Baltimore vol. 3: A Passing Stranger and Other Stories
You know, I’m not sure if there’s anyone in comics who loves doing short stories for their creator-owned works more than Mike Mignola. Some of the best volumes of “Hellboy” are made up entirely of one-shots, short pieces from anthologies, and miniseries too short to be collected in an individual volume. “B.P.R.D.” also has a few volumes like this as well. Now we get the first such collection from the world of “Baltimore.” Coming after the tour-de-force that was “The Plague Bells,” there’s nothing in “A Passing Stranger,” co-written as always with Christopher Golden, that matches its level of intensity and excitement. If you are a fan of Lord Henry Baltimore’s adventures, however, then you’ll appreciate the stories here which serve to add depth to his world and pursuit while offering further evidence of his stone-cold badassery.
If there’s one thing all of these stories have in common, it’s how they show that things are steadily getting worse in Baltimore’s world. Not only vampires are coming back, but other weirder creatures as well. The creepy title story is about two boys, friends, who see the lord passing through town and follow him. At the end of their journey lies a nest of giant spiders. Though a vampire is thought to be terrorizing a small French town in “The Tank,” we soon find out he’s a virtual prisoner of the rusted machine thanks to the beasties that live in the ground next to it. Then there’s “Doctor Leskovar’s Remedy,” where the titular doctor has apparently created even worse monsters in his quest for a vampirism cure. The truth isn’t quite as simple, with an even greater threat emerging from the remains of the monster Baltimore brought with him to a nearby fishing village.
These stories do follow a predictable pattern of having the main character show up, find out what’s going on, and then killing his way to a solution yet there’s enough weirdness and horror to them to make for an interesting reading experience. Ben Stenbeck once again provides the art and shows that he’s just as good as any other artist who has worked with Mignola in creating a spooky atmosphere and striking monster designs. Yes, at this point I’d even say that he’s on par with Guy Davis. While Stenbeck is excellent at realizing this World War I-era world, I’d love to see him bring his talents to “B.P.R.D.” at some point to offer his take on the weirdness there.
This isn’t all the book has to offer, though. “The Widow” has a very British, yet not humorously so, take on how a woman deals with her husband who has returned to war as a vampire. It also has the most memorable image in the book: the widow seeing her fading reflection in a mirror and realizing what her husband’s nightly bloodletting is doing to her. Haigus also gets a story to himself in “The Play” as we see that the old vampire is not immune to the forces of love, even if they’re forced upon him. While this display of his flaws does make him more interesting, and the story features the disembodied head of Edgar Allan Poe, things do fall apart towards the end with the climax feeling like a very mechanical kind of anarchy. In other words, not a very effective kind.
“The Inquisitor” rounds out the volume, and if you thought that it’s about Baltimore’s pursuer Judge Duvic, then you’d be correct. Having caught up with the writer Hodge from “The Curse Bells,” the judge plans to extract the location of the lord from the man by any means necessary. While making with the threats, Duvic also gives his life story and we see how such fanaticism as his was born. It’s a pretty straightforward explanation, but it reinforces the judge’s character as someone who genuinely believes in the rightness of what he’s doing. At least, that’s the case until the surprise return of a familiar character manages to instill bloody doubt in him. The framing sequence of the story also sets up a confrontation between Baltimore and Duvic. If the judge has been given reason to doubt his cause, then such an event now has the potential to develop in unexpected ways. I’m looking forward to that already.
“A Passing Stranger” is a step back from the previous volume, yet not an unwelcome one. Even if the quality may be a little uneven, all of the stories here have something interesting to offer. If nothing else, the volume left me with the uneasy feeling that Baltimore’s world is a far more dangerous place than I initially thought. Still, I have great expectations for the next volume. In case you hadn’t heard, it involves Baltimore boarding the Infernal Train to stop the resurrection of a vampire god! If that’s not something to get excited about, then I don’t know what is.