5 out of 5

Yeah, perfect.  All of Hellboy could be said to have sprung from pulp, but Mignola and crew have obviously taken that universe into its own distinct direction.  Lobster Johnson has maintained the pulp flare through and through, though, a Shadow-esque nature of mystery and small cluster of associates who help him track down evil, and shoot it, and brand it.  And Mike’s and John’s years of history in this industry can be boiled down to the execution of an excellent one-shot – the compressed story-telling, to make your reader feel like they got full bang for their buck for a single issue, is incredibly difficult.  Even when single issues are awesome they can said to be not as awesome as the series or maybe not the best starting point for a new reader.  But here, Satan Smells a Rat, you could hand to new readers and old and they’d fully get Lobster Johnson.  It’s a hunt-down-the-bad-guy tale with that extra sci-fi / pulp twist of seemingly animated corpses and a last minute ‘I could’ve saved the world’ confession, with enough single sentences to give you the gist the role each character plays without having a full panel filled with unnecessary words.

And Kevin Nowlan nails the atmosphere, his generally slightly perplexed characters being a good match for the slightly-off world of Lobster.  From the establishing shots to the action, it all has that slightly quirky, off feel that keeps your eyes focused but anxious to see what’s building.