It’s one of two new comic book days! What are you all getting? What are you excited for? Sound off in the comments below. While you think about that, here’s some comic news and reviews from around the web.
The Beat – A Year of Free Comics: Travel between worlds with the NOMADS – Free comics!
ICv2 – Funcom Acquires Cabinet Group – Interesting.
Reviews
CBR – Hellboy and the BPRD 1957 Family Ties
CBR – Rorschach #12
Hellboy comics can be a hell of a lot of fun. Mike Mignola has created characters and a world that balances a rich and complicated universe but also can deliver stories that can be picked up and enjoyed with little knowledge. Mignola has figured out how to balance the ongoing narrative with the one-shot. Hellboy and the B.P.R.D.: 1957—Family Ties is example of the comic you can just pick up and enjoy. You have to have little knowledge of the characters but if you do, there’s clearly more to this issue.
Written by Mignola and Chris Roberson, Hellboy and the B.P.R.D.: 1957—Family Ties has Hellboy and Agent Xiang looking for a book that can summon demons. It takes them to a house where unnatural things are occurring or it could be horrible family relations. There’s not a ton you really need to know to enjoy the comic. It’s a pretty typical “fight demons” type of story. Where it works well is the build up and tension.
Mignola and Roberson keep the readers guessing. Who’s the malignant force in the house? Who is going to be the demon they must fight? Where’s the demon they’ll have to fight? It’s all pretty standard but the way it’s presented will leave you not knowing who can be trusted until that’s revealed. There’s also some solid creepy moments. You get a cinematic feel as the horrors are presented. While it doesn’t deliver scares, there’s a general unease created by the imagery that works really well.
That’s due to the art of Laurence Campbell. Joined by Dave Stewart on colors and Clem Robins lettering, the visuals for the comic are excellent. There are some solid moments that really will make readers unease but never grossed out. There’s the type of visuals you’re not expecting so they deliver a slight punch as they’re revealed. But, it’s all done in a way that doesn’t really scare as opposed to make readers “sick”. With the colors and pencils combined, the art has a vibe about it that is more unease and gross than make you not want to turn a page.
Hellboy and the B.P.R.D.: 1957—Family Ties is a solid start to this series of one-shot comics. It has some details that fans of the Hellboy world will enjoy but those who have never read a story can ignore and not miss anything. It’s a solid horror comic for this Halloween season and one fans of Hellboy or the horror genre should check out.
Story: Mike Mignola and Chris Roberson Art: Laurence Campbell
Color: Dave Stewart Letterer: Clem Robins
Story: 8.15 Art: 8.3 Overall: 8.2 Recommendation: Buy
Dark Horse provided Graphic Policy with a FREE copy for review
Purchase: comiXology – Kindle – Zeus Comics – TFAW
The year is 1957 and change is in the air. This is the year that Elvis Presley appears on The Ed Sullivan Show for the final time. It is the year that the Wham-O Company produces the first Frisbee. The year that Andrei Gromyko becomes foreign minister of the Soviet Union, that Dwight D. Eisenhower is sworn in as the President of the United States, and that Congress approves the Eisenhower Doctrine and its assistance to Communist-threatened foreign regimes. It is, in short, the perfect year for the events of Hellboy & The BPRD 1950’s comics and the Occult Cold War storyline to come to a head.
This September, Dark Horse Comics will publish Hellboy and the B.P.R.D.: 1957—Family Ties, the first of a series of five suspense-filled, stand-alone and interconnected one-shots that will conclude the Hellboy & The BPRD 1950’s comics and set the stage for a new Hellboy & The BPRD set during the tumult of the 1960s. Hellboy and the B.P.R.D.: 1957—Family Ties is co-written by legendary Hellboy creator Mike Mignola and bestselling iZombie co-creator Chris Roberson, featuring art and a cover by Laurence Campbell, coloring by Eisner Award-winning colorist Dave Stewart and lettering by Clem Robins. Each of the 5 interconnected one-shots will feature a different artist; each comic will feature a cover by the extraordinary Laurence Campbell:
Before they can track down an errant copy of Gustav Strobl’s Witchcraft and Demonology, Hellboy and B.P.R.D. agent Susan Xiang is sidetracked by a beset housewife’s pleas for help in Hellboy and the B.P.R.D.: 1957— Family Ties. Unraveling the mystery of an unwanted house guest may lead the occult investigators right to where they wanted to be, but also right into demonic danger.
Hellboy and the B.P.R.D.: 1957— Family Ties will be published by Dark Horse Comics on September 15, 2021, as a full-colored 32-page comic.
