5 out of 5

See, I never really liked Abe – his I’m-a-team-member-but-fuck-off-while-I-go-moodily-investigate-my-past shtick is rather staid – and maybe because of that, I never cared much about knowing his background, and when it was eventually revealed, it just sorta landed flat for me.

Thankfully, John Arcudi seemed to recognize my feelings, and wrote Garden of Souls to address them.

Things start off somewhat business as dour-usual for Abe, who gets a cryptic message to come to Indonesia (oh, more past life scrounging, I thinks to m’self) and invites Daimio along for support and then… y’know, ditches him, because he’s fucking sourpuss Abe Sapien.  To keep the non-Abe fans of us interest, Arcudi has dumped a ton of weirdness into this upfront, including a living mummy (first appearance of Panya!), mind controlled kids, mutated Moreau-like creatures, steampunk bathyscape suits, and makes excellent use of Daimio’s chummy personality while he leads a take-charge hunt for Abe.  Meanwhile, a B story with Johann sharing some odd info he’s discovered on Daimio with Liz and Kate appears as a blip and then disappears, but I actually appreciated that John only spent as much time on that as was needed.

Blah blah Abe finds out about the Heliopic Brotherhood’s splinter group, the Oannes society, and mopey mopes through background info that ties him to the latter.  Obviously I’m not keen on this stuff, but again, Arcudi keeps a lot of other elements mixed in to keep it interesting, and because Abe is surrounded by other characters actively engaging him regarding this history – instead of Abe crying to himself during memories – the fleshing out of this stuff feels more active.

And then there’s a point where Abe is handed a cane that his past self used to use… and he goes batshit nuts with it and becomes the badass m.f. he always should have been.  Words cannot qualify how awesome the story becomes at this point, and it absolutely makes all the knuckle-dragging to get here worth it (though I sincerely doubt this scene was planned at the point Mignola was drafting his ‘tragic’ Abe backstory).  Cuts to Daimio start to build in intensity as they align with some world-ending antics going on in Abe town, but now we want to hang with Sapien, who’s verily taken control of his life goddamned finally.  “I met some men… and they all knew Langdon Caul.  …  But they didn’t know me.”  So endeth Garden of Souls, as a perfect summary of Abe’s transformation into a new fishman.

Guy Davis and Dave Stewart have a full grasp on things by this point; not a page or panel suffers from overreach or structural hiccups.  The trade includes copious sketches from Guy and Mike as always appreciated evidence of how much design work they put into these books.