Saturday, May 19, 2012

BPRD Hell on Earth: The Devil's Engine #1

Written by Mike Mignola and John Arcudi
Art by Tyler Crook

The Mike Mignola brand has been practically flooding the market lately, with at least three mini-series going at any one time.  As Hellboy, Mignola's central (although not best) book is on hiatus for a while, he's been running two concurrent BPRD series for the last few months.

This may be bad for my financial situation, but it has been good in that it has allowed Mignola and his co-writers (John Arcudi seems to work on the 'main' book, while Scott Allie writes the more peripheral one) the chance to examine different aspects of the post-Apocalyptic 'Hell on Earth', and spotlight characters that don't often get much screen time.

This new three-parter, 'The Devil's Engine' is focused on Andrew Devon, the BPRD agent who has been most critical of the organization, and who more or less betrayed Abe Sapien a while back.  Devon's been sent to recover the girl Fenix, who we first saw a little while ago leading a ragtag band of 20-somethings across America based on her poorly explained predictions or feelings about the future.

In this issue, Fenix and Devon plan on boarding a train to take them to Colorado, although that goes against Fenix's sense of danger.  There is also a scene involving the Zinco Corporation, where dastardly things are afoot. 

Not a whole lot happens in this issue, but it's nice to see Tyler Crook, who has drawn a couple BPRD mini-series, back drawing again.  He was originally announced as Guy Davis's replacement on this title, but I guess that was before the powers that be decided to expand the line, necessitating a rotating stable of artists.  He's very good, as is this comic.

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