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Lobster Johnson is back, as well as the slippery and enigmatic Mr. Martyn Gilfryd, as the Bureau keeps rolling on towards god only knows what.

This, the latest in the ongoing run of miniseries, picks up where the slightly disappointing The Warning left off, with most of the team trying to get back to what they were doing before they were so rudely interrupted by giant mechanical men as well as the everpresent frog creatures, namely find the missing Liz Sherman. One of their leads necessitates that they try to find out some information about Lobster Johnson, Mignola’s Pulp pastiche that’s been weaving in and out of the narrative for years now, as well as find out what he knew about the being that caused Liz’s disappearance. To this end, they find his sewer system lair and get a little more info than they had going in. Meanwhile, Kate Corrigan has found one of Johnson’s old associates, as in Doc Savage’s Fabulous Five or the Shadow’s agents, and listens to his stories of their struggles against Liz’s abductor. And that’s pretty much the two main storylines, as this is more or less a stage setting first chapter, in which most of the players get some screen time and the wheels of the next few issues are set spinning, to what ends only Arcudi and Mignola know for sure.

My caveat in the above paragraph notwithstanding, these B.P.R.D. books are really models of consistency; you know going in what to expect nearly every time. Arcudi fleshes out Mignola’s plots very well, and despite some occasionally clunky dialogue (”...the five of us, we were pretty all right, too”) he keeps things moving along at a brisk clip. Guy Davis is a real treasure; one of the absolute best artists working today, and apparently capable of turning out superhuman amounts of work; he’s also doing the backup feature in the concurrent Hellboy: The Wild Hunt miniseries. Over the years, he’s grown very comfortable with all the cast, and is capable of displaying the nuances in the relationships of each, as well as provide big widescreen action scenes when necessary. His style takes some getting used to; when I first saw it years ago in Sandman Mystery Theatre I wasn’t too crazy about it myself…but after the sadly-missed Nevermen series and now his ongoing B.P.R.D. work, I’m of the opinion that he’s as good as it gets these days.

Honestly, if you’re curious and you haven’t been keeping up with the various miniseries over the years, this isn’t the best place to stick your toe in the water. It doesn’t even try to fill new readers in on previous storylines, except in the dialogue and then only in passing most of the time. You’ll need to go back a ways; these plotlines have been going on for years now. You may recognize some of the characters via the films, but this is the way they should be portrayed and it differs in a lot of ways. But taken on its own merits, and for those who have been keeping up, this is yet another very well done chapter of the ongoing saga, and bodes well for the rest of the series.

B.P.R.D.: THE BLACK GODDESS #1

Writers: Mike Mignola and John Arcudi
Artist: Guy Davis
Color: Dave Stewart
Letters: Clem Robins
Cover: Kevin Nowlan

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