“B.P.R.D. The Devil You Know” picks up momentum in its second issue, hatching some long-gestating plotlines. Be warned, this review contains many spoilers.
Written by Mike Mignola and Scott AllieCover by Duncan Fegredo
Illustrated by Laurence Campbell
Colored by Dave Stewart
Lettered by Clem RobinsWith the apocalypse narrowly averted, the cults that sprang up in response to the worldwide crisis are left with idle hands.
Brian Salvatore: While last issue felt like a complete continuation of the prior cycle, “B.P.R.D. The Devil You Know” #2 introduces a ton of new information into the story. There is a lot happening in this issue, but before we dig in—was it just me, or was this a much better issue than the first?
Mark Tweedale: I did like this issue more, but not necessarily because it was an objectively better issue. There were a lot of things I’ve been wanting to see happen for a very long time now, and in this issue, they started to happen, so that was very exciting. More than the previous issue, this one really starts pulling from the “Abe Sapien” series, which worked to the comic’s benefit. The larger threats of “B.P.R.D. Hell on Earth” have been neutralized (for now) so it’s difficult build up momentum again, but “Abe Sapien” felt very unresolved when it ended and “The Devil You Know” #2 uses this to its advantage.
I’m curious Brian since you never finished “Abe Sapien,” did any of these newer elements throw you at all?
Brian: Not really. I mean, there were a few things that seemed a little more progressed than I’d have thought—specifically the cult stuff—but more or less, everything made sense to me.
Mark: I suspected that’d be the case. I thought that was well handled.
Brian: I suppose we should toss a spoiler warning right up top, but seeing Abe awake at the end, I think I was smiling as much as Liz was. That moment, to me, was how the first issue should have ended—it gives the series a hope and a personal tether that the first issue really lacked, for me at least.
Mark: The team’s been in such disarray of late that we needed a moment like that. I think I said in the last issue’s review I felt it was odd we were so distanced from Liz when she discovered Abe in the back of that van, and after her being so cold with Tian’s death, I was worried. But having her smile at Abe at the end of this issue made me feel like some of Liz was still alive.
I’m still shaken by that quick kiss she gave Howards while Tian was dying in #1. I mean, of all times! It struck me as incredibly callous. So when Nichols and Carla talk about Liz being broken in this issue, I couldn’t help but agree. There’s something wrong there and at least someone is acknowledging it.
Brian: Pardon the simplicity of the statement, but Liz’s humanity is more or less the new Johann’s humanity. Usually, a romantic relationship would be a positive for a character that we’ve seen be isolated and distant, but Howards is such a weird, isolated dude, that to see him as a potential life partner is probably a symptom of something being very, very wrong.
Mark: Howards, while he may not necessarily be good for Liz, I like how much of a following he’s gaining in the Bureau. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but in the last issue, Laurence Campbell had a few B.P.R.D. sporting the modified version of the Bureau logo with Howards’ Vril sword on it (first seen in “B.P.R.D. Hell on Earth: Flesh and Stone”).
Brian: I am surprised so far at how completely “The Devil You Know” is seemingly combining all the various pieces of B.P.R.D. miscellany and putting them all under one roof. Ashley Strode, vampires, cults, etc. The vampires are really not what I expected to see in the second issue of the cycle.
Mark: Back when “Abe Sapien” ongoing first launched, I thought that series was going to deal with the vampire plotline, but as soon as it was announced John Arcudi was leaving “B.P.R.D.,” it became clear this cycle would deal with it at last. I’m glad they got it out of the gates early. And, of course, it’s not hard to see how Ashley Strode’s going to be a very major character going ahead. She’s one of the most suited to deal with this stuff—a kind of modern-day Sir Edward Grey.
Continued belowI been waiting for this for a long time. The vampire plotline has been simmering since 2008’s “B.P.R.D.: 1946” with hints along the way that we’d see it unfold in the modern “B.P.R.D.” at some point. However, these aren’t your usual vampires. In 2012’s “The Picken’s County Horror” we learned that a weird fungus infected the sleeping vampires to disastrous results.
It’ll be very interesting to see these creatures loose in the world at large. I expect we’ll be seeing a lot more of that fungus too.
Brian: Yeah, vampires were never part of Arcudi’s world, so it makes sense that now that he’s out of the picture, they are coming more into focus.
While on the subject of Strode, I found it interesting that when she was interrogating that demon, that she was asking for Varvara’s name. I sometimes forget that the Bureau doesn’t share information the way a ‘regular’ office would, so there are members of the Bureau who are intimately familiar with Varvara, and some that would have no idea who she is. It is a glimpse inside the massiveness of the Bureau, at least at one point, and also a look at how that has now changed.
Speaking of Varvara, the comparison I made last time to The Stand seems even more appropriate, with her trading Las Vegas for New York, in terms of building a city that will be her base of operations.
Mark: Yeah, you totally called that. And man, I love what Laurence Campbell did with those pages. I mean, the scene has dialogue about a new Pandemonium being built beneath New York and architecture crying blood, and he brought that stuff to life fantastically. Campbell’s art is very different from Mignola’s but whenever he needs to summon up that Mignola mood, he has an amazing ability to zero in on it to a degree that always impresses me.
Brian: I want to echo your praise of Campbell’s art. He has this ability to instantly put you in a Mignola headspace, and the Varvara pages were the clearest indication of that here, but also with Strode’s interrogation—the demon was so perfectly a Mignola creation, but it lost none of Campbell’s touch, either.
We’ve said this in the past, but he is truly the perfect artist for this series, as his work feels at home in the broken world that these characters are living in, but he is able to bring some humanity and hope into the destruction. Even the scene with the vampires, where we see rampant death and destruction, his characters appear to believe they can get through this. Or, at least they are convincing themselves of that.
Campbell’s work really nails home the idea that this is a horror book—not just because there are monsters, but because this world is terrifying. Campbell’s art never lets you forget that fact, nor the fact that there is still a sliver—perhaps a microscopic sliver—of hope, too. He’s become a cornerstone Mignolaverse artist, and I marvel at his work each month. The smile on Liz’s face at the end of the issue was such an amazing example of what I’m talking about. It was a ray of sunshine in a very, very dark issue.
How do you want to grade this, Mark?
Mark: I’m going to go with a 7.5. I’m glad the series is finding its feet here. I’m still uncertain about the whole Liz–Howards thing, and I think that hampered my enjoyment somewhat, but I liked that this uncertainty was echoed in the story. That disconnect is part of the narrative’s engine. Laurence Campbell stole the show though. As you said above, he truly is the perfect artist for this series. I am so impatient for #3 now! The Abe–Liz reunion is obviously a huge deal.
Brian: Yeah, 7.5 sounds fair to me. I would love the entire third issue to just be Abe and Liz catching up. We won’t get that, but a boy can dream.
Final verdict: 7.5 – A step in the right direction, even if the ground is still a little shaky beneath their feet.
