B.P.R.D. The Universal Machine #1

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B.P.R.D. The Universal Machine #1
By Al Kratina
April 29, 2006 - 00:15

Dark Horse Comics
Writer(s): Mike Mignola and John Arcudi
Penciller(s): Guy Davis
Cover Artist(s): Mike Mignola

For the past ten years, Mike Mignola’s Hellboy has been the coolest thing in comics. There is no point arguing with me, I have a nine-foot demon with a stone hand on my side. The problem has been, however, that Mignola puts out issues of Hellboy with roughly the same frequency as solar eclipses, so it can be a little frustrating for fans. Perhaps it’s the long gaps between the various series that help make Hellboy seem a rare treat, the beluga caviar among the cracked, sulfurous eggs of various sub-par X titles, but nevertheless, the intermittent schedule is difficult to get used to.

Thankfully, in the past two years, Mignola and Dark Horse have come up with a solution to the Hellboy drought, with the advent of the B.P.R.D. series. The comics focus on the secondary and tertiary characters that surround Hellboy, and while Hellboy himself floats around in the ocean of the coast of Africa or casts for his next movie, the pyrokinetic Liz Sherman, fish-man Abe Sabien, homunculous Roger, and ectoplasmic necromancer Johann are all we have to tide us over. Essentially, the series is like the Lone Gunman to Hellboy’s The X-Files, only people seem to like this instead of rolling their eyes and watching 20/20 instead.

Like Hellboy, B.P.R.D is an ongoing succession of miniseries that work together to form a larger, over-arching narrative. Each miniseries is self-contained to a point, but a great deal is lost if they’re not read together, or in order. The Universal Machine picks up where the last few story arcs left off, with the team having defeated several large and gooey monsters, and coping with the death of a teammate. In true Mignola form, the first issue is layered with mythology and fantasy so thickly it becomes impossible to tell what is fiction and what is an obscure reference to a Montague Summers book or a 13^th century illuminated manuscript. The issue, scripted by Mignola and John Arcudi, is well-written, and nicely paced. The plotting gets stronger and pulpier with each series, and The Universal Machine is a real page-turner that ends with two nicely intertwined cliffhangers.

How Mignola managed to increase his output is, of course, by turning the art duties over to Guy Davis. As an illustrator Mignola was perfectly suited to burying suggested horrors in dark shadows, but ever since the recent Sin City re-releases, Frank Miller’s been using up all the black ink, so Davis had to step in. Where Mignola is all angles and corners, Davis is slime and rotting flesh dripping off of bone, and though his take on the characters makes everyone look ugly and mildly deformed, his conception of the monstrous stands distinct from Mignola’s and is no less unnerving. So much so that The Universal Machine, and most of the recent B.P.R.D. in general, manages to elevate itself above a Hellboy stop-gap, and stand on its own two decomposing feet.