After a brief hiatus, Mignolaversity rolls on with the first of two Lobster Johnson one-shots coming from Dark Horse in the coming months. “The Prayer of Neferu” deals with the theft of a mummy, and the attempted conjuring of its spirit.
Written by Mike Mignola and John Arcudi
Illustrated by Wilfredo TorresThe Heliopic Brotherhood of Ra hold a Victorian themed party complete with the unrolling of a mummy, with decidedly unexpected results, including a gun-blazing vigilante promising justice!
Brian: I don’t know if I would say we’ve missed him, but Lobster Johnson is back! David, what was your initial reaction to this one-shot?
David: Is it wrong of me to be kind of bored with ol’ Lobby? I mean, the guy is enjoyable, but he doesn’t really have a personality and this little adventure was not that entertaining. So I guess, my initial reaction is kind of heavy on the “meh” side. Am I alone in that response? What was your take?
Brian: That is a totally fair assessment. I get why these comics are fun to work on, but at this point, Lobster Johnson isn’t the character I want to necessarily see more stories surrounding. If this was more of a once a year character, I could dig that, but so far in 2012, if we’re counting next month’s one-shot, as well as the story in Dark Horse Presents, we have gotten 8 issues of Lobby, and have seen just about zero character development. He’s the most overexposed (and I’d argue perhaps the only overexposed) character in the Mignolaverse.
David: Yeah, I think that’s it. If you’re going to bring the guy around all of the time, give us something to work with. I know the idea is he’s this pulp archetype doing pulpy things, but at a certain point, the baseness of the character wears thin. And that point comes with repeated – and increasingly frequent – exposure. I’m not saying that at his foundation the character couldn’t work as a more regular character, I’m just saying that so far, we haven’t really seen it. I preferred him when he was this ghost guy that would show up to help our B.P.R.D. bros out in their time of need.
All of this without mentioning that this issue didn’t have what made the previous LoJo series tolerable, meaning Tonci Zonjic. What did you think of the art on this bad boy?
Brian: Wilfredo Torres doesn’t do a bad job here, but after Zonjic, anyone else drawing Lobby seems a little off to me. We’ve discussed the Mignolaverse house style being one of the strongest in all of comics, and rarely are the artists on these books anything less than really good, and I don’t think Torres does anything really wrong here. The issue doesn’t have all that much going on, in terms of different locations and/or characters – you get, mainly, the same dudes in the same building for most of the issue. That said, Torres handles the action about as well as could be expected.
What did you think?
David: You know, I was really up and down on it. At first I was like, “yeah, who is this guy? He is awesome!” And then I was like, “who the BEEP is this guy? He’s uglying up my comic!” It seemed pretty up and down. It was a pretty disappointingly inconsistent book from the art side for me. Maybe I am just turning into a LoJo hater?
Here’s a question for you: what do you think they should do with the guy? I think these books sell, but the quality is undoubtedly dropping. What would you do if you were the Mignola team?
Brian: Well, with the announcement of B.P.R.D. becoming a traditionally numbered series with issue #100, Scott Allie spoke to Andy Khouri from Comics Alliance,
Continued belowWhere we’re heading with this is simple: the end. There have been a lot of prophecies, a lot of omens, in the Hellboy books, including “B.P.R.D.” and all of this, and the omens have not been good. The idea is not that the reader can have a perfectly clear vision of where this is all heading — a lot of interpretation goes into these prophecies, and a lot of the interpreters are wrong. But we are stepping things up and heading to the big payoff. The slogan for B.P.R.D. this year was, “It’s all going to hell in 2012.” Well, then what? Then you’re in Hell for a long, long time, and our guys have to deal with that. Things have gone too far for them to hit the reset button and say, “Phew, handled that, all better now.” Readers are going to see how things in “Hellboy [In Hell],” “Lobster Johnson,” “Abe Sapien,” even “Witchfinder,” will just keeping coming together more and more over time. The payoff for [longtime Mignola readers] like you, Andy, is gonna be huge, and not all in one burst.
So, hopefully that means that these stories will become more tied into the Mignolaverse which, I think we can both agree, is what needs to happen. But beyond that, I don’t know what really can be done. As you said, to serve his intended purpose, he sort of needs to be a traditional pulp hero, and when you’re in a universe of Hellboys, Abe Sapiens, and guys in containment suits, the pulp hero of the 1940s is less exciting.
Wrapping up, how do you rate this one-shot?
David: You know, I didn’t know they were renumbering. That’s cool, and kind of odd, all things considered. Do you know if they are going to be rotating artists, or is it all Tyler Crook the rest of the way? Also, I just don’t see how they tie LoJo in. I can see that for other books – even Witchfinder – but I just can’t see that with this, save for the occasional Black Flame appearance.
Overall, I’m going to give this a 4.0. It’s just meh. There isn’t much that gets me going here. What about you?
Brian: I don’t know, man. These are tough to grade, because if this was your first Lobster story, you’d probably love it. But since it is the 8th such adventure this year, it is getting a little stale. I’ll give it a 6.0, averaging us down to a 5.
See you guys next week!
Final Verdict: 5.0 – Browse
