Since there aren’t any new comics at the moment, Dark Horse has been looking back at its catalog, shining a light on its older books. This week, they’re looking at Mike Mignola’s books, so you’ll be seeing previews and free first issues popping up online, sales on the digital issues, and Dark Horse’ll be chatting about Mignola’s works on their Twitch channel today at 1pm PT, then later this week they’ll be chatting to Warwick Johnson-Cadwell (“Mr. Higgins Comes Home” and “Our Encounters with Evil”) and Christopher Golden (“Baltimore” and “Joe Golem”) on Friday at 11am PT.
Thanks to Dark Horse, we’re sharing the first issue of Mike Mignola and Ben Stenbeck’s “Frankenstein Underground”, first published March 2015. Following his encounter with Hellboy in Mexico, 1956 (see “Hellboy: House of the Living Dead” collected in the “Hellboy in Mexico” trade paperback and the “Hellboy: The Complete Short Stories – Volume 1” omnibus), Frankenstein’s monster journeys into the Hollow Earth and discovers a Pellucidar-like world. “Frankenstein Underground” is a fan favorite and truly unique in the Hellboy Universe, taking Mary Shelley’s iconic character and bringing him into Mignola’s world.
Despite being a standalone story, it connects to so much of the broader mythology in “Hellboy,” “B.P.R.D.,” “Abe Sapien,” “Witchfinder,” and even somehow “Lobster Johnson,” something that seems to have surprised even Mignola himself.
“What started as a sort of fun, silly thing—chuck the Frankenstein monster to the center of the earth to fight monsters—ended up becoming a major event in the direction of the Hellboy universe. I love when that happens.”
Plus it’s a great title to revisit while we wait for the prequel, “Frankenstein Undone,” to resume. You can read “Frankenstein Underground” #1 in full below.
Before I leave you to your reading, I also wanted to mention Mike Mignola’s charity auctions on eBay. In case you haven’t heard, Mike Mignola’s been drawing quite a bit lately (follow him on social media to see what I mean). The full proceeds from the auctions go to José Andrés‘ World Central Kitchen.
That poster on the wall is the luchadore Lobster Johnson. You can read more about him in “Hellboy Gets Married” and “Hellboy vs. Lobster Johnson in The Ring of Death.”
This fight with Hellboy is from “Hellboy: House of the Living Dead.”
You can learn more these gods from “Hellboy: Seed of Destruction”, “B.P.R.D.: Hell on Earth—Gods”, and “Abe Sapien: The Shape of Things to Come.”
The guy in the final panel is Adoet de Fabre and he shows up again in “B.P.R.D.: The Universal Machine,” as do several other characters in this issue. . .
“Frankenstein Underground” #1 is also available for free on Dark Horse Digital and ComiXology.
