BPRD 1947 #1

Written by Mike Mignola and Joshua Dysart
Art by Gabriel Ba and Fabio Moon

I don't generally have any interest in Hellboy comics, despite a long-standing admiration for Mike Mignola's work (dating back to his run on Alpha Flight), but when I saw that this new spin-off series was co-written by Dysart (whose Unknown Soldier I'm enjoying quite a bit) and drawn by Ba and Moon, I wanted to give it a try.

While it could have stood with some further explanation of the backstory (even a little blurb at the front would have been helpful), the story isn't too difficult to get into. There has been some sort of Nazi Vampire stuff going on (presumably in BPRD 1946), and now the guy that's raising Hellboy wants to send a team of ptsd'ed ex-soldiers (and one merchant marine) to a small town in France to research a party from two hundred years previous, and the controversial opera that was based upon it.

There is some nice character work, as these four Americans are presumably new to the title. Most important to this book though, is the art. Ba and Moon work together seamlessly in this title, and their art, while lacking the freneticism of their work on Casanova, is very nice. Mignola and Dysart are wise to just shut up at times and let them tell the story through their art - the page with the cat and the bat are perfect examples of their story-telling skills.

I'm definitely staying on for the rest of this title.