Mike Mignola, Thomas Sniegoski, Christopher Golden, and Peter Bergting’s “Frankenstein: New World” #2 lives up to its name, not just by setting a story in the New World beyond the events of “B.P.R.D.: The Devil You Know,” but by giving us time to live in it. It feels like nothing else in the Hellboy Universe, yet also an essential part of it.
Written by Mike Mignola, Thomas Sniegoski, and Christopher Golden
Illustrated by Peter Bergting
Colored by Michelle Madsen
Lettered by Clem RobinsAs Lilja and Frankenstein explore the vibrant world around them, they rescue someone who introduces them to the new race of man. But unbeknownst to them, evil lurks within the shadows, tracking our heroes while sowing seeds of death and destruction.
Mark Tweedale: Before we go any further, I feel I have to mention something that was painfully obvious in the first issue that I completely missed until someone pointed it out to me—Lilja’s name means lily. And given the significance of lilies in the Hellboy Universe, there’s no way this is an accident. I was still picking up on other cues to Lilja’s importance, but that this one slipped by me is genuinely shocking. Anyway, let’s get to the review. Oh, and we’re definitely going to be diving into spoiler territory.
James Dowling: I don’t know what it is, but the wait between this issue and the last felt like a real chasm. I didn’t realize how excited I was for this series until I let it sit with me a while longer.
Mark: It was a month and a half instead of the usual month.
James: Yeah, the Diamond delays are hitting hard as usual. In what’s sure to be a monthly consistency, Bergting puts out an amazing cover here. It really conveys so much of the scale that last issue arguably lacked. This book is promising to be a real exploration of the New World’s culture, history, and ecosystem, and this second issue spends a vast majority of its time fulfilling that promise—arguably even losing its direction at points to facilitate this examination.
Mark: There’s a meandering quality to this issue, which works to the book’s advantage. It enhances the feeling of just spending time in the world, experiencing the world, not moving on to the next plot point. This isn’t just with the world, but with the characters too. There’s a sequence with Lilja singing and coaxing Frankenstein into joining in with her. Is this scene essential to the plot? No, but it brings the characters to life so beautifully. I’m glad the book keeps making space for scenes like this.
The book is not afraid to linger, and I feel like that’s conveyed right away from Bergting’s cover, where the two leads simply observe the landscape ahead. Actually, I can’t help but think how wonderful it would be to open it up across two pages. I just want to see so much more of this world.
James: Yeah, the first two pages of this issue, rather than paying off the demands of the plot, just allow the reader to take in the spectacle of this New World’s food chain. We’re treated to this whole world of alien biology, only to be reminded that the dynamic is all the same. It’s a great look at the danger and cycles of history, which becomes a growing theme by the end of this issue.
Mark: I just got to reveal the final cover for this series in last month’s Mignolaversity solicitations column, and now that all four are done, there’s a clear progression. Put the four covers side by side and they tell a story all of their own. This second cover, bathed in warm colors, is clearly the high point, when the story is most about experiencing the world. That this reads from the covers alone is a testament to Bergting’s visual storytelling.
James: There is something incredibly circular to the series of covers he’s assembled for this book. For one, there’s the rise and fall in hue across the colors, but also the shapes and blocking of each. Frankenstein grows more involved and his expression is easier to gauge each month, but in the last two issues that comes because he’s fighting and mourning. Even the negative space in the covers for issue #1 and #4 feel like they’re in conversation. You can tell how much visual design went into the overarching structure of this series.
Continued belowMark: There’s even a progression in the ink line, with the first cover having solid black shadows, then just ink line for the second cover, the third starts taking away that solid line, and the fourth it’s barely there. For me, it conveys the feeling of Frankenstein becoming untethered. Without knowing what’s ahead, I still have a strong sense of the emotional journey we’re in for.
James: I was wondering why the shape of issue #4’s cover felt so alien comparatively and I think that’s it. We’ve spoken about how uncannily Bergting sinks into the visual tics of other artists, but these covers force the reader to really acknowledge how much he can modulate his own style from page to page.
Mark: For sure. “Frankenstein: New World” is such a perfect way to showcase his versatility. I like how he can dial up the elements in his art that feel more Mignola-esque without literally drawing like Mignola. We really see that in the “Star Lady” moments. It’s not just the way he draws; it’s in the page and panel composition too.
And Michelle Madsen’s colors only enhance this. Actually, I have to say, her colors on both issues so far have been stellar. It’s a New World, and boy does she take this idea and run with it. Going back to the first issue, with the sequences in the Hollow Earth, the colors are so much more uniform. It’s still a kind of haven for humanity, so it’s pleasant still, but subdued. But the book completely transforms when Frankenstein and Lilja reach the surface.
What really surprises me is how the book feels so radically different from the rest of the Hellboy Universe, and yet it still uses the language of color established by Dave Stewart. We see this most clearly in the final page of the first issue, the way Madsen dials everything right back to emphasize the red roots digging into the corpses below. It’s such a quintessential Hellboy Universe coloring.
What we’re seeing here isn’t Madsen breaking out of Stewart’s color language and then retreating to it for a moment. Rather she’s introducing a new branch of that color language: the color of the New World. And I absolutely love it.
James: It must have been an exciting prospect for her, but she brings so much reverence to the palette, it’s hard to find this kind of vibrancy while maintaining the gothic roots that Stewart employed, but by adding touch points throughout, like the amber of the ‘star lady,’ or the blacks and reds as the “Ugdru-Hesh came to this inhospitable place,” we’re placed back in the familiar chronology at play.
I’d say that the creation story was my favorite part of the issue. It’s really special seeing the twenty-five-year apocalypse story reinterpreted into one of genesis, and it’s handled with the right level of reverence and simplicity that prophecy and mythology has always had in Mignola’s books.
Mark: Revisiting the end from the point of view of a beginning was one of those moments that I felt tapped into the heart of what the final issue of “B.P.R.D.: The Devil You Know” did so well, and showed how that heart was alive and beating in this new work. I think this is why ‘New World’ doesn’t feel tacked on, but utterly genuine.
Part of me wishes I could jump ahead a few years and see how all these new books fit together—“Sir Edward Grey: Acheron,” “The Sword of Hyperborea,” and now “Frankenstein: New World” all continue on past the ending of the Hellboy Universe, forming this epilogue phase. But in terms of timeline, they’re all over the place. The final sequence in “The Sword of Hyperborea” clearly takes place after this story, since Abe’s descendants now have the blade. But they seem to be a different branch than the people we meet here, which appear smaller and more frog-like.
The story as it’s unfolding now is much more jigsaw puzzle-like than the more linear progression of “B.P.R.D.” and for me, it makes me ponder things a little more. I wonder if perhaps this is Mignola’s influence, because it feels to me like the pre 1994 stories of “Hellboy,” jumping around the timeline to wherever it pleases him to go. I say this in part because I couldn’t help but notice Mignola is credited not with a “story by” credit, but a “script by” credit, which indicates to me that he’s much more hands on with this project than he is with something like “Castle Full of Blackbirds” where he has the usual “story by” credit.
Continued belowJames: Yeah, especially by the beginning of “B.P.R.D.,” the whole line of books felt like this inevitable death march, where even prequels like “Witchfinder” carried this somber prophecy. But now, the line is a lot more untethered and there’s something really exciting about trying to peel back the elusive narrative shape. Who knows how much longer these stories have and what kind of story it will tell?
Speaking of recontextualization, I have a theory that Frankenstein isn’t the only returning character in this book. The book’s villain, Murk, shares so much design with Guy Davis’s original Wendigo from “B.P.R.D.,” and it makes me wonder if that curse has wandered into the New World. We never really figured out where the Wendigo went after “B.P.R.D: Hell on Earth—The long Death,” so bringing it back here as a sort of slasher villain is really exciting. Even if you don’t have the necessary context, it’s still perfectly imposing. That said, it could just be a case of visual symmetry, like how the massive fungi in issue #1 evoked the Ogdru-Hem; they’re using familiar shapes to underscore an unfamiliar expanse.
Mark: When Murk first appears, it has yellow eyes, and then it kills a creature and tastes blood, and from then on its eyes are red. So that made me think of Murk as a very primordial being, where its actions will define its shape and what it will become. There’s a lumpy, clay-like design that feels like it could grow and change, gaining specificity as the story continues.
I like your idea of the old world bleeding into the new, especially since it is Frankenstein and Lilja that have to deal with it. The remnants of the old world must protect the new from its evils.
I was thinking recently about the difference in perspective between “Frankenstein Underground” and “Frankenstein: New World.” While both are Frankenstein stories, in the former Frankenstein is the point-of-view character, whereas in the latter it’s Lilja. We see Frankenstein’s emotions from an external point of view, so he’s a more distant character than he was previously.
This means that there’s a silent third character in this story. At the end of “Frankenstein Underground,” Thoth’s daughter joined with Frankenstein, with him forever. So I wonder what silent conversations those two are having in this tale. Thoth’s daughter is probably the only character alive that will immediately understand what Liz Sherman has become and her significance to the New World. I just find it very interesting that Mike Mignola, Christopher Golden, and Thomas Sniegoski have deliberately chosen this external point of view so that we are not privy to this information.
James: To me, this second issue is made to fulfill a promise. It looks unflinchingly at this new environment, solidifies the creation myth presented at the end of “B.P.R.D.: Devil You Know,” and begins revealing the shape of the story and its wider cast. I can’t imagine things will be this cheery for Frankenstein again, but it’s nice spending some time with him just for the joy of it. This issue is an 8 for me.
Mark: I’m going with an 8.5. I find “Frankenstein: New World” utterly winning. As you said earlier, the wait between issues feels bigger than usual, in part because it is a book that sticks in your mind. I keep coming back to it and wondering about the details, but it’s also that I just want to get back to these characters. My favorite moment of the issue was Frankenstein and Lilja singing. It’s the sort of moment that strips away the man stitched together from corpses and this fantastic new world, and brings it back to two characters forming a bond. It reminds me so much of a scene in “B.P.R.D.” when Liz asks Kate about her skirt, a scene that didn’t advance the plot at all, but it did so much to make those two women feel real in a world that was quickly becoming so unlike our own. I need these moments and they’re like gems when I find them.
Final Verdict: 8.25 – “Frankenstein: New World” #2 walks the story comfortably into its second act, introducing the many facets and peoples of this far future while placing an emphasis on authentic character work, rather than the mechanics of its post apocalyptic prophecy.
