3 out of 5

As I’ve blasphemed before, my reread of the Mignolaverse titles from start up until I dropped ’em – around when Arcudi left – has exposed that a lot of what I realized I didn’t like was always in place.  I fully respect what Mike has added (and continues to add) to the comic world, and to his Mignolaverse, and I can’t poo-poo on people who do like this particular type of reference-check enmeshed myth building – the kind of stuff that makes it handy to have compendiums and other things to remind yourself of prior lore – but it’s not for me, and I guess it never really has been.  The aspects of the HB universe that have arrived more or less fully formed – the main man’s personality, for example, and how it lends itself to punchy pulpiness – I’m down with, and characters that came in after the fact, as in Roger and Johann, I dig.  But the guy and gal who were, in my retconning, included as ‘weird’ details before they became full parts of the world and plot – Abe and Liz – have only rarely been interesting to me, and generally only after Arcudi shed off a lot of preceding Mignolaness to move on to what felt like his own plottings.

So: Abe Sabien’s first solo outing, as scripted by Mignola, perhaps not surprisingly comes across as something of a snooze to me.  Abe’s just not three-dimensional enough – in this format – to merit his own focus, and I don’t buy his personality during this mission, which has him plagued by daymares of HB and Liz telling him he’s not good enough, in response to which he mutters some vaguely Hellboy-isms (e.g. ‘Son of a…!’) which make it harder to attribute a unique set of attributes to the guy.  The story, involving a cursed land and the various inhabiting ghosts trying to keep things in check or set things aflame, is initially pretty grabbing, and a worthwhile way of getting Abe involved while staying tangential to B.P.R.D. / HB going-ons, but past some explanations, we again get roped heavily in to the ongoing Mignolaverse lore, further robbing the book the opportunity to make Abe exist on his own.  There are some good battles, and some creepy moments, it just feels very much like a backup that was allowed five issues to be told.

Jason Shawn Alexander’s dark, loose artwork is quite stunning at points, and is a good fit for the tale’s generally murky, sombre tone.  Occasional larger-than-the-page action sequences don’t quite ‘move’ that well, but most of the story is relatively low-key, so it works more often than not.

Paired with other titles at the time – the first Witchfinder, 1946 – Abe Sapien: The Drowning does form a nice complement to a set of ‘origin’ stories, but much like my feeling regarding the character himself, the story feels too much like its reliant on the rest of the HB world to prop it up, instead of rightfully existing on its own terms.