Lobster Johnson: Satan Smells a Rat

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Lobster Johnson: Satan Smells a Rat
By Geoff Hoppe
May 30, 2013 - 13:21

Dark Horse Comics
Writer(s): Mike Mignola and John Arcudi
Penciller(s): Kevin Nowlan

I really hope someone got the reference in the headline. Not talking to myself here.

SPOILERS below, so, you know, you’ve been warned.

“Satan Smells a Rat” has a cool, pulpy concept, but its execution is forgettable. There’s a creepy-looking mad scientist (rail-thin, of course) performing lethal experiments on hobos for a rich, immoral benefactor. Lobster Johnson and his support crew sniff, and then snuff, them out. This is common LJ fare, but the story doesn’t so much unfold as tick requisite items off a list.

Thirty-two pages isn’t a lot of space in which to develop characters, but that usually doesn’t stop John Arcudi. However, his talent for detail falls flat in this story. He’s tried to enhance the story with period details—Prohibition references, gangster-era patois, references to Halloween, a then newish holiday—but those details don’t gel in Arcudi’s typically confident fashion. It’s cool to set the story on Halloween, for instance, but beyond some scant images of kids in costumes, that doesn’t really develop the story’s atmosphere. Similarly, the rich, murderous benefactor toys with an HO-scale town in the same way he toys with actual homeless people. It makes sense, but it’s also pretty obvious.

Lobster Johnson is similarly uninspired in this issue. His ability to materialize inexplicably while chasing a villain should be creepy and startling. It needs to be a corollary to his belief that no one escapes justice. Here, however, his tendency to pop up unexpectedly is less Batman than Pepe LePew.

Worth the money? Not this time.