3 out of 5

A compellingly moody art style and well-intentioned pulp / noir influences help keep Midnight Society afloat (nyuck nyuck), despite a somewhat wandering sense of narration that doesn’t feel like it delivers on the promise of its opening issue.  However, Johnson’s supposed aims of crafting a larger world are noteworthy, and make the series worth reading, if simply for getting some mild goosebumps over witnessing the start of something that could be a lot of fun.

We open with a man named Arcturus and monocled Kevin Kaycee – cryptozoologists – wearing steampunk jetpacks and tracking down pixies in a cave.  Their resultant discovery turns into a disagreement on what to do with that discovery, which leads to a split between the two men that lasts until the present day, to which we fast-forward, an elder Arcturus leading some type of secret society and tasking charge Matilda Finn with heading out to Loch Ness to rescue Mr. Kaycee, who’s communications have ceased during his hunt for the fabled monster of the Ness.  The first issue is incredibly rich and immersive, and gives ample time to the pixie discovery to give our flash-forward appropriate weight.  Unfortunately, it also sets up an imbalance from the get-go, as remaining issues focus on Matilda and her hunt.  It’s a pretty exciting quest, with a couple nice twists, though some details (art and story) get lost in the Big Picture scope of this quest, and it never quite stirs the interest in the same way the setup did.  However, the agency for which Matilda works – MI: Omega – and Matilda’s past both get some world-building nods throughout our tale (though they are rather clumsily shoe-horned in), giving us a good starting point for, hopefully, future stories to continue from.

Black Lake is thus a pretty good romp, though its immediate effect is almost feels like a distraction from the curiosities Johnson litters in his story’s wake.