Mike Mignola continues to expand the vast Hellboy Universe with Captain Henry and the Graveyard of Time #1, written by Mignola and Bruce Zick with art and colors by Zick. Not familiar with the Hellboy Universe? No worries, this miniseries is self-contained and you can enjoy it knowing absolutely nothing about the rest of Hellboy’s shared Universe.
Like another recent Dark Horse miniseries, The Adventures of Lumen N. (check it out, it’s great!), this book embraces the trappings of late 19th and early 20th century writers like H. G. Wells, Edgar Rice Burroughs and H. P. Lovecraft, with hardy adventurers and scientists using clunky Victorian-era technology to travel to strange new worlds and dimensions and battle nightmarish creatures.
Bruce Zick’s stark art and sparse color scheme make reading the book feel like watching an old Universal Horror movie, like James Whale’s 1931 classic Frankenstein. Like that film, the book leans heavily into German expressionism, with Captain Henry’s trip to another dimension sometimes shown in warped angles, like looking at a reflection in a rippling stream. No matter the scene, you can feel Captain Henry’s tension emanating off the pages.
And tense it is, as Henry sets off in a bulky metallic suit – which looks like a combination of Iron Manish 19th Century armor and a deep-sea diving outfit – to find Sir Walter, a hunter who passed away and whose spirit is now stuck in “The Shadow Realm”, a dimension similar to purgatory. In the second half of the book, as Henry pushes deeper into The Shadow Realm, the scenery transforms into a Salvador Dali/MC Escher-type landscape, truly making you feel like you’ve been catapulted into a fever dream.
Dark Horse
Many times when reading a book (especially one I’m enjoying), I like to imagine what actor or actress would play the book’s characters if it were made into a film. Unfortunately, Sean Connery’s gone, but he would’ve been perfect to play Captain Henry, around the same time he starred in The Rock. Henry exudes that same strength and fire that Connery imbued in all his roles. He’s not the most interesting character in the Hellboy Universe, but for a story like this, the situations and obstacles the hero faces are far more interesting than the hero himself.
What more can be said about Mike Mignola’s brilliance? The man has an imagination as vast as the cosmos. There’s no end to the characters, worlds and monsters he routinely blesses us with and I love his penchant for setting his stories in the past. In many of his stories, computers and cellphones are nowhere to be seen, just men and women fighting with their fists and a trusty pistol at their side. Mignola’s keeping every genre of pulp fiction alive and well in the 21st Century, from dark fantasy to hard sci-fi and everything in between, and it’s always an entertaining read.
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