Mike Mignola and Rachele Aragno’s “Leonide the Vampyr: Miracle at The Crow’s Head” is a superb debut, exceeding the already high expectations I had for a Mignola and Aragno collaboration.
Written by Mike Mignola
Illustrated by Rachele Aragno
Colored by Dave Stewart
Lettered by Clem RobinsA small, coastal village is home to normal people living quiet and simple lives until a shipwreck brings a small coffin and its smaller occupant into their midst. What begins as a miracle soon takes a turn toward the horrible in this ghostly tale from celebrated Hellboy creator Mike Mignola and artist extraordinaire Rachele Aragno (Mel the Chosen)! The first issue of a new series of stories, Leonide the Vampyr is shiveringly spectacular.
I’ve seen some confusion regarding a certain point on this series, so let’s clear it up straight away. “Leonide the Vampyr” is not a part of Mike Mignola’s Hellboy Universe or any other world he’s working on. This is a wholly new world.
I was already an admirer of Rachele Aragno’s work before “Leonide the Vampyr” was announced. I have nine niblings between one and twelve years old, and I love buying them books and comics, so I’ve always got one eye on children’s and young adult books, and Aragno’s “Mel the Chosen” was already a stand-out. That said, “Mel the Chosen” is very different from “Leonide the Vampyr,” even if both stories feature a red-headed lead. But I can certainly see what caught Mignola’s eye when he decided Aragno was an artist he had to work with. That spark of inspiration is captured in the final comic.
Simply put, “Leonide the Vampyr: Miracle at The Crow’s Head” is a comic where the individual components—Mignola’s writing, Aragno’s art, Dave Stewart’s colors, Clem Robins’s lettering—are all exceptionally strong to begin with, but together the comic is even stronger than the sum of those parts. This alchemy is the single greatest part of the book.
But it is an alchemy that must be experienced. I do not wish to deaden it by telling you about it. I attempted a spoiler-free review, but it was circuitous and vague and talked around all the stuff I really loved. I know with new series we generally at least attempt a spoiler-free review, but I couldn’t muster it this time. I loved it, so go off and read it so we can talk about why it’s so great. From here on, it’s heavy spoiler territory.
Mignola’s writing on ‘Miracle at The Crow’s Head’ is very gentle, like a tale told to a child. There is an innocence in it that accents and heightens the innocence in Aragno’s art, and by the time Leonide arrives, that innocence they’ve been carefully nurturing comes to bloom. The people of the old village see Leonide and are deceived by her innocence—and it’s something that plays right through to the end. Even as Leonide harvests the villagers’ souls, she does so without an evil cackle or menace—insteads, she plucks souls from the air like a child gently gathering flowers. And it’s so much creepier and I love it.
The lamb-like predator archetype is hardly a new idea, but the way it’s presented in ‘Miracle at The Crow’s Head’ is done with such wonderful precision. Dave Stewart’s colors, for example, start the story in grays and dull browns. Even the glow of light is a dull orange. Then the doomed ship arrives with Leonide, and as she enters the story, we get our first pop of color from Robins with the “KRAK” of the ship hitting the rocks. Then there’s Leonide’s coffin in the water, this pearly white thing, seeminly pure when surrounded by the duller colors around it. And then the coffin opens and we see Leonide, her red hair the most dramatic color we’ve seen yet.
Notice the way the world transforms with her in it. The Crow’s Head is flooded with saturated colors, the lighting is warmer, the patrons have a pink flush to their cheeks. The effect radiates out. Notice even the grass outside The Crow’s Head has gone from dull brown to living green. Leonide isn’t even just linked to innocence, but to cultural notions of goodness when she seemingly works a miracle similar to one of Jesus’ when there is suddenly wine where there was previously none. But appearances in this story are not truth.
Continued belowWhich brings me to Sandroni, my favorite character. If Leonide is the monster at this story’s heart and she is by all appearances innocent and good and full of life, what better figure to act as her opponent than Sandroni, a moldering corpse, ugly to look at, without the gift of sweet words, and utterly gray. Even when he enters the warm light of The Crow’s Head, none of it touches him—he remains stubbornly gray. He is just the sort of character Mignola would cook up, and yet there’s nothing stale about him. Despite quite literally being a corpse, he is wonderfully alive on the page.
Leonide may be the character that caught my attention and reeled me in, but Sandroni is the one that had me finish the book and immediately think, “Oh, I need so much more of this!” These two characters are so perfect for each other—both dead and yet total opposites. In this issue, Leonide and Sandroni rarely share the same panel, but even still, their conflict plays out in the colors. Sandroni and his grays against the colors of Leonide. We can see this most plainly when Sandroni is threatened by the color of a flaming torch.
But the colors only work because they thematically echo Mignola’s writing and accent Aragno’s art. The interplay between the elements is what makes the book special.
There is more “Leonide the Vampyr” in the works, with the next issue coming in December, and yet ‘Miracle at The Crow’s Head’ works wonderfully as a single issue. Despite the to-be-continued situation, it feels complete. I’ve become so used to everything being either miniseries or one-shots lately that I’d forgotten what it’s like to read a comic that takes all of the pluses of both formats while deftly side-stepping the negatives. It makes for a very satisfying comic.
Final Verdict: 9 – “Leonide the Vampyr: Miracle at The Crow’s Head” is a disarming tale—but make no mistake, it will surely sink its teeth into unsuspecting readers.
