This middle book of the "Scorched Earth" trilogy, entitled The Black Goddess, is from the usual B.P.R.D. team of writers Mike Mignola and John Arcudi and artist Guy Davis. I reviewed the previous book, The Warning, for ComicMix, and several of the earlier books hither and yon. (Not to mention all of the wordage I've lavished on related Hellboy, Lobster Johnson, and Abe Sapien books; this might well be a short post, because I doubt I have much new to say.)The B.P.R.D. crew are chasing the mysterious Martin Gilfryd/Memnan Saa -- even though he said, at the end of the previous volume, that he wasn't the B.P.R.D.'s enemy, and that he knew what was going on much better than they did (then again, megalomaniacal villains always say that) -- and, along the way, the nearly as mysterious Lobster Johnson, who was active as a semi-supernatural crime-fighter just before WW II. Their major aim is to get back Liz Sherman, the powerful firestarter who Saa has brainwashed (or something) into helping him, with the usual undercurrent of "finding out what supernatural apocalypse is threatening this time, and stop it."
The Black Goddess is inherently middle book-y; full of battles that are exciting but not definitive, and long speeches by various people to explain the background and gloat about their superior wisdom, but short on actual results. There is a flurry of activity at the end that changes the status quo, certainly, but the book ends before we really know what it all means.
That's only to be expected in a middle book, though, and we know these characters and their world well enough by now to give Mignola, Arcudi, and Davis a little more space to spin out their story -- the conclusion of this trilogy, The King of Fear, will be coming along along in six or ten months. And I certainly hope that the B.P.R.D. will manage to save the Earth -- after all, that's where I keep all my stuff!
Book-A-Day 2010: The Epic Index
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Listening to: MiniBoone - Devil in Your Eyes
via FoxyTunes
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