5 out of 5

Does the thought of a cybernetic ape wrestling a leather-suited vigilante known only as Lobster Johnson amidst a model city of Manhattan tickle your pulp fancy?  Then just buy the series already, ya’ bum.

I’m almost fully invested in the Mignolaverse, having only recently dropped Abe Sapien due to what I consider poor writing, but otherwise kept mostly entertained and occasionally enthralled by Baltimore, B.P.R.D., Hellboy, Sledgehammer 44, and whatever else I might be missing.  Balty wavered a bit when it had to start wrapping things up, and B.P.R.D. has lacked a bit of luster since moving to ongoing format, but I’ve never felt like I’ve wasted my money.  Out of all the Hellboy-world books, though, Lobster Johnson has remained the most consistent in tone.  Perhaps it’s that funny moniker of its lead; perhaps it’s that the very setup is all things pulp and thus to veer too far from that course is to sorta’ ruin the point.  So instead of trying to wow us with an overly complex backstory, Arcudi / Mignola have gone the wiser route of developing Lobster’s associates and enemies.  The relationships and interactions of the newspaper reporter who follows Lobster, Lobster’s secret troupe, the police, that dwarf… they all speak with ‘real’ voices (relative to the story) and are as fun to read as the title character’s exploits; none of the side conversations to which we’re witness feel like they’re padding for the plot.  Which, in this case, involves an evil scientist who’s android-izing people around the city to cause chaos.  Meanwhile, the newspaper’s 5-part history of the Lobster (which gives us a fun and perhaps red herring-y ‘origin’ for the Lobster as a mad pirate) and the police chief’s sudden vendetta against LJ add complications in tracking down our scientist.

You got car chases, you got zeppelins, you got explosions.  You get a freaking pirate and wrestling story, and then that ape.  It’s never not fun, but it’s also bang-for-your-buck, as our writers don’t forget to seed in that lovely character building (and a nice ‘to be continued…’  set of epilogues).  Artist Tonci Zonjic has fully joined the Mignola house style by this point, but his framing is even more confident than it was on his last LJ outing, each panel a perfect example of commodity, narrowing down exactly what we need to see to understand mood and movement.

And the last panel is like every badass anti-hero’s dream.