Ben Stenbeck is writing and drawing the next Lands Unknown title, and the two-part series Lands Unknown: The Skinless Man launches this week. After reading the launch title, Bowling for Corpses, it’s safe to say this is more folklore feeling than fantasy, and Stenbeck is the perfect creator to carry Mike Mignola’s torch forward. Having worked with Mike Mignola for years, not only drawing but co-writing, Lands Unknown: The Skinless Man #1 feels wholly new and fresh, while supplying the storybook qualities we’ve come to expect from Mignola-led stories.
Stenbeck’s art is a standout hit for me, especially after the incredible Koshchei in Hell, so it’s no surprise how good it is here. Due to this not being in the Mignolaverse, the rendering of the people and locations feels more realistic. There are various cultures evident in clothing and skin tones, further making this more of a worldly alternate history than a fantasy. That said, the story opens with a witch who seems like a giant, especially when she’s wearing a walrus skin coat that fits. There’s also a talking rabbit, but the human characters in this tale seem very real.
This issue also benefits from the story-within-a-story technique, first introducing a hunter, his wolf, and his rabbit as they visit a witch who teeters on the edge of a cliff. Fairly quickly, the witch dives into a tale of the skinless man, sending readers on a grand adventure. I’ll admit it’s a bit odd that she goes into this tale when we don’t know what the hunter is after, but it does pay off by the end.
It was a dark and stormy night.
Courtesy Dark Horse Comics
The tale she tells is quite epic, focusing on a baby with gold eyes. This leads the skinless man to seek out warlocks to somehow give him skin back through the baby. Twists and turns abound in this tale, leading to a dead king, caged animals, and eventually a giant. Frankly, this stale reads like a lost chapter in the Bible, only a far more interesting mix of weird cultures and creatures.
It’s not all storytelling by a fire, however, with an exciting action scene involving a werewolf-creature to cap things off. Stenbeck keeps that action intense, with a nice twist involving a leg bone to cap it off.
It’s through the strange peculiarities of the tale that it finds a footing in your imagination. Again, the human characters all feel very real from different familiar past cultures, yet there’s also a werewolf creature, a man with no skin walking about, and other oddities. It’s as if this tale was woven at a time when weird traits and creatures were a thing because the unexplained was far more prevalent. That gives the tale a kind of magic and mythic feel that scratches an itch unique to this universe.
Lands Unknown: The Skinless Man #1 feels like a story pulled from some half-remembered medieval manuscript and brought to life with startling clarity. Stenbeck honors the mythic sensibilities associated with this corner of comics while forging something distinctly his own, leaning into realism in character design and culture while letting the supernatural elements feel raw and uncanny. The fireside tale structure gives the book a timeless cadence, and once the skinless man’s quest begins, the issue builds toward an ending that is both brutal and poetic. A few early narrative gaps may momentarily disorient readers, but by the final page, the spell is firmly cast. This is folklore rendered with confidence, texture, and just enough menace to linger.
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