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Witchfinder: In the Service of Angels |  | Authors: Mike Mignola, Ben Stenbeck, Dave Stewart
Publisher: Dark Horse
Category: Book
List Price: $17.99
Buy New: $11.37
as of 7/30/2010 11:04 CDT details
You Save: $6.62 (37%)
New (20) Used (6) from $9.99
Seller: stitchterk
Rating:  7 reviews
Sales Rank: 16112
Media: Paperback
Pages: 152
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 10.1 x 7.2 x 0.4
ISBN: 1595824839
Dewey Decimal Number: 741.5973
EAN: 9781595824837
ASIN: 1595824839
Publication Date: May 11, 2010
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Mike Mignola teams up with artist Ben Stenbeck (B.P.R.D.: The Ectoplasmic Man) for a look into one of the Hellboy universe's greatest enigmas: nineteenth-century occult investigator Edward Grey! In one of Grey's first cases as an agent of the queen, he goes from the sparkling echelons of Victorian London to its dark underbelly, facing occult conspiracies, a rampaging monster, and the city's most infamous secret society: the Heliopic Brotherhood of Ra.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 7
 Great switch from Hellboy June 28, 2010
M. DeGrand (Boston, MA)
If your a fan of the Hellboy series and Mike Mignola, I found this to be a fun deviation from that series but still with the same flair that I like about it. The time setting is fun and the characters are interesting, I found it to be a great read overall, I would definitely suggest it to others.
Witchfinder June 28, 2010
Scott Hand
As is almost always the case, Mike Mignola really delivered with this title. All of the characters are well conceived, and the entire graphic novel has an air of 19th century authenticity that fills the pages. I'm really looking forward to future story arcs from this title.
A decent Victorian horror story with Edward Grey April 22, 2010
JR Gumby (US)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I've looked forward to this book for some time now, as I am very fond of the brief appearance Grey made in The Drowning and his even briefer appearances in Hellboy.
To start with, the book is essentially identical to other Dark Horse TPBs in size and print quality. The pages run on the slightly light side, the print quality is good, and the binding is glued. In the past I have experienced hallboy TPBs losing their covers without a great deal of abuse, but the print itself is very good.
The next thing I noticed when I opened the book was the art. It has echoes of Mignola's sharp lines and heavy shadows, but there are times when I feel like the illustrations are clean as a result of a lack of character than style. Overall, I would rate him slightly below the other artists that have done a lot of work on Hellboy (Davis, Jason Shawn Alexander, Mignola, and Fegredo) but the "slightly" in there is more of a complement: those guys are amazing. Where Fegredo tends to deviate more towards detail in his style, Stenbeck tends to leave things very clean. I think it works fairly well, and overall the illustration adds a lot to the book as any decent graphic novel should.
The story is where I really felt torn. Many of the hellboy stories are a rush through strangeness without a lot of explanation, but this story felt like the paranormal occult bits were blasted through and skimmed over even more than most. A lot of time is spent developing Grey as a character, and I did enjoy that. What I think really bothered me is you get the sense of some great impending conflict with a secret society with hints of how massive and powerful it is... only to have the story end without resolution and a page epilogue that wraps up 10 years of conflict into a single textbox or two. It felt awkward and limiting, as though the story were over and done and unlikely to be revisited but still woefully incomplete. That's my main criticism of this particular book.
Still, it's a very enjoyable read. It is definetely a good thing to pick up if you're engrossed in hellboy, or possibly if you're into Victorian occult detectives. If you're interested in Hellboy, I'd recommend starting with the first Hellboy TPB, and if you've been following Hellboy I'd highly recommend The Drowning if you haven't read it already. I'm glad I bought this, and I'm sure it will be reread many times, but I didn't get quite the thrill I did from Seed of Destruction, Conqueror Worm, The Drowning, or Darkness Calls.
Victorian occult detective July 9, 2010
Zack Davisson (Seattle, WA, USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
So, it appears that I have been rather stupid. Although I am a huge fan of Hellboy, and own all the Library Editions, I have always avoided the side projects like B.P.R.D. and Hellboy: Weird Tales. My real beef with these series is that they aren't drawn by Mignola, and I have a pet peeve when writer/artists pass on the artist chores to someone else, especially on personal projects. If I am buying Sin City, I expect it to be written and drawn by Frank Miller. If I am buying Hellboy and related, I want them written and drawn by Mike Mignola.
However, recent Hellboy series like Hellboy Volume 9: The Wild Huntand Hellboy: The Crooked Man have gotten me accustomed to Mignola being drawn by someone else, and realize that the combination can still be a damn fine comic. I was intrigued enough by the few appearances of Sir Edward Grey in a few issues of Hellboy (as well as his name, a nod to William Hope Hodgson's Carnacki the Ghost Finder) hich I thought that was pretty cool) to give this series a try. And so I found out that avoiding Mignola's side projects was only my loss.
The story for "ir Edward Grey, Witchfinder" opens with supernatural murder, with bodies drained entirely of blood and a trail leading to a team of adventurers who dared to venture into and bring something back from a nameless city in the desert (another little nod, this time to Lovecraft's The Nameless City) that existed long before the rise of man and was peopled by something else. The artifact brought back was a semi-complete skeleton of something that walked like a man but was not human. The discovery was supposed to make them rich, but instead the men have found themselves dying one by one and they beg for the Queen's own supernatural detective to help them. The path leads Grey to a secret Egyptian society, a Hyberborian sword bound in a stone-age handle, an ectoplasm spewing medium and an awakened beast from dark pits best left forgotten. To defeat the mystery Grey allies himself with a two-hundred year old man known only as Captain and a lunatic from Bedlam who may hold the key to putting the beast back down where it belongs. All the ingredients for a Victorian occult detective pot-boiler are here.
In the afterword to "Sir Edward Grey, Witchfinder," Mignola says that he had always wanted to introduce an occult detective in the classic Victorian tradition into his Hellboy world, but after drawing the comic adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula for Topps Comics (remember them?) he knew he wasn't up to drawing the numerous horses, hansom cabs and extravagant clothing required of doing a period piece, so the idea went on the back burner. It took finding a partner in artist Ben Stenbeck (Living with the Dead) to make it a reality.
I wasn't very familiar with Stenbeck before this comic, but he has clearly been studying Mignola's style while adapting it with a more dynamic feel. Much of the line work and character design is pure Mignola, while the characters themselves are more fluid than Mignola's rock-hewn heroes. Stenbeck has a way with character's faces, especially those in the madhouse, and I loved his work on the characters of Captain and his associates Mr. Bacon and Mr. Salt.
As always, colorist Dave Stewart deserves props for his beautiful work, which is not only stunning as always be helps to keep a feeling of continuity between Mignola's work and Stenbeck's. Even with a different artist, "Sir Edward Grey, Witchfinder" looks like something from the Hellboy world, and that is due in large part to Stewart's coloring.
I can't say that I don't miss Mignola's art, and I hope that he continues to draw his series because the Mignola written and drawn issues are undeniably superior. However, Stenbeck's work on "Sir Edward Grey, Witchfinder" was definitely up to standards, and I would be happy to pick up a Mignola/Stenbeck book again.
This trade paperback from Dark Horse contains not only the main series "In the Service of Angels" but also two related back-up stories. The first, "Murderous Intent," was a sort of pilot to Mignola and Stenbeck working together and was published only on the internet. It tells the story of Grey's battle against three witches and his ascension to Knighthood as well as gaining the unofficial title of Witchfinder. The second back-up story, "The Burial of Katharine Baker," has art by Patric Reynolds and features the first Witchfinder, Henry Hood. This story first appeared in "Hellboy: Darkness Calls" but is not included in that collection. There is also the usual sketchbook found in Mignola's collections, with sketch art by both Mignola and Stenbeck.
Heavenly May 18, 2010
Wiggles (UK)
Set in Victorian England, a group of explorers return to London after an expedition to Egypt where they discovered, amongst other things, some bones belonging to a creature they can't identify. Shortly after they set off back home they begin being picked off one by one, dying mysterious and gruesome deaths. Who's responsible? Enter Sir Edward Grey, Witchfinder.
As he tracks the demon, he encounters spirits, a 200 year old captain, an actualisation of a real Victorian theory of the "Hollow Earth", and a shadowy secret brotherhood.
The character of Edward Grey has cropped up in lots of Mignola's previous work like Hellboy, Abe Sapien, and BPRD and I've liked the idea of it for a while. So it's great news that Mignola's decided to take the character and develop him into his own series.
Foggy London streets, shadowy Whitechapel alleys, amazing looking Victorian architecture, the artist Ben Stenbeck has done a great job bringing Mike Mignola's great script to life.
As always Mignola's work puts other mainstream comics to shame with the vivid characters and fantastic stories. Gothic horror doesn't get much better than Witchfinder.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 7
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