Bowling With Corpses and Other Strange Tales From Lands Unknown

Mike Mignola is responsible for one of the largest and most entertaining fictional universes in comics:  The Mignolaverse, which encompasses all of Hellboy’s adventures, those of his comrades in the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense, his antagonists, and those who came before and after them as well.  He’s also responsible in part for Outerverse, the shared realm of “Baltimore” and “Joe Golem,” along with Christopher Golden.  Now he’s back with a whole new world, the Lands Unknown, that he’s written and illustrated himself.  In addition to corpses with a thing for bowling, it also has its own dragon-filled creation myth, unscrupulous scientists searching for the secret of immortality, an underground kingdom of kobolds, and more.

The appeal of this original graphic novel should be obvious as it’s the longest work Mignola has illustrated in years.  His work here hasn’t lost its spooky allure with its angular humans, ghouls, and ghosts, surreal and supernatural settings, and love of inky black negative space.  You can say the same about his storytelling here as all of the stories have the singular sense of weirdness that he’s been displaying in his works for years, only this time in a setting that feels like medieval Europe, but with enough international flair to distinguish it.

Weirdly, Mignola himself outlines the biggest issue with this volume and the stories within it in his afterword.  He talks about how he came up with the mythology and general worldbuilding of the Lands Unknown first, as opposed to creating a character and having it all spring up around them.  The man didn’t take his own advice here and without a “Hellboy” to anchor things, the whole package feels unfocused and slight as a result.  Mignola acknowledges the rightness of this approach, saying that he tells people not to do it this way in his afterword.  Yet, when you’re as accomplished a creator as him it’s possible to break the rules whenever you want and still have the results be decently entertaining.  Even if it winds up being obvious why they’re not quite as good as they could have been.