Artist Jesse Lonergan makes his Mignolaverse debut with “Miss Truesdale and the Fall of Hyperborea” #1, showing a near-perfect synthesis between two creators obsessed with formalism in art. Spanning the intrigue of Victorian London and the Conan-esque Sword and Sorcery of Hyperborea, “Truesdale” takes the reader into uncharted territory for the Hellboy Universe.
Written by Mike Mignola
Illustrated by Jesse Lonergan
Lettered by Clem RobinsOne of the last followers of a failing Heliopic Brotherhood of Ra, the unassuming Miss Truesdale, finds herself on the receiving end of Brotherhood leader Tefnut Trionus’s final vision. Connecting her life in Victorian London to a young gladiator’s in ancient Hyperborea, Truesdale discovers she now has the chance to change the future by altering the bygone past.
Mike Mignola, creator of the Hellboy Universe and artist Jesse Lonergan team up to tell an all new, supernatural-horror tale.
• Award-winning creator Mike Mignola with acclaimed artist Jesse Lonergan!
• The beginning of a new Mignolaverse series!
James Dowling: Starting us off, I think the most marked aspect of this story is the art of Jesse Lonergan. It’s such a stratospheric departure from what we’ve seen in Hellboy Universe stories before, and is really unique in all of mainstream American comics. He brings this Kirby Crackle to his page layouts, figures, and motion. I also think he’s had a real chance to switch up his own design palette with this book. While the Hyperborea pages fit in with the primordial opera of “Drome,” the Heliopic Brotherhood scenes are a fun injection of Victorian architecture and subtler character acting into the usual Lonergan vibe.
Mark Tweedale: This issue was actually my introduction to Jesse Lonergan’s work, though I didn’t initially read the version you did. I read an unlettered version of the story without knowing who the writer or artist on the story was. And it utterly blew me away. What really surprised me was when I did eventually read the lettered version, it added surprisingly little to the story. Just enough to add a little more context, a little more detail, a little more nuance—but all the essentials are there in the art. What also surprised me was how it was so obviously Mignola writing the issue, even without his text on the page.
As soon as I was told that the artist was Jesse Lonergan, I immediately read up on his past work, discovered his Patreon, and became a backer. Hell yes, I wanted more! Lonergan’s layouts are magnificent, especially in how he uses them to modulate pacing. In this regard, “Miss Truesdale” actually reminded me of Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá’s work on “B.P.R.D.: Vampire,” which is an all-time favorite of mine.
James: I was introduced to Lonergan’s art with “Hedra,” which felt like it had a real mission statement on advancing the design and sequentials of comic art, which quickly hooked me onto his style. In fact, I really never buy comics merch, but I still own a t-shirt with some Lonergan art because he just feels like a clever designer in whatever medium he grapples. I can see why it feels like an all-gas-no-brakes Mike Mignola script, but to me this really felt like a Jesse Lonergan comic. I guess that’s what happens when two creators with such a strong capacity for creative design work together for the first time; they happily fly into uncharted territory.
I’m probably just getting greedy but after reading this first issue I was already imagining about a half dozen other Hellboy stories I’d want to see Lonergan on. If there was ever going to be an Abe Sapien revival, then he would undeniably be the man for the job.
Mark: It’s very easy to imagine Lonergan doing any number of stories in the Hellboy Universe. His work is both different from Mignola’s and other artists’, but also harmonious with what they’ve established, which is an excellent combination exploring areas of this universe we haven’t seen before. There’s just enough familiarity to feel connected, but beyond that, this totally feels like Lonergan can put his own personal stamp on this corner of the universe. Anum Yassa, for example, feels like a Lonergan character from “Drome.” And for this reason, I feel like his approach is ideal for exploring new territory.
Continued belowJames: Yeah, I really love the design for Anum Yassa. It’s stripped back just enough to be immediately iconic and plays so well into the gladiator sequence. I think the fifth page alone shows what Lonergan can do with the character in a series with this much creative free reign. The way the arc of swinging weapons gets to slice into the gutters and shape of the page is just awesome.
Mark: Anum Yassa is fantastic. The character immediately won me over. The gladiator sequence is the perfect introduction to the character too, not just because we see her in combat for the first time and learn who she is through that sequence, but because Miss Truesdale—this suppressed Victorian woman—is seeing her too. And, yes, Lonergan’s dynamic layouts only add to this. Miss Truesdale (and Tefnut Trionus) are such restrained, even caged, characters whereas Anum Yassa is slicing up her panels. She’s not free exactly, but she’s fighting to get out. It’s one thing for the readers to see Anum Yassa as powerful, but another thing entirely for these two women to see a powerful woman. Through Anum Yassa, Miss Truesdale and Tefnut Trionus see an aspect of their personhood that has been denied to them simply because they are women.
James: This series has already used its structure to really deftly hone in on modes of civil oppression, and how these two late-stage imperial cities are bloating under that mistreatment. This book is all about dualisms in places of unchecked urban growth, and it’s done a great job so far of merging these two images of Hyperborea, one as this sort of divine fable, the allegorical first civilisation, and the other as a very real place with real societal strifes. To me, it’s that balance of the mystical and the material in both settings that has me coming back to this issue over and over. It’s a real puzzle to crack.
Mark: Those two panels are a great example of the sort of thing that reads without text. The first shows the iconic Hyperborea we’ve seen in panels going back to “Hellboy: The Island,” with those golden rooftops, the next shows a faded version of it, taking us down into the streets where this tale takes place. Especially note how that golden tower in the middle of the first panel is broken in the panel below, indicating that time has passed visually. Through aspects like this, we immediately know we’re in the latter days of the Hyperborean Empire, when the Cult of the Left Hand had spread.
Mignola and Lonergan do this sort of stuff frequently throughout the issue, using visual touchstones that longtime Hellboy Universe readers will know and use them to anchor us in the story. We see the twin serpents Nimung-Gulla, the statue of the Black Goddess, Anum-Ra. . .
. . .We know these visual elements and they orient us in the story space.
James: It’s a story that really knows when it can lean on visual shorthand and resonant motifs, and when it needs to go and synthesize an entirely new piece of symbolism. To me it really does feel like the kind of creation from that early 2000s period of “Hellboy,” where Mignola had this massive array of visuals up his sleeve, but was producing some of his most dynamic comics anyway because he was retooling all those images in a range of ways. It’s a product of creators being enthusiastic to expand.
Mark: Speaking of expanding on the visual language of prior works, I have to draw attention to Lonergan’s coloring on the issue. I feel like he’s done an incredible job of tapping into the color language built up over decades by Dave Stewart, while never straying into outright mimicry. He references palettes used by Stewart for Hyperborea and the Black Goddess as part of the process to orient the reader, and he uses color beats—like a panel suddenly flooded with red for an act of violence—in a way that uses the same language Stewart and Mignola developed together.
But it’s Lonergan’s take on it. It doesn’t feel quite like the way Mignola would use it. It’s definitely more Lonergan. I think what we’re seeing is Lonergan perhaps pushing the aspects of his work that naturally feel similar to Mignola’s storytelling, and the result feels harmonious.
Continued belowThe panels of total black are another good example of this, and in fact my favorite part of this shared language, because it’s something Lonergan uses a lot in his own work too, so it both strengthens the connection to Mignola’s body of work while emphasizing Lonergan’s personal style. Plus, it’s an aspect that taps into what’s going on for the characters in the story really powerfully. It makes me feel their emotional journeys so much more deeply.
James: Yeah, he’s really adept at knowing when to work with what came before and when to diverge. I like that you focused on how he colors his own work too, when sequences move away from that block color hyperviolence we get to see expanding the usual palette of of these books, using sepias and earthy tones to bring the usually gold-encrusted Hyperborea down to a more terrestrial level. In the Victorian sequences we see that desaturation completely dominates the page, showing the progression of this millenia long narrative.
Mark: I think another reason why Lonergan’s work seems like such a great fit for me may have to do with the way he approached this project. Before he began, he looked at the fight sequence from “Hellboy: The Wolves of Saint August” and drew a version of it so he could better understand Mignola’s fight staging and page layouts. This was never done to directly copy Mignola, but simply to understand his approach, and that’s the mindset he took into the opening gladiatorial battle with Anum Yassa. But if you look at the fight in this issue, it’s got Lonergan-isms all over it. There’s no mistaking it. I really think he did a fantastic job in finding the harmony between his work and Mignola’s without in any way blunting what makes him such an exciting storyteller.
James: God, I’d love to see more artists just straight-up adapt Mignola pages. If it happened for “Dark Knight Returns” it could happen for “Saint August!” This debut was such a slam dunk for me, I’m giving it a 9.
Mark: I read this before I got to the incredible “Koshchei in Hell” #4, but when I read that initial unlettered version, I was left thinking “Holy crap, I may have just read my favorite comic of 2023,” and upon revisiting it as a lettered comic, it lost none of its power. Hell, it gained some from all the subtle touches Clem Robins added. It’s a 9.5 for me. I am ridiculously excited about this miniseries.
Final Verdict: 9.25 – While unmistakably a part of Mignola’s Hellboy Universe, with touchstones in visuals for various plot elements, Jesse Lonergan’s storytelling is front and center at all times, broadening the visual storytelling language, showing us this world anew. “Miss Truesdale and the Fall of Hyperborea” #1 makes the Hellboy Universe richer with every page.
