The revelations keep on coming in the latest “Abe Sapien”.
Cover by Sebastián Fiumara
Written by Mike Mignola and Scott Allie
Illustrated by Max Fiumara
Colored by Dave Stewart
Lettered by Clem RobinsAbe discovers parts of the biggest answers, withheld from him for decades by the BPRD itself.
Mark Tweedale: This was a busy issue! I’m still reeling from it all.
Mike Romeo: It was really busy. But not necessarily in an action-packed sort of way, it was more of a subtle sort of busy. I mean, yeah, there was a bit of action and battle magic, but it was all secondary to the central narrative.
I liked the balance of this issue. As Abe continues to explore Bruttenholm’s interview tapes, Strobl continues to make his way towards the house. The way the art described the situation, readers could see the weight of what was coming sitting on Abe’s shoulders. In a series of pages, we see Strobl unleashing on Zinco troopers for the first ¾ of the page, with the final, wide and narrow panel devoted to what Abe was listening to. It left me feeling that the world around Abe is crushing what is truly important to him.
Mark: Yeah, crushing what is truly important to him, that’s definitely it. I mean, I’ve been wanting to see what happens when you get Abe and Strobl in the same room together for a long time now, and to make that room be in Bruttenholm’s house, it felt like such a violation. Plus it comes at a time when Abe is so vulnerable. The recordings on Bruttenholm’s tapes are deeply personal. To have Strobl hear them is deeply disturbing.
And, yeah, I liked the balance of this issue too. It covers a lot of stuff, but the overlap of events made for an economical story. There was almost always more than one thing going on at a time. In particular, I love the immediacy Dave Stewart’s colors brought this story. I mean, we’re going back and forth between Strobl and Abe, while intercutting memories. The colors make navigating this effortless. Max Fiumara and Dave Stewart did an amazing job with this one.
Mike: For sure. I was really impressed by the way Stewart handled Vaughn’s appearance. Sure, Fiumara did his bit to make the former agent look haggard, but the colors are what made him look so disturbing. The guy’s been in rough shape for a while, but he seemed almost decayed in this issue.
So how do you want to cut into this one? I’m sure you’ve got a thing or two to unpack, so why don’t you take the lead?
Mark: I’ve noticed lately our reviews dip into spoiler territory early on, but unfortunately it’s something that’s been getting harder and harder to avoid as we approach the end of the series. So… spoiler warning. Massive spoiler warning.
Early on in this issue, Langdon Caul is talking about how he found the egg that turned him into Abe Sapien. He and his colleagues had visited a medium that had suggested they would meet a priest in the Hyperborean ruins. So is that what the spirit in the egg is? Some sort of dead priest?
And then Bruttenholm regresses Abe one level deeper, contacting a spirit that speaks Hyperborean. But the thing that really jumped out at me was later, when Abe was crying while hypnotized, crying at the realizations and he’d learnt. It got me thinking, maybe Abe’s the one that kept all this from himself, and Bruttenholm merely honored his wishes. I mean, Trevor could have easily asked him while hypnotized if he wanted to remember or not, and he would have gotten an honest answer.
Because that’s the thing, throughout this ongoing series, Abe has said again and again that he wanted to learn the truth about himself, and again and again he was shown to be lying to himself. I wonder if his hiding from the truth began in the ’80s.
Mike: I think that’s a great reading of Bruttenholm’s actions, and to me it’s cast the whole thing in a new light. I don’t know what this says about me, but I had defaulted to thinking that Brutenhol’s secretiveness had some sort of less-than-noble intention behind it. Like he was acting as an unappointed gatekeeper for Abe’s secrets, you know? But your thinking, that it’s possible Abe decided himself to cover it all up, is quite interesting.
Continued belowCircling back to the egg, I’m pretty into the thinking that the priest was the spirit in the egg, which would mean that it’s the spirit in Abe, as well. To me, what happened with Caul and the egg feels a lot like what happened with Agent Howards in Chicago. I mean, the circumstances are different, but both seem to be sharing their minds and bodies with an ancient spirit, right?
Mark: With Howards I’m not sure how far that goes. I still wonder if he’s two distinct people or if they’ve essentially merged into one. Whereas with Abe, I feel like he’s more entangled with his past lives. This priest spirit thing is an essential part of who Abe is, and it’s always been there, we’re just getting to know it… and we’ll probably get to know it a lot better in the next issue.
OK, so what did you make of the stuff with Strobl? I mean, that whole final sequence with him, when Abe sort of begins to change… what’s going on there? I mean, I still don’t know why Abe changed when Fenix shot him, and what the significance of that change is. So when I see Abe shift back to his former self, it’s a startling moment, but the significance of that moment is going right over my head.
Mike: You’re not alone in that. Maybe, with the title of this story and all, this is Abe regressing back to who he was when he had no interest in his past, and that shift in appearance was a symbol of that? So the reversion to his previous form wasn’t something that actually happened, it just figuratively happened? That sort of explanation could help reinforce Abe fleeing from the confrontation, I guess. But really, I’m just swinging in the dark here. Enough weird stuff happens in these books, so Abe shapeshifting wouldn’t be the most outlandish thing in the world.
One thing that seems much clearer to me is the fact that we’ve probably seen the last of Vaughn. Which is a shame, because I really like the guy. Well, maybe not ‘like,’ so much as he was my favorite person to feel bad for in this whole affair.
Mark: I’m not entirely sure how I feel about Vaughn’s “death”. I mean, technically he died all the way back in issue 3, and Strobl made no secret of how he’d be discarded as soon as he no longer had a use for him. We’d already seen what happened with Strobl’s previous slave, Willis. I guess that I’m still thinking about it and processing it is probably a good sign, though. And I liked that we learned Vaughn’s given name, Joe, in the moments before his death. But after 30 issues with the guy, I guess I just hoped there would more to his ultimate fate. Perhaps there is more with him yet, but I doubt it, given the state he was left in. Either way, his death scene was well handled. The dialogue from the tape recorder made for this really off-balance atmosphere.
OK, last thing I want to mention… Abe speaking Hyperborean. Not while hypnotized, but right here and now, speaking Hyperborean, and breaking free of the bindings Strobl had placed on him. It reminds me of the vision Abe had back in “The Shadow Over Suwanee” arc, where Caul was holding the egg and chanting, and somehow it drove back an Ogdru Hem.
Abe’s tapping into his power.
Mike: And still running from it! I’m really eager to see where things are going from here. We’ve got some idea, thanks to the solicits that’re out there, and it seems like the series is poised for a big finale.
So what do you say we wrap this up and get to the score?
I feel like this was a solid issue that delivered on a lot of the Abe mythos. Let’s call it an 8.
Mark: I agree. This is an 8.
Final Verdict: 8. This series keeps cramming in more and more with each issue, yet somehow it hasn’t become overwhelming. This series is sprinting to the finish line.
