According to Paste magazine, “Hellboy” creator Mike Mignola will once again join forces with novelist Christopher Golden, artist Peter Bergting, and colorist Michelle Madsen, for a new five-issue “Joe Golem: Occult Detective” miniseries, ‘The Drowning City.’ We can also exclusively reveal Dave Palumbo’s cover for the hardcover collection coming in 2019.
by Dave Palumbo
The miniseries will take place in 1975, fifty years after earthquakes and flooding submerged Lower Manhattan under thirty feet of water. Known as “the Drowning City,” the place where the poor go to flee uptown, the comic will see Joe Golem working with a paranormal investigator to confront threats that stalk the waterways, all the while struggling with strange dreams that he is a man-made creature of clay and stone, brought to life by unknown forces.
The comic is based on Mignola and Golden’s illustrated novel Joe Golem and the Drowning City, which was published in 2012. Previous “Joe Golem: Occult Detective” arcs (‘The Rat Catcher,’ ‘The Sunken Dead,’ ‘The Outer Dark,’ ‘Flesh and Blood’) were prequels to the original prose novel.
As Mike Mignola stated: “I came up with the original plot for Joe Golem years ago, originally planned as a graphic novel but shelved after 9/11. Years later I handed that original plot over to Chris Golden and he flashed it out into the original novel. All the comic[s] up to now have been prequel to that so now, finally, it’s exciting to see that original story as a comic at last.”
Christopher Golden also added, “It’s been a thrill to tell some of the Occult detective history of Joe Golem.” Our plan was always to build to events of the novel, but now that we know the characters and their world so much better, the story has changed and grown into [a] new continuity. I love every page.”
This isn’t the first time Mignola, Golden, Bergting, and Madsen have worked together. They collaborated on “Baltimore,” a comic series set in the same universe as “Joe Golem: Occult Detective,” focused on Lord Henry Baltimore, who changes the course of World War I, and his own life, when he wounds a vampire on the battlefield.
“Joe Golem: Occult Detective—The Drowning City” #1 hits shelves on September 12, 2018. Below is some advanced art by cover artist Dave Palumbo.
A psychic medium is captured by a crazed scientist desperate to find an occult object that will connect him to worlds beyond the veil, and paranormal investigator Simon Church and his hardy detective race to find the artifact with the help of the medium’s assistant before its supernatural side effects can destroy the city. But another mystery looms more than ever, as the occult detective searches for answers about his real identity and his past that’s been kept secret for so long.
Please note, this piece has been updated from its original version to include the hardcover collection artwork.
