3 out of 5

Dang, this is way too crowded.  There seemed to be a desire to do a proper horror book – the opening issues find Trevor Bruttenholm and associate Dr. Eaton exploring a haunted asylum – but then it veers hard into a tribute to old school, pulp HB, with Nazi robots and big punchin’ machines.  Meanwhile, what we’re witnessing is actually pretty damn important – the first appearance of Varvara, the best embodiment of the creepy kid trope in comics yet – and overall events that would lead to confirming the ‘need’ for B.P.R.D. as a funded agency, but the clutter of the way things unfold and the tonal whiplash prevents Varvara from becoming a proper focus, and doesn’t really help to establish why what happened in 1946 was any more relevant than any of the other stories we’ve been told from the era.

Drawn by Paul Azaceta, whose blocky style is a good parallel to Mignola’s – maintaining the artist’s own identity while melding with what would become the Mignolaverse’s ‘house’ look – a sense of place and space is, unfortunately, never well established.  The corridor horror of the first part of the book, and then some of the bigger sci-fi settings of the latter half, offer no grounding to the reader, and flip-flops between characters are completely lost in translation, making neither the horror or humor too effective.  Clem Robins seems confused working his lettering into this, as well, overlapping bubbles very oddly to try to work with some of the forced perspectives.

From a writing perspective, some of the individual character moments are quite good: Bruttenholm is particularly interesting and fun to follow, and Varvara is just a killer character, given some delightfully weird moments.  Because Azaceta nails her oft-kilter childishness and Dysart / Mignola script her dialogue to balance between cute-isms and threats, she’s really the standout here, and makes one wish that her appearance – as the leader of a Soviet occult team! – and her quickly tossed off background with demons had been more of the focus.

While 1946 does have a throughline of following up on some missing Nazi experiments, its two punctuations – a haunted house and a big ol’ pulp battle – split the reading experience oddly, with some clunky handling of the action in both of these parts preventing either moment from really standing out.  Conceptually, there are plenty of great ideas, and the characters remain engaging throughout.  This, along with its important place in B.P.R.D. lore, makes it a necessary read, even if it’s not the best Mignolaverse tale out there.