Review of Baltimore's Free Comic Book Day Issue

Even Mignola's signature cover amazes.

Mike Mignola is one of the best comics storytellers of this generation. It's not his story concepts but his ability to tell a cohesive, engaging, and complete story in each issue. And unlike some creators who phone it in for Free Comic Book Day (I'm looking at your Kung Fu Panda), Mignola always gives 100%. And this year's entry Baltimore: A Passing Stranger is no exception.

The series follows Lord Henry Baltimore across a post-World War I Europe that first succumbed to a plague, then vampires, and now beasts of the old world - similar to Steven King's The Mist but with Mignola's signature Gothic. Where this particular issue fits into the established story in which Baltimore is hunting a vampire responsible for the death of a loved one, is unclear, but it doesn't matter.

Again, it's the way this story is woven that sets it apart. Told from the point of view of a boy who falls into a den of giant spiders, the reader (likely new to the series and its main character) relates most strongly with the victim rather than the savior, lending to the comic's genre as a Gothic horror, as does the foreshadowing of things to come. But perhaps the best indicator of this story's value is its completeness in 14 pages; you don't need to have read anything by Mignola before or after to enjoy this story.

9 / 10

Questions? Quibbles? Controversies?