Mr. Higgins Comes Home

While Mike Mignola is best known for the supernatural action and strangeness he has delivered to great effect in his many Mignolaverse titles and other projects, he’s not a stranger to humor.  Hellboy has been known to punctuate just about all of his fights with a good deadpan quip and some of the short stories he’s been involved in have basically just been jokes with weird punchlines at the end.  “Mr. Higgins Comes Home” is the first side project of his that I’ve read where humor has been the driving point of the narrative.  It involves two fearless vampire hunters, Professor J.T. Meinhardt and his associate Mister Knox, who aim to employ the title character in their attempt to take down the evil Count Golga and all the other vampires he has invited to take part in the satanic orgy he has set up to celebrate Walpurgis.  You see, Mr. Higgins and his wife once had an encounter with Golga that left him and his wife… changed.  Now he only wishes for the sweet release of death that the professor has promised in return for his help.  However, Golga is a crafty vampire and has his own plans for dealing with Prof. Meinhardt by inviting him to the celebration.

I honestly don’t know why the professor would accept such an invitation.  Unless it’s because of his Very British nature and he just didn’t want to come off as rude towards the evil vampire lord who has pledged his loyalty to Satan Himself.  “Very British” is how most of the humor comes off here with the incongruity between the polite upper-crust vampires and their base nature.  It’s more amusing than laugh-out-loud funny, but it doesn’t overstay its welcome.  More to my liking is the art from Warwick Johnson-Caldwell whose exaggerated style does a good job of splitting the difference between comedy and horror.  I don’t think his work will be to everyone’s liking, but I enjoyed it enough to hope that he’ll work with Mignola again on another project.  Maybe on something that draws more than a few bemused chuckles from me.