Baltimore vol. 7: Empty Graves

The good news here is that co-writers Mike Mignola and Christopher Golden followed through on my hope from the previous volume.  We see a further thinning of the cast in this penultimate volume of “Baltimore” and a fleshing out of a couple of the existing members.  Harish, the Indian soldier, and Kidd, the British smith, both have had encounters with the supernatural that eventually led to their willingness to fight alongside the title character.  These supernatural encounters are also appropriately creepy and well in line with what you’d expect from a horror comic with Mignola’s involvement.  As for the story itself, after the graves mentioned in this title’s volume are dug and filled with memories, the group heads to Constantinople and splits into two.  While one group is tasked with deciphering the findings from the late reporter Hodge, Baltimore leads the other on a quest to track down the mother of the Blood Red Witch.

One of these groups finds a lot more than they bargained for, though both ultimately find the same thing:  Exposition!  I can abide by the people who are left to interpret what Hodge has left them as that results in payoff at the end of the volume and setup for the climax in the next one.  The exposition that Baltimore’s group has to deal with is a bit more unwieldy.  It involves the insertion of a new character into the mythos of this story as well as a long and winding reveal regarding the Blood Red Witch’s identity that ties into something set up way back in vol. 2.  There is plenty of action, supernatural and otherwise, to keep things from getting too dull and Baltimore himself cuts a more ruthless figure along the way.  By the end of the volume everything has been set up for the final showdown between Baltimore and the Red King.  Not exactly in the smoothest way, but in one that indicates the coming finale should still be something to see.