stewart
Publisher: Dark Horse Books
ISBN: 978-1-59582-974-0

-Matt