An Addendum to Comic Picks #153

The trouble with doing podcasts as off-the-cuff as I do is that after they’re done, something else I should’ve mentioned tends to come to mind.  Usually it’s a minor thing that doesn’t bear addressing, but that’s not the case with Abe Sapien.  A while back I wrote about how “B.P.R.D.” seemed to be setting the character up for a fall as he embraced a calling that put him at odds with his friends and comrades.  That’s still a storyline I’d like to read about and even though this path also looks like it might be pursued with Andersen in “Vampire” it’d still be valid with Abe’s ongoing series for a couple reasons.  Not only do we have no idea when we’ll get a follow-up to “Vampire,” but it’ll also help distinguish Abe’s solo title and give it the focus I felt it needed after the end of the first volume.

Though I enjoyed the stories about the character I discussed on the podcast, the fact remains that they’re not all that dissimilar from what we’ve been getting from “Hellboy” over the years.  Now it could be that Mike Mignola and his co-writers Scott Allie and John Arcudi are simply warming up for this path that I mentioned.  We have Panya effectively pushing Abe away from the B.P.R.D. while Abe himself seems to be unconsciously spreading chaos everywhere he goes.  If so, the “slow burn” approach doesn’t quite work in the first volume and that’s why it left me feeling that Abe’s story would be better served as an ongoing subplot in “B.P.R.D.” proper.

Mignola and co. have lit a fire in my mind with how the character’s direction could possibly go from here.  Now they just have to either deliver on this idea or show me that whatever they have in mind is better.