Koshchei In Hell #1, from Dark Horse, a new four-issue miniseries, is seriously good reading.
This Mike Mignola-written saga is mesmerizing, right from the first page. As Koshchei is recruited from his candlelit sofa, book in hand and wine glass on the coffee table, Mignola’s dialogue starts to pull us in. An old and powerful foe is returning, a ghost has come to warn Koshchei, and he has to act immediately! The lettering(Clem Robins) of the brief balloons, the tightly pared-down words and meanings, it’s all ultra-compressed and high stakes.
Ben Stenbeck (Frankenstein Underground, Witchfinder: In The Service of Angels, Baltimore, Koshchei the Deathless) keeps the art panels stately, but inside those panels, anything goes. With Dave Stewart on colours, Stenbeck has a Wally Wood sense of figure movement, apparitions moving without ‘action lines’, everything shadowed and dim. The figures are solid as ‘hell’, the shadows hugging the figures and making them three-dimensional.
Stenbeck’s storyboarding is impeccable. Each panel leads us along the dimly lit walkway through hell, where we are falling, enthralled with the rhythmic pulse of danger. It’s hypnotic, this meshing of Mignola and Stenbeck, the call and answer of two capable artisans handing the narrative back and forth. Time is suspended, the ticking clock of horror halted, we hold our breath and wait for issue 2.
Image Comics, Koshchei In Hell #1, $3.99 for 24 pages.
Newsdesk