Dancin’ with the Devil

North 40 #3

Conover County is still overrun with monsters who used to be normal county residents, including a junkyard owner who’s building giant robots, a police dispatch operator who’s been dead for 20 years, a former beauty queen who can see the world through her own photographs, the local goth teen turned spectral instrument of vengeance, and a whole heck of a lot of freaky kids attending the prom. Sheriff Morgan is trying to keep order, but he’s got people plotting against him, and he may stand no chance of stopping the slaughter planned at the high school.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Creepy, bizarre, funny, weird stuff. By this point, I thought all the main players were already on the stage, but I’m impressed that Aaron Williams is both still introducing new, mondo-bizarro characters and advancing the plot at the same time. This is the next-to-the-last issue of this miniseries, but I really hope they’re going to turn this into an ongoing series.

B.P.R.D.: 1947 #3

The Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense has sent four soldiers to Europe to deal with some vampires, and things don’t go well. After a suspenseful investigation of a couple of suspicious coffins in the castle’s crypt, two of the three operatives are attacked and killed by vampires. Meanwhile, the lone operative who’s been taken to the black mass with the witches and vampires is witness to Baron Konig’s undoing and to the terrifying summoning of Hecate herself. But does he survive the experience? Does any of them survive?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Outstanding — and very suspenseful — storytelling from Mike Mignola and Joshua Dysart, along with fantastic artwork by Gabriel Ba and Fabio Moon. Just plain outstanding horror fiction getting made here, on every level from intimate suspense to apocalyptic blood-and-thunder.