4 out of 5

…Not just because of the quality of this one series, but the experience of reading it in general, I am reminded why I continue buying up all the things in the Mignolaverse.  Because there’s a lot going on – a lot – and timelines jumping back and forth, so yeah, I generally don’t really know much of what’s going on beyond whichever story I’m currently reading.  I’ll have a vague grasp of how it slots into the big picture, but I mean the BIG picture, like on a really high level.  The nuance of the network is totes beyond me.  So when a week passes and there’s magically 3 Hellboy titles on the rack or something and I don’t hesitate to buy them all, as I flip through the pages at home I sometimes question – should I be reading all of these?  Am I enjoying them?  And then there are tons of titles that have blended the Hellboy concept of separate storylines in miniseries (meaning not necessarily a long-running narrative) with the Big Two publisher idea of making an ongoing easily collectible for trades – recently The Sixth Gun comes to mind, and how Bunn has attempted to expand upon his world arc by arc.  A ton of books use some form of this structure now, and I can identify with those when it’s sort of shaky, so I again ask myself if I’m just blind to some lacking in the HB world.

Thus when ‘Vampire’s final issue released, I got out the beginning of the series and read it in one go, my now general practice for these arcs that take a few months to complete.  And who knows what the duff kinda crazy sauce Mignola’s team is on, but I was reminded – yet again, yet again – that I keep reading this because of how cohesive it is and yet how you can read each individual book without a shred of understanding of whatever tapestry from which it’s drawn and still enjoy it and understand it, so rich is the world and the characters and the whole ‘school’ of moody, shadow-heavy art that the Hellboy artists sidle up to.

Right?

‘Kay.  So ‘Vampire’ picks up on some other B.P.R.D. threads (from the 194- dated ‘flashback’ B.P.R.D. series) and follows the put-upon Agent Anders in his quest to maybe find out about the spirits infecting him and maybe also to kill some vampires… whether borne of his own desire or his occulty insides, so do we see over the course of the five issues.  And yes, the series stumbles in some places.  It has an excellent lead-in that sets the stage without over-informing and also does that magical Mignola thing of sounding totally legit (the benefit of assumed years of gathering details for use in these stories), but leaves a couple details between the panels that doesn’t quite sync with Mike’s skilled compressed dialoguing.  — On a side note, in the letter cols, I’m noticing that they refer to Bá and Moon as the writers, even though the credits lead one to believe they’re co-writers.  The same goes for Arcudi, referencing his own writing on Abe Sapien.  So I’m starting to wonder if, aside from the purposeful shift the art goes through the enter Hellboy-land, if Mike mostly lays out structure and ideas for all these billions of books and then leaves the actual scripting up to whomever is listed as co-author.  Either way, stumbles or not, it still has that flair of Mikeness to it, so… yeah.  Crazy sauce.  End of site note.  —  And toward the end of the series, issue 4 delivering a penultimate battle and 5 the aftermath, some of our creepy sense of build-up is of course lost, but the imagination to the art and the resonance of the final page makes it satisfying on the whole.

Special nod to the opening dream sequence of floating bodies – several letter writers mentioned how amazing these panels were and I must agree.  Similarly, I found myself closing the books and then studying the covers afterward.  I love when the books look cool beforehand but then gain more effect after the story is absorbed.

Essentially a monster story, but there’s enough plot meat here to make it required reading for those following the Mignolaverse.  But you already own it, yeah?