2 out of 5

Checking the reviews out there, the kids are loving this issue, apparently, but me… not so much.  I can’t help but wonder if the Hellboy world gets nigh universal approval from those invested, when the unanswered or brushed-off letters in some issues’ letters pages suggest I’m not the only one who feels that the expanded print schedule has diminished quality in spots (and I do appreciate that they print these, of course, but Scott Allie’s sometimes flippant responses seem to cast the negative opinions in a particularly spurious light).  And yes, I’ve gotta say that I feel like its mostly the books where Mignola’s name is just included as, I assume, architect and not primary… and, yes, the ‘Abe Sapien’ ongoing series in general has not yet produced what I would consider a really notable issue.  Both the writing and art felt off here – for the former, poor in general and for the latter, forced.  Michael Avon Oeming is new to HB books and is here as a sorta guest star, so he adopts the Mignola house style of heavy blacks and negative space but just doesn’t do it too well.  His attempts at the framing panels Mike likes to use ruin most of his page flows (though he shares the same blockiness as Mignola, here Oeming’s pencils are more cartoonish and animated than the smooth, poetic fluidity Mike brings to the page, and as such framing panels just don’t factor in effectively) and shadowed action sequences just feel like they’re floating in space as opposed to – nyuck nyuck – given gravity by the technique.

To Allie, his voice for his characters has been significantly heavy handed thus far and this doesn’t change that, but the setup of Abe relating a story to the Professor (all in a flashback sequence) requires extra exposition that makes it especially clunky.  Then there’s the question of why this story exists.  In the editorial before the letters, Allie explains that every few issues will be a flashback one-shot to give series artists the Fiumara twins a break.  Fine and good, I suppose, except that the flashback seems to have nothing – nothing – to do with the primary story.  A review I read compared this to the recent Hellboy in Hell one-shot, except that that book at least took place at a sensible point after the previous one and made mention to pieces Mignola had placed in prior issues.  Here we get a vampire reference because we just had a vampire mini-series.  I guess.  Or, as usual, I’m missing the Mignolaverse context, I dunno.  It just seems weird that we’re not even granted a current-storyline Abe reflecting on something as a lead-in to the tale.  Which makes it feel like a fill-in issue.

Nothing added to the world, but besides my disappointment with the artwork, for better or worse on par with most of the issues from this series thus far.