Raptor

Dave McKean
Dark Horse Comics

I've always been more inclined towards words than pictures and so chose my comics based primarily on who the writer was but there are a few comic artists whose work I just can't resist, Eddie Campbell is one, Kevin O'Neill and Ted McKeever too and Dave McKean is most definitely another. 

Like many it was his eye-popping cover art to Neil Gaiman's Sandman comics - which incidentally I got to see in the really real at an exhibition and they were astonishing - as well as books like Violent Cases, Signal to Noise and Arkham Asylum - that introduced me to his work.  In the years since his art and his designs have also graced films (including 'Mirrormask' and Harry Potter's 'Dementors'), books (such as John Cale's autobiography 'What's Welsh for Zen' and Iain Sinclair's 'Slow Chocolate Autopsy') and numerous album covers ( by folks like Dream Theater, Front Line Assembly and Alice Cooper).

Raptor is the latest in a line of creator owned works he's produced and is presented in a beautiful large format and sumptuous edition that allows his paintings the space they deserve.  The story is split across two realities featuring 'Sokol', a monster hunter in a fantasy land, and a newly widowed Welsh writer of supernatural stories named 'Arthur'.  

As should be expected from McKean it's stunning to look at and filled with beauty. Storywise I think it could have done with a little more space to develop but as a tale of loss, grief and the corrupting influence power it was certainly intriguing and Mckean makes fine use of the medium blending perspectives and bleeding the two realities into each other as Arthur strives for just one more glimpse of his recently deceased wife in what made for a fascinating read that touched on Machen, A.E. Waite and the Golden Dawn.  

Buy it here - UK / US.

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Witchfinder: In the Service of Angels

Mike Mignola & Ben Steinbeck
(Dark Horse)

Mike Mignola teams up with artist Ben Stenbeck (B.P.R.D.: The Ectoplasmic Man) for a look into one of the Hellboy universe's greatest enigmas: nineteenth-century occult investigator Edward Grey In one of Grey's first cases as an agent of the queen, he goes from the sparkling echelons of Victorian London to its dark underbelly, facing occult conspiracies, a rampaging monster, and the city's most infamous secret society: the Heliopic Brotherhood of Ra.

At this point I've not read much Hellboy, one GN, two BPRD GNs and a novel, but the ones I had read I really dug, Sure it gets a bit too Lovecraft in places but I can forgive that if the rest is up to scratch. Witchfinder is a spin-off featuring Victorian occult detective to the Queen Sir Edward Grey.

The story deals with Grey investigating a series of deaths that are linked with a bag of bones found on an archeological expedition. The investigation leads Grey and his new found friends through a deliciously grimey and inhospitable London full of violent and raggedy people and strange occultist and religious groups.

The story's competent enough for an evenings read but I think I'm always going to prefer Mignola as an artist as opposed to as a writer.The art by Steinbeck is very nice when it comes to scenery but he seems to struggle occasionally with the people, I do mean occasionally though.

In all it was all good outlandish fun. Lovecraft as reimagined by Hammer studios.