So normally I don't review comic books that were published in the last ten years. There are a number of reasons for this, including:

a) I don't own a scanner and I like to use pictures in my posts, thus forcing me to stick to comics that have been scanned already and left lying around on the internet for me to download.

b) I don't trust myself not to spoil things. Spoilers are NOT APPROVED.

c) My friend Rachelle does a much better job than I could of talking about the new comics over at Living Between Wednesdays.

Here comes an exception!

Today I picked up Hellboy: Darkness Calls No. 1, the first new comic to feature the World's Greatest Paranormal Investigator in a long time, and it was great! Mike Mignola is focusing mostly on writing these days, so it read like a dream. He did do the cover:

as he's been doing over at B.P.R.D., so that looked real pretty. They got this new guy named Duncan Fegredo to do the inside art, which of course had me worried - Hellboy Weird Tales had shown that not everyone could do the Mignola thing really effectively (not that it wasn't a generally great series - I'd love to see Evan Dorkin take another shot at Hellboy & Co.) but thankfully things worked out nicely. Where Guy Davis brings his own style to B.P.R.D., Fegredo hews a little more closely to Mignola's way of drawing Hellboy and his world. That's not to say that he's bitin' Mike's style, more like he looked at a lot of his art before starting to draw. Basically, another really great choice of artist.

The story's also terrific - lots of cryptic statements and references to earlier stories and a sea chantey. Hellboy gets into trouble and there are some cats. And in the letters page: news of upcoming Lobster Johnson, Abe Sapien and Prof. Trevor Bruttenholm. Excitement!

So: that's why I don't write about current comics - I'm boring.

Hellboy and all series featuring him and everyone who works on them (shout out to Dave Stewart on colours!) are JOHN APPROVED.