The Hellboy Universe expands with a new title this week, “The House of Lost Horizons: A Sarah Jewell Mystery.” While the story is indeed designed to be a standalone tale and completely new-reader friendly, it’s also laying the groundwork for much more to come. . .
Written by Mike Mignola and Chris RobersonCover by Christopher Mitten
Illustrated by Leila del Duca
Colored by Michelle Madsen
Lettered by Clem RobinsInvestigator Sarah Jewell (Rise of the Black Flame, Witchfinder: The Reign of Darkness) gets her own series in this murder mystery with an occult twist.
A locked-room murder mystery puzzles paranormal detective Sarah Jewell and her associate Marie-Thérèse when a weekend trip on a private island off the coast of Washington goes astray. Trapped by a storm and surrounded by myriad suspects who have gathered for an auction of occult items, the intrepid duo must unravel the supernatural mysteries surrounding the guests in hopes of uncovering the murderer! But all the while, bodies keep piling up, and at any moment Sarah or Marie-Thérèse could be next!
Mike Mignola and Chris Roberson return to the world of Hellboy, accompanied by artist Leila del Duca and colorist Michelle Madsen.
Every now and then a comic is announced that seems like pure wish fulfillment. From Sarah Jewell’s first appearance in 2016’s “Rise of the Black Flame,” I’ve wanted her to get her own series. The character, who was modelled after globetrotting journalist Nellie Bly and heiress explorer Aimée Crocker, had such an expansive history beyond the page even in that first story. (See Monday’s Hell Notes for more details.) Even if I wasn’t such a Hellboy Universe geek, I would’ve been hooked at once—Nellie Bly was one of my childhood heroes. Fast forward to the present and we’ve got Sarah Jewell essentially dropped into an Agatha Christie book. For the record, my favorite Christie novel is And Then There Were None, in which all the main characters are summoned to an island under mysterious circumstances, then cut off from the outside world by a nasty storm and one by one the characters get killed off. So what’s ‘The House of Lost Horizons’ about? Well, it has a bunch of characters stuck on an island during a storm and there’s a murderer among them. I mean, come on! That and for years now I’ve had Leila del Duca on my mental list of artists I’d love to see work on the Hellboy Universe. Oh, and did I mention it combines two of my favorite mystery types? It’s both a closed-circle mystery (an isolated environment with a limited number of suspects) and a locked-door mystery (a crime committed in a room that’s seemingly impossible to have access to).
So, yeah, I cannot overstate “The House of Lost Horizons: A Sarah Jewell Mystery” is pure wish fulfillment for me. It plays into my interests damn near perfectly.
That said, when the yardstick the story is measured against is And Then There Were None, that’s a tough expectation to live up to. And this story has the same problem that nearly all closed-circle mysteries have—it requires a lot of time setting up the foundation. This sort of story needs a reasonably large cast of characters, and each of those characters needs to be compelling in their own way. On top of that, being a locked-room mystery, it’s important to set up the environment, the timeline, and the access limitations. All this in a twenty-page comic.
The economy of page real estate in this kind of story works in an entirely different way, because suddenly the little things matter so much more. When a character leaves a room, it doesn’t just matter that they left the room, suddenly it’s important how they left the room. The story naturally inflates with these extra panels that other stories in comics can skip over.
Thankfully, Roberson and del Duca carve out the necessary space for these moments. A tale like this lives or dies not only interesting characters, but amusing characters. Merely meeting them and seeing them play off of each other has to be something the reader enjoys even without a looming murder mystery. I particularly enjoyed one moment of characterization in this issue when a character is explored by how they observe other characters. It’s a simple enough thing, but it’s a level of self-awareness that immediately makes the character more compelling.
Continued belowThere’s so much that needs to be set up in ‘The House of Lost Horizons,’ even just in the rudimentary mechanics. After all, practically every scene in this issue is set inside the house, which means when we go from one scene to another, the rooms need to be immediately visually distinct while also feeling unified. Michelle Madsen especially is very careful with her color palettes, making sure that the shift is subtle, yet noticeable enough that we don’t consciously stop to think about the location. The kitchen has lighter walls, the hallways have darker wood, there’s distinctive paneling in the rooms branching off the hallway, the lounge has distinctive wallpaper. . . and all these rooms need to have enough flexibility in their colors to shift along with the mood of the scene or even into flashbacks.
Early on in the story, there’s a double-page spread with Sarah Jewell and Marie-Thérèse LaFleur being led through the house as they’re introduced to the mystery. It’s a great way to orient the reader and make a dialogue-heavy sequence visually interesting. Del Duca pays particular attention to eyelines and body language here, with Sarah mostly standing close to her childhood friend, while Marie-Thérèse stands at a distance. Throughout, Marie-Thérèse says very little, but she’s shown to be observant and empathetic. She’s still involved in the scene even in silence.
Honestly, Marie-Thérèse is the standout character for me. She says very little in the first half of the issue, letting Sarah comfort her friend, while she focuses on listening and observing, but when she pivots into action, she does so with fierce decisiveness. For me, a big part of why she works comes down to the art, where even without dialogue, you still get a sense of her interior thoughts. And when Sarah and Marie-Thérèse are alone together, there isn’t a hierarchy. This may be “A Sarah Jewell Mystery,” but Marie-Thérèse is every bit the detective as Sarah.
‘The House of Lost Horizons’ #1 by nature of the genre is a slow burn though. Every story of its kind has wrestled with the slow start and keeping it engaging, telling the reader a lot without overwhelming them, introducing a large cast while making each character distinct, memorable, and interesting to read. I think the biggest challenge the genre faces in comic form is that this kind of story can pivot on the nuances, but with a month between issues, will readers remember those nuances? For this reason, I’d feel like it would be better suited to the OGN format than the serialised monthly format if ‘The House of Lost Horizons’ was simply a classical mystery. However, this has a supernatural element at play too, so I’m hoping that tying in these larger than life elements will help readers hold onto the necessary details across the next four months as the story unfolds.
Final Verdict: 8 – There are so many challenges ahead for the creative team on “The House of Lost Horizons: A Sarah Jewell Mystery,” but happily they’ve laid a strong foundation in the first issue.
