A new title from Mike Mignola, Miss Truesdale And The Fall Of Hyperborea #1 might be the longest comic book title of 2023!
In Paris in 1883, Tefnut Trionus, the regal Queen of Heliopolis meets with a Miss Truesdale. As they sit together by a window in a typical Paris stone building, the Queen reveals that a dream has revealed to her that lived in ancient Hyperborea’s times. She has been reincarnated and recalls scenes of great battles, of warrior prisoners fighting to the death in arenas.
It’s a complicated tale full of long words, long-ago expressions, and obscure fictional history. But Mignola’s mastery of character detail and the ’specific’ details of costumes and settings set this story apart from similar ‘woman warrior’ tales. There is depth, breadth, and breath in these peoples. We can hear them yell, we can smell their sweat. It’s plausable fiction, what the heck, it coulda happened!
Artist Jesse Lonergan is up to the Herculean task of rendering justice to the goings-on. Lonergan’s loose line work, the seeming lack of ‘exactly straight’ lines, the rather simplified facial features somehow knit together to create an impressionist experience. It is loosely rendered, but correct. The movements in the fight scenes are fluid, the size of panels fit the amount of attention they deserve, the pacing is excellent. Lonergan’s colours are nicely applied too, and a good balance of cools and warms. The interiors bathed in pale blues, the dusty battle scenes coloured with yellows and reds. Lettering is by Clem Robins.
Recommended for those who enjoy smartly presented sword and sorcery books!
Dark Horse, Miss Truesdale And The Fall of Hyperborea #1, $3.99 for 22 pages of content.
Newsdesk 
Brian Isaacs - Executive Editor / Publisher