After the build-up in the first issue, The Infernal Train #2 hits full stream and doesn’t slow down.
Written by Mike Mignola and Christopher Golden
Illustrated by Ben Stenbeck
Colors by Dave Stewart
Lettering by Clem RobinsWhen Baltimore and Duvic find themselves fighting side by side against a plague of vampires, our hero is captured and taken to a weird ritual where a witch plans to feed him to the ancient undead.
What an explosive issue this was! Right from the beginning it dove straight into the action and kept up that pace right to the end. In my review of issue one I tip-toed around the appearance of the high priest vampires in the final pages. It was a moment I didn’t want to spoil. Now that I’m finally free to speak on the topic, I have to say, holy crap! Lord Baltimore’s had his hands full just going after Haigus. Fighting a group of these vampires isn’t going to be a walk in the park that’s for sure.
But we’ll have to wait for that battle. In this issue, it’s all about the battle with the revenants attacking Baltimore’s hotel and with the infamous Judge Duvic. Ever since the end of The Plague Ships readers have known eventually Judge Duvic and Lord Baltimore would come head to head one day. That moment has finally arrived.
Here we really get to see the fallout from the one-shot a few months earlier, The Inquisitor, which served as a kind of prelude to this story. Judge Duvic is unhinged. The animal inside him has been unleashed, though Duvic is unwilling to admit it. He is in stark contrast with Lord Baltimore. While the judge extols his virtue and divine right to judge and execute, Baltimore neatly undercuts his distorted logic with calm precision. It’s this that really makes this battle work. This is no mere clashing of swords.
The action in this issue is some of the best in the series so far. It feels appropriately big for the moment without overwhelming the story. Ben Stenbeck does an excellent job of keeping the pace up while maintaining a sense of the spacial relationships in the battle in the Hunyadi Hotel lobby, knowing just when to go to a long shot to reorientate the reader. It’s always nice when a character can look out beyond a panel and you still know where they’re looking towards. When it works it’s invisible, and that’s certainly the case here.
This issue isn’t all battles though. Somehow it finds time to explore a bit of the mythology of the Baltimore universe, clarifying the hierarchy of the vampires among other things, and setting the stage for future conflicts. It was nice to have this moment in the middle, laying bare the stakes that are at play here. I do have one slight bit of criticism of this section though. The sequence showing the prehistory of Lord Baltimore’s world was a little too similar to the one in Hellboy with it’s Ogdru-hem-like creatures. I would’ve liked the history of the Baltimore universe to be more distinctively its own. As it is, there are still people out there that think Baltimore is a part of the Hellboy universe, and that’s simply not the case. This particular scene doesn’t help to clarify this point.
It is a minor criticism, and very far from a damning one. Honestly, I feel like a bit of a jerk for mentioning it, because this is an issue that delivered in a big way and I really enjoyed it. Everyone involved, from writing to illustrating to colouring, lettering, and editing, has given it their all. It’s a big moment for the series, and I’m happy to report it lives up to expectations. You’ll have fun with this one for sure.
Final Verdict: 8.5 – Buy and enjoy.
Finally, I’d like to share my favourite moment from issue one, a moment I couldn’t talk about without spoiling the story. Over the last fifteen issues of Baltimore we’ve seen the repeated imagery of a beautiful bird-like vampire spirit escaping out of the mouth of a dying body. It was incredibly cool to see this imagery take a nasty turn, really selling the level of distortion Fulcaneli is playing with. Interestingly, this unsettling imagery wasn’t in an earlier draft of the story. Whoever decide to add it, Stenbeck, Golden, or Mignola, it was a nice touch.
